The Heiress by Jason Vail

Author:Jason Vail [Vail, Jason]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Mystery & Detective - Middle Ages
ISBN: 9798379295691
Publisher: Hawk Publishing
Published: 2023-03-14T04:00:00+00:00

There was a knock on the door. “The constable requires your presence!” a voice called from the other side.

Giselle opened the door. It was one of the underchamberlains.

“Come!” the man commanded.

The preemptory tone and the lack of any honorific made Giselle fear the worst.

“Of course,” she said as calmly as she could as if this was a summons to dinner and not perhaps to an execution.

When Giselle reached the bailey, it seemed as though the entire castle staff had assembled. Even Joanna and little Stephen, looking perplexed, were there. People looked at her in a funny way as they approached. But no one said anything. The entire bailey was as quiet as a church on Tuesday morning. The crowd parted as the soldiers led her to FitzWilliam, a big red-haired man. Not until she had got close did Giselle notice that FitzWilliam was standing over a bundle of rumpled clothing.

“My lady,” FitzWilliam said, “here is the measure of your foolishness.”

Giselle knelt beside Gerald. A sword blow had cut his skull open to the eyebrows. Someone had tied a kerchief around his head as if to keep it together so his brains would not spill out. His face was calm, reposed, as if he was sleeping. His skin had that waxy yellowness of the dead. Joanna and Stephen began to cry again.

“Keep still, the both of you,” Giselle ordered sharply, but the crying did not stop. The children muffled it behind their hands. Giselle’s own voice sounded odd to her, as if someone else was speaking and from a great distance. She knew a terrible thing had happened, and FitzWilliam was right: she had caused it. She had sent Gerald to his death. Yet she felt nothing. She felt numb. It was like a dream. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. She would wake from it soon and find that everything was all right.

She wanted to touch Gerald, to kiss his cheek as she had every night when she put him to bed as a child, but she found that she could not bring herself to do it. She stood up and said to FitzWilliam, “You will allow me to bury him, of course.”

“He will be taken care of,” FitzWilliam said. “Given what has happened, I cannot allow you to roam free.”

“A pauper’s grave, you mean. You bastard.”

FitzWilliam blinked at her fury. Like everyone else in the county, he had heard the stories about how she had fought Eustace FitzWalter to a standstill while her village of Willestun had burned around her, how she had harried him in a long private war in which she had proved herself the equal of ten knights, how she could shoot the head off a chicken — or put a man’s eye out — at fifty paces. But to actually see her in this way was chilling.

“Get you there.” He pointed toward the gate tower to the inner bailey. “The king still has a use for you, otherwise I’d hang you myself.”

Giselle nodded, expecting that response.

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