PROLOGUE
April, 1270 A.D.
Castle Questing, Northumberland
She was cold to the touch.
She was also wet, wrapped in a blanket with the twins, who were also cold and wet to the touch. But it was more than the coldness and the dampness of their flesh; it was also the color. Gray, like the color of stone. There was an odd quality to it as well. It wasn’t the flesh he knew. It wasn’t the warmth of Helene as he knew it, and the faces of his children weren’t the lively and smiling faces he recognized.
Acacia was the older twin by several minutes. Her face was pressed into her mother’s torso and he couldn’t see it, but Arista – his blond, vivacious Arista – was lying next to her sister, her sightless eyes half-lidded, staring up at the ceiling. As he stood there staring at them, his father reached down and closed the little girl’s eyelids.
“I am so sorry, my son,” William de Wolfe whispered hoarsely, tears trickling from his one good eye. The other eye, patched, was something he’d lost years ago. “It was an accident. A terrible, terrible accident…”
His handsome face was lined with the fatigue of sorrow, something Troy had never before seen on his father. At least, not like this. Perhaps that, more than anything else, disturbed him because it conveyed to him the hopelessness and grief of the situation almost more than anything else could. If his father was in tears, and the man was the strongest man he knew, then surely the situation was as horrible as Troy’s disbelieving eyes were telling him.
Dead.
They were all dead.
An odd buzzing filled Troy’s head. It made the room swim. When he looked at the bodies of his wife and two younger children, his stomach started to lurch. Behind him, on the floor and lying on wet blankets, were the wife and two younger children of his twin brother, Scott. He’d seen the three of them when he’d first entered the stale, warm solar. In fact, he’d seen them before he ever saw his own family. Scott’s wife was lying on her side as if she were sleeping, her children lying right next to her as if they, too, were sleeping. But they were all wet, much as his wife and children were. They were all wet because not three hours earlier, they’d all drowned.
Troy’s knees buckled.
“God,” he groaned, gripping the nearest chair as if it could support his substantial weight. Hands were holding him steady, the hands of his parents, but he didn’t notice. All he could see was the lifelessness before him. “Nay… it cannot be. Tell me this is not true.”
William had a tight grip on his faltering son. “It is true,” he said, his voice hoarse as his emotions got the better of him. “It was purely by accident, Troy. No one is to blame.”
Troy still couldn’t grasp the situation, not entirely. “What happened?”
He spoke harshly and William glanced at his weeping wife before continuing. This was such a horrific moment for all of them, the death of children and grandchildren, and it was only by God’s good grace that William was able to keep his composure. He’d been the first to see the bodies of his daughters-in-law and grandchildren when they’d been brought back by their escort of soldiers, men who were weeping even as they told him the appalling story of what had happened.
As William listened in horror, he noticed that all of the soldiers were soaking wet to varied degrees. They’d all tried to jump in to save the women and children after the bridge collapsed and the carriage was washed down the rain-swollen creek, but their efforts had been futile.
Now, the dead had been returned home.
Therefore, William was prepared for Troy’s question, a father demanding the reasons for the precious lives of his family that had been suddenly ended. The husband who was now a widower. William could hear the anguish in Troy’s tone and it cut him to the bone.
“Your wife and her sister were traveling this morning to see Patrick and Bridey’s new son,” he said, trying to remain calm. “They have been planning it for weeks. You know this, Troy. That is why your wife came to stay with us last week and brought the children, so she could travel with her sister to see your brother’s newest son.”
Troy wasn’t getting the answer he wanted; his big body tensed. “I know,” he rumbled. “Stop telling me what I already know. Tell me what I don’t know, Papa.”
William sighed faintly, feeling his son’s pain through his words, through his tone. It was only growing worse. “They wanted to take the enclosed carriage because of the children and the cold weather, so I permitted it,” he said. “Scott was here this morning before they departed and he assigned a contingent of soldiers to go with them, so they were well protected.”
Troy was staring at the gray face of his dead wife, his hands quivering violently where they held on to the chair. “Scott?” he repeated. “Where is he? Did he go with them? Oh… my sweet God, Papa, tell me that Scott did not meet the same fate.”
William shook his head. “Nay, he did not,” he said quickly. “He is fine. I sent him on business to Northwood Castle this morning after the women left because I needed him to relay counsel to the commanders of Northwood. He was there the entire time.”
Troy didn’t know if he felt better or worse about that. His brother was safe, his wife was dead… he was being torn into a thousand pieces of pain, in all directions. “Then he does not know?”
“Not yet,” William said quietly. “I have sent for him. Troy, we did all we could to protect the women as they went on their journey, but there are things we could not have known. All of the rain we have had this spring has made the creeks and rivers very swollen, but that was not a concern where it should have been because…”
He trailed off, hardly able to continue, and Troy jerked his head in his father’s direction as the man stumbled over his explanation.
“Because what?” Troy demanded. “Tell me!”
William sighed again, struggling with his composure. “The soldiers who escorted Athena and Helene to Berwick said that when they reached the River Till, it was very swollen and they were uncomfortable with the bridge crossing. It seemed to them that the strong flow of water had weakened the bridge. When they told the ladies their concerns, their warning was not heeded.”
Troy stared at him as the realization began to settle. Now, the pieces of the puzzle were coming together. “And they went over the bridge.”
“They did.”
The tremble in Troy’s hands grew worse. His eyes widened as he understood, clearly, what had happened.
“Nay,” he hissed. “Nay! Helene would have listened. She would have heeded such advice. But Athena would have discounted the soldiers because the woman does not listen to anyone, not even to Scott. It was her! She did this!”
William held up his hands, hastening to calm his son before the situation went from bad to worse. “You will not blame her,” he said firmly. “By all accounts, both the women insisted on proceeding, so you will not blame Athena solely. It was everyone’s fault but no one’s fault. Surely they did not know this would happen.”
Troy didn’t seem to be listening. “Athena did this! She killed them all!”
William grabbed the man by the shoulders, trying to shake some sense into him before he went mad with grief. “Casting blame does not bring them back!” he implored. “Would you truly curse the dead, Troy?”
Troy was nearly incoherent with rage. “That bitch,” he snarled. “My children are dead because of her! My wife is dead because of her!”
“It is God’s will, Troy,” William said steadily. “You must believe that what happened is…”
Troy cut him off savagely. “There is no God,” he barked. “God would not have allowed small children to drown while their mother watched and could do nothing to help them. He would not have taken innocent lives so cruelly. Nay, Papa, speak not to be of God. He had nothing to do with this. This is Athena’s fault!”
William could see that his words weren’t getting through and he was genuinely afraid; afraid of what Troy would do because the man was quick to rage and even quicker to act upon it. He didn’t have the calm that most of William’s sons had. Troy was aggressive and deadly, the first man into battle and the last man to leave. It was a fearsome de Wolfe quality but, in this case, it would do him no good. The man was raging at a dead woman, blaming her for his misery. William was expecting Troy’s brother at any moment and he didn’t want Troy to attack his brother in a fit of insanity. Therefore, he did the only thing he could – he forced Troy to face the object of his rage.
Yanking the man up by the arm, which was no mean feat considering Troy’s size, he dragged the man towards the lifeless body of Scott’s wife. When Troy dug his heels in to stop his father’s momentum, William grabbed him by the hair and pulled him, hauling him the last few feet until Troy was looking down at Athena and her children. William got a hand in behind Troy’s head and shoved it down, closer to the bodies so he could truly see who he was angry with.
“There!” William boomed. “There she is! Tell her of your anger, Troy. Tell her how you blame her for the deaths of Helene and the girls. Go on – tell her how stubborn and foolish she is. Tell her you hate her!”
Troy found himself looking into his sister-in-law’s frozen face. He hadn’t taken a good look at her when he’d entered the solar but now that he was, he could see that she didn’t look as if she were sleeping at all. Her eyes were half-open, the blue orbs dull in death. But the first thing he noticed was the fact that her features seemed to be frozen in a permanent expression of terror. Her mouth was slightly open, the ends downturned, and when Troy managed to look at her arms, stretched over the children, he could see that her nails were broken and dark with blood, as if something or someone had shredded them. Troy had seen that kind of thing before; it occurred to him why.
My God, he thought, she tried to claw her way out of the cab. She tried to free them!
His anger turned to shock, and shock to grief. He suddenly fell to his knees beside Athena, putting his hand on her cold head, feeling the sobs coming forth. Or maybe not sobs; something was trying to bubble up from his chest but he wasn’t sure what it was. An explosion of agony the likes of which he’d never experienced before. Biting off a groan, he bent down and kissed her on her wet, dirty head.
Lurching to his feet, he yanked himself away from his father’s grip and staggered over to his wife and children. His mother was still standing beside them, weeping quietly, but he ignored the woman. In fact, he ignored everything but those three figures lying at his feet. Falling to his knees beside them, he reached down and gathered Helene into his arms, pulling her against his chest and burying his face in her neck.
Troy thought he might cry but, in truth, what he felt went too deep for tears. It cut through him like a knife, eviscerating him, carving him clean of everything he had ever felt or ever possibly could feel. He felt as if all of his insides had just been sucked out and there was nothing left but a hollow shell. That hollow shell was now holding what was left of the woman he loved.
He may have been living, but his soul was dead.
So, he held her and rocked her, unable to do anything else. Time passed, but he was unaware of it. He was locked in his own little world, yet somewhere in the midst of it, Troy heard someone enter the solar to tell William that Scott had arrived. William went to deliver the terrible news to his other son while his wife, the shattered mother and grandmother, remained with Troy. In fact, Troy could feel his mother’s warm and gentle hands on his shoulder but, still, he couldn’t acknowledge her. He couldn’t acknowledge anything but the agony that now filled his hollow insides.
He rocked and he rocked. Helene’s body felt like so much dead weight. She’d always been so warm and sensual and weightless in his arms that this was completely unnatural. All of it, so unnatural and, at some point, it occurred to him that he couldn’t breathe. He tried, but he couldn’t seem to inhale. Something about that dead weight in his arms wouldn’t allow him to breathe and as the room began to spin, he released Helene and stood up, thinking that he had to leave. He had to get out of that room. Maybe when he wasn’t looking at the vestiges of the life he once knew could he breathe again.
Blindly, he ran from the solar with his mother behind him, calling softly to him, but he wasn’t listening. He was heading for the open entry door and the bailey beyond. Once outside, the light seemed to blind him. He couldn’t seem to breathe any better. He caught a glimpse of his brother, Scott, as his father stood next to him. He could hear weeping sounds but he wasn’t sure who they were coming from; it seemed that everyone was weeping. He thought, perhaps, it was his mother.
He never realized that the sounds were coming from him.
A few feet away from the keep entry, he came to a halt and tumbled onto his knees. Whatever had been bubbling up inside of him came out in a rush, and he vomited all over the mud of the bailey, gagging and choking until nothing more would come. But even still, he hunched over and continued to heave.
It was all he could do to stay conscious.
Men were moving around him, speaking softly, and he heard his father call out to his brother repeatedly but he didn’t know why. He didn’t care why. All he knew was that he’d lost his life today, drained from him by the three bodies back in the solar.
For the rest of the day, Troy remained on his knees in the mud, surrounded by his own vomit, and refusing to move. He simply sat there and stared out into space, unable to move or think, unable to deal with his grief. Somewhere in the madness, his younger brothers, Edward and Thomas, came to stand silent vigil over him. He remained there all night and so did his brothers. But when the morning finally dawned, so did Troy’s understanding of what his future would now be.
Without a wife, without his younger children. It was his cross to bear.
That morning, Troy de Wolfe’s world became a dark and hopeless place.
The darkest Wolfe of all.