“Hush now,” Brautus said, tightening his grip. “Kevin, where is that granddam of yours?”
“Sleeping in our rooms, I think,” Kevin answered, looking more confused by the moment. “Lady Isabel, what has happened? Why did Sir Simon flee the castle? Does he need help?”
“Tell Mother Bess to come to the solar,” Brautus answered for her. “Tell her Caitlin’s daughter needs her help.”
“What are you talking about?” Isabel demanded. Caitlin had been her mother’s name, but she could not remember Brautus ever mentioning it before. “She wanted to tell me before,” she said, remembering. “But you wouldn’t let her.” The wolf cannot die, the old woman had said. But you will beat him in the end. Simon had transformed to a wolf. Simon was something called a vampire, something Brautus seemed to know but she did not. “You knew!” she said, looking at him in horror.
“Forgive me, my lady, but hush,” Brautus ordered, giving her a shake.
Kevin looked back and forth between them with a frown. “Aye, Brautus,” he said. “I will bring her.” Nodding once to Isabel, he left.
“You knew,” she said again, tearing her arm from Brautus’s grip.
“No, love, I did not,” he answered. “If I had, he never would have crossed the drawbridge, I can promise you.” He looked pale, suddenly, and shaken. “But come. It is time to let the old witch say her piece.”
Malachi thundered down the forest path with Simon crouched low over his neck. Suddenly the stallion stumbled, sending the vampire sailing over his head without a moment’s warning like a stone launched from a flail. He slammed full force against a tree before crashing to the rocky ground, his spine giving way with a horrifying snap. Malachi reared over him, still fighting for his footing, the rope that had tripped him still tangled around his legs.
“Easy,” Simon said, trying to stand, but his limbs were shattered, beyond his control. “Easy, boy.” He managed to roll out of the pathway, but one of the horse’s hooves still came down hard on his leg, crushing it to pulp beneath the animal’s weight. “It’s all right,” he said soothingly, the pain making him feel faint. “It will be all right.” He was a vampire; he would heal in an hour or so, but if Malachi should fall trying to avoid him, he would not.
“That’s it,” he said softly as the horse stopped prancing to nuzzle him with his nose. “We’re fine.” But he couldn’t seem to make his arms work to reach up to him, and he was still restive, obviously still upset. Suddenly he reared up again, kicking Simon in the side, stoving in his ribs. The vampire cried out, unable to stop himself this time, and the stallion galloped away.
“Shit,” Simon muttered, borrowing Isabel’s worst oath as he rolled himself onto his back.
“Stop your crying.” Kivar had taken back the shape of the brigand, Michel, along with his manner and voice. “It’s not as if you can die.” He hauled Simon up by one arm, making him scream as his broken bones scraped and twisted inside his flesh, then threw him over his shoulder like a freshly dressed stag at the hunt. “Come, my son,” he grunted, shifting him to a more secure position, making him swear again in pain. “You and I must talk.”
Isabel waited in the solar, the cup of warm wine meant to revive her after her ordeal untouched. Brautus said nothing, sitting by the fire, and she didn’t ask him to speak. She wanted to hear Mother Bess first. She went to the loom, to the tapestry her mother had been weaving up until the day she died and Isabel was born. All her life, she had studied it, trying to conjure up some sense of the woman who had made it, the mother she had never known. What would her mother tell her now? I love him, Isabel would say to her. I want to save him. Would the pretty peasant girl call her a fool?
Th
e door opened, and Mother Bess came in, leaning on Kevin’s arm. “Welcome, old gran,” Brautus said, rising to meet her. “Come and sit by the fire.”
“Never you mind where I sit,” the old woman snapped. “You and your lord nearly made quite a mess, don’t you think?” She smiled at Isabel, patting her cheek. “But we’ll soon put it right.”
“I don’t know what you mean, Mother Bess,” Isabel said. “I don’t understand any of this.”
“You will, poppet,” Brautus promised as the old woman snorted at him again in disgust before she sat down. “It’s all right, Kevin. You can go.” The groom looked at Isabel, obviously uncertain, and she nodded.
“It’s all right.” He nodded back and left them, closing the door behind him.
Brautus took out a scroll of parchment very much like the ones Isabel had taken from her father’s study. “All right,” he said gruffly, looking first at Mother Bess, then at Isabel. “Shall I begin?”
“You know naught of the beginning,” Mother Bess said scornfully. “But aye, you may as well.”
“Thanks,” he muttered, turning to Isabel. “I was with your father when he came here to Charmot. We had fought together many years already, and I knew that he meant to make this place his final home. But he never once mentioned any need to take a wife. He had loved a demoiselle once in his youth in France, but she betrayed him, and he swore he would never love another.”
“Foolish Norman,” Mother Bess muttered, earning herself an impatient glance from the knight.
“But one day just after we had finished clearing the land for this fortress and the architect was drawing out the walls, we looked up to see a maiden coming across our brand-new bridge,” he went on. “The most beautiful creature your father, or indeed any of us, had ever seen.” He smiled at her fondly, and she made herself smile back. She could not doubt he loved her, that everything he had done had been for love. But all she could think of was Simon’s face as he left her. I could have stopped him, she thought. I could have made him explain; I could have saved him.
“You had not been born yet, you’ll recall,” Brautus was going on. “So this baggage walked straight up to Sir Gabriel like she knew him and said, ‘I will marry you.’ And he looked back at her for barely a moment before he said, ‘Yes, you will.’ And that was Lady Caitlin.”
“She was a pretty thing,” Mother Bess agreed.
Any other time Isabel would have found this story fascinating. She had certainly never heard it before. But she didn’t see what bearing it had on her present situation. Charmot was apparently besieged by demons from every side, one of whom had told her that he loved her. And she, poor fool, still loved him back. What did she care how her parents had come to be married? “I don’t understand,” she repeated. “What does my mother have to do with Simon?”
“Caitlin’s father was a protector of the druid’s grove,” Mother Bess explained, as if this should mean something to her. “Your grandfather, my very dear Lady Charmot.” Isabel looked at her blankly. “Sweet God, did that Norman tell her nothing?” she demanded of Brautus.
“Don’t speak that way about my father,” Isabel said, her temper starting to rise. “He was your lord, if you’ll recall, of noble blood—”