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“No,” she insisted aloud, turning around, and she tripped, her foot catching on the gnarled root of an olive tree. She tried to catch herself before she went sprawling, but it was a poor effort. Scraping both palms on the tree as she went, she fell to her hands and knees.
“Damnation!” She tried to sit back on her haunches and bumped her head on a low-hanging branch. “Ouch! Tom!” But the stable boy had gone back inside.
“Lovely.” The ground beneath her was soft and wet, the turf disturbed as if someone had been digging there. Her skirt was soaked with loamy black mud. She looked down at her hands and found them coated as well with blood welling up through the mud from her scrapes. “Well done, Isabel,” she muttered, sitting back on the root that had tripped her in the first place. “Why don’t you make matters worse?”
Her heart was pounding too quickly, she realized, and had been since she’d seen that murdered girl. No wonder she couldn’t think. She leaned back against the tree trunk and tried to get her bearings, to make herself be calm. She couldn’t afford to get caught up in what might have happened to some peasant from miles away, beyond the prayers Tom had so rightly suggested. She had to be sensible. She had to think of Charmot.
Father Colin couldn’t help her, obviously, or no more than he already had. He didn’t remember Michel, or at least he said he did not, and why should he lie? Perhaps the Frenchman and his retinue hadn’t made it so far as the chapel. She thought again of the dead girl, unable to stop herself, the pitiable sight of her dead body lying on the table in the church. What could have ravaged her so sorely? Could it have attacked Michel and his party as well? Or perhaps…
“Of course,” she said aloud, her skin prickling with horror. Why hadn’t she thought of it before? Michel had told anyone who would listen that he had no fear of the Black Knight of Charmot, that he was far worse than any demon loosed from hell. Why shouldn’t she believe him? Why shouldn’t she think he had come here, that he was the Black Knight Father Colin had spoken of, whatever the priest might have thought? Heaven only knew what such a monster might have done in the chapel; hell alone could guess the effect it might have had on the priest’s memory. Who was to say Michel hadn’t murdered that poor girl, or set his dogs on her for sport? Perhaps the dog she had seen had belonged to him as well. But why had he not come yet to Charmot?
“Oh sweet Jesus,” she whispered, a terrible thought occurring. What if he were there now? What if he had been watching and waiting; what if he knew she was gone? Brautus was in bed, too ill to rise; Simon knew nothing of Michel and wouldn’t come into the daylight if he did. She clambered to her feet, her skinned knees and ruined gown forgotten. She had to get home. She had to talk to Simon, to tell him the truth and convince him to help her, madman saint or not. He was her only hope.
She turned to start back toward the church and stopped, her eye caught by the glint of something shining in the mud. She bent down and lifted it free… a cross. A thick silver cross on a tarnished silver chain, the sort of ornament a knight might wear around his neck. Someone must have dropped it here, but how? No one ever came to this corner of the churchyard; the cemetery was on the other side… she froze. She looked down again at the ground where she had fallen, the broken turf and soft mud, as if someone had been digging. This was a grave.
“Tom!” she called out, running for the church. “Tom, come quickly! We have to go home!”
At first, Tom had wanted Isabel to stay at the church, where he was certain she would be safe, and Raymond and his cousin had agreed. “Whatever might be out there, it won’t dare to come into the church,” Raymond had insisted. But she knew this was not so, and so did Father Colin.
“Stay behind your father’s walls, my lady, whatever may occur,” he had told her, silencing the protests of the other men. “His blessings will protect you there as nowhere else. He was a godly man.”
“He was,” she had agreed, accepting his kiss on her cheek, though in truth she had barely heard him, so eager was she to leave. “I will stay at Charmot.”
Now they had reached the forest, and the sun had already set. Raymond and his cousin had insisted on coming with them, armed with pike and pitchfork for Isabel’s protection, but being on foot, they had slowed the party down. But now they were just inside the old druid’s grove, no more than two miles from the castle. “Not much longer now,” Raymond said with a smile, sounding relieved.
“Not much,” she agreed.
Suddenly Tom’s mare let out a terrified cry and stopped, refusing to go any farther. “What is it?” Isabel said, bringing her own horse around. Malachi seemed perfectly calm. “What’s the matter?”
“I cannot tell, my lady.” The little mare spun around again, fighting the reins. “Something has frightened her.”
“God save us,” Raymond muttered, taking a firmer hold on his pitchfork.
“It’s all right,” Isabel said. “She probably saw a snake—”
“No, my lady.” Raymond’s cousin’s voice was cold with fear of his own. “Not a snake.”
She turned in the direction he was pointing and saw the wolf, the largest of its kind she had ever seen. “Is that it, my lady?” Tom said, still fighting the mare. “Is that the dog you saw?”
“No,” she answered softly, surprised she had a voice. The dog she had seen had been smaller, thick through the chest with a broad, triangular head. This was a wolf, long and lean with longer, rougher fur. In the failing light of twilight, she could see it had brought down a stag and was feeding in the center of the druid’s grove, not from the belly as an animal would but from the throat, as if it were drinking its blood.
“Blasphemy,” Raymond said, moving to stand at Isabel’s knee. The stag was still a sacred beast to the common folk of the forest, Christians or not, its flesh and blood a pagan sacrament.
The wolf looked up at the word, and Isabel gasped, her heart racing faster with fear. Its eyes were faintly glowing, with a green, demonic fire. “Sweet holy God,” Raymond’s cousin whispered. “What manner of devil is that?”
“I don’t know.” She tightened her grip on Malachi’s reins, expecting him to shy, but in truth, her mount seemed far more sanguine than she felt. The wolf was staring straight at her, a single paw laid on the neck of its prey. The stag shivered, still living, and a shiver went through her as well.
“Run for it, my lady,” Raymond said urgently, raising his pitchfork, and his cousin raised his pike. “Ride for the castle. We will hold the beast.”
“No.” Wrapping the reins more tightly around her left hand, she reached for Raymond with her right, her eyes still locked to the wolf’s. “Climb on—you, climb on with Tom.” Malachi pranced to one side, but Raymond managed to climb on behind her in the saddle, propriety forgotten as he wrapped his arms around her waist.
The wolf watched all of this impassively, no threat in his manner beyond the glow in his eyes. “Go, Tom,” she ordered, drawing her father’s sword.
“No, my lady,” the boy protested. “You should go first—”
“Tom, do what I say.” She took a deep breath, willing her heart to slow down before she fainted, and the mare galloped away. The wolf looked away from her for barely a moment, then its eyes swept back to Isabel. “Hold on, Raymond.” She lifted the sword as if in warning, and the wolf seemed to smile, its tongue lolling out as it panted at her like a friendly dog, an almost human interest in its eyes as it watched her. Indeed, she could not shake the feeling that it knew her, that in truth this was no wolf at all. She felt the man behind her tighten his grip, heard him whispering something in his people’s ancient tongue.
“Go, Malachi!” She wheeled the horse around and nudged him hard with her heels, breaking free of the strange creature’s gaze. “Go now!” The horse obeyed, breaking into a gallop as he headed for the castle.
