Page 93 of My Hero
Garth stood tall. He was free at last. Now he could rescue his lady. Now his life could begin.
The Abbot made a face that looked as if he’d been chewing green oranges. Then his eyes gentled unexpectedly, and he gave Garth a perfidious smile of pity.
“I fear, good people,” he said, interlacing his fingers piously before him, “it’s already too late. Obviously, Father Garth has been bewitched by your mistress. We must pray for him. Perhaps, once temptation is removed from his path and he is no longer under the witch’s influence, he will recover his wits.” He pointed a bony arm in the direction of the dungeon. “Take her below.”
“Nay!” Garth exploded as two guards dragged Cynthia toward the dungeon stairs. “She’s innocent! You can’t—”
“You poor, poor man,” the Abbot announced, shaking his head sadly. “She’s apparently ensorcelled you. I shall pray for your soul,” he promised.
“Nay!” Garth yelled, hurtling wildly after her. “Nay!”
The remaining two guards seized him by the arms and wrenched him backward. He struggled with all his might to escape their hold, but he was no match for the armed giants. The last thing he saw was Cynthia’s pale bare foot as she stepped down the first stair toward the dungeon. Then someone drove a mailed fist into his cheek, exploding stars across his vision that faded to leave a deep black canopy.
“There, that’s a lad.”
Droplets sprinkled Garth’s forehead. He flinched.
“Coming around now, are you?”
He opened his eyes. Elspeth’s lined face wavered above him.
“Clouted you good, he did. You’ve been sleeping most of the day.”
He sat up instantly. That couldn’t be right. It seemed as if he’d just watched Cynthia being dragged off.
“Here, have a care,” Elspeth chided, bracing his shoulders. “You’ll be wobbly as a new foal for a bit.”
Hewasdizzy. The last time he’d been cuffed that hard, it was for scribbling Latin exercises over his brother Duncan’s love letters, and that was seven years ago. He shook his head to clear the cobwebs.
“I must go to her,” he said.
“Nay, you’ll be doing no such thing.”
“She needs my help.”
“She’ll be fine…for the moment. The last thing she needs is for you to get yourself locked up with her. You can’t help her from the confines of the dungeon.”
Elspeth was right, of course. But he couldn’t bear to think about his beloved Cynthia shivering somewhere in the dank bowels of the castle while he sat…
Where was he? A row of waxed cheeses hung from the low ceiling. Glazed earthen jars winked in the candlelight from beneath shelves of warped wood, where various cloth-wrapped bundles and bottles crowded together.
Elspeth answered his unasked question. “The buttery. Roger thought it would be best to keep you from beneath the Abbot’s nose for a bit…for your own good. As far as the Abbot knows, you roused and ran off.”
“I won’t hide here like a frightened rabbit while—”
“You’ll only endanger Lady Cynthia and your child if you—”
“My child.” He snapped his eyes toward her. “You know?”
“What?” Elspeth said with rueful snicker. “That the child is yours? Well, after all the tumbling the two of you’ve done in half the chambers of the castle, who else’s would it be?”
To his chagrin, Garth blushed. “I never meant to…”
Elspeth tugged the cassock up around his shoulders in a motherly fashion. “Truth to tell, lad, you never had a prayer, priest or not. Once Cynthia makes her mind up about a thing…well, you’d have to swim harder than a salmon upstream to resist her will.” She patted his hand. It felt strangely comforting. Then she clamped her lips together tightly. Her eyes watered. “But now she’s in the hands of the devil, and, will or no, she won’t wish to drag you into that hell. She’ll deny the babe is yours till they tie her to the stake and—” Her voice cut off with a choking sob.
Garth slammed a fist against the wall. Flakes of plaster fluttered to the hard-packed dirt floor.
“I have to go to her,” he muttered between his teeth, scrambling to his feet. “I have to go.”
