What if Claude had lied and his guards had done something terrible to him and he was gone forever?
A weight seemed to crush her chest. She could hardly breathe. God, please . . . please.
“Princess Elyce? Are you unwell?” Ysa was staring at her, and she realized she was bent over and clutching her chest.
“I am well.” She made the effort to stand up straight.
“You should eat something.”
Elyce felt sick to her stomach just thinking about eating. “I am not hungry.”
King Claude burst into the room. He ignored anyone else besides Elyce and strode toward her. Two guards followed him in.
“You wanted to speak to me?” His beady black eyes bored into hers.
“I want my wedding to be in Montciel.”
“What?”
“If I must marry Count Rodrigo—”
“You must.”
“Then I will marry him in Montciel, in my own church, in front of my own people.”
“I think that is a good idea.”
King Claude agreed so readily that he must have planned to have her marry in Montciel all along.
Elyce also had a plan, a plan that had entered her mind during the long night when she couldn’t sleep. With God’s favor, it just might work.
She desperately wanted to ask him about Sir Gerard and Sir Oswalt, if they were well, to get reassurance that he truly did plan to hold them for ransom. But she didn’t want to give Claude the satisfaction of knowing she was worried about them. Besides, she couldn’t trust any answer he gave.
Still looking at her coldly, he said, “You are ready for travel? Let us be on our way.”
* * *
Gerard and Sir Oswalt were allowed to pack up their saddlebags and mount their horses, then their wrists were tied to their horses’ pommels, which were in turn each tied to a guard’s horse.
The entire ride out of the walled city and a mile past it, Gerard wondered if they were only pretending to take them to Valkenfeld, if they would take out their crossbows and shoot Gerard and Oswalt as soon as they were out of sight of Württemberg.
By the time they stopped for the night, it was well past dark, and the guards made sure to set a watch over them while they slept.
When the guards were sleeping and there was no movement from the guard who had been set to watch over them, Gerard whispered to Oswalt, “I have a knife hidden in my boot.”
“Ahead of you.” Sir Oswalt was already sawing away at the rope binding his wrists.
Chagrined, Gerard took the knife from inside his boot and started cutting his own bonds. Soon they were both free and staring at the guard. Could he truly be asleep? Gerard had never seen such incompetence, a guard falling asleep so soon after being left on watch. He suspected Count Eberhard had sent his less worthy guards while keeping his best men at home.
Carefully, Gerard and Oswalt sneaked away to where the horses were being kept. The guard who was supposed to be watching the horses was sitting on the ground with his back against a tree, his arms folded in front of him. From the way his chin was resting on his chest, he seemed to be asleep as well.
As quietly as possible, they took two horses and led them away into the dark forest.
Gerard braced himself, listening for the whooshing sound of arrows or the shout of the guard on watch, glancing over his shoulder every so often.
They soon came to the road and stopped. King Claude’s guards were nowhere in sight. So they mounted up and rode away.
It was surprising that King Claude had not killed them outright, but perhaps he didn’t wish to draw the ire of King Richard, who certainly would have taken issue with a foreign king killing two of his knights who had only been trying to help a princess in distress. But the king would not have taken issue, likely, with his demand for a ransom. It was a traditional response to the capture of a foreign noble knight.
If they were fortunate, the guards would take their time about reporting them missing to King Claude. Furthermore, Claude might believe he needed all his men in case there was an uprising in Montciel and would not want to spare any men to search for and recapture them. Claude also might reasonably presume that Gerard and Oswalt would head straight back to England, assuming there was little they could do to help Princess Elyce now.
They had escaped with their lives, but Princess Elyce was in Claude’s grasp. And Gerard could not leave her to marry Count Rodrigo and fail at her mission to save her people from Claude’s greedy schemes.
Oswalt was staring at him. “What now?”
Thinking out loud, he said, “We can go to the Count of Montfort, as King Wenceslaus suggested. Or we can go back to Prague and see if the king will send more men. But we have to do something. I’m not leaving the princess to marry that puppet, Rodrigo.”
“And what about Ysa’s brothers? Claude was planning to kill them if the princess doesn’t marry Rodrigo.”
“That’s another reason we have to act fast. And now that I think about it, I have an idea. Bertold is the heir to the throne of Valkenfeld, and he hates his brother. Who better to help us take down King Claude?”
“Right. But how do we find Bertold?”
“He said he was going to find Astrid and make sure she was safe, but then he would go to Valkenfeld to confront King Claude.”
“That sounds right to me.”
They turned their horses toward Valkenfeld.
When they reached the town where King Claude lived in his large, gray stone fortress, they stopped at an inn to eat and to rest their horses before starting their search for Bertold.
They ate their bowl of stew rather hurriedly, and as they were leaving the inn, they nearly bumped into a man walking in. There was something very familiar about him. When the man’s face split into a wide grin, Gerard still couldn’t place him.
“Sir Gerard and Sir Oswalt!”
“Bertold?” Gerard saw it was indeed the man they had been searching for, but without his bushy beard and gruff, hostile demeanor. No wonder he didn’t recognize him. The man looked twenty years younger and . . . happy.
“It is I.”
“We were just going to search for you.”
“Let us go somewhere no one will overhear us.”
They walked out into the street of the town, and Bertold pulled his hood down to obscure most of his face. He led them behind the inn, into a small alleyway between the building and a rock wall.
As a few flakes of snow sifted down from the sky, they all kept their hoods on and huddled together to talk.
“Did you find Astrid?” Gerard said quietly.
“I did. I followed your directions to find the cottage in the forest. When I got there, I saw a woman walking near the house. My heart stopped. It was Astrid. She looked just the same, still as beautiful as ever.
“I stopped my horse, but when she turned her head and saw me, she practically ran away from me, into the cottage. I tied my horse to a tree limb and went and knocked on the door. An older woman answered. She stared at me but did not speak. I asked, ‘Are you Frau Ida, the aunt of Jacob, servant of the royal family of Montciel?’ She said she was and asked who I was. Before I could say my name, I heard a loud gasp coming from behind Frau Ida. Astrid came forward and stared at me, with eyes as blue as I remembered. Then she said, ‘Is it you? Are you Bertold?’
“‘Yes,’ I told her.