He cried out, but her hand tightened on his neck like a vise, forcing his mouth to stay tight to hers, muffling the scream. Then his whole body went slack, dragging down, and she loosed her hold, letting him slip to the floor. She stared down at the crumpled body and the spreading pool of blood, hardly able to believe he was really dead—but he did not move and, bending down to look, she saw his eyes had glazed. So much, then, for the debaucher of maidens! She felt not the slightest qualm of guilt; he had deserved a violent death a hundred times over. In fact, she found room to regret that it had been so quick.
Moving deliberately, she lifted the goblet; now she could allow herself a swallow, though she used it to rinse her mouth first, then took another mouthful to drink. Then, without hurrying, she changed back into her travelling dress; she knew no one dared disturb the lord at his pleasures, so none would come looking for him until morning. Finally, she pulled her knife from his chest, turned away so that she would not see the blood that must come pumping out, wiped the blade, and tucked it away in her sleeve. Then she opened the door.
The guards outside looked up, then frowned to see the clothes she wore.
"His Lordship requires more wine," she said, slurring her words and blinking blearily.
One guard smiled, relaxing, and nodded, moving away.
"So you drank it all, and saved none for him?" the other guard asked, chuckling.
"Aye..." She stared at his halberd, blinking stupidly as she listened to the other guard's footsteps fade away. "Why do you hold that ... that..."
"Halberd," he supplied. "To protect His Lordship, little miss."
"How will it do that?" she asked, taking hold of the shaft.
He chuckled indulgently and let go, letting her have the weapon. She took a staggering step backwards ... then swept the butt around with blinding speed and unerring accuracy. It cracked on bone; the guard crumpled.
Quickly, Jane caught him under the arms and straightened up, heaving. Staggering, she managed to drag him back inside the Count's chamber and closed the door. She bound the guard with his own belt, gagged him with a strip from his own tunic, then rolled him in a bedsheet, so that he would not be able to see the Count's body when he waked, and would perhaps be a little less frantic to call for help. Then she went back to collect her bundle and ran to the door. But she paused in the portal, considering, then reflected that it was hanged for the kid, hanged for the goat—if her life was forfeit for killing a nobleman, what mattered the punishment for stealing his sword? She hurried back to his dead body, unbuckled the swordbelt, and fastened it about her own waist. Then, with no further ado, she hurried out of the chamber.
She closed the door firmly behind her, turned the key in the huge old lock, then tucked it into her bundle and was off.
She knew where to go—they had brought her in that way, after all, to avoid notice. She avoided notice again as she slipped out, down the back stairs, through the servants' door, and across to the postern gate. If anyone saw her, they took no notice—least of all the guard at the postern, who knew only that there were suddenly a great many more stars than usual, then a deeper darkness. Jane slipped out, closed the gate softly behind her, and was gone into the night.
CHAPTER 5
"So you are still a virgin?" Geoffrey asked. "I am," Quicksilver replied.
"Then most definitely I shall not touch you, though I shall tell you truly, the urge to do so burns and' rages within me. Lessen my strain, I beseech you—distract me with your tale again. Tell me how you came to rule a county."
Quicksilver gave him a long, gauging look, as though measuring just how much turmoil he was hiding, and whether or not it was enough to satisfy her thirst for vengeance. Apparently what she saw pleased her, for she gave him a slanting smile and turned half away, to take up her history again.
"I had bought some time, for none would intrude in the Count's chamber until morning, and the sentry in the garderobe was not likely to be discovered unless someone should wake in the night. His fellow guard would think him fled after a wench, like as not, and would surely wait long before searching for him. I had at the least some hours, at most till mid-morning."
"Then, though," said Geoffrey, "they would be after you in earnest, with dogs and horses."
"Oh, they were," Quicksilver said softly, "as I knew they would be. But it was my county too, look you, and I knew its fields and woodlots better than any lord. Nay, I was into the trees within the hour, and buried in the depths of the greenwood before the air turned chill to wait for dawn. There I sat me down in the hollow of a huge old oak, to wait and plan—for I had thought no further than flight."
"Small wonder there," Geoffrey said, with a taut smile. "It was amazing you thought so clearly as you did, and so far ahead. Few men would have had the courage to plan so, let alone to carry out those plans."
"I ... thank you," she said, surprised. "Yet what choice had I?" She must have thought it was a rhetorical question, for she went right on. "I knew there were dangers awaiting me that, though not as bad as the Count's men, would be bad enough. I hid to catch what sleep I could, then woke to find the sun up and the forest filled with its light, straying through the leaves in scattered beams. There I laid my plans."
"Did not the dogs find your trail?"
For answer, Quicksilver only flashed him a hard smile. "Of course," Geoffrey said slowly. "You knew the ways of the wood, and how to hide all evidence of your passage."
"Far better than any dog, I assure you, whether he had four legs or two. Nay, I came out for my morning's ablutions, then was amazed to find that I was a-hungered. I ate of the food my mother had packed, then went back to my hollow to plan. I knew that I had become an outlaw by my night's work, for a dead lord is far more proof than is needed to hang a squire's daughter—and hang I would, if they caught me. I knew some anxiety for my brothers and my mother and sister, that the Count's son—the new Count, now—might seek to revenge his father on them; but I could not deal with it all, and had to take what fights came first."
"A sound plan," Geoffrey agreed.
"It was no plan at all," Quicksilver said tartly. "I began with what I knew—that I was dead if caught, probably torture first and hanging later; that I would have to live outside the law, where my life was any man's who wished to take it."
"The more fool he," Geoffrey grunted.
"Oh, I had no doubt he would come," Quicksilver said softly. "The world is filled with men who are fools. I bethought me how I should deal with them when they came, and was glad I had taken the Count's sword."
"How long did it take the gentlemen of the greenwood to find you?" Geoffrey asked.
"Call them not gentlemen, but men of the midden, for they were the refuse of manhood if ever I saw it. They came at noon, for they were more clever at following a trail than the Count's men—or, at least, the trail I had laid just for them, which began not at the edge of the wood, but only some few hundred feet from where I waited in hiding."
Geoffrey nodded judiciously. "So you chose the time and the place for the battle. Wisely done. Where was it?"
"A clearing," Quicksilver answered, "only a clearing in the woods, perhaps fifty feet across. I stood at the southern edge, screened by brush..."
"So the sun would be behind you, and in their eyes."
"Even so. They were a ragtag bunch, unwashed and unkempt... "
The bandits halted in the middle of the clearing, looking about them, puzzled. "She came this far," said one. "You see well enough, Much," the biggest bandit said impatiently. "Who cannot see those prints of tiny shoes? Aye, she came this far—but how did she disappear?"