gone ere this watch returns since they think I am the one who wishes a private audience. You are well with that?”
“I will not fail you, my prince.” That last Nicola added to better express her gratitude.
He inclined his head. “I am for bed now.”
She startled. “I thought you would keep watch.”
“No need. As I have faith you shall do as told, the five privy to what goes this eve shall remain five.”
She was pleased to have gained his trust, and yet she wished he would stay close enough to alert her should circumstances change. Silently chiding herself for being fearful, she said, “I shall see you when next we break fast.”
He eased open the door between them and those sleeping in the hall beyond the corridor, and looked back. “Do not waste precious minutes searching for keys to free him. That the guards will not risk.”
It had occurred to her as it had him, meaning he did not entirely trust her, as was wise. She inclined her head.
After he confirmed the passage remained clear, he stepped off the landing and quietly closed the door.
Nicola touched the dagger on her hip before slowly descending the torchlit steps she longed to fly down. Though she believed Vitalis was the only occupant of the cellar, time and again it had been impressed on her that no matter how great one’s belief in the things of this world, caution should be given its due. At the outset of what she had regarded as an adventure far preferable to the stale routine of Stern Castle, she had exercised little caution—and for it, much suffering. Thus, she had no intention of being the cause of further suffering, especially where Vitalis was concerned.
Yet you are here when you should be abovestairs sleeping the same as Ardith, reminded her inner voice.
It gave her pause as she neared the last step, but though she considered turning back, this was not something she did unbidden. It had been arranged by the prince rather than the reckless one.
The cellar was no immense open space as she had imagined beneath the great hall’s floor. Walls had been erected on either side of a wide corridor, the rooms made of them easily accessed in the absence of doors. Within were stocks of drink and foodstuffs, chamber linens, kitchen and dining ware, and a fearsome array of arms and other necessities of war. Unsurprisingly, the latter was not accessible, its doorway fit with iron bars in which a lock was set, the key to which was surely upon De Warenne’s belt.
But where were prisoners kept? Nicola wondered as she neared the corridor’s end. To the left from which light flickered and seeped into the right?
She halted, gripped her dagger’s hilt, and leaned forward just enough to peer down a corridor whose stunted length was lit by two torches. At the end was the guard’s station comprised of a table and chairs, across from it three wooden doors whose upper reaches were fit with grates.
Nicola’s heart sank a little. She had assumed that the same as the armory, Vitalis’s door would be fashioned of bars, permitting her to look full upon him and confirm he was well. Worse, despite the greater privacy a wooden door afforded a prisoner, it would make him feel more caged.
If the Saxon who recently passed had done so in the absence of physical abuse, it was possible his death was a result of isolation. Yet another form of abuse.
Vitalis fares well, she told herself and stepped forward. Maël assures me it is so, and he would not lie—rather, not with ill intent. But to shield me… Non, he speaks true, even if only because De Warenne would not deny the king the pleasure of himself witnessing, if not delivering, his enemy’s every punishment.
Immediately, Nicola berated herself for seeking to calm her heart with assurances of something that, albeit in the future, was more to be feared.
In passing, she snatched the first torch from its sconce. And faltered when Vitalis snarled, “Non, Nicola!”
Silently applauding his acute senses, she continued forward.
“Leave now!”
There was no face at the first cell’s grate nor the second, but the third…
Her torch’s flame showed one absent the purpling of bruises and red of cuts and scrapes. Still, red was present and not of hair and beard. This was of anger.
She thrust the torch in a sconce beside his door, stepped near, and hooked her fingers over the grate’s edge to support the rise to her toes.