Chapter 21
They pressed on the next day, taking the road heading south, now with a boy in tow. Angelet was delighted to have Goswin with them, even if the circumstances of their meeting had been a little less than ideal. She recognized the boy’s frustration with the world, since she’d felt the same thing herself. Even if he only traveled with them for a while, perhaps she could help temper that anger into something more healthy. And it would be good for Goswin to understand that Rafe was a person, not a monster out to destroy his happiness. Goswin was speaking to him, at least. That was a hopeful sign.
Goswin’s pony needed to rest more frequently than the other mounts, so Rafe sometimes declared that he and the boy would walk, holding the leads of their horses, while Angelet continued to ride at a leisurely pace. Her own weight hardly inconvenienced the big white horse.
During one of those periods, in the late morning, Angelet overheard Goswin and Rafe talking up ahead.
“She’s so beautiful,” Goswin was saying. “She looks like one of the fair folk.”
“Her family hails from Anjou, not fairyland,” Rafe said, putting a quick end to Goswin’s speculations. She understood why—the last thing they needed was for someone to draw a connection between Angelet’s affliction and some fairy curse. She also hoped that they’d find a safe place for Goswin long before he might see her have a seizure, which would only frighten him.
In fact, if she regained Henry and reached Anjou, both Rafe and Goswin would leave her life soon after. It’s for the best, she told herself. Rafe had made it very clear that he intended to be gone the moment his obligation to Angelet was over. If only she could persuade him to stay. She’d already seen that he had the experience to lead others, however much he declared that he didn’t feel comfortable as a commander.
Her inner voice slyly pointed out that perhaps her real reason for wanting to keep Rafe near her was not his military skill, but rather the way he occupied her nights. Angelet fought off a rising sense of embarrassment as she recalled their last encounter. Rafe had wakened a part of her that even her late husband couldn’t. Maybe if Hubert had lived, their marriage would have grown, and they would have shared the sort of intimacies that she’d experienced with Rafe. But Hubert had been young, and preoccupied, and singularly focused on getting a child—for both his sake and hers.
Lost in her musings, Angelet let out a sigh. Both Rafe and Goswin looked back at her.
“Is something the matter, my lady?” Goswin asked immediately.
Rafe didn’t say anything, but gave her a searching look.
“Don’t concern yourselves,” she said. “I was just thinking.”
“About what?” asked Goswin, absently pushing his curly hair off his forehead.
“Nothing important. Merely pondering the future.”
The boy looked more interested. “Are you going to seek vengeance?”
“What is your obsession with vengeance?” Rafe said. “Why would she want vengeance?”
“Or retribution,” Goswin said. “For what happened to your party before, on the road. I’d want vengeance if I had all my goods stolen and my retinue attacked.”
“You know about that?” Angelet asked.
“Course. It’s how I was able to find him,” Goswin explained, glaring at Rafe as though just remembering that he was a mortal enemy. “I was following about an hour or so behind the carriage, when I came across four men on horseback. Evil-looking men, too. They asked if I’d seen a man and a lady riding along the road, he on a black horse, she on a white one. They were looking for you, too.”
“So what did you say?”
“I told them yes! I said the couple rode right past me at a breakneck speed, aiming south along the road. The men spurred their mounts and sprang away. Didn’t even thank me.”
“Well, you did lie to them,” Rafe pointed out.
Goswin made a face. “But they didn’t know I lied. Anyway, I knew you hadn’t actually backtracked, so you must have taken a different turn. I keep traveling, going faster, and came across the broken carriage and cart, and a few dead bodies.”
She winced at the picture, remembering how young he still was. “Oh, how horrible for you to have seen that!”
“Not the first death I’ve seen, my lady,” Goswin said simply. “And it won’t be the last. Peaceful or violent, death is everyone’s lot.”
“What did you do next?” Rafe asked.
“I couldn’t do anything for the ones already dead, so I retraced my steps, looking for a path that turned off before the point where I met the four men. When I saw one with fresh tracks, I took it. Kept going, but my pony needed rest, so I moved much slower. I had to sleep in the woods two nights in a row. Then it rained the next day, and I thought I’d lose you for certain.”
“Why didn’t you give up?” Angelet asked, astounded at the boy’s tenacity.
Goswin looked sidelong at Rafe again. “Because I’ve got nothing to go back to. No one waiting for me. I kept on the roads, kept asking after a man and a woman riding black and white horses. When I met someone who had seen you, I just kept on.”
“Goswin, you may have saved my life,” Angelet said. “You misdirected those men, who surely would have tried to kill Sir Rafe and hurt or kill me too. We didn’t know how we eluded them.”
Goswin stood up straighter. “I saved your life?”
“Quite likely. I am so grateful to both of you,” she said, pointedly to Rafe.
“Yes,” he agreed, with only a slight roll of his eyes. “Goswin seems to have helped…inadvertently.”
“I’m more help than you,” the boy said. “Look! There’s a crossroads ahead. I’m going to see.” He sprang up onto his pony’s back and rode ahead, to where his sharp eyes must have detected a crossing.
After Goswin charged off, Angelet smiled sweetly at Rafe. “Just think. If we hadn’t been detained for an extra day by the poor weather, the lad might have lost our trail entirely.”
“We should have ridden through the fog,” Rafe said. “What was I thinking?”
“I hope you were thinking that we’d have got lost if we rode in that mist,” she countered. “For myself, I am glad we stayed at the inn another day and night.” She emphasized the last word just a little, and saw Rafe’s lips quirk in a half-smile.
“Well, if it pleased you,” he said quietly, “then it was worth it.”
Rafe mounted up, and they quickened their pace to meet up with Goswin, who was waiting impatiently at the intersection of their road with another.
“Come on,” he said. “Which way do we go? East or west?”
Angelet saw what he meant. Though technically a crossroads, it was really a T, since the path to the south quickly petered out from a true road to a mere narrow footpath. A few miles ahead, due south, she saw a dark hill rising from the forest.
She turned to Rafe, expecting him to simply point left or right.
Instead, Rafe was staring at the hill with narrowed eyes. “God damn me.”
“Don’t swear in front of the boy,” Angelet said. “What’s the matter? Are we lost?”
“No. I know exactly where we are,” he said, exhaling heavily. “That’s the problem.”
“Why should that be a problem?”
“Because where we are is exactly where I don’t want to be.” Rafe’s voice grew louder as he spoke. He looked around the peaceful scene, as if expecting something terrible to be revealed.
“What’s around here?” she asked.
“Nothing,” he snapped. “No other roads, no towns, no easy way around those hills unless we go east and then we’ll spend days getting back to a proper road south. Damn.”
“What’s to the west?” Goswin asked. “The path looks well-traveled.”
“That’s a royal forest, then a few towns, and then Wales. We’re not going that way. How did we get here?” he added, to himself. “We came too far west.”
“Rafe?” Angelet asked, concerned.
“Just give me a moment,” he said in a distracted tone. “I need to think. There may be another road that leads away…”
He turned Philon around in a circle, scanning the forest. “Stay here.” Rafe rode for a few hundred yards along the path leading east.
Goswin edged closer to Angelet. “What’s he so angry about?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “He doesn’t like this part of the country.” She kept her gaze on Rafe, who’d turned about and was riding back to them, with a stormy expression.
Thus, she didn’t know why Goswin suddenly shouted in alarm, or why someone hit her hard in the chest, almost knocking her off her horse. She clutched at the reins to keep her place.
“What was that?” she gasped out.
No one answered.
Goswin was screaming, “Over there, over there!” as Rafe rushed past her and rode on to something beyond her.
Angelet turned to look, but didn’t see anything more than the hazy wash of green leaves comprising the edge of the woods by the road. She blinked, trying to clear her eyes. What was the matter with them? Her vision wavered as if she was crying, and why would she be crying?
She took a deep breath, and felt a strange heat all over the front of her body. Then she looked down and saw why. The back half of a crossbow bolt stuck out of her chest. The warmth she’d felt was fresh blood, now soaking through the wool of her gown. “Oh.”
She put her hand to the protruding bolt, more in wonder than in fear. How very, very strange, she thought, her mind still rather hazy. This is something Rafe would have an opinion on.
“Rafe?” she called out. Only a rush of breathy air made it out, and the name was only a whisper.
She tried again. “Rafe?” A little louder that time. What was he up to?
Hoofbeats pounded in her ears. Someone rushed up to her, reining in at the last moment.
“Got him,” Rafe said, gripping his sword in his right hand, the blade looking red in the light. “I don’t know how the hell he got this close to us, but he’s never…”
Rafe stopped talking when he inched forward and got a look at her. His face went white. “You were hit.”
She tried to nod, but her head suddenly felt very heavy, and she slumped forward, lost her balance, and fell.