Marie (The Curse of Lanval Book 2) Read online

  Marie

  Curse of Lanval

  Book II

  By Rebekah Dodson

  Marie

  Curse of Lanval

  Book II

  Rebekah Dodson

  Curse of Lanval Series

  Mirrors

  Marie

  Magic

  Merlin

  Copyright © 2016 Rebekah Dodson

  All rights reserved. Including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stores in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical without the express written permission of the author. The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the internet or via any other means without the permission of the author is illegal and punishable by law.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  ISBN-13: 978-1542491310

  ISBN-10: 1542491312

  DEDICATION

  "Lord," she said, "That girl or boy

  Has never known this good world's joy

  Who never heard the laustic's song.

  That's why I stand here all night long.

  I hear him sing so sweet at night,

  It seems to me just pure delight;

  I feel pleasure, such longing--I

  Need to listen--I can't shut my eye."

  He listened to her, every word,

  Laughed, cruel, angry, at what he heard.

  Marie de France, “Laustic”

  Acknowledgement

  To Courtney, Janae, Kayla, Sarah, A.C. and and to all my authors in our fierce band of indie warriors, you guys have been insurmountable help with editing, formatting, promotion, marketing, and overall support. Even when we had to summon Kayla with the octopus.

  Most of all my muse, whose witty banter was a constant inspiration for Gill’s voice.

  Much love to you all.

  CONTENTS

  Chapter One: Chateau de Falaise

  Chapter Two: The Lady in Red

  Chapter Three: God Has a Sick Sense of Humor

  Chapter Four: Stabbings Hurt Like a B****

  Chapter Five: The French Ambassador, The Mouse

  Chapter Six: Some Kind of Magical Shit

  Chapter Seven: Magic Medicine

  Chapter Eight: Marie’s Mysteries

  Chapter Nine: That Fucking Curse

  Chapter Ten: Shame

  About the Author

  More Books by Rebekah Dodson

  Chapter One: Chateau de Falaise

  The ride through the French countryside was slow. In my time, it was bustling with narrow roads, country houses, and littered with towns. Now in 1154, it was deserted, rough, and mainly forested. The difference was so stark; I wondered if we were really in France at all. The prince fazed in and out of consciousness, moaning softly. It was a struggle to keep him upright in front of me. We’d been traveling for close to six hours, and the sun was blazing the noon hour overhead. The terrain sloped upwards, and above the trees, I could see the gray tips of a tower, a flag flying proudly in the air.

  I slowed my horse. “Jules, look.” I motioned toward the tower.

  Queen Eleanor pointed. “Chateau,” she said weakly, “close.”

  Jules pulled her horse next to mine. “How’s he doing?”

  “Unconscious,” I whispered in English because I didn’t know the French word. I mouthed something else to her, and she nodded, frowning.

  The queen reached out and touched the prince’s forehead. “Henry,” she murmured, her French accent dropping the h sound and pronouncing it On-ree. She sounded worried. She looked up at me and uttered the word hot. I translated for Jules. She nodded, her frown twisting into something more like agony. I’d seen that look before, in other paramedics, nurses, doctors. It was usually accompanied by a shake of the head to denote the patient didn’t have long. Behind me, Piers’ horse was stamping impatiently.

  “Infection,” I said in English. “It’s too late.”

  Jules shook her head and urged her horse forward. “He’s bleeding out. We have to get him to the castle.”

  “What about soldiers, guards, something like that?” I asked Jules in English, then in French to the queen.

  “Cinq,” she whispered, frowning at Henry’s slumped body in front of me.

  “Five? There’s only five soldiers?”

  “Yes, but hiding,” she said, still not looking at me.

  “Sir, the soldiers will know this is the queen,” Piers piped up, “once they see us.”

  I nodded back at him. I gripped the queen tighter and followed Jules up the winding slope that lead to a castle high on the hill.

  The terrain was so rough that about half-way up I hopped off and instructed the queen to hold the horse while I led it up the mossy, rocky hillside. Piers did the same, but Jules held fast to the prince. Shit, no one could attack this castle, let alone get to it, I thought. The sun was bright overhead, but the wind whipped around us, and with no cover from the forest it was freezing. It was still early October, I realized, and the winter air wasn’t far away.

  As if the weather read my thoughts, it started to rain. Not our Midwestern rain; oh no, this was European rain. Hard and fast, freezing little ice bullets that pierced my skin. The queen lifted her meager blanket over her head and wrapped it tight around her.

  It was the most fucking miserable experience I could have ever imagined.

  My horse stumbled on a wet rock then, and I tried to correct it, pulling hard and to the left on the reigns. I knew we were both going to be thrown. Jules tossed her reigns to Piers and dived for the prince as he tumbled sideways off the horse. She caught him under the shoulders and eased him to the grounded as he moaned loudly. His shirt was soaked with blood, and it spread to the moss beneath him. My thick tweed shirt was soaked as well.

  The rain pounded down, hard and fast. “Help me lift him!” Jules yelled. Both Piers and I hopped off our horses and reached for him, as a bolt of lightning struck the castle tower, a hundred feet ahead of us.

  “Oh fuck …” I said, watching the spark hit and the stones crumble down, showering us in rocky pebbles. Piers’ horse reared but didn’t throw him, and he held fast to my horse, wild-eyed, ready to bolt. The queen’s arms wrapped around the horse’s neck, and she whispered to it, trying to calm it.

  Jules’ horse, wasn’t so lucky.

  With no one holding the reigns and the crash of thunder booming across the sky behind us, her horse turned and fled down the rough-hewn path up to the castle, back the way we had come.

  “Goddamn it!” Jules shouted.

  “Jules, no!” I screamed as she started after it. “Let it go. You’ll fall and kill yourself on the rocks! Help me with the prince!”

  “Sir Knight!” Piers yelled, but his voice was thrown away in the wind.

  Just as Jules reached out to hoist him to his feet, I felt cold metal press into my back.

  “Halt intruders!”

  My brain roughly translated the ancient French. A soldier was barking orders into my ears I didn’t understand. I froze, not sure what to do. I couldn’t drop the prince, but he was dying right here in my arms. I tried to protest in French, but the rain had soaked my hair and my shirt; it was hard even to see what was going on.

  In front of me, the queen sat upright and pulled the blanket down over her shoulders. “Queen Eleanor of Aqui
taine, wife of Prince Henry of England and France,” she said, her quiet, worried voice replaced by one filled with the power of authority. I stared at her, so sexy in this moment. I was holding her husband with a sword pressed against my back, yet all I could think about was getting her naked. I groaned at my stupid brain. Of all the times…

  The hard metal at my back disappeared, and I heard several soldiers gasp. I wondered if there was only five, as the queen had said. It sounded like more – a great deal more.

  “Queen!” One of them exclaimed. I turned my head to see a small detail, no more than five or six, all bowing.

  The queen rattled off something in French I didn’t catch, and the soldier behind me barked orders. Four others in blue and white cloth draped over shining chainmail, took the prince from me. These weren’t the leather-clad warriors from Chateau Guillaume – I recognized them from my history book as the king’s guard. They skirted over the slippery rocks and darted to the left. I squinted against the pouring rain and could barely make out a path that led up a less steep side of the cliff. Why hadn’t I seen that before?

  Paramedic, ladies man, and awesome guy I am, but wildlife tracker I was not. Of course, I hadn’t seen the path.

  I was right about the detail of soldiers. Of the four that had hurried up the castle, about ten were left. One soldier hoisted himself onto the horse behind the queen and urged it up the hillside. Another soldier pulled Piers from his horse, and he landed in a bush with a cry.

  “Hey!” Jules said, protesting. “He didn’t do anything…”

  I knew enough of the French to know when to be quiet. I nudged Jules. “Just let it go,” I whispered.

  The nine remaining soldiers crowded around us, prodding us with swords. Not enough to hurt us, but to let us know we were now their prisoners. Jules followed me with Piers just behind her as we let them lead us up the path behind the queen’s horse.

  “This is fucking awful,” Jules said. “What are we going to do?”

  “The queen will explain everything,” I whispered behind me. But at the tip of my tongue was the phrase, we ARE cursed. I clenched my teeth together to avoid saying it.

  The soldier in front of me barked for us to remain silent, and I obliged him. Inside my head, I screamed obscenities, grabbing his sword, and demonstrating my swashbuckling skills.

  I almost laughed, despite being escorted as prisoner. Sir Guillaume was a joke, I realized, I’d never touched a sword in my life.

  Heavy iron shackles were hooked over our wrists, and a bar slid through the end to connect the three of us side-by-side. It was hard going up the castle hillside, but at least the rain had stopped—for now, anyway. Piers slipped once, taking us all tumbling down with him, but our guards pulled us all roughly to our feet.

  Maybe Jules was right this time. I didn’t know how we were going to get out of this alive.

  Chapter Two: The Lady in Red

  Soaking, covered in mud and moss, we finally made it to the back of the grand hall. As we skirted the rear of the castle, I couldn’t help but marvel at the newly constructed stone. I’d seen castles galore in textbooks and travel magazines and visited quite a few with my Uncle Richard, although not this particular one. There was something about the shining–well—newness of this castle. Limestone, I figured, since many of the castles were built with this plentiful material in ancient England as well as France. Everyone thinks they know what castles look like, but this one, with only a hall and attached tower, was brighter and more imposing than anything I’d ever seen.

  “Fucking majestic,” I said to no one in particular.

  “Shut up, Gill,” my sister whispered, while Piers looked between us.

  Our guard prodded us both in the back with something pointy, and I had a feeling he agreed with my sister.

  Like many structures of this period, as I knew from my studies at school, the cobblestone path leading to the massive arched gateway was uneven, treacherous, as we plodded across it. In the future, it would be a grass courtyard; I was sure. I stifled an ironic laugh as I imagined the safety rails and other devices this would be fitted with in the future, once the walls aged.

  I imagined on an average day this place would be alive with trade. Scattered thatched-roof buildings surrounded the castle, indicating a small village was budding around the its protective walls. This late in the day, however, with the sun setting so early, it was deserted. The only sound was the echo of our boots on the stone. Dismayed, I realized I was still in my dress slacks and shoes from the funeral, though my shiny shoes were caked with mud now and nearly destroyed. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to even give them up, especially when I looked at the woven cloth shoes my sister was wearing. I knew that Footlocker wouldn’t even be around for eight hundred years or so and oddly, that made me sad.

  Shit, what I wouldn’t give for a pair of hiking boots. Or sneakers. Or something goddamn modern at least. A good pair of shoes, tailored clothes, a mocha, maybe.

  Coffee. They didn’t even have coffee yet. I groaned inwardly. It was Arabic, I remembered, and didn’t appear in France for another two hundred years. Tea, from China, even longer. Also, notable foods missing from in this time: corn, potatoes, and tomatoes. Oh shit, what did they eat? My stomach rumbled, and I realized I hadn’t eaten in a little over twenty-four hours.

  On the wider road leading to the drawbridge ahead, the soldiers fanned out around us; two in front, two on either side and the rest falling behind. Jules nudged my shoulder and whispered, “Was that your stomach?”

  I nodded. “I’m starving.”

  “I want a burger,” she whispered.

  I chuckled. “We’re nine hundred years too early for that.”

  “Shit.”

  I had to agree.

  The long drawbridge over the entrance to the largest keep stretched out over a murky, shallow moat. It was rickety, a thing of terror as we crossed it. The soldiers seemed to pay no mind, nor did Piers, though he was wide-eyed and looked terrified.

  As soon as we ducked through the narrow entrance to the castle, the keep opened into a vast courtyard, and I realized where all the people were. The smell hit me first, worse than any slap to my face, more like I’d been decked by a prize-winning fighter. It was … ugh, so gross … I could almost taste it. Like an outhouse at the end of the long fair days—if both humans and animals used the outhouse, that is – and then someone had tipped it and spilled the contents over the ground. Excrement and urine were literally everywhere.

  God, it shouldn’t have bothered me. I’d seen way worse as a paramedic. I’d seen people shit themselves, I’d seen babies born in the back of minivans, I’d been puked on more times than I could count. None of it fazed me at all, I never flinched, I never wavered. I had a job to do.

  But standing here in the courtyard, while the soldiers pushed people aside and we literally waded through piles of shit, it hit me that the middle ages weren't glamorous, or cool, or even exciting anymore. The awe of the shiny castle and my excitement of being back in this time evaporated like the blackened smoke that spewed from the top of the keep in front of us.

  Christ, how did anyone live this way?

  Acrid smoke filled the air, burning my nose almost as much as the shit everywhere, followed by something burning, like the last time my mother forgot about her bread in the oven. There was nothing pleasant about this, nothing at all. Visions of brightly painted portraits from my art history class in high school flooded my brain, and I was starting to believe the artists had either been liars or just maybe blind. Fuck, it was utterly disgusting. I started to gag, and beside me, Jules did the same, her face a shade of green.

  The yard filled with a chaos of sounds, so loud I could barely concentrate, and with my hands in shackles, I couldn’t even cover my nose or ears. There were braying animals, goats, pigs, and horses, as well as screaming and harried peasants of all ages. Most gathered around ramshackle lean-tos. There were a few rough-hewn planks which supported sagging clothes over the top of thei
r wares. I spotted pottery, rows of wagons with muddy leeks, onions, and cabbage, and some cloth things that might have been rugs. The din was so loud I couldn’t make out any specific words, but I assumed they were recovering from the recent downpour. Like us, everyone was soaked to the bone, hair plastered to dirt streaked faces, wet clothes hanging from hunched shoulders. Everyone rushed this way and that, tying up merchandise and shoving tattered blankets around produce.

  “The sun will set soon,” Jules whispered.

  I looked at her. She was taking this crazy marketplace in stride. “They need to get back to the village,” I agreed. I realized I was glad I hadn’t eaten recently. I swallowed a dry heave and struggled to stand upright.

  Then there was Piers, shackled next to Jules, smiling and nodding at everyone that pushed around us. Of course, this is normal for him, I thought, he deals with this every day, doesn’t know anything different. Stepping in piles of filth was just another Monday for him.

  Suddenly, a hush fell over the entire courtyard, and many of the peasants dropped to one knee, a sickening sound as they plopped into the piles of mud at their feet, slickened by the recent rain. The soldiers snapped to attention, standing rigid around us, but since they were all so much shorter than Jules and I, I could see what everyone was groveling for.

  A short, round man with regal red robes, his face drawn and pinched, approached us. He looked younger than my father but older than Jules and me, so I guess maybe mid-thirties or so. He had thin lips and lines around his brown eyes, which made hi m look both disinterested and sad at the same time, but his eyes were kind. His head was bald, at least until the white pointed hat that sat straight up on his head, with little fringes of brown hair escaping out the sides. The large bronze cross he carried marked him as a religious leader; a bishop or something, I decided. My brain reminded me that the Catholic Church held everything in balance during this time period. I bowed my head and nudged Jules to do the same. Even Piers knew what was going on, and we all tried to bend at the waist as much as our shackles let us.