“Where is Sir Robert Neville?” she asked.
One of the guardsmen stepped forward.
“My lady, he is . . . he is abed.”
“Does anyone tend to him?” she asked anxiously.
Eric lost his patience, stepping around her. “I am Eric Graham, emissary of the rightful king of this holding, Robert the Bruce of Scotland. Lay down your arms, and your lives will be spared. The castle is now in the hands of the Scots who honor and acknowledge Robert Bruce as king.”
He glanced back at Peter MacDonald, who had ridden at his heels, giving a quick nod that he should now take over as the authority. Ignoring all else, he then started across the courtyard to the door to the keep, knowing exactly where the prisoners, even though near death, were held. It might have been a foolish move; a guard with a death wish of his own might have brought a battle sword piercing through his back. Behind him, he could hear the fall of arms as his men dismounted from their horses and collected the weapons. Peter MacDonald, a man who had been his right hand since the coronation of the king, began shouting the orders. Eric had complete confidence in Peter: the Scottish nationalists with whom he rode had survived thus far by covering one another’s back. They had become so tightly knit in their numbers, they nearly thought alike.
He was prepared for some sign of resistance when he entered into the great hall, but there was no one there, other than an old man hunched in a chair by the fire. The old man tried to stir at the sight of Eric, but the effort seemed too great. He fell back into the chair, watching Eric as Eric watched him.
“You’ve the disease, man?” Eric asked, his voice seeming to bellow across the stone expanse.
“Aye. But survived, I believe,” the fellow replied, watching Eric. “You’ve come to take the castle, sir? You’ve taken hell, sir, that’s what you’ve done. Slay me, if you will. I would serve you, if I could.”
Eric waved a hand. “Save your strength. Tell me, where are the rest of those who serve the castle?”
“Dead, many dead. Sir Robert Neville fell, and the Lady Igrainia’s maid tends him in his room. The guards . . . not yet afflicted, keep to the courtyard and the armory. The Lord of Langley was laid hastily into the crypt, walled into his grave, lest his sickness travel; his wife could not bear that he should be burned, as the rest of the victims.”
“And what of the prisoners and their guards?”
“Fallen together below in the dungeons.”
“And who tends them?”
“Those who still stand on two feet among their own number. Before . . . ah, well, the lady of the castle tended to the dying, until she was sent from here that her life might be spared.”
“Rest, old man. When you’ve strength, you might yet be called upon to serve.”
Eric strode through the hall, finding the passage that led from the hall to the winding stone stairs that led below. Hell. . . the man had said. Hell had been planned long before any disease for those incarcerated here. The damp stairs to the bowels of the castle seemed endless; the prisons here were sure to bring about disease all on their own, fetid, molded, wretched. Those brought here to the belly of the fortification were among the dead, long hallways with crypts where past lords and ladies, knights, nobility, and those who had served them well lay in perpetual silence and rot, some in no more than misty shrouds that barely hid the remnants of finery and bone, while some were walled with stone and remembered with fine chiseled monuments. The passages of dead came before the cells with their iron bars, chains and filthy rushes. The dead of the household were far more honored here than the prisoners brought in with little hope for life.
Eric passed through the crypts and knew he neared the cells again as he heard the sound of moaning. Ducking beneath an archway he came to a large, thick wooden door with a huge bolt; the bolt was not slid into place and the great door gaped. Pushing through, he saw the cells, and those who lay within them.
There were no soft beds or pallets here. The stench was so overwhelming that he wavered as he stood, but for no more than a matter of seconds. On either side of the hall, the sick and dying lay like piles of cast-off clothing. He entered to the right, where he had been kept with Margot and his daughter. He rolled a body over, saw where the boils on the man had swollen and burst. He did not recognize the dead man, who had surely been one of his own. He looked at a death more heinous than any horrible torture devised by his enemies.
The dead should have been taken away, their sad remains burned to keep the pestilence from spreading. Here . . .
“Margot!” he whispered his wife’s name, because the scene would allow for no more than a whisper, and he moved through the bodies around him on the rushes. He could not find Margot, but even in his desperation, as he searched, a burst of fury and fear gave him a force of energy that was near madness; he made some sense of the room, finding those who breathed, with signs of life, and lifted and carried them, separating the living from the dead.
“She is not here.”
He started at the sound of the woman’s voice.
Igrainia of Langley stood at the entrance to the cell, watching him, holding a large ewer.
“Where is she?”
“Several of the women were brought to the solar above,” she told him. As if she had known what he had been about, she approached those who still showed signs of life. She seemed heedless of the scent of rot and the horror that surrounded her. Despite her elegant apparel, she came down to the rushes among the living, her touch careful as she lifted heads to bring water to parched lips.
He strode to her, catching a handful of her hair to draw her face to his, his intent at the moment not cruel but born of greater desperation. “Where is the solar?”
“Above. Take the stairs from the great hall, to the tower. There is sun there. Father MacKinley believes the sun may have the power of healing.”
He still had a handful of ebony hair in his hands. His fingers tightened.
“Come with me.”
“If you care nothing for these, your friends—”
“They are my life’s blood. But my men will be along. They will see that the dead are burned, and that the others are brought from this deadly morass as well.”
Even as he spoke, he heard footsteps along the stone flooring that led to the cells. James of Menteith and Jarrett Miller had come. The Lady of Langley stood gracefully, yet gritted her teeth. “My hair, sir. I will accompany you with greater facility if you will be so good as to release me.”
He did so, unaware that he had maintained his death grip upon the black tresses.
She handed the ewer to James and pointed out where she had brought water, and what survivors remained. She stepped carefully around the prone Scots upon the floor and left the bars, her footsteps silent upon the stone where the men’s heavier tread had created a clatter. Eric nodded to James, who inclined his head in return, then followed after the Lady of Langley.
Once returned to the hall, he found that they traveled up a staircase amazing in its breadth for such a fortified castle. Though this stronghold had been built to repel an enemy, some resident had taken
