“No! Not without my baby!” Dori sobbed now, each breath searing her throat like a torch as she struggled to free herself from the priest’s grasp that both restrained and supported her. “He’s mine and you know it! They’ve stolen him!Youstole him!”
“Listen to me!” Simon gave her a sudden shake and, for the first time since she had known the priest, she heard a thread of fear in his normally emotionless voice. “I have committed a great sin. One that I cannot undo. There is no hope for me beyond God’s mercy.”
“You are the devil,” Theodora accused.
“He told me to kill you,” the priest said, shaking her again as if desperate that she should understand him. “That I will not do. And I cannot give you your son. But there is someone who can perhaps help you. You must go there quickly and you must leave tonight. Ifhefinds that you are still alive . . .”
Theodora only sobbed, clutching at the priest’s robes as he let the thought go unfinished.
“There is a ship at the docks, leaving tonight. In only hours,” he said with urgency. “You must see its journey to the end. Up the Danube to the town of Melk, where there is an abbey. Give this to the abbot there—Victor. Tell him who you are and what has been done to you. If there is any help to be had for you . . .” He broke off again, and Theodora felt him peel away one of her hands and then press a small disk-shaped object into it. “There is a sack of some of your belongings and what coin I could spare inside the carriage.”
Dori went very still, feeling the warm, round disk in her hand, like a little ember compared to the cold, wet spring air blasting past her heavy skirts but not moving them, sticking together and to her legs as they were wet with congealing blood. Simon wanted her to go away. He wanted to forget she existed. Of course he did. Likely he hoped she’d die before reaching whatever made-up destination of which he spoke.
The priest continued. “If you do as I say, there may still be hope for you and your child.”
“But not for you,” Theodora whispered, feeling a strange vibration coming from the road through the soles of her heretofore numb feet, frozen in her thin, sticky slippers. It was like a thread of lightning coursing through her, and she felt strength spreading to her legs, her spine, her arms, her heart.
She realized then that it was not lightning sizzling through her body but a fiery rage, rousing her fully from her torpor at last. And Dori welcomed it.
“You will burn in hell for this,” she continued in a low voice, hardly noticing that it had lost most of its rasp.
“Perhaps,” the priest acquiesced, and there was a tremble to the word when it passed his lips.
“You may as well go tonight.” Theodora raised both hands and shoved Simon with a sudden burst of furious energy, sending the priest backward down the rocky embankment past the edge of the road. His body disappeared into the darkness, taking his echoing shouts of surprise and pain with him.
She stood there swaying drunkenly on her feet, relishing for a cold moment the thought of the priest’s bones being broken and snapped, his head crushed on the stones below. But then she remembered she was not alone on the road and turned her head as quickly as her flagging strength would allow to find the servant boy. He stared back at her apathetically.
“You would attack me now, I suppose?” she asked with as much bravado as she could muster, her fire having burned out quickly. He seemed to be perhaps ten years of age, but stocky, likely from the physical exertion placed upon him by the menial labor he performed. Dori knew he could easily overtake her at that moment.
But the boy shook his blond head before looking toward the edge of the cliff where Simon had disappeared. “No, milady. I’ll fetch Father back up to the road if I can and take him back to the house.” He met her eyes again.
Theodora frowned, but she would not let the boy take advantage of her weakened state. She could afford no sympathy for any child save her own. “What will you tell them when you return?”
He looked back at the embankment, as if so disgusted either by her actions or her appearance that he couldn’t long stand the sight of her. “That a woman tried to kill Father Simon. That she left in a carriage for a ship.”
“You little spy,” Dori accused. “You would betray me even knowing the evil that has been done to me?”
He shrugged, still avoiding her gaze. “I’m not a spy. If I’m turned out, I’ve nowhere to go.” He glanced at the carriage. “You should go yourself, if you would. Before the driver comes inquiring. He expects only one of us to disembark at the docks any matter.”
Theodora’s hand raised from her side before she knew she was moving it, her fingers pinching the edge of the coin given to her by the priest as if it were an odious thing. “Here,” she said curtly. “Perhaps this will change your mind about what you saw tonight. Use it to buy food or something.”
The boy opened his palm and accepted the gold, only now daring to glance into Dori’s face. “Are you certain, milady? Father said this is the only way you—”
“I trust nothing that viper said. I certainly am not getting into a carriage bound for who knows where so that someone with marginally fewer morals can do the job he was too much of a coward to complete.” Besides, the mere thought of getting back into that rocking conveyance made her feel like vomiting again. “You must only tell me: In which direction is Thurston Hold?”
But the boy was now staring at the carriage as if mesmerized.
“Which direction?”
He blinked and then turned to point behind Dori, away from the rear of the carriage and down the dark road that disappeared into the black of the night.
If they had been on the way to the docks, she must be standing on the old Roman road to Chatham. Dori looked all around her, and then up into the clear, cold sky, feeling for any clue as to how far away she was from her home. But she may as well have been stranded in a foreign land rather than standing beneath the sky that had sheltered her since the moment of her birth. The stars seemed to be turning slowly above her, the black bowl of sky rotating as if balanced on a spindle....
The faint moaning of the priest from the abyss near the road startled her back to her predicament. He wasn’t dead after all.
Theodora began limping toward Thurston Hold, her steps mincing, dragging, gentle. She paused when she heard the carriage door open and turned in time to see the boy calling up to the driver as he stood on the threshold of the opening.
“We’re off,” he said. “Don’t stop until you reach the ship. The passenger will see himself disembarked.” He turned his head to look at Dori as the carriage began rolling away into the darkness. “My thanks for the coin, mistress,” he called past his cupped hand. “I hope you get your baby back. A boy needs a mother, even if she’s not a good one.”
