Beauchamp Besieged. Elaine Knighton
his statement. The lines of pain on the Englishman’s face bespoke the truth. The “tally” did matter to him. ’Twas not likely that she was the cause of his distress, but something gnawed at that soul he claimed to have, however black it was.
As they neared the lane’s entry to the woods, Ceridwen thought she saw Raymond take pause. His horse tossed its head as if to confirm her suspicion, but Beauchamp shook the reins and reclaimed the animal’s obedience. The knight sniffed the breeze. “Rain will soon fall, we will be caught out. I know a shortcut, but we must take a steep path. Can you manage?”
“Aye,” Ceridwen replied. Come what may, she would stick to her pony like a burr. She followed Raymond’s mount as the black courser bolted through the woods, nimble despite his size. The Englishman rode lightly but the horse seemed out of control. A madness had possessed him as surely as it had his master.
Ceridwen was hard pressed to keep up, but Raymond hurtled on anyway, the faster to get through the forest he hated. Tree trunks sped past in flickering alternations of light and shadow. He let the horse take him, share with him all its wild power.
Leaning over the animal’s neck, Raymond’s hands left the reins, and he rubbed his palms down the pounding, sweat-slickened shoulders of his mount. He did not want to think or to feel. For a little while, he simply wanted to be.
But his momentary peace was shattered as a flash of white burst into the path before them. Grendel whinnied and shied and reared all at once. Raymond kept his seat until his mount headed irrevocably for a low branch. He dove off, landed wrong, and lay still for a moment with his eyes closed.
A jingle of harness and the receding thud of hooves told him of Grendel’s desertion. Hamfast licked his cheek and whined. Moist breath warmed his face as Ceridwen’s pony arrived and nuzzled him. God grant that she was still upon its scruffy back.
“Are you injured, Beauchamp?”
“Nay.” Raymond picked himself up and tried standing. Too quickly, but he managed to avoid her proffered hand. His right knee throbbed. As he tested it, a soft whuffle of sound caught his attention. Raymond stared down the curving path.
Standing there was the stuff of legend. A white stag, living and breathing. Heretofore an insubstantial animal of his imagination, from tales told him by Alys when he was a boy.
Raymond blinked and looked again. It remained, its nostrils flaring gently with each inhalation, deep brown eyes staring at him. A faint blue light seemed to flicker about its antlers and along its back. It snorted and pawed the earth.
He glanced at Ceridwen. She looked unperturbed, as if magical deer were an everyday occurrence. The stag leaped away between the trees. Raymond could not help himself. “Come on!” he shouted. The great dog at his heels, he ran after the beast, drawn like a moth to flame.
A white stag. Emblazoned upon his shield as befit a man of Beauchamp. He could no longer make that claim. He had gone through the motions, followed Alonso’s orders. But his heart was not in it. His ideals of keeping a united front, standing by his brothers no matter what, now seemed as vaporous as the creature he pursued. The stag was a creature purely of myth. It did not exist, except in the minds of superstitious old women. Perhaps all that he had lived for was as much a phantom as the beast. But it looked so real. He had to find out.
Chapter Six
Raymond ran on, limping, his breath coming in ragged gasps. He cursed. Men who owned horses had no business on foot. He pursued the stag through the bracken. It led him higher, pausing now and again, mist swirling at its feet, only to dart away as he approached.
As if from far away, Raymond heard Ceridwen calling. But he could not stop to explain and let the stag escape. The air took on an opaque quality, as if a layer of thin cloth had dropped before his eyes. The wind died and the terrain grew steeper.
Raymond’s heart pounded, until it beat in his ears and neck and belly. His knee felt on fire. The old thigh wound, from the Welsh arrow, ached like the bad memory it was. He climbed the last craggy steps over the rotten, crumbling rocks of the tor. Wisps of fog gathered in the open space of the summit, gray fingers reached to meet each other in a silent entwining. Leaning over to catch his breath, he looked about. The stag was nowhere in sight, and Hamfast too had vanished.
“Sir Raymond!” Ceridwen’s clear voice echoed.
“Keep off! ’Tis unsafe.” Infested with demons, it was.
She tied the pony to a shrub and marched toward him. “What in God’s name are you about? Have you gone mad?”
Raymond kept silent, for in that moment he did not know. A long dolmen was before him, a horizontal slab of stone that had no doubt lain there since the beginning of the world. It rested upon two smaller stones, like a tabletop. The dolmen was waist high, but once it had seemed gigantic. Dread knotted in his stomach. He tried to swallow and could not.
Ceridwen stepped closer, brushing past his arm with the lightest of touches. He kept still until she was out of reach.
“What is this place? Has some enchantment taken you, sir?”
He stared into her clear, innocent eyes, then shook his head. She was the only thing capable of enchanting him, and that he would not allow. A pang speared his gut and the unwelcome past burst upon him, vivid and intense. “An evil remembrance.”
Ceridwen nodded sagely. “Bad memories are like infected wounds. They must be allowed to drain.”
Her knowing words surprised him. But never had he told anyone what had happened here. Not even his lord father, who had made an earnest attempt to beat it out of him. To speak of it might give power and substance to Alonso’s act of betrayal. Raymond rested his hands upon the bench of stone, its surface rough and gritty beneath his palms.
He rubbed his scarred wrists, the legacy of scraping his bonds against the stone to free himself that night. He had survived, but poor Parsifal had never been the same, ever at Alonso’s mercy, or lack thereof.
“What happened, then?”
He jumped at Ceridwen’s question. There she sat, still waiting for him to speak. He cleared his throat and looked at the sullen, brooding sky. “I had a—small disagreement with my brothers here, long ago.”
Ceridwen raised an eyebrow. “You do not care for the truth. Its lack will haunt you.”
Raymond scowled at her impertinence and climbed onto the stone. He lay back, touching the rough, lichen-covered dolmen with his fingertips. The events of that night still burned at the bottom of all his hatred for Alonso.
Ceridwen clambered up to sit cross-legged on top of the dolmen. “You had best tell the tale before the storm breaks.”
“I do not want to speak of it.”
“Are you afraid of my judgment?”
Raymond smiled grimly. “God is my judge, not you.”
She studied him, her eyes grave. “We all have fear. Or regret.
If one keeps it always at bay, one never heals.”
“I have healed. Many times. I am covered in scars.”
“That is not the sort of healing I mean.”
Raymond shifted uncomfortably and glanced at the young woman beside him. She was like a stick poking a raw wound. “Here is the truth, then. I spent an uncomfortable night here once as a boy. I woke at dawn, warmed by a great dog. The original Hamfast, as I named him, the great-great-grandsire of all that have since followed.” Never had he been so glad of another creature’s comfort. God only knew where he had come from.
The girl made no comment. The stone bit into his shoulder blades. The sky wheeled overhead, as though the slab he lay upon revolved on its own axis. Here he was, on the brink of war, of fratricide, no better than Alonso. He wanted to cover his face with his hands, but not with Ceridwen looking on. He was glad he