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It was nearly midnight when Kayne rode out of Wirth, cloaked in a heavy black cape and riding atop Tristan. He knew that the destrier’s heavy hooves made a great deal of noise, but the pleasure he experienced at riding his magnificent steed far overtook his fear of unsettling the villagers.
A powerful mount, Tristan readily bore Kayne’s muscled weight, moving with a speed and grace that made it seem as if he carried nothing at all. Once clear of the village, he gave the horse full rein, bending low over the animal’s neck as it lengthened its strides, galloping for several long minutes with clear enjoyment.
When they neared the forest, Kayne at last reined the majestic beast in, slowing his pace by degrees. Just as he had been during their years together in France, Tristan was instantly obedient to his master’s will. Without such obedience, Kayne knew, he’d have been long dead. More times than he could recall it had been Tristan’s perfectly honed skills as a warhorse that had kept them both alive.
It was an easy matter to find the place where he needed to turn in, though it was not always so in the midst of those nights when he journeyed to the forest. Tonight, however, the moon was nearly full, giving plenty of light for such late wanderings. Tomorrow night, Kayne thought, glancing upward, ’twould be even brighter, and all those celebrating Midsummer Night would rejoice to have their dancing and feasting made that much more pleasant.
Sofia, especially, would enjoy herself. She had a gift for happiness; one that he envied greatly. He could almost envision her now, with her long golden hair unbound and flowing free, crowned with a circlet of flowers and swaying like the finest silk cloth as she danced about the bonfires. She’d have no lack of partners. Nay, she’d suffer quite a different trouble by having far too many vying for her hand, both young and old alike.
It wasn’t far to the clearing which was his destination. Senet and John were there before him, waiting.
“Where is Aric?” Kayne asked as he brought Tristan to a halt. He dismounted with ease as the other men approached, and held out a hand in greeting.
“His wife, Magan, is heavy with child,” Senet Gaillard, the lord of Lomas, replied, clasping Kayne’s arm in the manner of long friendship, “and he will not leave her for fear that the babe might come with him gone. ’Tis good to see you again, Kayne. You are well?”
“Most well, as you see,” he assured him before turning to greet the other man. “John, well met.”
John Baldwin, who had recently become the lord of Cap-well, shook his hand warmly.
“Aye, indeed, Kayne. I was sorry not to come when Senet and Aric last met you here, and so had to come this time. Clarise sends her warmest love.”
“Give her my thanks, and send my own affections in return. She is well and happy? But I think she must be, now that you are wed.”
John smiled and nodded. “Most happy, we are, the both of us. But what of you? Your burns are much healed from what I saw many months ago.”
“He has the lady of Wirth to thank for it,” Senet said, grinning at Kayne. “A very beautiful lady, from what is told of her, and most attentive to our Kayne. Mistress Sofia Ahlgren is her name, but to hear the words fall from his lips, you would think her named ‘Loveliest Angel,’ instead.”
Kayne scowled at him. “You are pleased to make jest, yet there is nothing more to Mistress Sofia’s kindness than mere Christian duty, and nothing more to my speaking of her than gratitude. But you did not ride so far in the dark of night to speak of such things. Something is amiss if you come to meet with me again, so soon after our last parting, and only a day before Midsummer Night. You’ll wish to be home with your wives on the morrow, and not here with me. Though I am not sorry to see you, of course.”
“Nay, of course not,” Senet replied with a raised eyebrow. “But it may seem so, as you refuse to let us come to your home, as friends might expect to do.”
“You know why it must be so,” Kayne said quietly, grieved in his heart to treat his dearest friends—men who were as his own brothers—in such a manner. They had been inseparable during the ten years they’d spent together fighting in France, and nothing save death could have parted them. But once they’d returned to England, Senet, Aric and John had taken wives and set up their own estates within miles of each other. They had begged Kayne to do likewise, and take the fortune he’d amassed during his years at war and become master of his own land and manor house. But his soul had been too darkened to carry on a life of planting fields and overseeing servants and vassals and pretending that all was well. Too much of him had died during the war to let him live in that manner.
He had craved solitude and peace, and above all, namelessness—to put his old self away forever and never embrace it again. But becoming unknown had required great sacrifice. He could leave Wirth to visit his friends, but he could not receive their visits in his home. If any of the villagers saw Senet or John or Aric, they would know at once who Kayne was, and what he had once been, and the small measure of peace he’d striven so hard to gain would be lost. He would have to leave Wirth…and Sofia…and begin all over in a new place. If he could find one.
It had taken months of hard searching to find Wirth, and he’d been especially glad of it for it kept him so close to his friends. Only twenty miles separated him from Senet and Aric, and another ten from John. He did not like to think of being farther away, in case they should ever need him, and because of this, he stood firmly in his determination to keep his friendship with such noblemen—famed warriors all—a secret.
“Aye, we know,” Senet said more kindly. “My prayer is yet that you will one day come to yourself again, and cease such solitude. If you had gone into a monastery and taken vows, you could be no less cloistered than you are now.”
It was true. Kayne had even considered taking such vows when he’d first begun to seek peace. He might have done so, if not for the vow of celibacy. He was not a man given to much dallying with women, but neither was he a man to forever deny himself the company of females. Even if he’d been able to conquer outright lust, desire was something he knew he would never vanquish.
“Kayne,” Senet said, the timbre of his voice changing, growing sober and serious, “there is indeed a certain task that causes us to come to you this night. I’ve had a missive from your father.”
Kayne looked sharply at his friend. “From my sire, you mean. I have no father, though I might name Sir Justin such, as he was a father to us all when we were boys.”
“Aye, Sir Justin was truly a father to the fatherless,” John agreed, “but you were more fortunate than the rest of us, Kayne. You knew your parents—both mother and father, even if your father never claimed you as he should have done.”
“Neither my mother, may God assoil her, or me,” Kayne said tightly, hot anger seeping through every pore. “I’ve tried not to hate the man, but the truth cannot be denied. He used her for his pleasure—a simple serving maid who knew no better than to love her lord—and when she found herself with child, he sent her away with naught but what she could carry.”
Senet stepped forward. “I know you’re full angered with the man, Kayne, but you must realize that he did the best he could for her. He could have turned her out and left the both of you to suffer, but he sent her to Briarstone, where both she and you could be safe, and he sent money every quarter….”
“Don’t speak of it!” Kayne shouted furiously, turning away from them. “Money to buy her silence. And to keep the truth of who my father was a secret from one and all.”
“Nay, that is not why. Even your mother never thought that was so,” John argued gently, speaking with great care. “And when she died, Lord Renfrow sent for you, to bring you back to live with him at Vellaux. He did not want you to be alone, once she was gone. ’Twas your own stubbornness that kept you from going.”
“I never would have put myself in his grasp,” Kayne muttered with a shake of his head. “By then he was only desperate for an heir. The wife he’d taken after sending my mother away never gave him a child—nor did any of his other women. I only became of import to him when he began to fear that he’d die without a child of his loins to inherit his grand titles and estates. If God had blessed him with other sons—legitimate sons—he would have forgotten me entirely.”
Senet gave a long, weary sigh. “You are one of the best men on God’s earth, Kayne,” he said. “It grieves me to hear you speak so bitterly, when I know that your heart is above all things gentle and kind—except for the man who gave you life.”
Kayne rounded on him. “He made my mother a whore, and then abandoned her. She spent her remaining days longing for him—for a man who cared nothing for either her or me.”
“None of us can claim perfection, Kayne,” John argued. “Has he not tried to make amends? He is ill. He may be dying.”
The argument on Kayne’s tongue fell away at this. He gazed first at John, then at Senet.
“Dying? Is this true?”
Senet nodded. “His physicians have given little hope that he’ll live another twelve months—and will be fortunate to survive but six. His one desire before he greets death is to see you, Kayne.”
Kayne closed his eyes briefly, staring at the ground when he opened them again. He shook his head. “I cannot.”
“You must,” Senet pressed, “else you face God’s punishment for letting sinful pride overtake righteous compassion. You’ve never even met the man to judge him so harshly.”
“And I’ll not meet him,” Kayne said stubbornly. “By the age of ten, I’d known enough of my mother’s tears to vow that I would never crawl to that bastard—for any reason.”
Senet held out a beseeching hand. “Kayne…”
“If he’d wanted a son by his side,” Kayne cried, cutting him off, “then he should never have sent my mother away in favor of another.”
“He may regret that he did so,” John said quietly. “Indeed, I think it must be the greatest regret of his life. But you’ll not know unless you go to him.” John hesitated, clearly considering what he was about to say. “I want to tell you something, Kayne—something I’ve wished to tell you for many years now.”
Kayne turned his gaze to the smaller man. When he’d been a boy, John had ever spoken first and thought last, the greatest chatterer among them. But as a man, he’d become quieter, more considering, and when he spoke, it was a good thing to attend him. Kayne did so now, asking, “What is it, John?”
“When we were boys at Briarstone,” John said, “before Sir Justin had taken us to Talwar to train in the ways of battle, I used to watch you with your mother—you and Aric and all the others. ’Tis true that they were all women who’d suffered a great deal, and almost all of them bearing children out of wedlock, but they were alive and loving—and I was tormented with a jealousy that you cannot begin to know. I had neither mother nor father nor any kin to claim me. To have had only a mother, such as you had, would have meant everything in the world. I would have gladly given my life to know but a week of such joy.”
“I know that, John,” Kayne said with heartfelt sorrow. John had been abandoned as a newborn babe, left to die in a filthy ditch on a dark London night. He’d been rescued by the owner of a nearby tavern, and spent his earliest days living on London’s streets more like an animal than a human. If Sir Justin hadn’t discovered him and brought him to Briarstone—a place of refuge for all the unwanted—he’d surely have died long before reaching his tenth year. “But you did have a family at Briarstone. All of us were kin to one another there.”
“Aye, and a blessed thing it was, too,” John agreed. “And, yet, for all that I knew of goodness there, I was jealous. Of you more than any other, for you had not only a mother, but also a father who was faithful to send money and goods and even gifts at Christmastide, and who made certain that you and your mother were comfortable and well-kept.” John moved nearer, holding Kayne’s gaze. “If there is a man on this earth who would step forward this very day to reveal himself as my father, and who was full sorrowed at having lost me and pleaded, as your father has done, that I come to him, I vow by God above that I would move mountains to see him just once. Just once. Kayne,” he said, setting a hand on Kayne’s arm, “you don’t know what you have—what someone like me has dreamt of all my life. Don’t throw it away as if it were naught.”
Kayne was stricken to his soul. He said nothing, but only continued to gaze into John’s set face.
“Go to see him,” John pressed. “Speak to him. Give him a chance, Kayne. I beg it of you not for his sake, but for mine, if you bear me any love at all.”
“You know I do,” Kayne said. “You are as my own brother. All of you.”
“Then I ask it of you as a brother,” John said somberly. “I cannot tell you how it will grieve me if you turn so precious a gift aside.”
Kayne’s resolve crumbled. John had never asked anything of him before, not even during the many years when they’d all been together, fighting in France.
“Aye,” he murmured, setting his fingers over the hand that John yet held on his arm. “For you, my brother, I will go. If it will ease your mind, you may come with me.”
“Surely you didn’t think we’d let you go alone?” Senet said from where he stood, leaning against a tree, his arms folded over his chest in a relaxed manner. “You’re a brave fool, Kayne, but even you will admit to dreading such a first encounter. We know you too well to think that it would be otherwise.”
Kayne smiled at his friend’s teasing tone. “Aye, you knave, I admit it. Any man would feel the same, I vow. ’Twill be much like going into battle. But I have done that many a time before, and can do so once more. You need not go with me, to coddle me as if I were a child.”
Senet sighed and pushed himself upright. “Nevertheless, we will. Why do you not come with us now, back to Lomas? We’ll spend Midsummer Day there and begin for Vellaux the following morn. I’ll send your father, Lord Renfrow, a missive telling him of our coming.”
“Nay, do not,” Kayne said with a shake of his head. “’Twould be easier to meet him without formality. He must take me as I am, when I come to him. Give me a week to prepare and close my shop. I will meet you at Lomas on the seventh day.”
“Are you certain?” John asked. “Can you not come with us now?”
“Nay,” Kayne said. “There is something of import that I must do tomorrow—on Midsummer Day. Someone I must meet.”
Both Senet and John looked at him with open interest.
“Someone?” Senet repeated with a grin.
“Aye, someone,” Kayne said testily, “and you may keep your thoughts to yourself, my lord. You’ve no need to fear that I will be delayed in coming to Lomas. I’ll meet you there at the end of next week, and we can begin for Vellaux. On my word of honor, we will.”
Chapter Five
The dancing began at midday, even before the feasting had taken place. Sofia refused the first few requests to join in the merriment when the music filled the air, hoping yet that Kayne would change his stubborn mind and arrive. She knew that he would be reserved—if he came—and would feel an outsider to the other villagers. It was her intention to stay by his side every moment, bearing him company to make his time as pleasing as possible. If he could but see that there was naught to fear from knowing and communing with his neighbors, mayhap ’twould be easier to lure him to such festivities in future.
It was a perfect day. The sun was bright overhead, but not too hot, and a cool breeze carried the many delicious scents of the faire across the fields where the festivities were taking place, down to the banks of the river, where children were already making small boats out of leaves and twigs, and even into the forest, where young couples sought the shelter of the trees to share stolen kisses or begin searching for the fern blossoms which became imbued with great power in the coming darkness of this most magical of nights.
Sellers had set out their wares—jewelry, flowers, toys, herbs, medicines, crafts of every kind and a variety of foods. Great mounds of wood were being set out for the bonfires that would later be lit, and many smaller fires were already being used to roast whole pigs and haunches of venison and beef.
All the village maidens, Sofia included, had twined ribbons in their hair and adorned themselves with circlets of flowers, and were brazenly teasing and dallying with the young men. The young men, apart from admiring the maidens, were waiting for the contests to begin in order to prove their strength and prowess in such skills as archery, running and wrestling. There were prizes for the winners of each contest, all to be awarded with great ceremony by Sofia’s father, Sir Malcolm, who was already strolling amongst the feasters, merrily jesting and laughing and drinking far too much ale and wine. When the dancing began, Sofia noted, her father was one of the first to take a pretty maiden by the hand and draw her in among the other dancers.
“Will you not dance, Mistress Sofia?” Olvan, the cobbler’s handsome eldest son, cried out as three maidens laughingly pulled him toward the music.
Sofia smiled and shook her head—then laughed along with the maidens as Olvan stumbled at their urgent tugging and quickly righted himself, flushed with pleasure at being so sought after by the fairer sex. Everyone, it seemed, was smiling and laughing, and Sofia suddenly twirled about with her arms wide, uncaring of who saw. She felt gladsome and free and happy beyond measure. Could anything be better—or rarer—than a day of ease and pleasure?
She stopped spinning and closed her eyes, feeling the warmth of the sun upon her upturned face, thinking of what was to come. The feasting and games and contests, the sailing of wishes, and then, as night fell, the bonfires and music and merriment throughout. Oh, how she wished Kayne would put his stubbornness aside and come. He would enjoy himself so very much—
“Sofia.”
A cruel hand closed over her arm, pulling her about. Sofia’s eyes flew open to see the man who’s voice she’d already recognized.
Sir Griel.
He was dressed, as he always was, in black, and surrounded by a half-dozen of his fighting men. They were the only men present who were fully armed, as if for battle, and silence began to fall over the assembly as their daunting presence was noted.
Sofia drew herself up full height, refusing to let anyone see the fear that welled up at the memory of her last meeting with Sir Griel. His fingers gripped her in the same steely manner as he had done then. Sofia made one effort to wrench herself free, saw his amused smile, and fell still.
“My lord,” she greeted coldly.
“Mistress,” he replied, still smiling. “You are very beautiful this afternoon. But this, to my partial view, is as you ever are.”
Sofia gave no answer to this, sickened by the way his gaze moved over her in so brazen and lecherous a manner.
“You have come to make merry for St. John’s Day?” she asked, calling the day by its church-given name, rather than what it had been known by since time began. “You have not honored us with your presence on such occasions before. I’m certain the people of Wirth are most pleased to have you attend their festivities.”
“But not you, Sofia?”
She lifted her chin.
“I have come,” he said, “but only to celebrate the day with my lovely betrothed. To bear you company both the day and night long, as Midsummer is surely among the most romantic times of the year. A day for maids to discover who their husbands might be. But you’ve no need of such as that, Sofia—” his tone grew softer “—for you already know who that man is. Do you wish to dance?” His grip tightened and he moved as if to draw her toward that place where the other dancers had fallen still, watching them.
“Nay, the music has stopped,” she told him, struggling in vain as he dragged her along. “There is no more dancing.”
“There will be music, presently,” he promised. “Where is your father? We will make him useful—though he is seldom so.”
The crowds melted away at Sir Griel’s approach, and Sofia could see her father, standing in the midst of the now still dancers, clutching his partner’s hand and gaping at Sir Griel in open fear.
Suddenly their way was blocked by a tall, muscular figure. Sir Griel actually ran into the man, so sudden and unexpected was his appearance, pulling Sofia into the same collision.
“Mistress Sofia.”
She looked up at the sound of Kayne’s voice, almost afraid to believe that it was truly him. But it was, and he stood before Sir Griel like a strong, immovable mountain, completely unafraid.
“Master Kayne,” she whispered. She was so glad to see him.
He held out his hand, holding her gaze, not even looking at Sir Griel.
“I’m sorry to be so late. We had arranged to meet much earlier. Come and teach me to dance, as you promised.”
She gratefully set her free hand in his, smiling up at him.
“Yes,” she began, just as Sir Griel, yet holding her other hand, tugged so hard that she slipped free of Kayne’s reassuring grasp and fell against her captor.
“You overstep, blacksmith, to address Mistress Sofia in so forward a manner,” Sir Griel warned in a low voice. “Move out of our way.”
Kayne stood where he was, still ignoring Sir Griel. He reached out to take Sofia’s hand once more, and, with a violent motion, Sir Griel shoved at him, unsuccessfully trying to push him aside.
“Move now!” Sir Griel shouted furiously. His men, as one, drew their swords and stepped nearer. Except for the sound of the river running nearby and the wind rustling in the trees, the silence from those attending the festival was complete.
Kayne gazed into Sofia’s eyes with what seemed to her an ineffable sadness, then he sighed and, at last, looked at Sir Griel.
“I do not wish to make trouble, neither do I desire a fight,” he stated calmly. “I carry neither sword nor dagger.” He held his arms out from his sides to prove the truth of the words. “But I will not move until you have released Mistress Sofia and let her make a free choice of who she will go with.”
Sir Griel looked at Kayne as if were a madman seeking certain death.
“Mistress Sofia is my betrothed,” he said with ill-concealed fury. “She has no free choice in any matter, and will do my bidding.”
Kayne was clearly unperturbed by this.
“No banns have been read to proclaim your coming union,” he said, “and Mistress Sofia wears no betrothal ring marking your possession of her. She herself has openly denied any such betrothal, to which many who are present can readily bear witness. By what right or law, my lord, do you make such a claim?”
