My Lady Knight Read online

  Lady Knight

  Jocelyn Kelley

  For James Jones

  Thanks for all the information you shared.

  Sometimes what happens in Vegas doesn’t stay in Vegas.

  Chapter 1

  A single mistake could be disastrous.

  Isabella de Montfort repeated those words over and over to herself, not that she needed to. Whenever she worked with dangerous elements, she was aware of how unforgiving they could be. It was not like when she blended herbs or used polished healing stones. Then, a single mistake only meant starting over. A misstep with elements could do far more damage.

  She held her breath as she raised the glass bottle over the dish set on the table in the center of the stone bam. She watched a drop slide down the glass toward the opening. Only a single drop must be allowed to fall into the dish. More would be unsafe. The strong, bitter odor of the elements scratched her throat as she stirred them together.

  With a satisfied smile as the elements blended correctly, she carried the bottle to the shelves where she stored her supplies. She kept them behind a locked door because she did not want anyone else in St. Jude’s Abbey moving them and causing an accident. Closing the door, she secured it with the key she wore on the end of a string around her neck.

  Isabella went back to the table as she wiped her hands on the leather apron she wore over her simple gray gown. She opened one of the half dozen pouches she wore on her waist sash and drew out a slip of smooth hide. For the past few years, she had kept her most frequently used materials in small pouches. She needed to make notes about the experiment, for she must be able to repeat the process with the same result to prove it was not a fluke. Sitting on a stool by the table, she tapped the quill against her chin as she considered the next step.

  She did not have much time before vespers. The rest of the experiment would have to wait until tomorrow. Nobody else should be nearby because she was never certain what the results of her mixtures might be. During the afternoon, being alone was not difficult. Each day after the midday meal, the other sisters of St. Jude’s Abbey practiced their skills with Nariko and her fellow instructors who taught swordsmanship and other defensive arts in the cleared areas within the Abbey and in the fields beyond its walls.

  Isabella always took advantage of the hours when the cloister was quiet. Unlike most of her sisters, she enjoyed the silence. It offered her an opportunity to think without intrusion.

  And just now she was thinking if she added a bit more salt water to the mixture ...

  Jumping to her feet, she went to the storage cupboard, unlocked the door, and took out a bottle. Once she finished this test, she wanted to turn her attention to the experiment she never had been able to make work. A fantastic tale from beyond Outremer spoke of a compound that, when properly mixed and lit with a brand, created a controlled explosion. She had been trying for the past six years to devise the proper formula. She was getting closer to the solution, knowing it contained both sulfur and charcoal because of the description of its residual odor, but she had not solved it.

  For now, she must concentrate on her current project. She bent over the bowl and prepared to pour more water into it.

  “Sister Isabella, are you here?” came a call from the other side of the bam.

  Isabella set the bottle down, then moved it away from the dish, as she looked past stacks of empty barrels in the bam. She recognized the youthful voice. “What are you doing here at this hour, Zuki?”

  A girl, who had celebrated the twelfth anniversary of her birth a few weeks ago, stepped out from the shadows. Mikazuki was the only child born to Nariko and her husband, George, who oversaw the Abbey’s gardens and fields. Born in the second year of Queen Eleanor’s imprisonment, Zuki—as she was called by the sisters—had inherited her mother’s tilted eyes and ebony hair. She had dark green eyes like her father and his ability to make anything sprout, which was why she often spent time with Isabella. She had endless questions about the herbs Isabella grew for the stillroom.

  “I am avoiding Kachan,” Zuki said as she shut the door before inching closer to where Isabella was working. She wore the short tunic donned for practicing with the instructors.

  “Your mother will be vexed,” Isabella replied, knowing that the word meant “mother” in Nariko’s native language. It was of the far distant land from where her mother’s father had traveled west to Persia and the Holy Land. There, Queen Eleanor first encountered him and his daughter, Nariko, and invited them to return with her to England.

  “She knows I do not like to practice with a bow and arrow.” She slashed the air with an imaginary blade. “I prefer something sharper. Or maybe you can teach me to use a whip as you do.” She pointed to the leather coiled over Isabella’s right hip.

  With a frown, Isabella walked around the table to keep the girl from coming nearer. Zuki was all elbows and knees as she seemed taller each morning. If she bumped something . . . Isabella did not even want to think of that. Folding her arms in front of her, she said, “You cannot hide here today.”

  “But, Sister Isabella, you said I could always come and learn from you.”

  “Not today. What I am doing is dangerous, and I will not put you in jeopardy.”

  Zuki crossed her arms over her narrow chest, copying Isabella’s pose as she stamped her foot against the stone floor. “You said—”

  “Ame futte ji katamaru is what your mother says.”

  The girl rolled her eyes. “Sister Isabella! Don’t use that old saying! Kachan speaks in her father’s tongue only when she wants to teach me a lesson.”

  “Do you remember what those words mean? ‘Rain firms the ground.’ ”

  “I know it is supposed to caution a young person that challenges make one stronger.” She let her arms fall to her sides. “Please don’t lecture me, too.”

  “Too?”

  “Sister Dominique insists I study all sorts of weapons.”

  “As everyone else does.”

  “You don’t.”

  Isabella forced her lips to remain in a smile. “Not now, but I have. You know it is the abbess’s wish that each of us find the path that brings us the most joy and offers us a purpose. I found my path when I was close to your age. You need to continue studying until you find yours.”

  Muttering something, Zuki went to look out the window. She did that, Isabella had learned, when she had no argument left, but was unwilling to concede. That stubborn nature was the very thing that would compel Zuki to keep at her studies.

  It was unfortunate that Isabella had not learned that lesson herself. She admired the sisters who could command a sword. She had seen Sister Fayette swing a sword through a stack of onions in a single blow, slicing them in equal halves. The sisters who controlled the flight of an arrow with ease awed her. Sister Dominique was equally skilled with a quarterstaff and a short blade, sometimes combining the two, and Isabella was breathless watching her.

  But working with herbs and science was the way Isabella had chosen. She had read every manuscript she could find about elements and humors that could bring health or sickness. During a hard winter almost five years ago, she had saved the abbess when a vile fever had taken several lives within the Abbey. She had been commended, but she wondered if everything she learned really mattered when she was not as skilled as her sisters. If she could create the compound from the bits of information she had garnered from tom pages and discussions with Nariko, she would prove she was as capable of serving the Abbey as anyone else within its walls.

  “Sister Isabella!” came a shout from beyond the bam.

  “It is Sister Charlotta,” Zuki said, pushing away from the window. “Running!”

  “Sister Charlotta is running?” Isabella was shocked. The stout
sister seldom moved faster than a snail, even when going into the chapel. Sister Charlotta had been the cause for many sisters getting soaked in a sudden shower outside the church door.

  Going to the door, she opened it. “I am in here, Sister Charlotta. Is something amiss?”

  “Thank goodness you are here.” The rotund sister stumbled into the bam. “The abbess— Let me catch my breath.” She put her hand out to steady herself against a barrel as she sucked in air. The barrels rocked; then one tumbled onto another. With a loud thump, one fell onto the table. It collapsed. The bowl and bottle flew, smashing against a wall. A barrel bounced toward Zuki.

  Loosening the whip from her belt, Isabella snaked it out. It wrapped around the girl’s waist. She tugged hard. Zuki stumbled toward her. The barrel struck the wall near the window. Another rolled across the bam, hitting beneath the other window and shattering. The wooden hoops holding it together bounced across the floor to land atop the broken table.

  “Oh my!” choked Sister Charlotta. “I did not mean to min your bam, Sister Isabella.”

  “Are you all right?” She looked at Sister Charlotta and then at Zuki, who was loosening the whip from around her.

  “That was amazing!” Zuki cried. “I did not realize you could do that with your whip, Sister Isabella. Will you teach me how to capture someone with a whip?”

  “Maybe later.” As she coiled her whip once more, she stared around at what was left of her work area. It would take days to clean the mess.

  “I never guessed,” Zuki continued, too excited to stand still, “that barrels could bounce so high. Did you see the one that hit the ceiling?”

  Isabella was about to reply when a motion caught her eye. Something liquid was running along the wall. She gasped in horror. The door on her storage cabinet was open. Bottles were broken or tipped over. Liquids and powders were mixing together. A finger of smoke came from beneath the cracked table.

  It was the only warning she needed. She shoved Zuki toward the door. It was too far.

  “Get behind the barrels!” she ordered.

  “Barrels? Which ones?”

  “Any one!” She grabbed Sister Charlotta’s arm. She pushed the shocked woman next to Zuki and threw herself over another barrel to kneel behind it.

  “Cover your ears!” she shouted. “It is going to explode.”

  Sister Charlotta stared in horror. Zuki’s eyes were wide with excitement and fear.

  “Cover your ears!” She put her hands up over her own

  ears. “Now!”

  The explosion rocked the building. Flames erupted toward the thatched roof. Shards of stone and wood crashed into the walls. Pain rammed her left shoulder. Hearing a cry, she could not tell if it came from Zuki or Sister Charlotta. The sound was everywhere, inside her as well as outside. Was the whole world blowing up?

  Then it was silent.

  Dust and thatch and slivers of wood tumbled around her. She coughed as she waved aside the cloud jabbing invisible needles into her eyes. Its acrid stench burned her throat, and she tried to see through the tears cascading down her cheeks.

  They had to get out of the bam. She could not be certain what the cloud might contain, but as each breath seared through her, she knew it was dangerous.

  Shaking Zuki’s shoulder, she got no response. She rolled her over onto her back. The girl’s eyes were closed, but she was breathing.

  Isabella drew the girl over her shoulder and struggled to come to her feet. She should not have any trouble lifting someone as slight as Zuki, but her knees seemed unable to function. Forcing them to lock in place, she stood. Her head rang as if the chapel bell were inside it.

  “Sister Charlotta?” She tried to shout the name. Only a raspy whisper emerged.

  It was enough, because Sister Charlotta raised her head, shaking pieces of thatch and daub out of her dark hair.

  “We have to get fresh air!” Isabella poked her with a toe when the sister let her head fall back on her hands. “Hurry!”

  Sister Charlotta came to her feet, weaving as if she had swallowed all the wine in the undercroft. Somehow, Isabella was able to steer her out the door, which thankfully had not collapsed.

  Shouts came from every direction, and the sisters ran toward them from the cloisters and the stables and the falconry mews and through the gate. Isabella motioned for them to stay back. Her raspy warning vanished as another explosion ripped through the building. Oddly colored flames rose through what was left of the roof.

  The concussion knocked Isabella to her knees. She struggled to stand. Hands came from everywhere, guiding her to her feet and away from the fire. She heard her own voice— as if from the depths of the Abbey’s well—ordering the others to flee. Then she heard nothing, save the endless ringing, as she sank into darkness.

  As she stood in the abbess’s office, Isabella adjusted the sling around her left arm and tried not to wince. She was lucky to be alive. As were Sister Charlotta and Zuki. Both were in the infirmary overseen by Isabella’s assistant, Sister Marthe. Sister Charlotta had burns on her left arm as well as a broken wrist. Zuki had been hurt worst, for she had a lump the size of a fist on her forehead. The girl had been senseless for more than an hour, but was now conscious and able to identify herself and others.

  Wanting to remain by their bedsides, Isabella had not been able to ignore the abbess’s request to come to her office. It had been a terse repetition of what Sister Charlotta had intended to tell her. The abbess of St. Jude’s Abbey wished to see her, and no sister kept the abbess waiting. Yet, when Isabella had arrived, the abbess’s office was empty.

  The room was the grandest in the abbess’s house because she received visitors in it. By the broad hearth was a table with a pair of benches, but Isabella had never seen anyone but the abbess sit there. A prie-dieu was placed by the window offering a view of the cloister where the sisters would soon be gathering after the evening meal. A portrait of Queen Eleanor graced one wall and a crucifix the other.

  The abbess came into the room. She was short and as round as Sister Charlotta. Unlike Sister Charlotta, she always traveled around the Abbey at a speed that would be the envy of a woman half her age. As she crossed the room, Isabella felt as if she were shrinking. She towered over the abbess, but she always felt small in the abbess’s presence.

  “I am pleased to see you here,” the abbess said, her clear voice cutting through the ringing that remained in Isabella’s ears. “At last.”

  Isabella gulped hard. The abbess asked nothing less from the sisters than what she asked of herself. Perfection. “It was an accident. It will not happen again. I—”

  “Sister Isabella, I understand that the injuries are minor.”

  “Yes.” She did not admit that her shoulder ached fiercely.

  “You told me that you would not attempt inside the Abbey to create the dangerous powder that Nariko told you about.”

  The abbess had stopped short of forbidding Isabella’s trying to discover the formula for the powdery mix. She had, however, insisted the experiments not endanger anyone or the sacred parts of the Abbey.

  Not that the restriction had mattered. Isabella’s mixtures, made in the fields beyond the Abbey, had sputtered or hissed. Nothing more.

  “Abbess,” Isabella hurried to add, “the explosion in the bam was an accident. I did not gainsay your orders.”

  “I am pleased to hear that.” She frowned. “We shall speak more about this after you have returned.”

  “Returned? From where?” Her stomach twisted with anxiety. The sisters of St. Jude’s Abbey left the Abbey for only one reason: when Queen Eleanor requested a sister’s help. But wasn’t that impossible? The queen had been imprisoned by her husband almost a dozen years ago, and in all that time, there had been no communication between her and St. Jude’s Abbey.

  She looked at the portrait of the queen. Queen Eleanor, wife of King Henry II, mother of Prince Richard—the king’s heir—and his brother, Prince John, had established St. Jude’s Abbey
. Named for the patron saint of hopeless causes, the Abbey served the queen as a source of highly trained women who could be called forth to serve the queen with amazing skills.

  But Isabella de Montfort did not have amazing skills. She had excused herself from too many classes and avoided too many practices to experiment with herbs and elements. Her stomach cramped more. Was the queen ill? Queen Eleanor was no longer a young woman, and evil humors preyed on those who had left their youth behind. No, that made no sense. The queen had physicians and surgeons to tend to her. She had no need to call forth the Abbey’s healer.

  “When you return from where you are being sent,” the abbess replied with a hint of reproof in her voice. St. Jude’s Abbey might not be exactly like other religious houses, but the abbess demanded the absolute sense of duty that was present in any abbey.

  “I see,” Isabella said, because she thought she should reply.

  “And what do you see, Sister Isabella?” The abbess scowled as she sat at her table. “Have you been studying the dark arts of divination along with healing?”

  “No, no. I meant—that is, I should have said. ..” She paused and took a deep breath. The motion sent a whetted pang across her aching shoulder. She was not sure if she had banged it against a barrel or hurt it while carrying Zuki’s

  limp body from the burning bam. “Forgive me for speaking when I should have been listening.”

  The abbess’s face eased from her frown. “Now that sounds like the Sister Isabella I know well. You depend on logic rather than emotion, and you will be well served by that skill on the errand I have for you.”

  Errand? Disappointment welled up, even though, moments ago, she had been overwhelmed at the idea of leaving the Abbey. She had been certain she was about to be tapped to go on a glorious adventure in the service of Queen Eleanor. It seemed the abbess was aware of Isabella’s lack of skills. Another twinge swept over her, but it had nothing to do with her shoulder.