“It is her destiny.”
“I dislike it when you speak in riddles,” Christien muttered.
Michael grinned.“Her destiny is tied to the treasure.If she fails in one life, she must come back in another.”
“So I am fated to meet her and fall in love with her over and over?”Hope and despair combined inside him.Mon Dieu,he couldn’t keep reliving this intense love and the inevitable grief that followed it.
“Until those seals are broken, yes, I’m afraid so.”
And Christien’s job was to make sure those seals were never broken.
Michael was right.The castle was a day’s ride from the campsite—and what a long, monotonous day it had been.Christien ran a weary hand through his hair.It’d been a while since he’d ridden a horse and his muscles were cramping.He had a whole new appreciation for the power and speed of his Italian sports car and a little less nostalgia for the good old days.
The horse plodded on, giving his mind free rein that he didn’t appreciate.He thought of Madelaine, grief giving way to hope and circling back around to grief.The hope was almost as bad as the grief.The knowledge that he would see her again gave him the strength he needed to go on.The thought of losing her yet again pitched him into the deepest despair.
He wanted a life with her.A life without danger stalking them.A life of peace.But that was impossible.He knew that, but it didn’t stop him from yearning for it.
People’s voices pulled him from his dreary thoughts.He drew back on the reins and cocked his head to listen.It’d been such a long time since he’d been a soldier.Could he do this?Would he be able to slip back into the soldier he’d been so long ago?So much had happened since then.
A few minutes more of riding and he glimpsed the castle walls, the lowered portcullis and the soldiers walking the battlements.
For a few crazy seconds he stared, disoriented, at the swords swinging from soldiers’ hips and the occasional archer with his bow.
Slowly he slid off his horse and observed carts loaded with grain and produce rumble across the wooden bridge.Men called to each other, waved and stopped to pass a few words.Men he’d walked beside seven hundred years ago.Men he’d broken bread with and trained with.Men who had been dead seven centuries.Except, now they were very much alive and very real.
The stench surprised him.He’d forgotten the smell of the fourteenth century.No bathrooms, no running water.Filthy people living in filthy circumstances and not knowing any differently.The castle was rich, yet had an air of squalor about it.He didn’t need to come close to know most people didn’t have a full set of teeth, their skin was pockmarked, but their bodies strong from years of hard labor or fighting.The majority couldn’t read, yet they were smart in ways the twenty-first-century man wouldn’t be, nor would he want to be.
Survival was the name of the game in this time.It was an elemental way of living and yet their worries and heartaches were eerily similar to the men of the twenty-first century.
He led his horse forward.The time for questioning was long gone.And Madelaine could very well be within those walls.
He waved to the sentry on duty, as he always did when entering.The man, Petrus was his name—Christien was shocked he remembered—waved back with a half-hearted effort, his expression grim.
Christien led his horse to the stables where a boy, no more than ten years of age, took it from him.Ten years old.In modern days that would equate to child labor and the parents would be hauled in front of a judge to answer to their neglect.In this day, the child was paying his own way through servitude.Probably had been for a few years and would for the rest of his life.
As he passed through the bailey, Christien recognized and waved to different people, feeling as if he were having an out-of-body experience.There were few smiles and almost no laughter.It’d been that way at the castle because the count made it that way, but today seemed a little more somber than most.A feeling of foreboding overcame him but he shoved it away, not willing to acknowledge what his mind was trying to tell him.
Christien wanted to stop someone and ask them what day it was but that would lead to questions he couldn’t answer so he kept moving toward the castle doors.Was Madelaine on the other side of those doors?
If she was, he had to remember she wasn’t the same Madelaine of modern day, but the scared girl she’d become from living with her husband and fighting off Lucien.
Women gathered at the well, dipping buckets in while children chased each other around their legs.A piglet squealed and took off running, its eyes rounded in terror.The women didn’t laugh, didn’t linger to pass on the latest gossip.Their looks were dispirited, their eyes darting around as if they were afraid.
Christien pulled open the front door and strode into the dark hall where silence hung heavy.
The count stood at the cold hearth, head bent, shoulders bowed.Lucien stood beside him, leaning close, speaking to him in earnest whispers.
Christien stepped up and cleared his throat, searching for the appropriate words.It’d been a long time since he’d had to show obeisance to anyone and he found the act grating.
Lucien’s head jerked up, his eyes flaring in panic before narrowing in hatred.’Twas the panic that interested Christien the most.
“My lord,” Christien said in Norman French, the words flowing from his lips as if he hadn’t spent the past few hundred years speaking modern English.He bowed to the count, despising every minute of it.
The count’s eyes were red-rimmed and watery.“Sir Knight,” he said softly.The stench of alcohol rose off him and Christien stepped back.
He was uncertain of what to say, how to ask what was wrong.Except he knew.In his heart he knew what had put the grief on the man’s face.He was too late to save Madelaine.
Lucien moved toward Christien.It took everything in Christien not to step away from the foul smell of the priest.
