A Knight To Remember

Chapter 39

Chapter 39

Everything changed.  The atmosphere became heavy and charged. 

No one walked anywhere, everyone ran. 

Jonathan’s first action was to send out a pair of scouts on fast horses.  They rode out the gate within the hour of her words.

Meanwhile I drifted aimlessly.  I couldn’t concentrate.  My head was flooded with conflicting emotions and a hundred unanswered questions. 

Eventually I found my way to the rose gardens.

Eve was behind everything.  Eve had orchestrated our lives to achieve her aims.  But so much didn’t make sense. 

My fingers gently caressed a blood red rose.

How could one partly delusional woman be so instrumental?  I suppose it was possible.  She certainly rescued Torcall.  There was no disputing that. 

The petals were so smooth and soft under my fingertips.

The rumours that Lord Maine and Edward circulated were meant to draw Torcall back to Hithwood Hall so Eve could have also found her way there.  I wasn’t going to even guess how she smuggled him from the dungeons.  But disguising herself as a healer would not have been hard.  She obviously had some skill in it as she kept Torcall alive although his injuries were extensive.

The morning dew dripped from the plant’s leaves.

But who was she?  Who was this woman really?  She was married to Charles so must have come from an influential family.  What was her relationship with the others like before Charles death?  Grace had said that she was not friends with the wives of the other brothers.  She said that they treated her badly because she was a provincial no-one and not worthy of their time.  This would not have been the same for Edward, Torcall, Robert and Percival.  They all lived together.  So she must have known Edward before and Torcall too.

I lowered my head and inhaled the delicate fragrance of the bloom.

What happened to her after Charles’ death.  What did she do for all those years? 

The soft petals tickled my cheeks and nose.

She must not have known the plot and trap that Edward had planned for Torcall and Lord Maine.  I wondered if she knew that Edward would be there?  Maybe she primed Torcall to challenge Edward knowing that he was waiting for him.  But no one could have expected Edward to behave so cowardly and deny the challenge, turning his guards on Torcall.  That was possibly why she had to come up with this complicated scheme instead. 

I gently plucked a single petal from the full head.

She had Torcall, so finding the location of his family probably wasn’t difficult.  He probably trusted her in the early stages, after all she did rescue him and nurse him back to life.  Maybe she promised to return him to his family so that she could find their location.  I wondered what she did then.  She must have known what Jonathan’s plans to run away.  She possibly sabotaged his journey so that when he ‘stumbled’ across her he would be ready for her ‘help’. 

My nails bruised the petal’s flesh scoring dark marks into its perfection.

So she wasn’t using him to seed a child.  No her motivations were far more sinister.  She was breaking him in, whispering in his ear and sowing her seed.  She was laying the foundations for her scheme.  So much could have gone a wrong over the ten years she waited.  But then again she did say that she crossed our paths many times without us noticing.