“Provide me with a worthy mount,” she said, her eyes raking boldly down the powerful length of his body, “And you will not hear me balking at the thought of a hard day’s ride.”
Lucien turned to the gaping guard. “Go below and have my seneschal find you some hot food and drink, then be ready to lead us back to the green.”
“Yes, my lord. My lord … there was one other thing.”
Wardieu had already started back into his chamber to dress. “Yes, what is it?”
Sweat popped out across the man’s brow in tiny, oily beads. “It comes from the Black Wolf, my liege. He said it should be delivered with a further message so that you would know his intentions were true.”
A shaking, gloved hand reached into a leather pouch strapped to his belt. A small canvas sack was withdrawn and held out to the frowning baron. The thong binding the mouth of the sack had become loosened through the long journey and, before Wardieu could unthread it fully, the sack gaped open and the contents fell onto the floor by his bare feet.
It was a finger; a woman’s severed finger, judging by the size and shape of it.
Wardieu drew a deep breath. “What was the message?”
The guard’s chin quivered and he looked from Nicolaa to the baron. “Only … only that if you did not pay the ransom, you would not see your bride again … leastwise not in pieces large enough for anyone to recognize.”
Nicolaa, sidling closer for a better view, was the first one to break the ensuing silence.
“Well,” she murmured, “if nothing else, this Black Wolf knows how to make his meaning perfectly clear.”
7
Onfroi de la Haye was a spike-thin, ferret-faced man cursed with a propensity for breaking into clammy, prolonged sweats when subjected to any kind of stress. He suffered nervous ticks in his high, gaunt cheekbones which set his brows and eyelids twitching in alternating spasms. Perpetually dry lips—even though the rest of his body might be drowning— continually brought his tongue flicking forth like a snake to chase the dried flakes to a crusted scum at both corners. His eyes were set too close together to allow for normal vision, with the result that when he was not twitching, he was squinting myopically to see objects only a few paces away. His nose was long and hooked, his chin pointed, his skin— beneath the few scrawny hairs he was able to cultivate into a beard—was a pitted and pocked testament to a sickly childhood.
Sweating torrents, twitching spasmodically, and picking morosely at a favorite weal on his cheek, Onfroi paced before the smoking ashes of the campfire, tracing and retracing a worn path in the flattened grass. By his calculations it had been nearly eighteen hours since he had bolstered his courage enough to dispatch his messenger to Bloodmoor Keep. Given the time required to ride from Alford to the castle and back …
The sheriff came to the end of his measured track: halted, swiveled abruptly on his heel, and paced back.
… it would be well nigh onto midnight before a missive could return along the same route.
Onfroi paused long enough to squint out across the common on which his men had pitched camp. The abbey was nestled in a shallow valley, the monastery and its surrounding fruit orchards separated from the wide meadow by a sparkling ribbon of water. An orderly compound of buildings made of quarried stone and pitched slate roofs, the abbey was tranquil and rose-tinted in the dusk light, the air singing occasionally with the lowing of a lamb or a tinkling of a goat’s bell. The small bronze bell in the priory had rung at dawn to call the holy brothers to mass, then had vibrated the stillness again at three-hour intervals until the last—Vespers—nearly an hour ago. It had allowed for plenty of time to go over every detail of the ambush again, to anticipate every question and demand that would come his way.
Onfroi swabbed his brow with the fold of his velvet sleeve. He could not even begin to imagine what form Wardieu’s anger would take. Having witnessed all extremes in his ten years as sheriff of Lincoln, he was not certain which to dread the most: the cold, icy calm that caused an offender’s bowels to turn to jelly; or the hot, rampaging fury that resulted in flesh and tissue being splattered in all directions. The man was a spawn of the