The Valcourt Heiress (Medieval Song 7)

“All right. But you know, Garron, when next you visit the king, you will doubtless be bored with her. Then we will see if I still want you. Come, what is wrong with that?”

Wrong. Something was very wrong. Oh God, it was Merry. She w

as screaming, screaming. He ran from his chamber, holding the blanket around his waist with one hand and the lit taper in the other. He kicked Gilpin in the side with one bare foot, leaped over him. “À moi. Now!” The stone floor beneath his feet felt like ice, but he paid no attention, ran faster. Gilpin was soon behind him, running as fast as he could, not knowing what was happening. “My lord, what is the matter? Why are we running?”

“It’s Merry,” Garron shouted. “Something is wrong with Merry.”

Gilpin heard a laugh behind him and turned to see Lady Blanche of Howarth, her gown flowing around her, waving a white hand as she quietly closed Garron’s bedchamber door behind her and turned to walk away in the opposite direction.

That wasn’t right, Gilpin thought as he tried to catch his master. What had happened? How could his master know something was wrong with Merry?

It seemed an eon passed before Garron pounded on Merry’s door. There was no answer. He didn’t hesitate, and slammed the door open. He raised his taper high, saw her narrow bed was empty, a blanket hanging off the side onto the floor.

“No,” he said, “no, this isn’t possible. Gilpin, get yourself dressed and fetch Whalen, the captain of the guard. Tell him Marianna de Luce de Mornay of Valcourt is gone, kidnapped. Hurry!”

Gilpin, ashen-faced, ran as fast as he could.

Within ten minutes, Whalen was sending out his guards to search the White Tower.

The king didn’t want to leave his fine dream. The ground around him was strewn with the bodies of warriors he himself had slain, his tunic soaked with their blood. He was faster than the wind, stronger than his prized destrier, so skilled he needed no soldiers to assist him. He was smiling because he’d won, he’d saved England—he heard a man’s voice in the antechamber, it was too loud. He’d take his sword to the lout, he’d—

“Garron! What is wrong?” The queen’s voice.

Garron didn’t even see she was suckling her baby. “It’s Merry, my lady, she is gone, taken. My lord, you must awaken, you must.”

“No,” the king said, “surely there are more villains for me to dispatch. Will you be quiet?”

“My lord,” Eleanor said, lightly touching his shoulder, “these villains are here. Garron needs you. Merry is gone.”

The king lurched up in bed. “What did you say, Eleanor? Merry is gone? What nonsense is this? Who would take her? Why did she run away?”

“Nay, sire, she didn’t run away. Someone took her.” Garron stood in the doorway, fully dressed, his sword in his hand, his eyes wild. “Whalen and his soldiers are searching for her. I don’t understand it—who could have taken her?”

The king was known to move very quickly, both his body and his brain, and so he did. “Was it her mother or Jason of Brennan?”

“Either, both, I don’t know yet.”

“One of the louts fell asleep. Whalen will discover who it was.” He paused a moment. “You told me her mother, Abbess Helen of Meizerling, is reputed to be a witch. Do you think she spirited her away, somehow removed the guards’ memories?”

“I don’t believe witchcraft had anything to do with it. I smelled something sweet in her chamber, a drug of some sort.”

Two of the king’s servants bolted into the chamber, panting, one of them pulling a short tunic over his head, the other holding clothes for the king. Within moments, Edward was striding into the antechamber. “You were not in her bed with her, were you?”

“I was not.” He thought of Blanche, and for an instant, he wondered if she’d known what was happening, if she’d been sent to distract him.

“Then how did you know something happened to her?”

Garron drew up, felt his heart begin to pound. He said slowly, “I don’t know how I knew. Really, I do not, it’s just that suddenly, from one moment to the next, I knew something was wrong, knew it to my heels. I got to her chamber as quickly as I could but she was already gone. They cannot have gotten far.”

Burnell had slipped into the antechamber, wearing a bedrobe as black as a sinner’s heart, a black scarf wrapped around his neck. He was frowning, shaking his head. “What you said, my lord, it makes no sense. You must have been dreaming, and it awakened you. You said you simply knew something was wrong? Surely not. Ah, were you dreaming about her?”

“I wasn’t asleep, I was wide awake.”

Burnell clasped Garron’s arm. “Are you ill to be awake in the middle of the night?”

“I was not ill. I was simply awake. I have only six men with me. If her mother has taken her, know, sire, that she has her own private army. I wish to borrow some men, and ride immediately to Meizerling.”

“Would her mother take her that far? That is a full day’s journey from London.” And the king was frowning toward the doorway where the queen stood, holding the babe in her arms, rocking her. She said, “If her mother took her, surely she would expect you would immediately think of Meizerling Abbey. Would she not hide her elsewhere? I would, were I she.”