Two Novels: The Intended and Flame

Chapter 3

3

The Norwich road, a wide and well-traveled thoroughfare, provided an easy ride from the duke’s palace at Kenninghall, and Jaime reined in her sprightly, dappled mare at the crest of the rolling hill that led down toward the city walls. As the others rode on, she shaded her eyes against the late-morning sun and surveyed the bustling city of cloth makers and merchants, the beautiful spires of the cathedral, and the sinister, gray form of Norwich Castle—an ominous presence on its hill—sullenly guarding everything below. Though the fortress belonged to the duke of Norfolk, it had been used for nothing other than a prison for longer than anyone remembered. Involuntarily, Jaime shuddered at the grimness of the sight.

Edward pulled up and started to trot his hunter back toward the crest of the hill, but as he approached, Jaime spurred her little mare past him, leaving him in a cloud of dust as he wheeled and chased her back to the rest of the party. She simply couldn’t bring herself to be alone with him—not now, not after what had happened in the Hall. Last night, immediately following the dinner and while the festivities were still in high glee, she had escaped to her bedchamber and barred her door, admitting only Mary when she returned from the Great Hall. As her cousin put on her shift, Jaime had been tempted to talk to her about the events that had transpired, but a sense of complicity—of guilt, almost—kept her from discussing the matter.

And this morning, Jaime had done her best not to allow him a moment alone with her. She knew the questions he would ask—questions to which she had no answers. Jaime knew inside that she was partly responsible for Edward’s attentions. And somehow, perhaps through her actions or her words, he had come to assume she was ready for a more intimate encounter. He was wrong, but she didn’t know how to tell him without destroying all that might lie in store for them.

The castle was no less forbidding up close, and as they passed through the thick walls and the huge gates, Jaime suddenly found herself faced with an appalling number of men, women, and children who seemed to be living in the courtyard. A dozen soldiers roughly cleared the way for them, and Edward led the group up the wooden steps of the keep.

Jaime held back. It was the faces. She couldn’t tear her eyes away from the thin, drawn faces of the children who gawked at her fine dress. Their sad, round eyes bore through the small openings between the row of soldiers—their starved expressions piercing her heart. She wrenched her attention away as she heard Edward retracing his steps, his eyes locked on her. She thought she glimpsed a spark of annoyance in his gray eyes before he glanced at those in the yard.

“Who are those unfortunates?” she whispered as he took her arm.

“Mostly the king’s enemies,” he said quietly. “Though some of them are county criminals.”

Leading them up the winding torch lit stone stairwell, Edward came to a stop at the next landing. Ducking under the low round arch of the doorway, he stepped into a very large room—into what had at one time been the Great Hall of the castle.

Jaime looked at the hundred or so men huddled in groups or lying in the filthy straw that covered the wood floor. The stench of the place struck her, sickening her, but she clenched her teeth and moved into the hall.

“Perhaps this was a mistake to bring you here,” he said mockingly. “To expose such a delicate flower to the unpleasantness of the real world.”

Jaime shot him a hard look and stepped past him. Through the sharp odor of men and their waste, the smell of burned porridge reached her senses. At one end of the hall, a loud and greasy-looking man was ladling mush out of an iron cauldron onto thick crusts of what Jaime was sure must be week-old bread. And as she watched, a boy nearby poured water out of a huge skin bag into a stone horse trough. A steady line of filthy, ragged men made their way past, every now and then one of them casting a furtive glance their way. She turned to Edward.

“Why do you keep all these prisoners?” she asked, her voice hushed.

“Well, we serve the king.” He peered through the murky light. “Some of these men may have trespassed against my father in some way, but most are foreigners, and interrogating them takes time.”

“And once you’ve questioned them, you keep them here...forever?”

“Nay. That would hardly be worth our while now, would it?” Edward’s face was grim, his eyes the color of flint. “Few survive their sessions with Reed, the jailer. He is a brutal but necessary man. Using those in his employ, he has become my eyes and ears all along the coast. He knows all, and what he doesn’t know...he extracts.”

Jaime cast her eyes about her, but all she could see was the sordid suffering that surrounded them. “This is a foul place, Edward,” she whispered raggedly.

“Aye, Jaime. There is a foul side to the most glorious business. And war is no exception.” He took her by the arm. “But it is important for one to see the refuse to fully appreciate the splendor.”

“Show me what you brought me here to see,” she whispered under her breath.

With a nod, Edward looked into the center of the hall. Following his eyes, Jaime saw a group of five or six men half sitting and lying down. They had to be the ones, Jaime thought. His prisoners. Her challenge.

“M’lord?” A burly, round-faced man carrying a stout club approached them, and Edward turned irritably toward him.

“What is it, Reed?” he snapped.

“Well, m’lord, this ‘ere Spaniard in yon corner may be done fer. I thought—since ye happened by this morning, ye’d like to talk to ‘im. All of the sudden, seeing his end ‘afore ‘im, ‘e appears to ‘ave a bushel full to pass on. Some of it ye might just find to yer liking, m’lord.”

“Very well.” Edward turned to Jaime and glanced over his shoulder at the officers who had ridden in with them. Taking her by the hand, he said, “Wait for me right here. This should only take a moment.”

Jaime watched him follow the jailer into a dark corner and down a few steps where they pushed aside a ragged piece of cloth that did little to conceal the murky, torch-lit antechamber beyond. As they passed into the small room, she could see a man hunched against a wall. Dark patches spotted the wall above the man. She wondered if it was the Spaniard’s blood. If not his, she thought, then whose? Looking back at the group Edward had indicated before, she paused. Two of them, standing in conversation over another, were wearing clothes of the French nobility. She threw a glance at Edward, and then at his officers.

This was, indeed, why he had brought her here. Aye, he meant to test her loyalty, but perhaps he also wanted to see if she might be able to identify these men, perhaps to give him a sense of their true worth? The thought of him bringing her into such a sordid business repulsed her all the more. But, she argued inwardly, how else could he be assured that her years of study in France or the Scottish blood that he thought ran in her veins would not divide her loyalties?

The c***k of a whip tore through the air, followed by the shrill scream of a man. Her hands instinctively rose to her mouth to stop her own shocked cry. She turned toward the antechamber. Edward was bent over the cringing heap that she knew to be the Spaniard. She shut her eyes tightly as Edward stepped back, giving Reed room to strike again at the dying man. She backed away in an unconscious attempt to put more distance between herself and the horrifying sight.

Jaime stumbled slightly as she tripped over the outstretched foot of a prisoner sitting nearby. The man’s vacant eyes looked up at her, but they didn’t seem to comprehend what he was seeing. And then he began to cough—it was a painful, consumptive fit—and Jaime found herself edging away in the direction of the French prisoners.

More cries emanated from the corner room and again the c***k of the whip—again and again the lash fell. She looked about—the officers, the coughing man at her feet—she could see Edward speaking to someone just inside the antechamber. But no one seemed to hear the man’s cries. Everyone but Jaime herself seemed deaf to the sounds of the t*****e. The coughing man vomited a sizable amount of blood. She took another step back while trying to swallow the bile in her throat. These men were dying before her eyes.

As she continued to move off, she heard a few words of French and realized she was almost on top of the new prisoners. Northerner...late... With an anxious look at Edward, still in the corner room, she slowly approached them, but they backed away in silence as she neared them.

There was a man lying in the straw before her. With a start Jaime bent over him—he was an elderly man wearing the red and gray tartan of the MacGregor’s. A Scot, she thought. Edward had never mentioned that he had taken Scots in his victory. A b****y cloth covered the man’s eyes, and his face and beard were caked with dried blood. Before she even knelt, she knew that the man was dead. She placed her hand on the man’s cold, stiff fingers and said a silent prayer for his soul. Then she stood up and tried to step back.

But she couldn’t. The hem of her skirt was caught, and she couldn’t move anywhere. She looked down in shock, thinking wildly that the dead MacGregor had come back to life, but instead she saw another large and b****y hand holding her gown. In spite of the flash of panic, she couldn’t call out for help. These men had suffered enough. She would not bring more misery into their wretched lives. She would handle this.

Following the outstretched arm, she turned slowly to the side and saw the man who lay propped up on a bundle of rags in the straw. The man’s face was turned, his tangled hair b****y and matted, and blood soaked his traveling cloak, as well. Her eyes immediately took in the fine boots that covered the man’s long legs to his knees. He had to be another one of the French nobles captured by Edward. She looked furtively about her, making sure she was bringing no attention to herself, nor to this dying prisoner. Edward still occupied himself with the Spaniard, and his officers stood a few paces away, involved in an increasingly animated argument. One of the officers, though, returned Jaime’s glance. She just gave him an indifferent nod and pretended that she was preoccupied with the study of the hall’s structure. The man’s attention returned to his friends. Jaime tugged at her skirt again, but the man’s grip on her skirt’s hem was strong.

The flat of a sword blade slapping on flesh and a cry of pain jolted Jaime as she caught a glimpse of one of Edward's officers using it on a prisoner’s hand that had reached out to touch his boots. Turning away, she squatted at once and took a hold of her skirt, trying to wrench it free from the man’s hand. He wouldn’t release her. With both of her hands now at work, she touched his hand—but with the speed of lightning, the prisoner’s fingers clamped onto her wrist.

She summoned all her courage and swallowed her urge to scream. Panic raced through her as the prisoner raised his face, pulling her closer to him. Beneath the tangle of hair, she saw his jaw move.

“Jaime,” the man whispered.

Her blood froze at the sound. She didn’t have to see his face to recognize the man. She had heard his voice call out to her a thousand times in her dreams. Malcolm.

As he weakly shook back the mass of hair, a tumult of thoughts and emotions surged through her. How could it be that he—of all people—should be here?

“Jaime,” he whispered her name again. “I thought it a dream, but it is you?”

In an instant, shock gave way to confusion and hate as an icy shiver ran down her back. Here he was, the man whom she had loved—the man who had rejected her so callously. She gazed on him, b****y and pale. She heard a cry and glanced quickly in the direction of the antechamber.

“Draw no attention to us,” Malcolm ordered, bringing her attention back to him.

“You’re wounded,” she whispered, trying to keep her voice flat and calm. “I’ll have someone look at your injuries.” She took a sharp breath as the pressure of his hand nearly snapped the bones of her wrist.

“Nay,” he commanded. The pressure eased on her wrist. “Say nothing. You don’t know me.”

“You could die.”

“Then let me die,” he whispered hoarsely. “I’ll gladly take death before giving these blackguards any knowledge of who I am.”

As surely as she was kneeling there, she felt the tearing in her chest as she looked on him. A flood of molten liquid poured into her heart, and a pain engulfed her, smothering her attempt to speak.

“Jaime, I won’t let them ransom me. I won’t let them steal my honor. Go, lass. Just walk away and forget you saw me. But...later...let my kin know what happened to me. If you ever cared for me, do this. It is a wee thing I’m asking of you.”

Jaime pulled her hand slowly out of his grip, and he let her go. She stared into his dark eyes. They were pleading with her, so unlike the eyes of the Malcolm she remembered. She stood up slowly and took a step back. Edward's voice stopped her, swinging her around.

“I see you’ve found the bagatelle I’ve brought home.”

“Your treasures, you mean?” she asked, matter-of-factly.

Edward's eyebrows shot up in interest. Jaime pointed at Malcolm, her eyes defiantly matching the wounded Highlander’s glare as Edward’s arm encircled her waist.

“That one. The one dressed in French attire. He is Malcolm MacLeod, the chief of the powerful MacLeod clan. Aside from the Earl of Argyll, he has the greatest fortune in the Western Isles.”

Jaime turned her gaze back to Edward's face. His eyes sparkled, even in the murky light of the prison.

“That one man—alive—” she continued, “will bring you a king’s ransom.”