Knight Triumphant Read Online Free PDF Page B

her laughter and her smile and her innocence of the cruelty of the world around her. Aileen, with her little arms outstretched to him, calling him, each time he had been away, her little footsteps bringing her to him. And he would bend down and scoop her into his arms, and she would cup his face in her hands and kiss his cheek and say his name again with such sweet trust that he knew that the world itself was worth saving, that freedom was worth fighting for . . .
    Innocence, trust beauty . . . dead. The sun had gone out of the world.
    This time, when his knees failed him, he fell to the floor, cradling her lifeless form in his arms.
    Â 
    Â 
    Alone among the sick in the solar, Igrainia looked about with dismay. Among the Scots seized and still living, there was an older woman with long, graying hair. She would survive, Igrainia thought. Her boils had broken, and she was breathing still. The pestilence here was as strange as death itself; this woman had lived many years; she appeared frail and weak. Yet she would survive.
    Another younger woman seemed to slip away as Igrainia bathed her forehead. The two others in the room were young as well, both still holding on. Igrainia lowered her head to the chest of one, and heard that the rattle had left her breathing; she, too, would survive. And the other . . .
    â€œWater!” came a desperate and pathetic whisper.
    â€œCarefully, carefully,” Igrainia warned, holding the woman’s head. She was, perhaps, twenty, almost as light as Margot. Igrainia forced her to drink slowly, then nearly dropped her head back to the pallet as a cry suddenly seemed to rip through the stone walls. It was more than a cry, more like a howl of fury, despair and anguish. It was like the sound of a wolf, lifting its head, giving a shattering curse upon heaven itself, and she knew that the Scotsman had seen his daughter.
    She looked up at a sound in the doorway and saw her maid, Jennie, a frightened and startled look upon her face as they both listened to the echoes of the cry.
    â€œMy God. We are haunted now by monsters!” Jennie whispered. “My lady . . .”
    She ran across the room and greeted Igrainia with a fierce and trembling hug. “You did not make it away; the Scotsmen came. They are here, now, among us. They won’t understand that we have done all we can. Mary was working in the dungeons, until she fell there, she lies among them still. Father MacKinley and I are all who walk now, even Garth fell ill, you know, yet survived, the boils did not come to him, he thinks he might have suffered a similar illness as a child. Berlinda in the kitchen fell ill in the scant time you were away. Sir Robert Neville stood upon the parapets watching you go . . . then took instantly to his bed. Oh, lord, this man will kill us, won’t he, we might as well have all fallen to the plague! So few of us are left . . .”
    Jennie was still in Igrainia’s arms, shaking. Igrainia pulled away from her. Sir Eric’s agony over his child would last some time, but then he would be back.
    â€œJennie, we must be strong. Tell me, first, who tends Sir Robert Neville?”
    â€œI keep watch over him. Molly, Merry, John . . . Tom, the kitchen lad.”
    â€œWhere is Sir Neville?”
    â€œIn his chambers. We are doing all we can.”
    â€œWhy were the remaining prisoners ignored in the dungeons?”
    Jennie stared at her, wide eyed. “How could we tend to more? We are all dying. And the smiths and merchants in residence in the courtyard . . . they all fight for their own lives. But what difference does it make now? We are all doomed.”
    â€œThis rebel doesn’t know that the Earl of Pembroke ordered Sir Niles Mason to find what Bruce forces he could and bring them here for their fates to be decided. Nor does he realize that Sir Niles took his troops and left at the first sign of the disease!” Igrainia said bitterly. “He thinks that Afton was