Coming to a halt beside Ariane, Ranulf slowly dismounted, keeping his gaze trained solely on her. His expression was cold, harsh, unforgiving, as he stood before her, a towering, vengeful figure.
Ariane quaked, knowing she was in imminent peril of death. His eyes were savage, so dark they were nearly black.
“I will ask you but once more,” Ranulf said with lethal softness, his tone devoid of all emotion. “Whom did you think to meet in the wood?”
“I cannot tell you,” Ariane returned in a voice trembling with anguish. A life was at stake, the life of someone she held dearer than her own. She could not trust Ranulf’s mercy enough to risk divulging her precious secret. “I swore a sacred oath. You
may beat me, imprison me, threaten me with death, but I cannot tell you.”
At the alternatives she presented, bleak pain flared in Ranulf’s eyes for a fleeting instant, but it vanished as a mask slammed down over his features. His duty was suddenly abhorrent to him, but he could no longer allow such defiance to go unchallenged.
“Your disobedience, your willfulness, must be punished, then. Payn, you will escort this hostage to the dungeon, where she will be incarcerated till she makes a full and truthful confession and gives up the rebels she seeks to protect.”
“Nay! You cannot!” The cry came from a young man who pushed through the crowd of spectators.
Gilbert, Ariane realized in despair. If only she had found him a few moments earlier.
The boy was determined to come to her defense, it seemed. “You cannot imprison my lady. I challenge you, milord! I challenge you to single combat!”
“You fight me?” Ranulf’s mouth curled in disbelief as he stared down at the slightly built youth. “I will not be driven to murder a weakling still wet behind the ears.”
“Coward! Black-hearted coward!”
Ranulf froze, while a collective gasp rose from the crowd. His jaw hardening, Ranulf gestured to one of his sergeants. “Fetch him a sword. And a helm and hauberk. If he is so eager for a fight, I will give him one.”
“Sweet Mary, no!” Ariane’s plea went unheeded as Ranulf watched his command being carried out and the items fetched. She tried again, this time more desperately. “My lord . . . I beg you. Your quarrel is with me, not Gilbert.”
“Why do you tarry?” Ranulf asked Payn coldly. “Take her to the dungeon.”
“Aye, my lord,” his vassal replied.
His grip on her arm tightening, Payn drew Ariane toward the tower as her defiant younger brother was fitted with a heavy tunic of chain mail.
She had to be forced up the outer steps of the keep, for she kept trying to watch over her shoulder as Gilbert bravely donned the steel helmet and accepted a knight’s sword.
When Payn had led her inside the hall, Ariane put a hand over her mouth to stifle a whimper. “Ranulf will kill him. . . .”
“No, he will only teach the fool boy a lesson.”
She shook her head. It washer fault that Gilbert’s life was at risk; that his stubborn loyalty had driven an unskilled youth to challenge a mighty warlord in combat.
“The boy’s discipline has naught to do with you,” Payn said quietly, as if reading her mind. “He was mad to defy Ranulf like that, especially before his liegemen and serfs. A lord cannot allow his authority to be undermined so flagrantly.”
“I know,” Ariane whispered hoarsely. “But I am the one Ranulf should punish.”
“I expect he will, demoiselle,” Payn admitted in a troubled tone. “I have rarely seen Ranulf in so dangerous a mood. When he is angry he bellows and blusters and knocks heads together. When he is furious he is deadly calm.”
She did not need Payn to tell her that her situation was dire.
He came to a halt at the head of the stairwell, looking down at her somberly. “I cannot help you, my lady. Your best course is to tell Ranulf what he wishes to know—the full truth. He despises dishonesty, in women most of all.”
“I have not lied to him,” she said weakly, her heart aching.
“Have you not, my lady?” Payn replied, his tone cool.
He lit a rushlight from a burning wall torch and used it to illuminate the descent past the kitchens and down a narrow flight of stone steps. The Claredon dungeon was little more than a dark hole beneath the tower kitchens—cold and damp and crawling with vermin. Ariane shuddered as Payn stepped aside to allow her to enter the tiny cell. She had to stoop to keep her head from brushing the ceiling.
She sank to her knees and drew the edges of her mantle protectively about her, watching gratefully as he lit a torch for her. At least she would not be imprisoned in the dark.