My Lady Midnight. Laurie Grant
think it best that they follow their usual routine,” he said, as if he read her thoughts. “You will be free until dinner.”
’Tis not a “usual” day, my lord, she longed to retort, but she dared not argue. Instead she watched as the children walked numbly away with the priest.
Well, now she had the opportunity she had been seeking.
“Be it all right if I look around the castle, my lord?” she asked, taking care to keep her eyes down and her tone subservient. “By Saint Swithin’s knucklebone, I never been in such a vast place, I haven’t. Why, the cot I come from wasn’t nothin’ but one room, and the cow and the pig shared that of a winter, they did.”
A faint look of disgust—or was it boredom?—crossed his lean, high-cheekboned face. “It’s of no concern to me what you do until dinner,” he said with a careless shrug of his shoulders. “Just don’t distract the men on guard duty in the gatehouses, and don’t pester Guy, the smith. He’ll be shoeing my war-horse in a little while, and it’s bound to make Guy testy.” He turned away and began to follow the others back into the inner ward.
The seneschal came up to him. “My lord, there are matters that require your attention this day,” Sir Gautier said. “The reeve would have a word with you, followed by the bailiff, and there is correspondence from the empress…”
Claire had been about to let Lord Alain get some distance from her, for she had been tacitly dismissed, when the last remark came to her ears, and she quickened her steps to stay just behind him. Correspondence from the empress? She wondered about the contents of such a missive—would it be something of interest to Hardouin? She wished she could see the letter—perhaps the information would be so valuable that Hardouin would be willing to forgo his plot to have her kidnap the children!
“As always, she demands a prompt answer, and that you burn it immediately upon reading its contents,” Sir Gautier went on. Both men seemed totally oblivious to her presence, but of course they spoke in French, and doubtless felt free to converse in front of her.
Claire was disappointed. It didn’t sound as if she would have a chance to read the missive.
“Yes, yes,” Lord Alain muttered with a trace of impatience. “What else?”
“Oh, and the kennel master begs me to inform you that your favorite alaunt bitch has delivered a new litter…”
Lord Alain gave a rueful shrug. “New puppies will have to wait, unfortunately. I’ll see the bailiff and the reeve first, and then attend me in my chambers, and we’ll see what Matilda has to say this time.”
They were in front of the outside staircase that led up to the great hall by them. Claire lingered no more. It was clear that the lord of Hawkswell would have more than enough to occupy him. He would not know that she had gone to check on his prisoners.
Claire waited until Lord Alain and the seneschal had gone into the great hall before entering the doorway right in front of her, praying the locked room would be under the main cellar, and hoping if any saw her, she would appear to be innocently exploring, just as she had asked to do.
Fortunately, when she reached the cellar, by taking the steps down instead of up to the great hall, no one else was there. As her eyes adjusted to the large, shadowy room just below the great hall, Claire made out piles of filled sacks, upright barrels and casks lying on their sides. Her nose was filled with the mingled odors of grain, apples, wine and old leather. There were cobwebs in the high, angled window that let in faint light from outside. There was no door or stairs leading to a room below this one. Was there some other room known as a cellar, perhaps in one of the other towers? But surely not—he had said the cellar.
A preternatural silence made the hair on the back of Claire’s neck stand on end. She moved tentatively across the straw-covered floor, watching where she put her feet, lest she encounter a spider, a creature she had detested ever since childhood. She peered into the dark corners, too, half-expecting a crouching soldier—or some subterranean monster—to leap out and grab her. Apparently the locked room was not in this building, she decided. She would have to look elsewhere. But as she began to retreat from the room, the dust from the straw tickled her nose, and before she could catch herself, she sneezed.
Immediately she heard a faint, muffled exclamation. Had it come from below?
Claire waited, but no further sound came. She would have to risk calling out. “Hello? Is anyone there?” she asked in English.
Then she heard it again, clearer this time, a man’s voice, shouting from below in thickly accented English. “Who’s there?”
“I—” She began, then stopped. Should she call herself Claire, or Haesel? How did she know who was calling to her?
“Who are ye?” She stood absolutely still so she could hear where the sound came from.
“Ivo of Caen! Who’re ye?” came the muffled voice. It seemed to be coming from directly beneath her.
“Ivo! Is anyone with ye?” She dared not reveal herself until she knew if there was a guard within earshot.
“Just Jean.” The voice switched to French. “Is that ye, Lady Claire?”
“Y-yes,” she said, switching to French. “Where are ye?”
“Are ye in the cellar? We’re in a cell right below ye!” came the voice. “Are ye alone? Come down here!”
“But how?” she called back. “I see no door—”
“There’s a trapdoor in the floor. Poke around until ye find it!”
“I will…” Wishing she could have brought a lantern, or even just a candle, she poked her crude leather shoe among the prickly dry straw, until at last her foot collided with something hard that protruded ever so slightly from the floor. She crouched and pushed the straw away with her hands, uncovering a metal ring about four inches in diameter.
“I’ve found it, I think,” she called. “A metal ring?”
“That’s it! Pull up on it, and come down here!” commanded Ivo.
Claire felt an instant flare of irritation at the mercenary’s peremptory tone, but she put his impatience down to the effects of confinement. At first the trapdoor didn’t budge when she pulled on it, but after she braced herself and gave it a mighty yank, it yielded with a creak.
Claire peered down into the gaping hole. She could see a stone stairway, but no Ivo or Jean waiting at its foot. There seemed to be a flickering light below, but still she hesitated. Would she be going right into the very cell in which Ivo and Jean were imprisoned? Despite the fact that they were supposedly on the same side, she didn’t trust the rough men, for she’d seen the secret, hungry looks the soldiers had leveled at her during the journey from Coverly—as if they were wolves and she were a helpless lamb traveling in the midst of the pack.
“Does this stairway lead right into your cell?” she called down.
She heard a snort of laughter. “Do ye think Hawkswell would make it so easy to overwhelm the man who brings us our meals and empties our slop bucket? Nay, lady, we’re in a cell at the base of the stairway. Come on down and you’ll see.”
Was it a trick? She’d just have to trust that they were telling the truth, she decided, and lowered her foot onto the first step below.
The walls were cool and damp, but not slimy, she noted, and once she got halfway down she saw that the light was coming from a pitch-soaked torch set in the stone wall right next to a door in which a small, square hole, covered with close-set iron bars, was cut. The hole was just big enough to reveal Ivo’s and Jean’s faces pressed against the bars, watching her descent.
“It’s about time, my lady,” Jean greeted her in his coarse peasant French. “Do ye bring the key to let us out?”
“The key?” She paused on the last step, astonished at his question, but determined