With Dreams Only of You Read online

  Knowing she was defeated, Frederica stood up and turned to Eryx. He was gazing back at her impassively but there was no mistaking the warmth in the eyes. There is trust there. He was trusting her to make the right decision.

  “Take the sword back where you found it,” Frederica murmured. “Although I do not believe it is cursed, mayhap… mayhap it would be best if you remove it. I am afraid this will get out of control if you do not.”

  Eryx nodded faintly. “As am I,” he said quietly. “It would seem that Robbin’s jealousy has bled over onto Lady Willew. They are in support of one another now in a common cause to separate you from the sword.”

  Frederica lifted her eyebrows. “Why would you say that about Robbin?”

  “Because he wants you. Anything I give to you, he is jealous of. Could you not see that last night?”

  It made sense and Frederica nodded in defeat. “I suppose I could,” she said. Then, she reached out to touch the man’s arm, softly. “I still love the sword. Mayhap… mayhap you could put it back where you found it and we shall go and retrieve it together someday.”

  He smiled begrudgingly. “It is a long way to the Roman castle,” he said. “I can see it from Corchester Castle and that is at least five or six hours away.”

  Frederica smiled also, joined to his gesture in the warmth she felt for him. “Mayhap someday it will not be such a long ride,” she whispered. “Mayhap then I will be living at Corchester Castle with you.”

  He nodded, his dusky eyes glimmering with thoughts of their future together. “Indeed you will,” he said for her ears only. “That being the case, I will put the sword back for safekeeping until such time as we can collect it again.”

  “I consider the sword a symbol of adoration, you know. It is not cursed.”

  He cocked his head. “Why would you say adoration?”

  She thought back to that moment yesterday when she had touched the sword and felt those strains of devotion from it. Devotion and love. She felt strongly that there was indeed something connected to the sword but it was not a curse. It was something far more powerful.

  “Because that’s what it represents,” she explained. “If there are souls in it, it is of the man who carried it and the woman who loved him. That is all there is to it.”

  Eryx lost himself in her sweet gaze for a moment, warmed and touched by her words. He knew that she meant the soft words that would bind them, connect them, and seal their destiny. But before he lost himself in too much reflection, he remembered that there was a room full of people waiting for him to do what he was told to do – return the sword. With a wink at Frederica, he spoke to Lady Amelia.

  “If it is your wish, my lady, then I will remove the weapon,” he said. “Shall I help you bury Sir Broderick first?”

  Amelia shook her head, her gaze upon her husband’s corpse. “Nay,” she said. “His men shall do that.”

  Eryx could sense a snub. “As you wish, my lady,” he said politely. “Your husband was my friend and I am deeply saddened for your loss. I shall return and tell Lord d’Umfraville of this tragedy. He will want to know.”

  Amelia didn’t reply. Eryx didn’t expect her to. Therefore, he returned his focus to Frederica, briefly.

  “I will be back for you,” he mouthed.

  Frederica smiled, her heart doing that great and giddy dance that she was coming to associate with him. “I will be waiting,” she mouthed in return.

  Without another word, Eryx quit the common room and headed out to the stables where his horse and possessions were waiting for him. While Frederica returned her attention to her aunt to once again try and convince the woman that there was no curse upon Pelinom Castle or upon the ancient sword, Robbin’s attention lingered on Eryx.

  So the man was returning the sword back to the Roman castle. That was all well and good, but what would happen after that? Robbin had seen Eryx and Frederica whispering to one another and he could only imagine what had been said. Eryx returning the sword only solved some of the problem. As he’d thought to himself earlier, he had to rid himself of Eryx once and for all. As it was, he was precariously close to losing Frederica. He knew he could win her heart if only Eryx wasn’t around, but he had to be given that chance. Clearly, she had told him she was not interested in him but he knew that was only because of Eryx’s presence. Damn the man! Robbin wasn’t completely ready to concede defeat.

  But it depended on how long he could keep Eryx away from Pelinom. Much could happen on a journey north to the Roman castle. Many things could befall a man, including death. Eryx could meet with his and, for all anyone would know, it would be a terrible accident. Raiding Scots or an errant bandit… so many violent men out to commit violent deeds. A lone knight wouldn’t be vulnerable in hand to hand combat with another, and especially not a knight as skilled as Eryx de Reyne, but even men such as de Reyne were vulnerable to a weapon there was little defense against… a crossbow.

  As the inhabitants of Pelinom cleaned up and carried on after the tragedy of the fire, Robbin made sure to integrate himself however he could. Instead of Eryx being on hand to help bury Lord Broderick, it was Robbin and a few other Pelinom knights who prepared the man’s body. Robbin never much liked Broderick but Eryx had, so there was some sweet sense of vengeance to Robbin that he was preparing the man and Eryx wasn’t. Robbin was beyond suspicion while Eryx had been sent off in disgrace.

  It was all well and good except for the fact that Frederica wouldn’t speak to or even look at Robbin. She had retreated with her aunt into one of the small rooms in the knights’ quarters and there they remained. Willew had wandered off, no doubt to start trouble elsewhere now that the sword issue had been decided in her favor, while Robbin was left with a fresh corpse. But not for long.

  As the day marched on towards mid-morning and the clean-up of Pelinom’s burnt-out keep was in full swing, Robbin was able to slip away, unnoticed, and follow Eryx’s path north. It was true that Eryx had a couple of hours head start on him but that didn’t matter to Robbin. He intended to drive his horse faster and harder until he caught Eryx, who was probably not traveling at a speedy pace, unwilling to put increasing distance between himself and Frederica. Perhaps Eryx would even try to return and attempt to redeem both himself and the sword in the eyes of the castle. Perhaps he would even come into Lady Amelia’s good graces again.

  Clearly, Robbin could not let that happen. The mere thought drove him mad with jealousy and fury.

  Eryx had to die.

  Chapter Seven

  Vitam aut mortem

  Oddly enough, the sub-levels of Pelinom’s massive keep suffered minimal damage with the massive fire burning above it, so the food stores and a secondary well were in excellent condition. The fire burned upward, through the ceilings above, and didn’t burn through the floor of the second or even the first floors. Therefore, those levels were salvageable and even livable to a certain extent. By early afternoon, the knights of Pelinom had turned the lowest level, the stores, into a cozy and comfortable dwelling for the de Velt women.

  Amelia was nearly catatonic by the time they moved her into the corner of the storeroom that had three beds placed in it, beds taken from the knights’ quarters. Broderick’s body had been prepared and moved into Pelinom’s very small chapel and word had been sent to the village of Falstone to the south for the town’s only priest to come to Pelinom to perform the funeral mass for Broderick.

  With Amelia so distraught, Frederica had worked very hard to return the castle to some semblance of normalcy. Willew certainly couldn’t do it, as she was off divining the future of the castle and its inhabitants by reading the animal droppings in the kitchen yard, so it was up to Frederica to take charge. Oddly enough, the old woman hadn’t said another word about the curse or about the sword, as if once Eryx departed to return the thing, she had forgotten it and moved on.

  But Frederica hadn’t moved on. She was still upset over the fact that Eryx had been sent away as if he had committed a crime as Willew
and Robbin set against him. Frederica knew Robbin’s motives but she couldn’t imagine what Willew’s were and as early afternoon set upon them, she gave up thinking on the old woman’s motives. It didn’t matter in the long run, she supposed. Soon, she and Eryx would be married and they could collect the sword once more from its hiding place in the old Roman castle.

  Now, the sword had great sentimental value to her, as it was the first gift Eryx had ever given her. She wanted it back. She wanted him back, too, as soon as he could manage it. She was ready to move on with the rest of their lives, together, and forget about people like Willew and Robbin.

  With thoughts of Eryx on her mind, she tried to settle Amelia down in the cool, dry corner of the sub-level of Pelinom. The servant girl who usually helped the women of the family had brought several bladders filled with hot water to warm the beds and Amelia was settled into one of the beds with hot bladders to keep her warm. Willew had wandered into their cozy corner at one point, exhausted from an eventful night and morning, and she fell into bed and fast asleep without saying a word to anyone. Right away, she began snoring loud enough to cause the soldiers who had been helping organize the lower levels to break into giggles.

  But Frederica didn’t think it was so funny. Her only concern was her aunt while the servant girl tended the old woman by putting warm bladders against her back and covering her with a heavy, woolen blanket. As the servant girl prepared Frederica’s bed with two hot bladders, Frederica took one of them from the servant and put it into her aunt’s bed. Amelia now had four hot bladders and she was quite content. It was the first time since before the fire started that she had been. As the grief-stricken woman drifted off to sleep, Frederica turned to the servant.

  “There,” she said quietly. “That should keep her comfortable for a while. Do we have any more bladders?”

  The servant girl nodded. “We do, m’lady,” she said. “I will make sure to fill them.”

  Frederica nodded, feeling very weary herself. But she was also hungry. “Good,” she said, putting her hands on her hips and surveying their situation. “Now we need to determine what to do about a meal. Where is the cook?”

  The servant pointed in the direction of the kitchen. “She is already working on a stew, m’lady,” she said. “Mutton and turnips and peas, I believe. There should be a meal ready soon.”

  Frederica was thinking ahead to the logistics of that event. “We should serve it in the knights’ quarters,” she said. “There is a table in there. At least it is warm and dry, even if it is small. The men can eat in shifts. I suppose we can move men in there to sleep as well, considering the hall is now gone. There are my uncle’s three knights plus Sir Robbin. They will all have to make do by sleeping in the same room. We can squeeze a dozen or more soldiers into the common room, at the very least.”

  As Frederica thought on the sleeping arrangements, the servant girl shook her head. “Sir Robbin is not here, m’lady,” she said. “He left a short time ago.”

  Frederica looked at her with some relief. “God’s Bones,” she muttered. “Finally. I hope he never comes back.”

  The servant girl watched Lady Frederica’s reaction. The girl hadn’t been blind to the competition going on between Sir Robbin and Sir Eryx for Lady Frederica’s hand. Everyone knew of it. She knew that Lady Frederica was quite fond of Sir Eryx and she also knew that Sir Robbin hated the man because of it. The servant girl had understood that much the night before when he had bedded her. Robbin’s hatred for Eryx was nearly all he could speak of in between bouts of telling the servant girl how ugly she was as compared to Frederica. He had even closed his eyes and called her Freddie as he’d spilled his seed into her, twice. It had been a humiliating experience for the servant in a life that had been full of such things.

  But Lady Frederica had been kind to her since her arrival a few months earlier, so the servant girl gravitated towards the kind soul. She wanted to help her, too, as much as she could, and reassure her that Sir Robbin was indeed gone from Pelinom for the moment but that his plans, from the angry ramblings the servant girl had been privy to the night before, were only temporary.

  “He is gone for now but he said that he was coming back, m’lady,” the timid servant said. “He said that when Sir Eryx was gone, he would return for you. Mayhap you should tell Sir Eryx that. I am certain he would not be pleased.”

  Frederica looked at the girl curiously. “When Sir Eryx was gone?” she repeated. “What do you mean ‘gone’? Do you mean after he left Pelinom?”

  The servant girl shrugged. She was starting to feel the least bit nervous because Sir Robbin’s manner had been unsettling and confusing. She didn’t want to upset Lady Frederica but she thought that perhaps the lady should know what Sir Robbin had been spouting.

  “I don’t know, m’lady,” she said. “He said he would come back after Sir Eryx was gone. He said that he wanted him gone.”

  Frederica’s confusion turned into something else. A hint of foreboding filled her as she tried to put together the servant girl’s puzzling words. Gone. Gone… as in gone from Pelinom? Or gone from something else? Possibly… gone from the earth? Was that possibly what he meant? Robbin had shown such edgy behavior since arriving at Pelinom, such wicked propensity, that at this point Frederica could believe him capable of anything and the mere thought terrified her. Reaching out, she grasped the servant girl by both arms.

  “How do you know this?” she demanded. “Who told you?”

  The servant girl was quickly growing frightened at the tone of Frederica’s voice. “Sir Robbin told me,” she said. “He… we… he ordered me to come to him and I complied. I was afraid what would happen if I did not obey him.”

  Frederica understood exactly what the servant girl meant. It was an all too common practice between soldiers and subservient women. They were used to relieve a man’s needs, like breeding cows, sexually exploited and then cast aside like rubbish. She wasn’t shocked at the realization but she was rather disgusted by it.

  “Did he really say he would come back after Eryx was gone?” she asked, fighting back the fear that clutched at her. “What else did he say? Did he say anything more about Eryx being gone?”

  The servant girl shook her head, frightened. “He… he said he wished the man had not come to Pelinom, m’lady,” she stammered. “He… he said he would make him pay!”

  Frederica stared at the girl a long, intense moment before releasing her. He said he would make him pay… he wanted him gone… those two thoughts rolled over and over in Frederica’s mind until she was nearly mad with it all. Something told her that Robbin was going to do Eryx great bodily harm although she wasn’t sure what he could do. Eryx was smarter and stronger than Robbin could ever hope to be. So what was it that Robbin could do? God’s Bones… he could do almost anything. She’d seen it in his eyes as he’d looked at Eryx last night, as he’d tried to engage the man in a verbal battle. Perhaps now he was no longer content with verbal battles. Perhaps now he wanted the real thing.

  Perhaps now he wanted to kill him.

  Frederica was flying out of the storage room before the servant girl could stop her.

  * * *

  Eryx was fairly certain he had a shadow.

  It started about an hour before with movement out of the corner of his eye. He had been traveling across the snow-mucked road beneath angry, gray skies and was near a section of a white-laden forest when he thought he saw movement in the trees. It was difficult to get a fix on the shape but he was fairly certain from the size that it was a horse and rider. It could very well be some other kind of animal, four-legged, but for the fact that he was almost positive that he saw a rider upon the beast’s back.

  Now, he was traveling across open ground but there were hills all around him, and groves of trees, and it wouldn’t be difficult for a tail to hide among them. He was perhaps two hours from Corchester Castle and, subsequently, the Roman castle, and the ground was so poor with patches of ice and big, deep puddles that he
didn’t want to push his horse particularly hard. It was bad enough that he’d had to return the sword to the place where he had discovered it, so all aspects of this trip were negative to him. He wanted to be back at Pelinom with Frederica, burying her uncle and then sending word to the woman’s father to ask for her hand. He simply wanted to be near her again.

  But he struggled to stay off thoughts of Frederica, at least for the moment. He had a shadow tailing him and he was very concerned with the fact. He could see, up ahead, that the road plunged into a rather large forest of white-frosted trees and he didn’t want to get caught in the trees with someone trailing him. Trees could be used for cover and he didn’t want to give his shadowy friend the advantage. In fact, he didn’t want to give the person any advantage at all, so well away from the forest up ahead, he came to a halt in the middle of the slushy, dirty road.

  Now we’ll see what you are up to, my friend, he thought to himself as he dismounted. He bent over his horse’s leg to pretend he was inspecting the animal for injury. As he was hunched over the animal, he was also looking to the hills off to the west because his tail had been following him off to the west. The hills were mostly white, with patches of dead grass now and again, and he very slowly inspected all four hooves, creating quite a time delay for anyone pursuing him. He’d not entered the trees up ahead as was expected. He was stopped out in the open, making a surprise ambush or a stealth attack nearly impossible. If someone approached him, he would see them coming and be able to prepare.