Catalina was clearly impatient. “That sounds very strange,” she said, moving to open another trunk. “If he does not remember his identity, why would he think I could?”
“I do not know, my lady, only that he hoped you could.”
She sighed and turned back to the trunk in front of her. “Show me what it is and let’s be done with it,” she said. “I am very busy.”
Lance reached into his coin purse and dug the cross out. Catalina was digging through the trunk when he extended the cross to her. She noticed that he was holding an item out to her and, pausing in her rummaging, took it from him. She didn’t look at it right away. As he stood back politely, she finally tore her attention away from the trunk and looked at the item in her hand.
Her first glance was unreadable. She simply looked at it. But she looked again, more closely, and as Lance watched, her eyes widened and she seemed to stagger sideways. It was as if a great, unseen wind was blowing at her, trying to knock her off her feet. She had to grab on to a chair to steady herself.
“My… my…” she gasped. “My…God!”
She nearly shouted the last word, and Lance’s brow furrowed. “Do you know what that is, my lady?” he asked.
Catalina couldn’t even answer him at first. When she did, all that came out was a cry of anguish. In fact, it made Lance flinch because it was so loud. Suddenly, de Efford soldiers were in the tent flap, making sure Lady Catalina wasn’t being attacked, and Lance simply looked at them and shrugged his shoulders. He didn’t know what was going on any more than they did. Catalina shrieked again and practically fell into the chair she’d been gripping, still looking at that small, twisted cross. Lance waved the soldiers away before approaching her, slowly.
It was clear that something was very, very amiss.
“My lady?” he said timidly. “What is it? What is wrong?”
She was staring at the cross, unable to speak. As Lance watched, her eyes filled with tears and she began gasping.
“Wh-who…” she stammered. “Whogave this to you?”
Lance pointed in the general direction of the tournament field. “As I said, I saw a man lurking about here,” he said. “My lady… he was horribly scarred. I’ve never seen anything like it. He said it was a fire that had injured him so. He—”
She screamed again, leaping to her feet and putting her hands over her ears. “Nay!” she cried. “Nay, do not tell me! I do not want to hear any more!”
“I do not understand.”
She suddenly whirled on him, rushing to him and trying to give him the cross. “Take this back to the man,” she said in a panic. “Tell him I do not know what it is. I do not know anything about it. Lance, do this for me and do not tell a soul of this incident, and I shall make sure you have a good position, somewhere. But you must forget about this and never speak of it again. Will you promise me?”
He was confused, but he was also concerned. She was horribly overwrought and he had no idea why. He didn’t take the cross from her, merely eyed it.
“My lady, are you in trouble?” he said, reaching out to steady her because she was trembling so badly. “If you are in trouble, let me find your husband. He will want to know.”
“Nay!” she cried again, stepping back from him and tripping over the borrowed dress she was still wearing from yesterday. She ended up on her bottom on the cold earthen floor. “You will never speak of this to—”
She was cut off when Harald suddenly appeared in the doorway. He’d been returning from the great hall of Lioncross, nearing the edge of the encampment, when he heard the screaming coming from his tent. That had sent him on the run, noting that his own soldiers seemed concerned but indecisive, so he burst into the tent to see what was amiss. One look at his daughter on the ground, with Lance standing over her, and he was filled with rage.
Shock and rage.
Even if Harald didn’t particularly care about his daughter, he was enraged that Lance should be here.Again.After Harald had banished him, the man had had the gall to return. Perhaps he was even beating on Catalina because of the sins of her father. The fact that she was here was puzzling, too, but he didn’t stop to ask questions. All he knew was that his daughter was on the ground and Lance was standing over her, and he was compelled to punish the man. He grabbed the first thing he could find, which happened to be an iron sconce near the door.
He wielded it like a club.
“You!” he boomed. “What are you doing here?”
Before Lance could speak, he had a sconce flying at his head as Harald tried to decapitate him. He ducked it, but in doing so, he put his arm up to protect himself, and that push-back motion sent Harald’s momentum sideways. The old man, unused to swinging heavy sconces around, stumbled to his left, unable to stop himself.
Unfortunately for him, there was a big wooden rack that held the weapons for his guards right in his path. The swords were all stored with the blade side down, but the spears and maces were not. There were two particular maces that had bulbous, spiked ends and then enormous, daggerlike spikes coming out from the top of the bulbs, pointing straight up. Harald’s momentum had him crashing into the rack of weapons and the daggerlike spike of one of the maces ramming straight into his throat while the spike from the other mace pierced his right eye, through his brain, and emerged through the back of his skull.
Harald collapsed on the cache of weapons, dead.
Catalina’s screams could be heard all over the encampment.
CHAPTER TWENTY
“Well,” Addax said,“isn’t this cozy? You look like a family man already, Es.”
