Laurie Grant - My Lady Midnight

“I will…” Wishing she could have brought a lantern, or even just a candle, she poked her crude leather shoe among the prickly dry straw, until at last her foot collided with something hard that protruded ever so slightly from the floor. She crouched and pushed the straw away with her hands, uncovering a metal ring about four inches in diameter.

“I’ve found it, I think,” she called. “A metal ring?”

“That’s it! Pull up on it, and come down here!” commanded Ivo.

Claire felt an instant flare of irritation at the mercenary’s peremptory tone, but she put his impatience down to the effects of confinement. At first the trapdoor didn’t budge when she pulled on it, but after she braced herself and gave it a mighty yank, it yielded with a creak.

Claire peered down into the gaping hole. She could see a stone stairway, but no Ivo or Jean waiting at its foot. There seemed to be a flickering light below, but still she hesitated. Would she be going right into the very cell in which Ivo and Jean were imprisoned? Despite the fact that they were supposedly on the same side, she didn’t trust the rough men, for she’d seen the secret, hungry looks the soldiers had leveled at her during the journey from Coverly—as if they were wolves and she were a helpless lamb traveling in the midst of the pack.

“Does this stairway lead right into your cell?” she called down.

She heard a snort of laughter. “Do ye think Hawkswell would make it so easy to overwhelm the man who brings us our meals and empties our slop bucket? Nay, lady, we’re in a cell at the base of the stairway. Come on down and you’ll see.”

Was it a trick? She’d just have to trust that they were telling the truth, she decided, and lowered her foot onto the first step below.

The walls were cool and damp, but not slimy, she noted, and once she got halfway down she saw that the light was coming from a pitch-soaked torch set in the stone wall right next to a door in which a small, square hole, covered with close-set iron bars, was cut. The hole was just big enough to reveal Ivo’s and Jean’s faces pressed against the bars, watching her descent.

“It’s about time, my lady,” Jean greeted her in his coarse peasant French. “Do ye bring the key to let us out?”

“The key?” She paused on the last step, astonished at his question, but determined not to show her surprise. It was a relief to speak in French again, even to these rough men. “Nay, of course not. I don’t know where the key is kept. I merely came to see if you were both all right. Have you been questioned? Tortured?”

“See, I told you she wouldn’t think to bring no key,” she heard Ivo mutter to Jean. “Yes, we’ve been questioned—by none other than the lord o’ Hawkswell himself. But we didn’t tell him nothing,” the man-at-arms boasted.

“You’ve not been harmed?” Claire persisted, ignoring their surly reception. “You’re all right?”

“Nay, we’re not ‘all right’! We’ve not been tortured, just questioned, but we’re cold and hungry and the food the lord sent down is more like pig swill!” snapped Jean.

“Has he threatened to torture you?” she asked, feeling some lessening of her anxiety as she peered beyond the men and found that while their cell was small, it was furnished with blankets and clean straw.

“Nay, but what of that? Find the key and get us out of here!”

Claire felt a rising exasperation at the men’s truculence. They had not been tortured, at least not yet, and while their surroundings were not luxurious, they were not inhumane. “I’m sorry that you were captured, but I’m afraid it’s not that simple,” said Claire, injecting into her voice enough hauteur for a queen. “Even if I had the means to let you out of this dungeon, you might well be captured trying to escape the castle. And then the whole mission is jeopardized, for Lord Alain would have to discover how you escaped, would he not? You would be forced to reveal who released you, and then we would all be thrown into this cell and our mission for King Stephen would not be accomplished.”

Ivo swore and told Claire in graphic terms what the king could do to himself.

She was determined not to let the man bait her, and pretended she had not heard the obscene remark. “I pray you will be patient. Perhaps once he is satisfied that you know nothing, Lord Alain will release you.”

“Yes, and the pope will turn Muslim,” retorted Jean with an ugly laugh.

“If he does not, you will at least have to be patient while I learn my way about the castle,” Claire said. She was sorry she had found them. “I would remind you I have been here less than a day. If it is possible to effect your release without endangering myself, you may trust I will do so. In the meantime, perhaps I can steal a bit of food, so that you can at least have a little something better to eat,” she offered, trying to smile encouragingly at them.

“Well, ain’t that good of ye, my fine lady, dispensing charity to the poor captives?” snarled Ivo. “It’s all yer fault we’re here anyway. We could have found a way to kidnap Lord Alain’s whelps, easy. But no, Hardouin had to use ye!”

How dared they blame her! She hadn’t asked for this task! She opened her mouth to deliver a tart reprimand. “If you hadn’t lingered at an alehouse instead of finding a concealed place to wait for me, you and the rest of them—”

She froze, for suddenly she heard the creak of the flooring above, and the sound of voices.

A torch was thrust down the opening. “Who’s down there?” a familiar voice demanded in French.

Lord Alain! But wasn’t he supposed to be consulting with the reeve and the bailiff, and reading a message from the empress?

“I said, who’s there? ” Lord Alain demanded again, this time in English, and she saw his booted feet coming down the stone steps.

There was no help for it. “I—it’s me, Haesel, my lord,” she said, before his head had come below the upper level.

He descended the final steps before speaking to her, and raised the torch.

“What are you doing down here, Haesel?” he demanded, his voice as cold as the stone wall she shrank back against. “Why are you talking to these men?”

Taking refuge in her role as Haesel, the simple Englishwoman, she said, “I—ye said I might explore, my lord, and I was doin’ that…I came into the cellar, and these men called out t’ me, and I just came to talk t’ them, ’tis all, my lord. I—I felt sorry for them, I did, for they said they’re cold and hungry…I’m sorry, my lord, I did not mean to anger ye. I merely wished t’ comfort them in their captivity, like a good Christian.”

His eyes bored a hole through her. His face was a mask of suspicion. “And would your piety allow you to go inside their cell if you could, and warm them with your body, Haesel? I’m sure they’d find that comfort enough! Would you like me to let you in? I regret I would have to lock the door behind you, of course.”

Claire felt her mouth fall open during his tirade, and she didn’t have to feign the tears that sprang into her eyes. “Nay, of course I wouldn’t, my lord! I was just talkin’ to them, my lord! They was lonely!” She allowed herself to sniffle as the tears spilled over her cheek, hoping she could move whatever trace of a heart he had left.

His eyes appraised her for an endless moment. “Very well, I’ll accept what you’re telling me this time,” he said, his eyes still full of distrust. “But don’t let me find you down here again, Haesel. These are low, murdering knaves, and they’d rape you as fast as look at you, then slit your throat, do you understand? They are not fit to be the recipients of your charity,” he concluded sternly, then gestured to the stairs. “Go on, get out of here. I would speak further with these baseborn scoundrels.”