“You must hear me. The potion is made of …” Isolde’s voice whispered through the dark hallways, and Sorcha only half listened.
The dungeon smelled of rotting hay and urine. Rats scurried beneath thin layers of musty straw, and Sorcha’s heart hammered so loudly, she was certain the prisoner could hear it. If Tadd discovered that Isolde had placed a potion in the guards’ mead during the meal and that now they both slept at their posts while the old woman helped Sorcha escape, he would surely flail them both.
Tadd was an angry man, a strong man, a man who hated being beaten, but he was also easily tricked. Sorcha loved fooling him almost as much as she loved defying him. He hated her. That much was certain. Ever since he’d heard the old wives’ tale about the “kiss of the moon” and had seen the birthmark on her neck, he’d been resentful and malicious, though sometimes Sorcha was certain she saw fear in his eyes … as if he sometimes believed in the witchcraft and visions of the old ones.
Sorcha enjoyed this little bit of power, though she believed not in Isolde’s old fable. As Father William had pointed out time after time, should she be the true savior of Prydd, she would have been born a man, though why Father William even bothered to give her this information was a mystery. As a true man of the cloth, he didn’t believe in folk tales.
No doubt Tadd would whip her within an inch of her life if he thought she would be so bold as to talk to the traitor, Sir Robert. She had no choice. Since her father was off fighting the no-good Scots with King Edward, and Tadd would do nothing to free Leah, Sorcha would. The first step was to talk to the prisoner and find out what he knew.
Sorcha held her torch high, allowing the flickering light to fall into the cell. With a clanking of rusted metal, she unlocked the gate and shoved the filthy barrier open. The flames cast orange shadows over the prisoner, a man whom Tadd had foolishly once trusted with his very life. Now Sir Robert was barely alive. His lips were cracked, and blood trailed from one nostril. Both eyes were swollen to mere slits, and his breath rattled deep in his lungs as he breathed. Naked to the waist, he shuddered at the light. Purple welts on his back still oozed blood, and the wound where Sir Henry’s arrow had pierced his shoulder was deep and raw.
“Please … no more …” he whispered, tears running from his puffed and blackened eyes at the thought of another beating. “I’ve told you all I know.”
“Aye, Sir Robert, but you spoke to Lord Tadd,” Sorcha said as Isolde brought in a bucket of water, towels, broth from the kitchen, and her oils and herbs for healing. “Now you must tell me of my sister. Tadd told me little, but ’tis rumored that you know what happened to her.”
Isolde offered the man a cup of water. He drank too quickly and retched the cool liquid back up. “Slowly,” Isolde said, refilling the cup from her pail.
Robert sipped carefully, licking his lips and groaning. When at last he’d had his fill, he leaned back against the cold, damp stones. “Aye,” he said, his voice filled with remorse, “I know of the Lady Leah.”
“Tell me.”
Isolde motioned him to bend forward, then touched his back with a clean, wet towel. He sucked in his breath in a horrid hiss. “ ’Twill help,” Isolde whispered as she cleaned his wounds and added her balms and herbs. She offered him the broth of salmon she’d begged from the cook. Sir Robert drank long, then wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Leah was on her way back from mass and giving alms in town—”
“This much I know,” Sorcha said, guilt riddling her soul.
Robert closed his bruised eyes. “The lady was stopped on the road by a band of outlaws. Her guard, in trying to defend her, was slain. And her maid …” He hesitated, drawing in a shaking breath. Then, with a curse, he added, “Gwendolyn was beaten, raped, and left for dead as well. Christ, Jesus, I’m sorry … so sorry…”
Sorcha felt as if a dagger had been twisted in her heart all over again. Gwendolyn had been with the castle for all her fifteen years, and she’d hoped to marry the baker’s son. Sir Henry had taught Sorcha to ride and aim an arrow with precision. Henry, like Keane, had been a good man, a kind-hearted man, and he deserved not to die. “Tadd told me of Sir Henry’s loyalty,” she said, her voice filled with a need for vengeance. “And that Leah was taken to Erbyn.”
“Aye.”
Again Sorcha’s soul turned to ice. She had hoped that Tadd had lied to her. “Why would Hagan want Leah?”
Robert spat blood through a hole in his teeth. “I know not.” Sorcha knew he was lying. She leaned closer to the man she had once respected.
“You know more, and if you want me to see that you are a free man again, you will tell me the truth, Robert of Ainsley. And I want to know all. More than you told my brother.”
In the smoky light from the torch, Sir Robert grimaced in pain. He gazed through the bloody slits that were his eyes. “ ’Twas not Hagan who did the kidnapping,” he admitted. “The baron is off fighting the Scots with your father.”
“Darton, then,” Sorcha said, thinking of the younger scheming brother, even more vile than his twin.
“Aye, and ’twas not Leah he wanted.”
Sorcha’s heart stood still. “Then why?”
“ ’Twas you, m’lady.”
“Nay!” she cried, though she knew he wasn’t lying.
Isolde turned tortured eyes upon her. “He speaks the truth. My dreams have forewarned me.”
“What dreams?” Sorcha asked, though she did not wish to hear them.
“Of you and Castle Erbyn.” Isolde crossed herself deftly and dropped to the straw.
“Your visions mean naught,” Sorcha whispered, but a cold drip of truth settled into her heart. She forgot about the stench of the cell and the rats rustling beneath the straw. “But why? I’ve never met that cur from Erbyn.”
“But he has seen you,” Robert said, “and he paid the outlaws to bring you to him. He knew you would never come to him on your own. The feud between Erbyn and Prydd may not cause war just yet, but ’tis just as strong as it was before Hagan demanded a truce.”