After sitting there for two days and nights, William and Tor finally came looking for him and found him sitting at the table, now cluttered with old food and empty pitchers of wine, still waiting for the woman who hadn’t shown up. Andreas was exhausted and heartbroken, and it took both William and Tor to convince him that it was time to leave. But even after they left, Andreas walked to The Asher and stood across the street with his cousins, watching the front door, watching for some sign of Gavriella.
But he saw nothing.
Gavriella had told him that she was afraid for him to come to The Asher because she was unsure how her aunt would react to a man coming to call for her. He had mentioned that to William and Tor, and when the wait became too excessive, it took both of his cousins to convince him not to go to the door and inquire about Gavriella. But that didn’t stop William from going to one of the guards at the entry door and asking them about the lady. One of the guards knew nothing, but the second guard told him that the niece of Lady Blackburn had been sent home. That was all he could tell William, who returned to Andreas to relay the news.
Now, he knew.
But Andreas sent William back to talk to the guard who could tell him nothing more than what he had already told him. He didn’t know where she’d come from and he didn’t know where she had returned, and not even the offer of a few coins from William could get him to change his story. He positively refused to ask the countess about her.
The guard finally chased William away by refusing to answer any further questions and William had to return to Andreas to tell him that there was no further information about his mysterious lady. All they knew was that she had been sent back where she had come from, and Andreas knew that was somewhere in Northumberland.
Andreas hadn’t felt real disappointment in his life until that very moment. When he realized that he might never see Gavriella again, he felt disillusionment that was bone crushing. He only had one lead, that she lived somewhere in Northumberland, and he thought that if he started from one end of the province and worked his way to the other end, he might be able to find her or at least find someone who knew her.
He was willing to try.
Northumberland was quite large, but it wasn’t heavily populated, so it was very possible he would find at least her trail. Perhaps the easiest way of doing that would be to inquire at all the churches, for if she was meant for the veil, certainly he would find her priest at some point.
That meant he had to go home as soon as possible.
The sooner he could get to Northumberland, the sooner he could find his Gavriella. In fact, if she had been sent home the very last night that he saw her, that meant she only had a few days head start on him and there weren’t many roads into Northumberland, so he had hopes of possibly finding her on the road if they moved swiftly.
Four days after Andreas was supposed to meet Gavriella in that stuffy little tavern, he departed London along with William, Tor, and Theodis, heading for the wilds of Northumberland.
Andreas had never wanted to go home so badly in his life.
He was going to find Gavriella if it took him the rest of his life.
PART TWO
THE SCOTTISH MARCHES
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Year of Our Lord 1293
January
Wolfe’s Lair
The bailey was filling up with dirty, war-scarred men and knights, funneling into the great bailey of Wolfe’s Lair nearly as far as the eye could see.
It was an army returning from war.
The de Wolfe knights were filthy, sweaty, and in most cases, bloodied as well. They had just seen six days of a nasty battle in a long line of battles over the past five months, but this one had started when Clan Maxwell, reinforced with their allies from the north, had broken out in an ugly skirmish with Clan Elliot. There were pockets of fighting, and clans chasing clans, and all of those Scots had overrun the border north of The Lair.
Oddly enough, this wasn’t a typical land grab, the type of thing that had been going on for centuries. There were wars between Clan Maxwell and its enemies, Clan Elliot and Clan Johnstone, but that feud was spilling over into de Wolfe lands and tearing up everything in its path.
The English found themselves caught up in a clan war.
It was a nasty, political conflict. The House of de Wolfe had tens of thousands of men at their disposal, but there was such a buildup of angry clans on the border that William de Wolfe, the Earl of Warenton and the head of the House of de Wolfe, had called upon the king to send more troops north to help contain the rage. Considering King Edward was mostly focused in Wales at this time, he hadn’t been happy about moving men and material from the Welsh Marches to deal with the conflict happening along the Scottish border.
De Wolfe was holding the line, but he was calling in reinforcements.
Other great de Wolfe allies had come to their aid – de Lohr, de Winter, de Shera, du Reims, de Royans, de Reyne, and more. Wellesbourne and de Russe had also headed north with their massive armies, which the Scots saw as a buildup to an English invasion. Or, perhaps they saw it as an insult that the English should involve themselves in a bloody conflict between clans that was just growing worse. Whatever the case, that brought more Scots to the border.
The entire north of England was straining against a Scots surge.
Wolfe’s Lair was right in the middle of it because, technically, it was in Clan Elliot territory. Wolfe’s Lair belonged to Scott de Wolfe, the heir to the House of de Wolfe, but what made the situation complicated was the fact that Scott’s twin, Troy, had married a chieftain’s daughter from Clan Kerr. That particular clan was allied with Clan Maxwell but in the midst of these border wars, they were doing their best to remain neutral.
As Troy had put it, the whole thing was a goddamned mess.
On this icy winter’s day as the sun set against an orange sky to the west and the embattled army filtered into the bailey for the night, Wolfe’s Lair sat like an immovable sentinel against the dramatic Scottish landscape, protecting the armies that trusted her.
The Lair…
In truth, Rule Water Castle hadn’t been called by its proper name in decades, ever since the de Wolfe family from nearby Castle Questing had annexed the former Scottish garrison for the de Wolfe barony of Kilham, now the Earldom of Warenton. Everyone in England and Scotland knew the place as Wolfe’s Lair, or simply The Lair, an extremely fortified fortress that had an imposing look to it.
Much like infamous Hell’s Guardhouse Castle about a day’s ride to the southwest, seat of the terrible de Soulis family, Rule Water Castle was built in much the same design and it was almost twice the size. It was square, box-shaped, and four stories tall. The walls of the keep were also the exterior walls of the fortress, with massive flying buttresses by design. It also had an enormous moat that was fed by a nearby stream, a wide and muck-filled ditch that was at least twenty feet wide in places and had a massive retractable wooden bridge that crossed it.
The impression of Wolfe’s Lair was one of intimidation. It sat on a flat plain, with rolling hills in the distance, and could been seen for miles. With its sheer, dark walls, it had the look of dread and danger about it. The entrance to the fortress was also much like Hermitage Castle in that it was a Norman arch, several stories tall, and had two enormous gates that had been forged from the strongest iron. These gates were thick, vastly heavy, and impossible to breach once closed.