The Knight Before Christmas by Cynthia Luhrs

Author:Cynthia Luhrs
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Cynthia Luhrs

CHAPTER 13

LORD GORGES

Lord Gorges woke with a start. How much time passed, he could not say. He had not closed the bed curtains before he fell asleep. A sound from the darkest corner of the chamber had him pulling the covers up to his chin.

“It was only a dream.” He breathed out, relieved. Until the bells at the abbey rang out, filling him with terror once again.

Soon they would stop ringing and Helena would come to empty the chamber pot, bringing light to the dark chamber. Nay, he remembered he had given her leave to visit her family. The stable boy would not hear him if he shouted, and the cook? Likely drunk and asleep in the kitchens. Peter was utterly alone.

The door to the chamber banged open. Peter shrieked and pulled the covers over his head. The cold that filled the chamber was unlike anything he could remember. The sound of some great thing scraping against the stone made him tremble. Mustering all of his meager courage, he lowered the covers to see a fire blazing in the hearth, filling the chamber with light.

“No,” he whispered when he saw the spirit in front of the fire.

The apparition was not his father. This spirit looked like an old man with a white beard, dressed in white robes.

“Who… are… you?” Peter stammered.

“I am the spirit your father foretold. The spirit of Yule past.”

The spirit’s voice filled the chamber, filling Peter’s head until he thought it would split.

Lord Gorges put his feet on the cold stone. Then he pinched his arm. “You are not real, merely an apparition. The stew last night disagreed with me. Sleep. I needs sleep.”

But when he blinked, the spirit was still there and holding out a hand.

“Come, Lord Gorges, there is much to see on this night.”

Against his will, Peter took the spirit’s hand. ’Twas cold to the touch, colder than the snow outside. He flinched and cried out as the spirit took them through the stone wall of his chamber and into London.

On the street, a small boy ran through him, and Peter gasped. “Tell me, spirit, am I dead?”

“Nay, what you see before you is what was.” The spirit’s voice rang out across the cobblestones. “Look there.” The apparition pointed.

It was the house where Peter had spent summers as a child. There was a cousin, a boy named Samuel, who was cruel and threw rocks at him. When he had gone crying to his father, he was told to be a man and fight back. The boy was thrice his size, so Peter spent each summer in terror, never knowing when the next beating or mistreatment would come his way.

’Twas a small comfort to Peter that the boy had died when he had been thrown from a horse and broken his neck.

“Enough, spirit,” he cried out, but the spirit took him by the hand, the cold filling his soul, and took him to see her.

She had been the daughter of a merchant, well off but not titled or wealthy enough to suit his sire.

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