A Killing Season by Priscilla Royal Page A

her forehead against the unyielding stone, she wept. The transgression she might have committed was a sin she had not even truly desired. “My most beloved husband, why have you forsaken me?” she murmured. “How did I offend?”
    Lifting her head, she looked out on the black night and let the darkness slide into her empty heart. She grasped her breasts. “When these were still sweet to suck and my flesh bore the blush of roses, men begged to lie with me. I rejected their pleas, not even allowing a single kiss. Why? When you rode through the gate, you turned your back on me, refusing to grant even one kind glance. Shall I pay for cleaving to my vows as God required? Was my constancy so great a sin that I must writhe alone in my bed like the Devil’s whore?”
    A squall of hard rain hit the open window, stinging her face.
    She laughed.
    A servant, passing through the corridor, abruptly halted in alarm. The tray in her hands tilted. Struggling, she righted it before the vessels tumbled to the floor. “My lady, are you ill?”
    Spinning around, Margaret pressed her back to the wall and screamed maledictions at the woman.
    The maid gripped the tray and ran down the corridor, not stopping until she had reached the safety of a door. Only then did she dare look back, her eyes wide with terror.
    Margaret slid to the floor and bent forward, fists pressed into her womb. “I can bear this no longer,” she whispered. “My sons are dying. My husband refuses to lend me the comfort of his arms. My loneliness eats into my soul where it rots like a rat’s corpse. What grave transgression have I committed to deserve these curses?”
    The wind howled in reply.
    “When I was young,” she whispered to whatever spirit might care to listen, “our union was blessed. I was as fruitful as my lord was virile. Then he left to take the cross. Should I have abandoned my children and taken holy vows myself? Is that my sin?”
    She waited for a response but could feel no warmth of God’s love in the icy air.
    “Am I to be condemned for lust because my womb begins to wither?” She looked up at the unrelenting darkness outside the window, then screamed: “Is it just, my lord, that I must suffer because we grew old apart?”
    ***
    At the end of the corridor, two servants peeked around the corner. The wizened maid drew the sign of the cross; the young one shook her head in dismay.
    “I see the Devil himself hovering over there. See? Just behind the mistress,” the former whispered and pointed toward Lady Margaret. “He’ll be riding the mistress tonight in her bed for cert, leaving our master to walk the ramparts alone again.”
    The young one shuddered.
    Hastily, they both scurried away.

Chapter Fifteen
    Hugh nodded to the soldier on watch.
    The man was eager to talk, but Hugh’s spirit begged for silence. With a terse reply, he passed the man by, then grieved that he had not been kinder. Sentry duty on windswept nights was a lonely task, one he understood well. How many nights had he stared into the blackness, fearing a muffled sound was the enemy and wishing it so in equal measure?
    Turning around, he shouted encouragement and a jest to the motionless shadow behind him.
    The soldier raised his hand and resumed his slow walk along the wall.
    The coming storm confirmed Hugh’s troubled mood. The wind was wild, the air so cold it nipped painfully at his face. He knew he should not be here on these exposed ramparts; neither could he bear any longer the softer company he had escaped. As the untamed elements lashed him, he doubted that any effort to retain his reason would last. He surrendered to failure. His warm, fur-lined cloak might protect his body from those elements, but his maimed spirit trembled.
    He had been foolish to leave Lucas behind, the only person who could pull him out of the whirlpool that often threatened to drown him in memories of blood. But the baron hated the very sight of the man, and, when Hugh received Herbert’s