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  The earl, raised his head, and took a moment to look at Old Tate as if taking in his full measure, and added solemnly, “If you ever get tired of living in Bressott, come to Avium, and I will have a place for you.”

  “Thank you, your lordship,” Old Tate ducked his head and moved on down the street.

  The baron offered his own knights to transport Ellalee and her siblings. It took nearly a half an hour to get a wagon, team, and supplies brought to the town square. During the wait, Ellalee’s head swam with contradictory emotions from rolling relief of the punishment she escaped to sheer terror of the punishment to be. Daniella refused to make eye contact with her sister, even when the knights bodily threw Ellalee into the back of the wagon next to her. Ellalee rolled onto her side, clutching her ankle that had caught the side of the wagon and whimpered. They were no less careful with Christopher who pierced the morning air with an earsplitting scream when he landed, his eyes glazing over in the shock of pain. Ellalee grabbed him into her lap, shushing him as her hands tried to comfort him. The Earl de Avium, who had not so much as flinched when she was tossed akimbo into the wagon, leaped up cursing when Christopher landed.

  Without introduction, he grabbed Christopher’s pant leg and pushed it up as Christopher screamed once more. The earl slammed his fist into the side of the wagon and spun around cursing. Then he turned back to Ellalee, his mouth tight with fury. “Alas, the joke is on me. I’ve well overpaid for ruined goods.” He scowled at Ellalee. “You’ve been nothing but more cursed luck.”

  Christopher cried openly, and Ellalee’s furious glare would have reduced anyone but this foul earl to a mere grease spot.

  “Ruined, but redeemed,” Daniella murmured.

  “Stop it!” Ellalee hissed.

  “If you both don’t shut your traps back there, I will beat you bloody and senseless. Do not utter another word. Not one.” The earl snapped up into the saddle as the two guards began tying Ellalee’s wrists to the side of the wagon. The earl wheeled his horse around with a horrible laugh. “Do not bother; two of the three are cripples.”

  The earl turned his cowl towards Daniella and threatened with a low voice, “If you so much as look like you are going to run, I will lop off their heads, and then I will return you here to fulfill the full sentence of all three. Do you understand?”

  Daniella nodded mutely without even looking up.

  The knights waited until the earl’s back was turned and then crossed themselves as though the devil himself had just happened across their path. The two knights clamored up into the seat of the wagon just as the baron and two additional knights trotted up alongside. The baron brought his steed next to the Earl de Avium, and Ellalee strained to listen as the earl and baron spoke quietly.

  “Valen, I think you’re making an awful mistake with these three.” The baron frowned. “And I’m not thrilled that you came all this way by yourself. There are bandits and thieves in the woods between here and Avium. They might even be scarier than you, though I doubt it. These four knights will tag along until you’re safely back in your own keep. Try not to get them killed; they’re four of my best.”

  “I think four knights to guard two maids and a cripple is overly generous,” Valen shook his head. No matter how Ellalee bent her neck, all she could see of the Earl de Avium was a slight twist in his lips.

  “It is not these three that I am worried about,” the baron said.

  Valen gave a low chuckle putting out his arm. The baron smiled and clasped arms with Valen, the Earl de Avium, and then turned his own horse back towards the manor. Valen watched his cousin as he left, then urged his destrier into a trot. One knight snapped the reins, and the wagon lurched forward while the other two knights rode on horseback, trotting just behind the earl. The wagon brought up the rear of the procession.

  The crowds cheered and jeered as the small procession left and launched more repugnant items at the three siblings which might have continued had not one peasant misaimed and nailed one of the baron’s knights in the wagon just above Ellalee’s head. The incensed knight was out of the wagon like a shot, sword drawn before the next volley of refuse could be hurled. It proved enough of a deterrent that the crowd settled on cheering and shouting their hopes for the siblings’ fate.

  “Hope it is a nice slow death at de bottom of de well like de last maid!”

  “Come back so we can get our blood and keep our coin too!”

  “Got what ye finally deserved, didn’t ya!”

  “Ya going into ‘ell wit’ the devil ‘isself. Shouldha’ lived without yor ‘ands!”

  Ellalee nestled Christopher under the crook of her arm as he sobbed. Daniella closed her eyes and bowed her head; Ellalee was sure she was praying. She snorted. Why? Because this whole praying thing was going so well? Ellalee found the baker’s triumphant eyes and put every ounce of fury into her stare back. She would go, and somehow, she would survive. She survived her father’s death. She survived her thieving. She survived the Wasenwater. She survived being nearly frozen in Wyndale Woods, and somehow, she would survive even this. She would never give up until she was dead. Dead and buried.

  Chapter Six: The Cursed Castle

  Once the group past through the town, Christopher’s sniffles dried up. Boyish ten-year-old curiosity flared for the first few miles at the world beyond the village but soon faded as exhaustion overwhelmed his diminutive form. Based on the bags under his eyes, Ellalee didn’t think he had slept the entire night. She was beleaguered by her feelings of guilt, sure that while she slept by the bright warmth of the fire last night, her brother had spent the night in dark icy terror. She was laid low with the culpability for their current position and didn’t let go of him even though the reek of his body initially overwhelmed her senses, and even still when he moved and stirred the air.

  Ellalee and Daniella did not talk. Daniella was either staring off into her own world or drowsing against the side of the wagon. In fact, no one talked, not even the knights, which Ellalee thought seemed odd. She noted that their eyes often drifted to the hooded figure riding ahead. She wondered if they were as filled with dread as she was. Doubtful. The earl seemed entirely impervious to the mood of the knights, and no matter how evilly she stared at him, he never once so much as glanced her direction.

  They rumbled on through along the well-trod path for several hours before they came across a stream, and the earl called a halt to water the horses. The lurching of the wagon to a stop brought Christopher and Daniella around. Christopher was wild-eyed and frightened once more as the earl approached the wagon.

  “Get down you three. I can stand your stench no longer. You will scour the filth from your bodies. Do so quickly; we haven’t daylight to lose.”

  It was all well and fine to say, but given the state of her ankle and Christopher’s leg, the two of them were forced to hang onto Daniella’s shoulders which nearly sunk her to her knees more than once. One knight untacked the horses from the wagon, and the two others led the still-saddled horses to the stream. The remaining knight from the wagon stared at the Ellalee and her siblings in unmitigated disgust.

  Ellalee blushed. She had been many things, but never so completely scorned. She could feel the prick of tears. None of the knights moved to help, nor could Ellalee blame them. The two of the three of them were beyond revolting, and she couldn’t imagine what her hair and face must look like. The three knights now watching from the stream seemed to be grossly amused at their lack of progress. Somehow being ridiculed by the three was better than being shamed by the fourth. Ridicule was easily deflected by anger, and Lord, if there was one emotion that Ellalee seemed to have in spades these last few years, it was every flavor and temperature of anger. Anger had become both her sword and her shield, but shame pierced that shield to her very heart and left her breathless. As she knelt by the stream, she watched the knight that had shown them such contempt wander off into the forest.

  The frigid water nearly took her breath away, but Ellalee was gladder s
till to be clean, taking handfuls of river sand to scrub her hands and her arms. She washed tenderly around the plethora of bruises and scratches. When she was satisfied, Ellalee then unbraided her hair and ran wet fingers through her hair getting out the worst of the snarls. Finally, she washed her face and wondering if by its tenderness, it looked as bruised as it felt. Daniella cleaned up likewise. Even Christopher didn’t need the usual reminding which made Ellalee realize it wasn’t just their skin they were trying to wash, but memories do not wash away so easily.

  Not long later, Ellalee heard the sound of chopping upstream and wondered briefly what on earth the knight was up to now. As she pulled herself up from the stream, the knight that had scorned them earlier came by and dropped a bag and two newly made crutches made out of stout branches. Ellalee blushed furiously, but Christopher smiled shyly up at the knight and mumbled, “Thank you.”

  The knight glowered and nodded once. Ellalee opened the sack which contained used, but clean clothes. Two dresses, a tunic, and some breeches. Ellalee and Daniella slipped into the woods to change putting the soiled dress and the borrowed shirt and breeches in the bag until they could be washed and then gathered Christopher’s clothes as well. The clean breeches hung too loosely off Christopher’s bony waist, and Ellalee gave him the rope that had held up her own borrowed breeches. They made their way back to the wagon with greater ease thanks to the crutches.

  Christopher sped ahead, accustomed to the motion of the crutch while Ellalee worked to get her gait and crutch to synchronize. She gave her brother a speculative look as she realized that walking with one crutch was far more challenging than Christopher made it seem and felt rush of appreciation for the boy’s fluid coordination. Daniella dutifully kept the slower pace with Ellalee and twice reached out to steady her as Ellalee fumbled the crutch and wobbled precariously. Ellalee was deeply grateful and gave Daniella a weary smile which her sister fleetingly returned.

  The earl initially looked merely annoyed with the length of time they had spent at the river, but grew furious when he saw that they had packed their soiled clothes to tote them along.

  “Do you so enjoy your own stench?” he roared as the knights looked down or elsewhere.

  “Waste not, want not,” Daniella said softly with her eyes downcast. “We are well acquainted with laundry. We will scrub them when we stop this evening if we can.”

  The earl muttered something under his breath and leapt onto his horse. The knights followed suit, except the one who had given Ellalee her crutch. He watched the earl go with a glower for the earl’s back and short shake of his head. Ellalee was beginning to wonder if the knight’s look of disgust wasn’t actually directed at her after all, but rather a permanent feature of his visage. This consideration made her feel oddly relieved. The knight then turned and helped Daniella by scooping her up and gently placing her into the wagon and then finally lifted Christopher under the boy’s arms into the wagon. Ellalee thought perhaps the knight’s countenance softened a bit as he lifted Christopher. However, his face most definitely took on a darker hue as he helped Ellalee. Ellalee groaned inwardly. The knight then climbed up into the wagon and snapped the reins without another glance backwards.

  Ellalee and her siblings rode the rest of the day for the most part in silence. The guards were not especially social, even with each other, and Daniella and Christopher slept after their exhausting ordeal the night before. Even Ellalee felt drowsy as she rested her head against the side of the wagon where the rhythmic rocking of the wagon proved palliative. She allowed her mind to wander, contemplating the speech she’d heard that man, Dessi, give outside Old Tate’s tavern. It seemed he wasn’t exaggerating. The deaths at Castle de Avium that Dessi described were confirmed by the earl himself. Servants who worked at Avium were not a long-lived breed. The earl had said as much before the entire village of Bressott. Ellalee felt profound bleakness. The feeling stoked memories of the day she was forced to accept that her father wasn’t coming back.

  More cursed luck, she thought. That is what she felt, and nearly word for word what the earl had said when he discovered Christopher’s crippled leg. Was she cursed? Ellalee wondered. She picked her head up and stared at the earl in his black cloak with the shredded hem. Was he?

  Finally the evening began to weigh down the sun on one of the darkest days in Ellalee’s eighteen years. The earl held up a fist, and the wagon lumbered to a stop. Ellalee could hear a brook bubbling nearby. The men scattered, unsaddling their horses, brushing them down, building a fire, and setting up camp. The earl and one of the knights disappeared into the woods with their quivers and bows. Ellalee, Daniella, and Christopher stood beside the wagon watching the busy knights in a silent awe. No one hollered instructions or voiced commands. It seemed that every knight knew what needed to be done and went about doing it. Ellalee grabbed the bag of soiled clothes and led her siblings over to the newly made fire where they waited quietly. The earl came back shortly with a two rabbits which smelled delicious as they roasted. The look on Christopher’s face was positively agog with delight. Ellalee caught the earl’s downturned mouth and tried to turn Christopher’s attention from the food but the boy was starving and nothing short of being knocked unconscious would turn his attention.

  As the rabbits came off the spit, the knight began slicing off large pieces of crispy meat. The knight who had given them the crutches began to hand a piece to Christopher, but the earl’s hand stayed him.

  “No, Sir Kent, if they do not work, they do not eat,” the earl growled and tossed them tack bread he pulled from his saddle bag.

  Christopher’s tears slid down his face, but he caught he tack bread and began gnawing on it. Daniella mumbled out a thank you, but Ellalee was fit to spit as she watched her sister bless it. She took her hard bread, handed to it Christopher without so much as a glance backwards, grabbed their sack of spoiled clothes and her crutch and hobbled furiously to the brook. She began scrubbing the clothes ferociously with a rock and then with sand imagining the earl’s evil face. To cook meat in front of a starving child and then deny him. It was a torturous cruelty and nothing short of it. Anger was a feeling with which she was much accustomed, but it wasn’t often that hate broiled her from the inside out. Ellalee was pretty sure that Daniella would have some lesson on hatred to share later, or worse, forgiveness, but she hardly cared in this moment. So embittered by the evening’s events, she didn’t hear the earl approach until he spoke.

  “You think yourself mistreated? What have you done, thief, but take?”

  “Judge all you want to. I think you are vile and unjust, and I will hate you forever for this day.”

  He laughed, and she threw the breeches she had been scrubbing down onto the bank and used her crutch to wheel to her feet.

  “You are mocking me!” she seethed.

  “You mock yourself. Had I not stepped forward you would have no hands and no tongue and would likely have bled out within the quarter hour. I can’t imagine what would have happened to your sibling in whom you profess such affection, but I can assure you, it would be worse than eating tack for supper.”

  Unwanted, furious tears rose in her eyes, and she turned her back so that this earl would not see. “That starving boy dreams of meat, and to have it cooked in front of him….” Her voice cracked, and she cleared her throat as a tear slipped down one cheek which she absently wiped away. “He never stole. It was always me.” She straightened her shoulders trying to pull together emotions that were too long too ragged. “Now if you will excuse me, I have to finish these clothes or I will not be able to save them, and I’m sure you’d like to have your own clothes back.”

  She turned her back on the earl, and knelt back down by the river, her muscles taught as she expected a blow for her defiance and continued cleaning the clothes with elbow grease rather than fury. She refused to look behind her, and after a moment, she heard the earl’s heavy footsteps heading back down the trail. She heaved a sigh of relief and wiped the tears from her fa
ce.

  By the time she began her long crutch back to camp, she realized the scowling knight had been set to watch her. She assumed it must have been for her safety because it was highly unlikely she could crutch any great distance for some grand escape. She frowned back at the knight as she went past, which made him raise one eyebrow. Perhaps that was as much amusement as his scowling countenance could reveal.

  She continued to camp as the knight kept her slow pace behind her. At the campsite she laid the wet clothes over the side of the wagon. After she was done, she winced as she examined her crutch. The crutch was rubbing the under part of her arm and the side of her chest positively raw, and her ankle was throbbing as she had put more weight on it to make up for the pain under her arm. She gave Christopher a long look. How on earth had he managed the crutch without complaint? Hobbling towards her siblings, she nearly flung herself to ground by the fire. The knights were sorting themselves out for the night. Thick cold air, the type that starts on the skin but settles into the bones, was heavy upon the ground. It was then Ellalee realized that they had no blankets. The scowling knight seemed to realize it too, and passed his blanket to Christopher.

  “Keep your blanket, Sir Kent,” the earl growled.

  “You paid a lot of silver for these three; they’ll be worth nothing if they don’t survive the trip.”

  “I’ve known the earl’s kindness for some time now,” Ellalee sniffed. “Christopher can sleep between us. Daniella can sleep closest to the fire. I will make sure that we stay warm enough to survive the trip and perform our duties when we arrive.”

  “Lord Almighty Above give me patience. I should have let them cut out your tongue. You wield it mercilessly,” the earl growled. “Did you think I wouldn’t provide what you needed? I absolutely intend to get my full investment in work out of you three, and an early death will not cheat me of it.” The earl leaned over the log he was seated on and pulled out extra blankets from a bag he had had strapped to his saddle and then walked around the fire to dump the blankets unceremoniously on Ellalee’s lap.