Chapter Thirteen
She was back on the ship again. It was rolling.
Everything was rolling.
Gregoria opened her eyes to see horse’s legs beneath her and the muddy road zinging by as the horse ran. Everything was a blur. Some of the mud was flying up in her face, specs of it hitting her in the forehead. Realizing she was upside down, slung over the saddle of a horse, when her last memory had been of a fight going on around her, she panicked in thinking that she’d been abducted from the fight.
All kicking feet and swinging arms, she could feel someone trying to steady her. She thought she might have even heard a familiar voice… Constantine’s voice… but she couldn’t be sure. All she knew was that she wanted off the galloping horse.
Gregoria got her wish. She was fighting so much that the horse was pulled up to a stumbling halt and she managed to pitch herself off in such a way that she ended up on her feet. But she was still moving with the momentum of the swiftly-moving horse and she stumbled back, ending up on her arse in the middle of the muddy, rocky road. Feet suddenly hit the ground beside her.
“Are you well, love?” It was Constantine, grasping her by the arm and hauling her to her feet. “Did you hurt yourself?”
Gregoria’s head was swimming as she held on to Constantine for support, relieved that it was him to her rescue and she wasn’t in the clutches of an enemy. “I… I do not think so,” she said, putting a hand to her head. “What… what happened? Where are we?”
Constantine put both hands on her because she seemed so unsteady. “Come over here,” he said, leading her over to the side of the road where there was an upturned stump. “Sit down before you fall down. How do you feel?”
Gregoria wasn’t entirely sure how to answer that question. Sitting on the stump, she struggled to orient herself. “My head hurts,” she said, looking up to Constantine and wincing because the bright sky over his head hurt her eyes. “What happened? Where are we?”
Constantine crouched down beside her. “There was a fight back in Eynon,” he said. “Do you remember that?”
She nodded. “I do,” she said. “There were men all around and then… I think they broke the table I was hiding under.”
Constantine grinned faintly. “They did, indeed,” he said. “It was a heavy table and it must have hit you on the head when it fell. I took you out as quickly as I could and now we are on our way to Three Crosses.”
Three Crosses. Suddenly, Gregoria’s head wasn’t hurting as badly as the stab of terror those two words gave her. Everything came to her all in a flood; her thoughts before the fight began, when she had been planning on telling Constantine everything, and then her intentions being thwarted by the battle. She began looking around in a panic.
“How long has it been since we left the town?” she asked. “How far have we come?”
Constantine could see the fear in her expression, although he didn’t understand it. “Everything is well,” he assured her. “We were not followed from town.”
That wasn’t the answer she sought. She looked at him. “How far have we come?”
Constantine threw a thumb at the road, in a general northerly direction. “Far enough,” he said. “At this pace, we should be there in another hour or two. We are not too far away now.”
That bit of news gripped Gregoria with fear. We are not too far away. She grabbed hold of him, looking at their surroundings, seeing mostly hills and fields with trees in the distance. There were dots of white sheep down the hill, corralled by two figures she presumed to be shepherds, but other than the sheep and the two men, she couldn’t see anyone else. No army was lying in wait.
Thank God!
There was no more time to waste.
“I must speak with you privately, my lord,” she said to Constantine, her pale face full of angst. “Please send your men away.”
Constantine simply nodded, turning to tell Augustin to take the men up the road and he would join them later. As the men began to move, Gregoria kept her head down, watching them out of her peripheral vision, waiting until they were far enough away before she would bring forth that painful subject. Before she could speak, however, Constantine was brushing the specs of mud from her forehead.
“I must tell you something,” he said.
Her hand went to her forehead to brush off the area he was picking at. “What is it?”
“You will call me Constantine. Or Con. I will answer to whatever you want to call me, Gregg. But please do not address me formally any longer.”
She looked at him, wide-eyed. That sweet request had her heart racing and her courage fading. But… no. She couldn’t lose courage, not now.
She had to save Constantine’s life.
“I want you to listen to me carefully and try to reserve judgment until I am finished,” she said, her voice trembling. “I have a great deal to say and not much time to say it. Will you do that? Will you listen to me?”
“I will always listen to you.”
God, he was just making this harder. Frightened, full of sorrow, Gregoria stood up from the stump and moved away from him, if only to gather her thoughts. After a few moments, she turned to him.
“I grew up in a household with my mother, my brother, and my father,” she said quietly. “My mother and father died some time ago, leaving me with my brother. He is very ambitious, you see, for the Earl of March’s favor. He is so desperate for it that he offered to help the earl gain a clear path to the throne and he is using me to accomplish that task.”
Constantine wasn’t sure what she was talking about, an unexpected subject in the midst of chaos. He stood up, his gaze upon her.
“What do you mean?” he asked. “What is he having you do?”
Gregoria could see that he wasn’t understanding what she was trying to say. Heavily, she sighed. “I am not being clear,” she said. “Constantine, I must be plain. I lied to you. Miles Tenby is not my father and I was never married to a man named Meyrick. I have never been married at all. The cup I told you is a holy relic is simply an old cup with no greater glory. My name is Lady Gregoria de Moyon and my brother is Olin de Moyon, Baron Buckland. His liege is Lord Wembury. If you do not know him, you should. He hates you with a vengeance. My brother and Lord Wembury, in order to be in March’s good graces, have forced me to lie to you. If you go to Three Crosses, the Earl of March is waiting for you. You are a threat to the earl’s claim to the throne and they want you removed. Therefore, you must turn around at this very moment and make haste back to your ship. Get out of here, Constantine. Get out of here before they find you and kill you.”
By the time she was finished, there were tears brimming in her eyes. Had Constantine any less self-control, there would have been tears in his eyes, too. He felt as if he’d just been hit in the gut, feeling shock and disappointment as he’d never felt in his life. No, he hadn’t seen this coming. He hadn’t seen this at all. But he should have.
He felt like a fool.
“Are you serious?” he asked, stunned.
“Never more serious in my life.”
If the first hit to the gut was painful, this second hit was about to take him to the ground. He was actually having trouble standing as he realized that all had not been as it seemed. Something had been going on around him that he’d been too blind to suspect or too foolish to realize.
Gregoria wasn’t who she appeared to be.
She was a traitor.
“Then all of this was part of your plan,” he said, trying to remain calm. “Endearing yourself to me, making me feel as if… all of it was part of your plan.”
“I had to earn your trust, aye.”
“It worked. Brava, my lady. Now, what do you intend to do?”
Gregoria could see the pain in his eyes as he spoke and it clawed at her, ripping her heart and soul right out of her body. She could see, in just that brief exchange, that she had badly hurt him.
“I do not plan to do anything more,” she insisted. “I told you to go. You must return to your ship immediately. I… I cannot let you go to Three Crosses.”
Constantine’s pain-filled gaze lingered on her before looking away. “Now you become the noble hero?” he said. “You have me now. You could easily finish what you started.”
Gregoria shook he head. “Nay, I cannot,” she said. She was desperate to explain herself, as if that would make a difference now. “When I came to Perran Castle, I simply wanted to be done with all of this. I had been bullied into this position, promised a small house and a garden of my own should I succeed. All I wanted was my house and my garden, and to get away from my wicked brother. I am his ward, you see, and he controls everything. When he told me what I had to do, I could not refuse him. I had no choice but to go through with it. I didn’t care that I was betraying you at first, a greatly feared pirate. I thought that I might even be doing the world a great service. But as we came to know one another… I came to care very much. No one has ever been as kind to me as you have been, Constantine. You changed everything.”
Constantine wasn’t going to be taken in again; his defenses went up. All of the soft words in the world weren’t going to matter to him now. He wasn’t going to fall for them.
“That was my mistake,” he rumbled. “It was my terrible mistake to be kind to you, to think you were different from the other women I have known. But I see you are just like the rest. Greedy, treacherous wenches.”
His words hurt her, but Gregoria knew she deserved them. “I know you must think so,” she said, fighting off the tears. “I knew that by telling you the truth, we would lose everything between us. I did not have to tell you, Constantine, but I did. I love you too much to see the Earl of March get his hands on you. That is why you must take your men and flee back to your ship this very moment. I cannot even be sure the Earl of March and his men have not come down this far, thinking we might be coming into Eynon Bay. They may very well be scouring the road for you.”
His eyes narrowed. “How would they know that?” he asked. “Did you manipulate that, too, somehow?”
Gregoria shook her head. “I heard my brother mention, once, that you would not dock in Swansea because there are too many people there who would either try to capture you or resist you,” she said. “Everyone knows that Eynon is a port for smugglers. There are only so many bays along this coast that you could have come to.”
She had a point. She also had a point in mentioning that she did not have to tell him about any of this. She could have quite easily allowed them to continue on, right into the waiting arms of the Earl of March. But she didn’t. Something had stopped her from finishing her objective.
I love you too much to see the Earl of March get his hands on you…
Bloody Beard, was it true? Did she really love him?
Frustrated, and deeply hurt, he turned away from her, taking a few steps down the road, his mind mulling over what he’d been told. He was in such turmoil that it was difficult for him to grasp only one thought. All he knew was that he’d let his guard down for this woman and it had turned around to bite him in the arse. He was an idiot; he knew that now. His men had known it all along and they’d tried to warn him, but he didn’t listen. He hadn’t wanted to listen, thinking he knew best.
Is this what it felt like to have loved and lost? No wonder he’d never wanted any part of it.
“I thought you were different,” he finally said. “A beautiful, intelligent woman who wanted to be with me. A woman who was willing to accept me for all of my faults and willing to accept who I am.”
Gregoria could hear the anguish in his voice and she took a step towards him, wanting so badly to put her arms around him. This was what she had been so fearful of; losing him. Now, it was happening. She’d already lost him. All of that warmth and affection between them was gone, and the pain of it was more than she could bear.
“I am willing to accept you for who you are,” she said hoarsely. “I am sorry I came to you under false pretenses; I truly am. Had I not fallen in love with you, it would not have mattered. I would have turned you over to the Earl of March and not thought anything of it. But it was my mistake to love you and everything about you. That is why I am telling you that you cannot go to Three Crosses. I will go on alone and explain to them that I was unable to bring you to them. I will think of something. But you… you must leave immediately. The longer you remain, the more chance of you being seen. Will you go, Constantine? Will you please go?”
He simply stood there while everything she said sank in, not moving. Had he not been so emotionally fragile, it would have been much easier to walk away from her. But one very large factor kept him from walking away – she had confessed to him before he discovered it for himself. Now, she was trying to save him, trying to prevent something terrible from happening. She loved him. No one had ever loved him before, at least no one he wanted to love him. Could he really walk away from her under these circumstances? He was afraid that if he did, he would never forgive himself.
God, he wanted to believe her.
So badly.
“If you go to Three Crosses to tell the Earl of March I have escaped you, he will not treat you kindly,” he said, turning to look at her. “Look me in the eye, Gregg; tell me that there is nothing else you are withholding from me, nothing else you have lied about. Now is the moment for total truth between us or, I swear, you will be dead to me.”
Hope sprouted in her heart. “I have told you everything,” she said, feeling desperate and anxious. “But I must apologize; when I started this task, I was only thinking of myself. I was only thinking of the house and garden I was promised. I was not thinking of the man I had been sent to betray. I am sorry that I thought my house and garden to be more important than you in the beginning. I was wrong; so very wrong.”
All he could see in her face was total, utter honesty. He could see the same pain reflecting in her eyes that he was feeling at the moment, the pain of something precious slipping away. She loved him; not only had she told him so, but he could tell simply by looking at her. If he was honest with himself, then he supposed he loved her, too. Having never been in love, there was no other way to explain the feelings in his heart. There was no other way to explain the joy he felt when he looked at her. Even now, he was feeling joy even though she’d hurt him. But she was trying to redeem herself.
If it was foolish to let her try, then he was about to be a fool. A big one.
“I suppose we all do things we regret,” he finally said. “God knows, I’ve had my share. There is much I regret in life, but you are not one of them. Do not make me change my mind, Gregg. Please.”
Gregoria could hardly believe it. Was he actually forgiving her? Tears filled her eyes as she gazed at him.
“I will not, I swear it,” she murmured. “I am so very sorry for all of this, Constantine.”
“I believe you.”
“Will you forgive me?”
She was begging him. Unable to stand her remorseful expression, he went over to her and cupped her face in his two big hands, looking her in the eye.
“Aye, I will,” he said. “But do not make me regret any of this. No more lies, ever. No matter what.”
She nodded, blinking, and her tears spattered on his wrist. “I swear upon my mother’s grave, no more anything,” she whispered. “But you must go now. I must go to Three Crosses and face my brother and Lord Wembury and the Earl of March.”
He shook his head. “You are not going anywhere,” he said. “You are returning to the Gaia with me. You promised, you know. I will hold you to it.”
“Are… are you certain?”
“Of course I am,” he said. “Now, let us go find Augustin and the men and tell them we are turning back. There is no point in telling them any of this, so you will let me make excuses. They are probably not too far ahead. In fact, I want to…”
He was cut off by the sounds of thundering hooves, heading in his direction from the north. Concerned, he helped Gregoria to mount his fat steed just as his men came up and over a rise, heading in his direction at top speed. That pounding cadence of men rushing at him had Constantine leaping onto his horse in front of Gregoria, gathering the reins tightly to control the animal, who began to dance about as his men approached.
“What is it?” he called.
Augustin was in the lead. He heard the question. “Go!” he boomed. “There is an army behind us!”
Startled, Constantine turned to see a horde of armored men on horseback pursuing. They were less than a quarter-mile away, at the bottom of the rise that Augustin had just crested, and they were coming fast. Therefore, he didn’t ask any questions; he dug his heels into his horse and sped off after his men.
But it was a harried flight. The road was muddy and slippery, and rocks and dirt flew up, pelting the riders and covering them with mud. Constantine could feel Gregoria holding on to him tightly as he maneuvered his horse up in front, up near Augustin.
“What happened?” he yelled over the wind.
Augustin turned his head slightly and it was then that Constantine realized the man had a bloody scratch on his face. “They were in the trees about a half-mile north,” he shouted. “Dozens of them, crawling all over the area. They fired a crossbow at me and it barely missed.”
That explained the scratch on his cheek, but it also underscored what Gregoria had said; they may be scouring the road for you. Evidently, they were. They were probably watching every road between the coast and Three Crosses because as far as Constantine knew, there weren’t very many roads leading to Three Crosses and if the Earl of March had brought hundreds of men with him, then he could easily cover all of the roads. More than likely bored of just sitting and waiting for their quarry to come to them, they’d fanned out to make sure that quarry was trapped, any way he came.
It had very nearly worked.
“Did you see who they were?” Constantine shouted.
Augustin sat forward on his horse, trying to get more speed out of the animal. “Nay,” he called back. “But they were well-armed and well-protected. Whoever they are, it is an important army!”
The Earl of March would have such an army. Constantine hoped his horse could hold out all the way back to Eynon Bay, carrying two people as it was. So far, the steed was strong and keeping pace, but they were still a few miles away. That kind of pace would take its toll, eventually.
All he could do was pray.
Over another rise, down into a dale, and up again, they kept pace in front of the pursuing horses. It was possible that the army in pursuit had no idea who they really were, simply wanting to stop them and interrogate them, but with all of these men and one lone woman, the odds that the prey had come to the Earl of March were good.
The road became a little windy at one point and the horses struggled with their footing on the wet ground. Just as they crested another rise, the road leveled out in front of them and it was nearly a straight line all the way into Eynon Bay, which they could see clearly now. Constantine could see the distant speck of the Gaia out in the bay, the sunlight of late afternoon reflecting off of the water. He thought he saw a second vessel as well, but he couldn’t be sure the way the water and sun were playing tricks on his vision. He urged his grunting horse faster, eager to make the sand, eager to reach his ship.
Then, the arrows started to fly.
There were many of them, too many to count, all of them singing as they hit the earth around them. Gregoria shrieked, ducking her head low and trying to cover it with a hand and not fall off, but there wasn’t much she could do. She was exposed sitting where she was, covering Constantine’s back, and he struggled not to feel panic because of it. An arrow aimed for him would hit her instead. He tried to lay lower on the horse, forcing her to assume a lower profile as well.
God, please… just let us make it to the ship unharmed!
More arrows. One of Constantine’s men was hit in the leg. He could hear the man grunt in pain and he turned to see the man ripping the arrow from his thigh and tossing it away. This was a tough crew of men and they proved it every day. He was glad they were with him.
But it would be a bounty for the Earl of March if he captured all of them.
At this point, they could be seen from the sea, probably tiny dots being chased by more tiny dots, but he hoped that the man in command of the Gaia, Aeolis – or even Lucifer – could see them from the spyglass and realize they were being chased. He began to pray for it, praying that his men on duty would see that they were in distress. The spyglass would be able to easily single them out and then they could move the ship in closer. They would have to leave the horses behind more than likely, but it couldn’t be helped. All the Earl of March would have of Constantine le Brecque was his horse, but that was a small price to pay, considering.
And then, the sounds of distant thunder…
Only it wasn’t thunder. It was nine-pounders being launched from cannons. Constantine knew the sound of that concussion well. As he watched with astonishment, both ships in the bay – now, for certain, he saw a second one – were firing their cannons. At first, Constantine thought that the Gaia was under fire because he couldn’t clearly see the second ship but, soon enough, the cannonballs were flying over their heads, hitting the land behind them and exploding in a hail of shrapnel.
Help had, indeed, arrived.
The Gaia and the second ship were firing at the land, not at each other, and cannonballs were sailing overhead. The first burst of cannons was devastating for the men in pursuit; Constantine glanced behind to see men and horses being seriously damaged. It was enough to slow the group down but not stop them entirely. And as Constantine and his men neared the town, another volley of cannon fire ripped through the end of town, just as they passed through it, and tore through the lines of men who were still pursuing them.
It was enough to turn the rest of the pursuers around. They couldn’t compete with volleys of cannon fire from the ships in the bay and those who hadn’t been injured by the exploding nine-pounders turned tail and raced back the way they’d come. Men were picking up pieces of each other, trying to herd everyone back from where they’d come, but the cannonballs had been shattering. Wounded men and horses were on the ground, drying or crying for help, as Constantine and his men made it through the town and onto the sandy beach where four skiffs were being rowed in, full of heavily-armed men coming to help them.
“It’s Shaw!” Augustin said, pointing to the dark and mighty Savage of the Sea as she sat in the glittering bay near the Gaia. “He’s come!”
Constantine had been more concerned with the men pursuing them, but he quickly came to see that what was left of them had turned back. It took him a moment to realize he and his men were no longer being chased, no longer in immediate danger. Emitting a heavy sigh, one of utter relief, he dismounted his frothing horse, pulling Gregoria off with him as he turned his attention to the second dark-sailed ship in the bay.
“Bloody Beard,” he muttered with mock disgust. “It is Shaw, indeed. Now, I shall have to listen to the man tell me how he saved my hide. There will be no living with him.”
Augustin grinned as the men moved nearer to the water’s edge, watching the skiffs moving in. He started to laugh when he saw that Shaw himself was on one of the skiffs, a broadsword in one hand and a dagger in the other, preparing to fight to the death for his fellow pirate brethren.
“Shaw!” Augustin cried, lifting his hand. “Ahoy! Thank God you came when you did!”
Shaw was armed to the teeth for a fight. He was fairly close to the shoreline now, enough so that he could see Constantine and the woman in his arms. It occurred to him that Constantine was holding the woman quite possessively, something he’d never seen Constantine do. It was a great curiosity, but something to question at a later time. At the moment, he had to make sure Constantine understood that he’d just saved his hide.
“What’s that ye say?” he said, turning his head and cupping a hand to his ear. “That I’m the greatest man ye know? That there is none more daring or smarter than I?”
Constantine rolled his eyes as the skiffs came in close and the Gaia began to move in closer to shore so the horses could be loaded. But he made sure to fix Shaw in the eye as the man leapt off the skiff and waded through the ankle-deep water to where Constantine and Gregoria were standing.
“Aye, you dirty sea dog, you are the greatest man I know,” Constantine said. “And the most daring. But I am more handsome and far more intelligent than you are.”
Shaw grinned broadly as he came up on Constantine, pulling the man into a brotherly embrace before kissing him loudly on the cheek.
“I’ve heard ye had some trouble, lad,” he said, pulling back to pat the man on the head. “I came tae help.”
There was a seriousness now to the conversation as they faced each other with the realization that the danger, for the moment, was over for Constantine. The moment between them was warm and deep, a bonding moment between men who had saved one another time and time again and had lived to tell the tale.
“I was wondering when you would arrive,” Constantine said. “I thought I was going to have to fight off those bastards by myself.”
Shaw cocked a dark eyebrow. “So ye knew I was coming, did ye?”
“I know everything.”
Shaw grinned. “Ye know that I have a special sense that tells me ye’re in trouble.”
Constantine laughed softly. “Aye, I know it. It’s a special sense called Lucifer. He told me he sent you word.”
Shaw shrugged. “’Tis a good thing he did.”
Constantine nodded. “It is, indeed,” he said. The, he sobered dramatically. “I knew you would come. You always do. You always know when I am in need of you, my brother.”
Shaw’s dark eyes twinkled. “That storm we had last night made it so I almost dinna make it in time,” he said. “It blew us into Parrog Bay where an old man told me he’d seen a Sassenach army near Three Crosses. Knowing ye were heading there, I came tae warn ye. I am sorry I was too late.”
Constantine shook his head. “You made up for it by chasing them off my tail,” he said. “If you and the Gaia hadn’t fired cannons to chase them off, it is quite possible they could have caught us. In that respect, you have my deepest gratitude.”
“There is no gratitude between us, Con. Only brotherhood.”
“Agreed.”
“And I would never let my brother down.”
“Nor I.”
Shaw’s smile was back. “As ye’ve proven tae me, many times,” he said. “Our brotherhood runs deeper than blood, laddie. I’ll love ye ’til I die. And speaking of love, will ye introduce me tae the lady?”
Constantine pulled Gregoria to him, making sure she was well away from Shaw, a truly handsome devil. “Mayhap someday I will,” he said. “But for now, I am keeping her all to myself.”
Shaw began to follow the pair as they headed to one of the skiffs. “I saved yer hides and ye willna at least introduce me tae the woman I risked my life for?”
“Nay.”
“Not even a name?”
“Not even a name.”
The men around them began to chuckle, sensing the game between them. There was so much adoration and camaraderie between Constantine and Shaw that it was moments like these where that bond was felt the most deeply.
A daring brotherhood, where honor among thieves reigns supreme, and crushing their enemies was a thrilling pastime. Today, it was Shaw crushing those who would see his brother’s life ended. Tomorrow, it could very well be Constantine risking all to save Shaw. But that was how it went with them.
Brothers above all, until the very end.