Ah, sweet Jesu, but he loved her—and even more miraculously, she loved him too, having spoken those very words to him moments after they’d made love, following the tournament. He had not answered her then…he had not known how to, overwhelmed as he’d been by his own fears for their future. But the future had come. He was living the horror of it right now, and it had not changed anything about the feelings he cherished for her.
He needed to get to her, to break free of this confinement and tell her the truth of it. He needed to protect her from Hugh. And so through the torment of these last few days, Damien had formulated a plan.
He had been aided in it by the force of something else that had changed inside him. Aye, at the moment that he’d accepted his love for Alissende and hers for him, he had felt the understanding flood his heart, helping him fill the empty place that had been aching inside him for so long. Against all odds, against hope itself, he had been given another chance to love Alissende and be loved by her in return. And suddenly it had become crystal clear to him that no God who would abandon him in his greatest need would then grace him with such a life-sustaining treasure.
That awareness had freed him from the bitterness that had stifled him for so long. He was not alone in the hell of his imprisonment. He never had been, even in France. Nay, it was he who had turned his back on God, refusing to see. Now that his vision was clear, there was nothing that could stand in his way of getting back to Alissende. This day, he would put into motion the plan he had whispered to this tattered and weakened group of Templar brothers, liberating himself and them from their inquisitors at last.
Tapping lightly on the wall, Damien waited for an answering sound. They’d housed him alone because of his strength and size, but he’d found his means of communicating with the others anyway. Soon another scratch came, and he knew that the man there would spread the message, so that as much as they were able, those who could might be ready to offer a united burst of resistance when the opportunity came.
His heart pounded as he heard the guards approach his door. Though it disgusted him to do so, he positioned himself sideways on the rotted straw that covered the floor of his vermin-infested cell, pretending that he’d fallen senseless—from fear or illness, it did not matter. He only needed to appear unable to respond, talk or stand.
Certainly unable to fight back.
The door grated open, and the wash of light shone across his barely closed eyes. The same two guards who collected him each day strode through the door, one of them cursing at the sight of him.
“The bastard’s out cold, and he hasn’t even been questioned properly yet,” the first man complained to his mate, leaning over to grab one of Damien’s arms. He pulled, yelling, “Come and help me with ’im, why don’t you, Eustace! Get ’is other arm and pull.”
Eustace lumbered over and complied, and Damien forced himself to remain motionless in their grasp as they pulled him out into the open, into the hallway that connected all the cells. The corridor wound around further up, leading to the interrogation chambers, and Damien knew there would be precious little time, depending on how much noise Eustace and his mate made when he offered his counterattack, to begin opening the cell doors before other guards would come running.
He would simply have to make the most of it.
Eustace grunted, pausing as they dragged him over the filthy stones, with a mumbled call for a rest…
And it was then that Damien made his move. With a soundless burst of energy, he shot to his feet, taking the two guards so by surprise that Eustace fell back, hitting his head against the wall, and uttering one loud groan. He seemed dazed, but the other guard started to call out for help, so Damien dealt with him first, choking the sound off to a gurgle as he grabbed him by his throat and squeezed. The man’s eyes bulged in fear, but Damien had no intention of killing him, much as the wretch likely deserved it. Nay, that would take too much time. Instead, Damien pulled back his fist and slammed it into the guard’s temple, setting him down when he slumped over, senseless.
A good crack across Eustace’s jaw put him in the same condition, and, breathing heavily, Damien scrambled to lift the bars on the four remaining cells on his side of the corridor. To his great relief, Bernard emerged from one of the filthy chambers, and Damien gripped his arm in solidarity before moving on to the doors at the other side of the corridor. The poor souls within them were unlikely to be able to move from where they’d been thrown after their latest interrogation sessions, but he could at least give them a fighting chance.
Tumult ensued when three more guards and two of the inquisitors came charging down the hallway toward Damien and the other prisoners. By force of pure will, it seemed, and perhaps a touch of good luck, the bedraggled lot of long-tortured Templar brethren, Bernard, and Damien managed to hold their own, using improvised weapons—and, in Damien’s case, his bare fists.
By the time the commotion settled, two of the Templar prisoners were dead, as was one of the guards and an inquisitor. The remaining tyrants were locked into the filthy cells to which their captives had been consigned for so many months.
“We are free, brothers,” the scrawny, bearded man from the cell next to Damien’s rasped, sounding as if he was near to tears. He was slumped against the wall where the uprising had taken place, his wrinkled face tipped up to the ceiling. “Praise God, we are free!”
The sentiment was echoed in the laughing coughs and choked sobs of the other men who had survived. There were six in all, aside from Bernard and Damien. None of the brethren surrounding them right now had been Templar Knights; they were instead simple brothers in charge of farming or keeping accounts at the priory where they had all lived and worked. Four of the six were in their waning years, and they all looked like survivors of a pestilence, painfully thin, dirty, and covered in sores, cuts, and bruises. Damien’s jaw clenched with the thought that, unlike those who had lived through a plague, however, these men had suffered at the hands of their own.
“It is not over yet, brothers,” Damien said quietly. He motioned to them to gather behind him. “First we must find our way out of this damnable place without being caught by any of Lord Harwick’s servants or guards above.”
Two of the old men shuffled nervously, while the one who had been housed next to Damien pointed a bony finger down the hall. “Just past the devil’s chambers yonder, there is a storeroom. I heard them speaking within it, once, when I was being questioned. They would come and go by that room.”
Damien nodded. “Follow me. We shall see if this storeroom is to be the gate to our salvation this night.”
The strange parade of old and injured men did as Damien requested. There was indeed a corridor leading out of the storage chamber. Even better, once they’d reached its limits—which opened into the kitchens, by the look of the goods stacked near that final door—there was also a covered, rough-hewn hole in the wall, quite large, that angled down toward the ground below. Naught could be seen at the bottom; it was night, apparently, and pitch dark, but anyone with a nose would know what this was.
They’d discovered a refuse chute, used by the kitchen workers for throwing away scraps and garbage. The tunnel, hewn right into the stone wall, emptied into a pit dug outside the fortified manor house’s barbican. It would be an unpleasant landing, perhaps, but at least they would be clear of Grantley Hall when they were through.
Damien went first, just in case there were any guards stationed outside. It seemed unlikely, but after all they had risked to escape, he wasn’t about to chance it. To their good fortune, naught but an open field edged by woodland greeted them below. That and the reeking mound of garbage that broke their fall. Trying not to breathe in the stench, Damien moved as quickly as he could, getting clear of the pit and then helping the others do the same.
None of them had smelled pleasant before, he could attest, but now they reeked of dead fish, rotted onions, and other unmentionables as well. As he moved the group carefully toward the wooded area a hundred paces away, he tightened his jaw, more grateful than he had ever been for the fresh, outdoor air.
They traveled on foot for another quarter hour through the cover of the trees, and Damien was just turning to murmur his next command when he heard a crackle of branches. In the dimmed light of a cloud-covered crescent moon, he made out the slowly approaching forms of what appeared to be several men, coming through the trees toward them. Mounted men.
This close to Grantley, and so comfortable traveling at night, they could only be Hugh’s guard.
Biting back a curse, Damien stiffened. He gazed around blindly for something he could use to perhaps knock one of these soldiers from his steed. If he called attention to himself, at least one of them might charge him, and he could take the man’s sword if he toppled him. With a weapon he’d have a chance at least—not much, but a chance nonetheless—to fend off the others so that his weakened brethren and Bernard could flee.
Twisting back to the men behind him, he murmured, “Move slowly away from me, divide up, and then run when I attract their attention.”
“Whose attention?” the old Templar behind him rasped.
