where the casks of wine and ale were kept, there was a complete armoury that could be used in times of siege to repair and replace expended weaponry.
Neither the donjons nor the armoury had been used in recent years, although both were lit and cleaned regularly to discourage rats and other rodents from increasing their families. The armoury was also used to store the castle’s private stock of weaponry, with racks of swords, lances, crossbows, and precious hoards of raw iron. Here, with its heady smell of well-oiled metal and leather, Eduard had often come to admire the Wolf’s cache of deadly trophies won in tournaments and battles he had fought from one end of the Continent to the other. The walls of the great hall were hung with crossed swords and lances, decorated with the pennants and prizes won from his foes … hundreds of each, to be gazed upon with proud remembrances, each with its own story of victory, of meeting and overcoming impossible or improbable odds. But here, in the darkest heart of his castle, was where Lord Randwulf kept his private victories. Here were kept the stories he would not boast of before a roomful of boisterous knights.
There was the sword King Richard had given him on the redoubt outside Jerusalem—the same sword he had not used to obey the command to aid in the slaughter of a thousand unarmed prisoners Richard had had no further use for. There was the armour, black and gleaming, he had worn the day he had met his brother Etienne in mortal combat at Bloodmoor Keep … and never worn again. There was the sword—oddly shaped and fitted with iron sleeves that could add or decrease the weight and balance of the weapon—the Wolf had used this long ago to strengthen an arm so ravaged by hideous wounding the physician had predicted he would never use it again.
Eduard’s footsteps slowed, as they often did when he passed the armoury. The door to the chamber was partially open and a light glowed from inside—nothing unusual in itself, and he might not have stopped, might not even have taken a second glance had the faint but unmistakable rasp of a sword leaving its sheath not set the fine hairs across the back of his neck prickling an alert.
FitzRandwulf’s hand dropped instinctively to the hilt of his own sword and he stepped quickly to one side of the door, his back pressed to the wall and his body immersed in the darkness.
A shadow cut across the path of the light where it spilled out into the corridor and Eduard’s gaze flicked to the wall on the far side of the chamber. A silhouette bloomed larger than life on the rough stone, thrown there by whoever was cutting and capering in front of the torch. It was the silhouette of a woman, identifiable by the unbroken sweep of her skirt. She was holding a sword, testing its weight and balance, and as she spun to parry the thrust from an imaginary opponent, the long, unbound waves of her hair lifted around her shoulders.
Eduard’s hand relaxed from his sword and he let out his breath in a slow, steady stream. Whoever the girl was, she had a deal of gall to be in there touching things she had no business touching. He took an angry step toward the door, but was brought to a dead halt again as the intensity of light was broken a second time, not by a shadow, but by the flesh and blood outline of the guilty culprit herself.
The woman’s shape was blurred by the loose-fitting tunic she wore; more so by the incredible abundance of fiery red hair that tumbled and swirled about her shoulders in a sleek, shining mass of curls. Her movements—twisting, dodging, pivotting on her heels—caused the gleaming red waves to dance like live flames in the torchlight, fanning out in a bright coppery swirl when she spun, and crushing to her shoulders in a froth of red and gold and amber when she stopped or suddenly changed directions.
“Hah! Foiled, Sir Knight,” she muttered in smug triumph. “And such a pity to have to bleed all over your fine new tunic.”
Intrigued, Eduard folded his arms over his chest and watched. The girl was not familiar to him, but then he had been absent three months and would have no way of knowing any new servants on sight. Although he should have known her. He should have been