Phantom Bride Read online

  Phantom Bride

  by

  Lisa Cach

  (Originally published as Of Midnight Born by Dorchester Publishing)

  Version 1.2 – November, 2012

  Published by Lisa Cach at Smashwords

  Copyright © 2012 by Lisa Cach

  Discover other titles by Lisa Cach at www.lisacach.com

  Smashwords Edition, License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be resold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Chapter One

  Clerenbold Keep, England 1350

  “God’s heart, Thomas, enough with your daydreaming! I cannot be expected to do this all myself,” Serena scolded, catching her brother wielding his sickle as if it were a sword, slashing at imaginary Frenchmen. She hacked at the wheat in front of her, the heavy-headed stalks falling with a whisper to the stubbled ground at her feet. The muscles in her shoulders and back burned with the pain of overuse, her hands were torn with blisters, her filthy gown stank of sweat and desperation, and a deep hunger that teetered on the edge of starvation gnawed at her gut, devouring patience and good humor.

  “Better that you should waste your strength on it than me; you were an idiot to suggest we attempt the harvest, and I must have been mad to listen to you. I should be fighting under the Black Prince,” Thomas said, standing with feet spread wide, his sickle pointed at her, “not cutting corn like a peasant.”

  “Then find me a peasant to take your place, and I will happily see you go,” Serena answered. “What? There are none?” she continued in mock surprise, flipping her long blond braid over her shoulder. “Wherever could they have gone?”

  Thomas slashed his sickle through the tops of the wheat, mangling the crop. “It’s stupid to keep living like this, Serena. We weren’t born to work in the fields; or at least I wasn’t. God knows what you were born for.”

  Serena took one more slash at the wheat, then dropped her own sickle, standing straight to her full six feet, glaring down at her shorter brother, a familiar anger rising within her. Never had any of her family thought she was worth listening to. Never had they seen her having any worth. “Do you think I like working in the fields?” she asked harshly. “Day after day in the sun, bent double, sweating and stinking like a pig, going home to that filthy, crumbling shell of a keep, weary to the bone, and supping on nothing but water and whatever we have scrounged from the fields? Do you think I like it? I don’t, Thomas. I hate it. But I do it, and you’re going to do it, too. I’ll be damned if I’ll die of starvation after all we’ve been through.”

  Thomas let out a cry of answering anger and threw his sickle across the field, the blade glinting in the sun as it twisted in the air, then fell, disappearing into the wheat. “Look at this field, Serena. Look at it!” he shouted, gesturing toward the acres of waving grain. “Why can’t you admit that we’re beaten? We can’t harvest this all ourselves. We’ll never find enough food to survive the winter, and even if we did, spring would find us worse off than we are now, with no one to plow or sow the fields for us.”

  “We have no choice!” Serena shouted back. The Pestilence had wiped out two-thirds of the people in the surrounding countryside, and taken an even steeper toll on the denizens of Clerenbold Keep. There was no one left but her and Thomas. “You’re not going to get to France without armor or a horse. No one is going to come to marry me, an ugly giantess with a scarred face and no money. No one wealthy will marry a pauper like you, either, for all your pretty looks. We are stuck here. Accept it! And if you don’t want to die of an empty belly, pick up your sickle and get back to work!”

  “You dare to give me orders? As if I would take orders from any woman, but to think I’d take them from my useless lump of a sister beggars belief.” Thomas made a rude gesture at her and began to walk away.

  “Thomas! Where are you going?”

  “Wherever I want,” he said without turning. “Have supper waiting for me when I return.”

  “Thomas!” she yelled. “By Saint Nicholas, come back here!”

  He kept walking.

  Serena turned back to the standing grain, picking up her sickle and hacking at the wheat—hacking at fate, at death, at Thomas, and at the few peasants who, having survived the ravening Pestilence, had run off to find better pay than they could offer. Sweat dripped into her eyes, ran between her breasts, and soaked through the back and underarms of her old gown. The muscles in the small of her back screamed, her whole body cramping from the stooped posture.

  Weariness pulling at her, she turned to survey how much she had accomplished. Less than an eighth of this one field lay cut. Rooks had already settled en masse on the ground, feeding on her corn.

  “Yaa! Hee!” she screeched at them, waving the sickle and running at the birds. They scattered into the air, but did not go far, landing in shrubs at the edge of field, waiting for her to leave.

  Cutting the wheat was not enough. She would need to rake and gather the grain, then dry and thresh it. She would need to do all of that and more before she could eat it, and half of it must be done before the night fell, if she wanted to protect her crop from the birds and mice.

  She dropped down to the ground, sitting amid the stubble and cut stalks, the sickle falling to the side as the immensity of the task overwhelmed her. Tears stung her eyes and her chest clenched. She was weary, so weary. And when she was tired the door creaked open on the dark pain within her heart.

  So much loss. So many familiar faces, gone forever. So alone.

  Serena choked on a sob, then tightened her jaw and roughly scrubbed her tingling nose with the back of her hand, as if she could erase the sign of weakness from her own awareness. She would not break down. She would not! That way lay death, for she knew if she ever allowed herself to feel her grief for all the people who had died, if she fully felt the terror of being alone in the world with only Thomas to depend on, she would collapse in this field and let the rooks have her corpse.

  They’d be welcome to the damned corn, too.

  She sniffled, lips pulling in a wry smile that sagged again as she looked at the uncut wheat.

  Maybe Thomas was right. It was too much work for the two of them, and they knew only a smattering of what they should of farming and of preserving food. Add to that that all that remained of their livestock was an ancient pony and three chickens, and there seemed no way for them to survive here at the keep through the winter and next year, much less to recover their fortunes.

  She picked up a head of wheat, breaking the grains away from the stalk with her fingers. There had to be some alternative, some way out. They had lived through too much to give up now. If they could not do all the work themselves, there had to be a way to get the money to pay the high wages the peasantry now charged for their labor.

  She and Thomas had no money of their own. Their family had not been wealthy even before the Pestilence had taken so much, so there was nothing of value to sell in their barren keep. Even if there had been something, there were no buyers. There were those who sold off fragments of their land out of desperation, but that she could not do. Their father had long ago sold more than he should have to fund his warring, and there had been barely enough left to support them and the peasants they had once had. She knew she would be nothing without the remaining land and keep, would be reduced to the condition of a peasant herself. Thomas was likely willing enough to sell, though—all he could see was the glory and adventure of battle.


  It was true that Thomas might possibly win wealth and new lands through war, either through plunder or the Black Prince’s favor—assuming he was not killed in the process—but he could not go to war without horse and armor. And the only horses suited to the task were dead, the only armor either outsized, or broken and rusted through.

  Marriage had always been a reliable source of income, but neither she nor Thomas stood much chance of finding a willing, wealthy partner. Thomas was fair enough of face, but poor and without a title. And she—she had not even the face to recommend her. She touched the scar that crossed her forehead, cut through her right eyebrow, then leaped over her eye to trace a path across her cheekbone. She had not forgiven her brother William for giving her that, even now that he was dead.

  She stared out across the valley, looking for some answer in the green countryside. Its lushness was an illusion of life, for she knew that in ditches and empty hovels, in houses and along roads, even in the very fields, there lay the moldering remains of the victims of the disease that had spread like a foul wind across the land. People, sheep, horses, goats, even cats and dogs had fallen, their bodies black and putrid. Even now, one could sometimes catch the scent of death and decay on the air and wonder if the Pestilence would come back to take those it had left living.

  The sun was behind her, slanting its rays across the valley as it descended behind the hills. The valley fell into shadow, but several miles away, on top of the highest hill in the range, the golden light caught on Hugh le Gayne’s fortress, its squat towers rising above the trees.

  Le Gayne’s lands and home had been decimated by the Pestilence just as her own had, only he had money to continue paying peasants to work his fields; she had been told so by a small group of workers crossing her own land to go to his. They said they had heard he had bought new livestock, undoubtedly at outrageous prices. He had been hit hard, yet had retained his wealth.

  Would that le Gayne’s home were her home, and that she had no fears of starving over the winter.

  Would that she had someone to rely on, a husband who would protect and cherish her, as she would cherish him.

  Would that she might bear children to love.

  Would that she need never again be so helpless and alone.

  She watched as the sun painted the fortress in pink and gold, the sky behind it deepening into a rich blue. Suddenly the turquoise streak of a falling star, pale and strange in the last light of day, coursed across the lower heavens and disappeared in the sky behind the fortress.

  She drew in her breath. God himself had given her the sign she needed.

  Serena was in the small kitchen of the keep, eating roasted apples and boiled turnips and greens, and drinking some of their precious remaining wine when Thomas at last returned, a hare hanging from his hand. There was a larger kitchen in a separate building outside the keep, but they had no need of its huge fireplaces, large enough to fit an entire ox, and the large stone room only made them feel their lack of companions. She and Thomas spent most of their time indoors in this small kitchen off the upper great hall of the keep, the rest of the chambers too hauntingly empty of life to be comfortable.

  “It was in one of my snares,” Thomas said of the beast, dropping it on the table and taking out his knife to start dressing it.

  “Oh, Thomas,” she said, setting down her cup and staring large-eyed at the animal. It had been over a week since she’d tasted meat. “I still have turnips and greens in the kettle. We can have a real stew.”

  He nodded, made several cuts on the hare, then with a tearing sound pulled the skin off in one piece.

  She knew better than to think the rabbit a peace offering. They fought constantly, she and Thomas, and neither was wont to back down or apologize. Their desperate situation had increased the tensions that had always been between them, but it had also made them realize their dependence on one another. The empty keep was a constant reminder that they were all the family either one had left, and that no one else would care if they lived or died. Their battles usually ended in bloodless standoffs, the disagreements ultimately less important than working together to survive.

  With the hare in the pot and the unusable bits cleaned away, Serena poured Thomas a cup of the wine. He raised his eyebrows at her.

  “What’s this for?” he asked suspiciously.

  “ ’Tis in celebration.”

  “Marry! Celebration of what?”

  “Sit down, Thomas, and I shall tell you.” She waited until he had sat and taken a drink of the wine before she continued. “I have thought of a way to keep us from starving: I shall marry Hugh le Gayne.”

  Thomas rolled his eyes and looked away, losing interest. “He won’t have you. He is wealthy enough to have his choice of women, and will choose one who can increase his holdings.” He swirled the wine in his cup.

  “He will have me. He will have no choice.” Serena smiled darkly. “You and I are going to kidnap him.”

  Thomas’s eyes popped open wide, then he gave a shout of laughter. “Ha! You think he’s a virgin heiress? You can’t destroy his reputation by forcing him to spend a night in our keep without chaperones. My God, Serena, you’ve lost your senses!”

  “It wasn’t my thought to pluck his nonexistent virginity,” she said dryly. “What I had in mind was giving him a choice between death and marriage.”

  Thomas swallowed his wine wrong, coughing. “Are you crazy?” he said in a gasp. “You can’t threaten Hugh le Gayne—he’d kill you before the words were half out of your lips.” He set his cup on the table. “God’s blood, I needn’t worry. You’d never succeed in kidnapping him, anyway.”

  “He is much better off than we, but still he cannot have so many surviving men-at-arms to defend him. Everyone works in the fields—or if they can they go to war. How many could he have left to guard him? He must leave the fortress to oversee the work, and I am betting that he is accompanied by few, if any, when he does. He is likely too confident of his position, and of his authority. He cannot think that any would dare to attack him.”

  “You don’t know that. He didn’t hold on to so much by being careless. A man with so much to lose learns caution.”

  “We will seize him on his own lands,” Serena said, hands gripped around her cup, the desperate plan laid out in her mind’s eye. “Then we shall bring him back here and lock him in a storeroom with neither food nor water until he agrees to the marriage. The next monk who comes begging can perform the service.” She leaned forward, pinning Thomas with her eyes and the force of her will. “It can work, if we are bold enough to attempt it.”

  Thomas shook his head, leaning back, away from her. “It will lead only to death, even more surely than winter.”

  “It’s life, Thomas. I’ll have a husband, and we’ll finally be able to outfit you for war. You can go fight under the Black Prince.”

  He snorted. “A man would hardly be generous to a wife who forced him to wed, much less to her brother. Le Gayne! Even if your idea could work—and it can’t—le Gayne would be the worst choice. He is a beast of a man, hardly human. You’ve seen him: ugly as a cow pat, with the personality of a rabid badger.”

  She shrugged, pretending not to care, even as she pushed down the doubts that Thomas’s words stirred in her. She’d seen le Gayne only once, years ago, when he visited the keep to talk to her father. She had hidden out of sight, for le Gayne, with his fleshy face and loud, arrogant voice, had frightened and repulsed her. To be married to such a man, to give him dominion over her body, to be under his control… Her soul shuddered. “He is the only choice. A rich and awful husband is better than no husband at all.”

  “He is said to be godless, and ruthless with those who disobey him. I have heard that his first wife poisoned herself rather than continue to share his bed.”

  “Nonsense. The woman died of a fever, and there is nothing unusual in that. I am not afraid of le Gayne,” she lied. “Do you think I cannot hold my own with the likes of him, after l
iving so many years amongst our brothers? He is said to be old and fat now. I will be able to defend myself.”

  “Perhaps he is old, but old like a boar, with the same strength and temper. Serena, forget this plan,” Thomas begged, real concern growing in his eyes. “It can lead only to disaster.”

  “There’s a chance it might work. You cannot deny that,” she said softly. “There is a chance.”

  “Very small, and not worth the price of failure.”

  “If I were wed and your responsibilities to me finished, you would be free to go where you wished, and to sell the land and keep if that was what you wanted. You could get enough to arm yourself for war that way, even if le Gayne would not pay.”

  “I would be dead before I had the chance, and you as well,” he said.

  “And you are the one who wishes to be a soldier!” she scoffed. “There is no daring in you, no fight.”

  “There is none of your foolishness in me!”

  Serena took several breaths, and when she spoke again she did so in a lowered voice. “I have always wanted a husband, Thomas. You and our brothers may not have thought so—certainly you all made clear to me how unlikely it ever was to happen—but it is the truth. I am eighteen years of age, and I do not want to grow old barren and untouched. I survived the scourge upon this land, and now I want a full life. I want children, and a family of my own. Le Gayne can give me that, even if he hates me. I don’t care how unappealing he is, as long as he can give me children and a secure home, and keep me from starving over the winter.”

  “You want to be a wife?” Thomas asked, incredulous. “A mother? I cannot believe it! You begged to be trained to fight like the rest of us. You know nothing of children, and you but scarcely tried to learn the duties of a chatelaine.”

  “With Mother dead when I was still a child, who was there to teach me, except the bailiff who had no time for a girl? Who was there to encourage me? The only praise that ever came from Father’s lips came for skill with a weapon. He had no time for womanish things, not after Mother died. Of course I wanted to learn to fight.”