Three Nights With the Princess Page 3

  “We are returning to Henri’s house. And when we get there I intend to rid myself of this damp, sticky gown and give my skin a thorough scrubbing. I feel tainted from having witnessed that lout’s excesses. Come, Lillith.”

  “Come? Now? Without escort?” Lillith glanced about the passage and peered back over her shoulder at the kitchen doorway. “But we were to wait here for the earl and his men, until the banquet is finished.”

  “Finished? They shall be banqueting half the night, and I do not intend to remain a moment longer under the same roof with that heap of Norman tallow.”

  “Princess!” Lillith, truly alarmed, grabbed Thera’s cloak. “This is not Mercia. The earl says the streets are not always safe at night.”

  “It is not fully night yet. And I marked the way as we came. It isn’t far.” With regal finality, she lifted her hood up over her head and struck off for the stairs leading down to the street door. “Come on, Lillith . . . the light is wasting.”

  Lillith glanced around the dim passage and groaned, realizing there was no help to be had in dissuading her headstrong mistress. She drew her own cloak about her shoulders and hurried for the stairs as well.

  Chapter Two

  The narrow street was deserted when they stepped outside. Thera paused a moment, taking her bearings. Things had looked different earlier, from the back of a horse and in full daylight; now the houses loomed taller and hovered over the streets with a brooding air. The streets seemed narrower . . . crowded by the presence of the deepening shadows. But after a moment, she located the direction from which they had come.

  “This way,” she declared, pointing.

  They hadn’t taken a dozen steps when they were nearly run down by two large, bony hounds chasing something furtive and ratlike along the edge of the houses. The scramble stirred the dust in the street and with it wafted up the faint smells of moldering wood, soured kitchen water tossed into the open gutter, and animal dung. Thera covered her nose with a wince.

  “By the saints,” she muttered. “In France, the streets and the noblemen smell alike.”

  When Lillith hung back with a worried expression, Thera seized the edge of her cloak and pulled her along, keeping close to the street doors of the houses, beneath the overhanging upper stories. They followed the winding street past several narrow alleys and finally turned onto a slightly broader thoroughfare. Muffled voices occasionally floated down from the unshuttered windows far above the street, and dogs barked in the distance, but Thera began to have an odd sense that she and Lillith were alone in the city, and she found it strangely unnerving. It was as if the people had withdrawn from the streets, abandoning them to the darkness.

  The farther they went in the deepening gloom, the more the house fronts and the signboards began to look alike. Thera halted at one corner after another, searching in vain for the red shop front with the three gilded pills on the signboard which marked the apothecary at the end of the rue le Carreaux. Soon the twilight was spent and they were still searching.

  “We should have been there by now. It could not have been this far,” Lillith whispered, searching the shadows. “We’re lost!”

  “We are not lost,” Thera whispered back, hauling Lillith close to glare at her. “We are in Nantes.” She glanced at the discomforting gloom all around them and frowned. “On a street.” Her frown deepened. “At a corner. Of some sort.”

  The winding streets narrowed as they went on, and several huddled forms scurried past, keeping a wary distance. Thera marked the slamming of doors and the sound of bars being drawn. Then from somewhere nearby they heard the creak of leather harness and the muffled thud of hooves . . . numbers of hooves. The two perceptions formed a connection in her mind, and without fully understanding why, she began to walk faster and search the darkness with a new sense of urgency.

  A male shout split the air from some distance away, uttering words unintelligible but bearing an unmistakable bark of command. A moment later the street behind them filled with horses and the dull clank of armor and the rattle of metal against wood. Thera pulled Lillith around the nearest corner and into an alley, narrowly escaping an onrushing column of riders. In the dim light, they could make out the massive size of the horses, the dark glint of metal helmets, and the patterned configurations that could only have been shields.

  “Soldiers,” she breathed, and she heard Lillith’s intake of breath.

  Henri de Peloquin was right, Thera realized; this was indeed a different world from Mercia. The stench, the soot-laden sky, the haunted feeling of the streets, and now soldiers riding through the night; it was nothing at all like her realm. A knot of anxiety began to form in the pit of her stomach. She pulled Lillith into motion again, and they darted back into the street and around another corner, opposite the direction the soldiers had gone.

  Soon they came to a deserted street lined with rickety merchant stalls and shuttered shops. They gave wide berth to the open door of a tavern and the drunken forms slumped against the walls on either side. Just as they drew a breath of relief, they heard barking and baying . . . which drew ominously closer. A pack of gaunt, wild-eyed hounds appeared out of the gloom behind them, ranging through the streets on their nightly hunt, like a ravenous tide that searched out and engulfed everything that moved.

  Galvanized, Thera lifted her skirts and cried out, “Dear God—Lillith, run!”

  They bolted down the street just inches ahead of hunger-wasted bodies and snapping jaws. When they glimpsed light and commotion in the widening street to one side, they headed straight for it and plunged smack into the middle of it. The starving hounds followed them to the very edge of the crowd, then halted, snarling and turning on each other as they retreated from the threat of so many humans.

  Thera and Lillith had little chance to savor their deliverance, for they were now caught up in a surging, jostling crowd of frantic city dwellers. On all sides they were pressed and shoved by unwashed bodies with thickly thatched heads and gaunt, frightened faces. Above their wails and panicky shouts, Thera heard crashing, thudding, and the squawk of fowl. As she struggled to keep her feet, the throng abruptly thinned and she glimpsed the reason for the townspeople’s terror.

  The street was littered with splintered boards and broken crockery, strewn tinware and baskets. Wooden planks and ripped awnings hung from half-demolished stalls, and chickens and geese squawked as they escaped from cages on an overturned poulterer’s cart. And in the midst of that tableau of destruction were several large, dark-clad figures, laughing and uttering drunken curses as they hacked at the remaining stalls and goods with battle-axes and broadswords.

  Thera froze watching those great weapons, stunned by the shaggy, dark-shrouded forms that wielded them. Never before had she seen such creatures. Their faces were covered with scraggly beards, their bodies were thick-muscled and sinewy, and their eyes seemed to burn with the Devil’s own fire. They wore knee-length cloaks made of animal furs, leather cross braces over their bare chests, and boots that laced tightly from ankle to knee. Every aspect of their fierce appearance and brutal actions bespoke a feral, animalistic nature. Barbarians, she realized with some shock. They had to be the infamous barbarians from the east who were sometimes hired as mercenaries by western nobles.

  The hapless merchants tried to protect their wares, only to find those vicious swords and axes turned on them. The weaponless townspeople did what they could: shouted curses, shook fists, and rushed at the vandals . . . only to scatter like sheep whenever one of the barbarians turned and charged them full out, swinging his blade.

  In one such foray two of the barbarians joined to threaten and bully the crowd. As the townspeople fell back, a young girl tripped on the debris in the street and went sprawling, straight in the path of the murderous heathens. She was little more than a child, ten or twelve years, wearing long dark braids and a threadbare tunic that was too short for her developing frame. The marauders lumbered to a halt, panting, staring at the girl’s frightened eyes and expo
sed legs, and deciding quickly on another sort of pillage. With an ugly laugh they lunged at her. Several in the frantic crowd surged forward to help her, but it was instantly clear that the barbarians would reach the girl first, and her would-be rescuers scrambled back . . . all but one.

  Thera’s fingers closed on one of the girl’s arms the same moment the barbarians’ hands clamped around her ankle and wrist. The girl twisted and flailed, turning a frantic plea to whoever was trying to help her.

  “Help! Save me—for the Virgin’s sake—save me!” the girl cried out as the barbarians jerked her to her feet.

  The wanton destruction Thera was witnessing had prodded her sense of justice, crowding it into a combustible knot in her chest. When the barbarians charged straight at the crowd around her, that volatile tangle of pride, outrage, and duty was set ablaze. One look at the girl’s terrified face was all that was needed to spur her to action. She was used to royal prerogative, to taking charge, to ·protecting those who could not defend themselves. It was her royal duty.

  “Let her go—you brutes!” she shouted, confronting their grizzled faces and rapacious eyes as she struggled to maintain her grip on the girl. “Let her go, I say! How dare you lay hands on a citizen of this good realm—”

  “Princess, nay!” Lillith cried, tugging at her cloak. “You cannot do this—”

  The barbarians were stopped by her resistance in the same moment the strain of Lillith’s pulling loosened the ties on her cloak. The hood slid from Thera’s head and the heavy garment fell open. Those close by in the crowd murmured at the sight of her, and all motion seemed to halt as the barbarians transferred their hungry stares from their waifish victim to the one who had interfered with their pleasure. In the torchlight her burnished hair caught fire, her skin glowed, and her open cloak revealed a ripe, womanly form swathed in pristine white.

  “Princess, ple-ease!” came Lillith’s hoarse whisper from behind her.

  “Let her go,” Thera demanded, drawing herself up to the fullest glaring at them with all the determination she possessed. Emboldened by their pause, she continued: “You’ve wreaked enough destruction here. Release her . . . slink back into the gutter from whence you came, filthy dogs!”

  They must have understood at least part of what she said. Looking to each other, they scowled and repeated the word dogs with a snarl. Then one added something in their guttural tongue which produced an ugly laugh in his comrade, and the pair turned menacing looks on her. She swallowed hard, refusing to quail before them.

  “Very well then . . . I’m going to count,” she declared. And as their eyes narrowed, she carried out her threat, slowly and deliberately, barking each word a bit louder. “One . . . two . . . three! Four!”

  They suddenly loosened their hold, and the girl lurched back into Thera’s arms. The princess held the child tightly for a moment, and as she released the girl to the safety of the crowd, she felt a pulsing surge of triumph. The child’s release vindicated her reckless course, and with her authority established, her mind was already racing on to her next command.

  She was totally unprepared for the barbarians’ lunge and was caught with a breath half taken, unable to utter more than a choked cry of surprise. In a heartbeat, they had seized her arms and shoulders, and were growling threats in their base tongue that needed no interpretation. She wrestled furiously, demanding they release her, which only drew several of the other marauders from their bashing and hacking. Joining their comrades circling her wriggling, defiant form, they assessed her with eyes burning with a new kind of fire.

  “Do something! Help her!” Lillith cried out to the crowd, which shrank back their faces gray with helplessness. “Worthless cowards. She helped you—” But when Lillith threw herself at one of the barbarians’ backs, she was slammed to the ground by a brawny fist. She lay stunned by the impact as the barbarians dragged Thera onto their shoulders and bore her, kicking and flailing, from the street.

  * * *

  Across the square, just out of the range of torchlight, a force of mounted soldiers was crowded between the overhanging houses on another side street. They wore mail and iron-bound helms, and their shields bore the crest of a noble house. At their head sat Drustane Canard, duc de Verville, astride his massive black destrier, watching his barbarian mercenaries destroy the market stalls and terrorize the citizenry. He was clothed all in black, from the plume on his helm to the tips of his leather boots. Even his eyes were black, and glowing like polished obsidian. His handsome, aristocratic mouth bent in a grim smile as stalls splintered and townspeople scattered before the agents of his will.

  “This wilt teach the earl to deny my men access to the whores and taverns of his precious city,” he said with a sidelong glance at the stony-eyed captain of his personal guard. “And to think, he might have had an exchange that was both peaceable and profitable. I tried to be reasonable. Was I not reasonable with the man, Scallion?”

  “Most reasonable, mon seigneur.”

  “All I wanted was a bit of diversion for my battle-weary troops and the chance to provision . . . a bit of pleasure combined with a bit of trade. Most inhospitable of him, sending his lackey to turn my men away at the city gates.” The duc’s smirk broadened to a vengeful smile. “And most unwise. Now he no longer has city gates.”

  The commotion on the far side of the square suddenly stilled, and a high·pitched scream rent the charged air . . . a young girl’s scream. De Verville laughed with a cynical edge, knowing it meant that his barbarians were about to take a part of their reward. He nudged his mount forward, shoving aside some of the crowd, sorting through the human rabble for the source of that cry. Spotting several shaggy fur cloaks focused around a smaller form, he raised in his stirrups for a better look, his blood stirring in his loins at the thought of the vengeance his hirelings were about to wreak on a daughter of the earl’s city.

  “Ho—what is this?” he uttered softly, raising a brow at the sight of the fiery young beauty facing his fiercest mercenaries. “Where did you come from, Precious?” he whispered with sultry interest. When the captain kneed his mount forward and drew up beside him, the duc pointed to her.

  With the sweep of a practiced eye, Drustane de Verville took in the burnished halo of her hair, the delicacy of her features, and the authority inherent in her stance. Even through the hazy torchlight and distracting motion, he could tell the young woman was not of common stock. Squinting, he searched her dark cloak for clues to what lay beneath, and was rewarded a moment later when her cloak opened and was dragged half from her shoulders as someone in the crowd tried to pull her away from his men. White . . . she wore white.

  “A fetching demoiselle, mon seigneur,” the captain ventured, watching the glint in his lord’s eye.

  “Too damned fetching for the likes of them,” de Verville said with a coarse laugh, sinking back into his saddle. “I could use a prime bit of bed-sport myself this night. Perhaps you’d better rescue the demoiselle, Scallion, and bring her to my tent, outside the city gates.” As his mercenaries hoisted the young woman onto their shoulders and she fought them, her cloak fell away, baring raised and twisted skirts and long, pale legs. A shaft of desire sank through the duc at the sight of those delectably vulnerable limbs, captive and writhing.

  “Go, Scallion. Hurry,” he commanded, giving the captain’s horse a kick that set it snorting. “There will be nothing left to enjoy if they finish with her first!”

  The captain signaled several of his men and together they plunged forward into the crowd, bent on rescuing the defiant young beauty. But as the barbarians raced from the square with Thera on their shoulders, the townspeople grew bolder and surged after them, shaking fists and snatching up splintered planks to wield as weapons. They crowded into the street where the mercenaries had disappeared, shoving and shouting, venting their anger and blocking the way of the duc’s men.

  The black-clad soldiers forced their massive war-horses forward like battering rams, and the townspeople who braved
the horses’ hooves were bashed aside with shields as the duc’s men plowed determinedly through the crowd. But the delay had cost them precious time, and when they finally broke through and charged down the narrow street, there was not a trace to be found of the barbarians or of the duc’s intended bit of bed-sport. When they returned empty-handed, the duc fixed his captain with a cold, threatening glare.

  “I want her. Find her. Scour every pesthole and sewer in the city. There cannot be that many alleys available for a raping!”

  * * *

  A dark blur of sensation enveloped Thera as she was borne through the dank streets on the rock-hard shoulders of a brutish barbarian. Her blood had drained to her head, making coherent thought difficult, and with each step her captor took, the breath was pounded from her chest.

  From time to time, her captors paused to shift her from one set of shoulders to another and to drink from an earthen jug they had stolen from one of the wrecked market stalls. As they drank, they inspected their prize, clasping and smacking her bottom through her gown and laughing as she choked out a groan and squirmed.

  Her terrifying journey came to an end in a darkened alley at the rear of a noisy tavern. The barbarians dumped her onto her feet, and when her knees buckled they held her up and put the jug to her mouth to force her to drink. She jerked her head aside, refusing the soured wine, and they laughed, ripped her cloak from her shoulders, and began to paw her. The feel of their rough hands grabbing and probing her body galvanized her reeling senses. The terrifying feeling of captivity knocked her sense of royal self-possession back to duty. Fight—she had to fight them!

  Outrage pumped new strength into her limbs. Suddenly she was alive with anger, twisting and grappling against their rough hands, trying desperately to free herself. But the harder she struggled, the harder they held her, and it slowly dawned. Four, five . . . there were at least six of them. Half a dozen filthy, vicious barbarians . . .