Constantine shook his head. “I won’t.” He leaned forward until his nose touched his son’s. “I promise you.”
Christian’s gaze was dropped to the road and his brow was furrowed. Dori jostled William into one arm and wrapped her other around Christian.
“Come along to the wall with us,” she said to the boy. “We’ll all wait for your papa there.”
Christian turned away from Constantine into Dori’s skirt but didn’t say anything.
“One thousand yards!” the soldier shouted down from the wall.
Constantine rose and took his sword from Adrian.
“Go into the ward,” Constantine said, glancing at Dori as he removed his cloak and tossed it aside. The rest of his friends seemed also to be readying for battle, withdrawing long daggers and swords. The large man, Roman, produced a pair of hammers.
“Five hundred yards!”
Dori seemed rooted to the road, where she could feel the vibration of the riders through the soles of her shoes, and she turned her head, wanting to see with her own eyes. William stirred and began to cry.
“Theodora!” Constantine shouted and she looked to him. “Go!”
Dori looked over her shoulder and saw that Mary Beckham was already retreating with her daughter, albeit reluctantly, also looking back at the road as she walked. Maisie Lindsey and Isra had both failed to heed the orders of their men.
Dori wanted Glayer Felsteppe to see that she was alive. That she was alive and had William. She wanted him to see her face before he died, to know that he had not beaten her.
But she felt the hands in her skirt, the weight of the boy hanging on them. Christian, who had borne too much for his young age. She looked down at his panicked, pale face and felt his fright.
“I don’t want to go,” he whispered up at her. “I don’t want to leave my papa.”
It would require little bravery for her to face Felsteppe now, but it would cost her all her will to let her moment of revenge go in order to protect the precious children now in her care.
She withdrew her arm from his shoulder in order to grasp his hand. “Come, Christian,” she said firmly. “Let’s hurry and do as your father asks. We don’t wish to worry him.” And she turned and ran with the boys up the road toward the ruin, following in Mary Beckham’s wake.
Chapter 26
Constantine stood in the center of the road, facing down the slope toward the deserted village, his head lowered, his gaze trained on the gravel just beginning to lighten in the predawn. He could feel the stones of Benningsgate Castle at his back, bolstering him, anchoring him to this place—this land and people who brought him here, brought him back, called him to stay.
Patrice. Christian. Theodora and William.
Henry, his king.
His villagers, those who had stayed and those he would one day welcome home again.
The three men now standing at his side.
Constantine felt a hand clap his back and looked to his right as Adrian Hailsworth squeezed his shoulder. He looked to his left and saw Roman Berg’s grim countenance staring down the road; just past him, Valentine held a slender dagger in his teeth while he shrugged out of his short cape and adjusted his sleeves. He armed himself with a flourish and then glanced at Stan with a roguish smile.
The first of the riders appeared around the bend of the road, their mounts like ghostly dragons in the morning mist, the steam coming from their nostrils like dull, gray smoke. The riders parted in the middle, veering to either side of the road and opening up to expose the rotten heart of the party of king’s men and hired mercenaries, and the man who comprised it.
Glayer Felsteppe slowed to a canter and then a walk as he saw the four men stretched across the road before Benningsgate. His face was blank, his eyes black in his face and darting from man to man, to the torches along the battlement. Then he looked at Constantine, and a sudden smirk erupted over his once slender face, now bloated and pocked with excess.
“Glutton for punishment, aren’t you, Gerard?” he taunted. “Just had to come back to see for yourself all that I’ve won. Didn’t believe me, did you? That I’d make you pay.”
Constantine cocked his head. “What exactly have you won, Felsteppe?”
He held his gauntleted hands from his sides with a laugh, as if indicating all that was around them. “Everything!”
Constantine shook his head. “Nothing.”
“Benningsgate is mine, Gerard,” Felsteppe needled with a grating chuckle. “What’s left of it any matter.”
