Near the end of the walkway, chained in a cell, an elderly man stood stooped, leaning against the wall.
He remembered briefly seeing the man when they’d slipped in to rescue Sir Petrus. Regardless of his fate, though dressed in rags, his frame thin and his face streaked with bruises, he held himself with pride.
Familiarity crept up Cailin’s spine. He stilled. God’s blade, he knew him. He struggled to remember the names of men he’d known as a child. The few that came to mind he dismissed as they’d bethe wrong age.
Legs trembling, Cailin braced his feet and held the man’s gaze, furious that even an elder wasn’t spared his uncle’s torture.
The old man coughed, a deep, rattling sound. Eyes bright with intelligence narrowed.
“Gaufrid is dead,” Cailin said, finding it important that the man should know. “I have come to free you.”
“A bloody lie.” With a snarl, the prisoner glared at the door. “Gaufrid is out there, ’tis yet another of the bastard’s tricks.”
The rough, familiar voice had Cailin’s pulse racing.“Who are you?”
Nostrils flared with fury. “As if you dinna bloody know. What is Gaufrid’s plan this time?” he snarled. “Nay doubt he has invented another punishment to appease his warped mind.”
“Your name,” Cailin demanded, chilled by the sense of urgency.
His gray hair and beard hanging in oily strands, he drew himself to his full height. “The rightful Earl of Dalkirk!”
Chapter 19
Cailin’s knees almost buckled as he stared at the man behind the forged bars, chained to the wall like an animal. A man he’d loved, a man due to his uncle’s treachery he’d believed dead. “Father!” he cried.
The elder’s face wrinkled with suspicion, then he moved as far forward toward the door as his chains would allow. His mouth parted, and tears began to roll down his face. “S–son, can itreally be you?”
“Aye.” He struggled to breathe, expecting any minute to awaken and find ’twas all a dream. Ever since his youth, he’d believed him dead. But here, now, he’d been blessed with the most precious gift. “Gaufrid told meyou were dead.”
His father wiped the tears from his eyes. “My brother told me you had died at sea. ’Twould seem,” he spat, “the bastard lied to us both.”
Metal scraped as Cailin fumbled the key into the lock, turned it. Hands shaking, he jerked open the door and wrapped his arms around his father, and for the first time since he’d been told of his father’s death years before, he cried.
When his body stilled, Cailin freed him from his chains and stepped back, taking in his gaunt frame, the ragged, filthy garb, the worn holes in his cracked boots. “How long haveyou been here?”
“Since the day your mother and I and Gaufrid went hunting when you were a lad.”
“Is she alive?” he asked, praying for another miracle.
The joy in father’s eyes faded. “She is dead. While I was out of sight during the hunt, Gaufrid killed her. A fact I didna learn until I woke up in the dungeon. ’Twas then that my brother revealed how he had crept up and hit me while I held her lifeless body.” His mouth curled into a snarl. “Over the years, my brother found perverse pleasure in keeping me alive, tryingto break me.”
After the reports of his uncle’s twisted ways, something Cailincould believe.
“For several years, he kept me in a secret location,” he continued. “At times he would beat me, leave me without food or water for days. I will never forget when he strode in, declaring that he had paid to see you murdered. I…” A tremor shook his thin body. “I refused the bastard the satisfaction of knowing how I crumpled inside. A few years ago, after having installed younger guards in the dungeon who wouldna know me, and with them believing I was dead, Gaufrid brought me to this cell through thesecret tunnel.”
“I never knew,” Cailin whispered, aching at the misery he’d endured, the ultimate betrayal.
He stilled, glared at the door. “Gaufrid?”
“Dead,” Cailin growled. “Had I but known you were locked here, of how you had suffered over the years, I would have ensured the bastard died a slow andpainful death.”
His father’s shoulders sagged as if a weight had been lifted. “When did he die?”
“Yesterday. After his men attacked my camp, trying to kill me, but almost killed Elspet instead…” Even as he yearned for hours with his father, Cailin looked away. He had to get back to her.
“Who?”
“The woman I love.” He shook his head and shifted to relieve the weight on his injured leg. “Father, there is much I need to tell you, to explain, but not here. After a bath and a hot meal, you need to rest. We have plenty of time to talk. Years.”
