The Silent Songbird (Hagenheim #7)(61)

“Some men threw me in here. Can you please let me out?”

“Oh, I don’t think I will.”

Evangeline’s stomach sank and her face burned. Her mind raced as Sabina continued to speak.

“I thought I wanted to marry Westley le Wyse. Everyone knew I wanted to marry him.”

Sabina must have been standing off to the side because Evangeline could not see her through the tiny window.

“And I always get what I want. But when you came and Westley looked at you the way I wanted him to look at me, I could not let him make a fool of me.”

Evangeline leaned against the door. What was it Reeve Folsham had taught her? She stared hard at the bottom of the steps, looking for something she could use as a weapon. Sabina continued talking, but Evangeline hardly heard her as she ran down the steps and found a heavy pottery churn. She took out the paddle and the lid and threw them on the floor, then carried the heavy churn up the steps.

“Westley is not so saintly as everyone thinks. John Underhill told me how he always speaks ill of his father, Hugh Underhill. He blames Westley’s father for his father’s death. But either way, John is the one who has what I want—the will to gain the most wealth, the most land, and the most power.”

Evangeline raised the heavy churn over her head, then brought it down as hard as she could on the handle of the door. The churn fell to the stone step and broke into several pieces, but the handle also broke off and lay among the broken pottery pieces.

She pushed the door open, still holding on to the largest piece of the broken churn, and thrust it into Sabina’s face.

Sabina’s eyes widened and she screamed. Evangeline charged at her with the giant piece of broken pottery and used it to shove her to the ground, the broken edge near her throat. Sabina screamed again.

Evangeline fell to the ground beside Sabina and used her knee to press down on the pottery and Sabina’s chest. She grabbed Sabina’s hands and pinned them down on either side of her head. The pressure on Sabina’s throat halted her screaming.

“Where are they? Where were they taking Westley?”

Sabina’s face was turning red and her mouth and eyes were wide open. Evangeline eased up on the pressure to her chest. Sabina sucked in a gulp of air.

“Tell me now or I’ll—”

“They were taking him to the woods”—she gasped for air again—“behind the meadow.”

“If you’re lying to me . . .”

Sabina shook her head, her face a cloudy white now instead of red.

Evangeline left the broken pottery on top of Sabina as she stood. She ran as fast as she could to the oat barn, then she barreled out of the barn with her bow and arrows.

The reeve rushed toward her. “Where did you—?”

“Westley is in trouble! John Underhill is here. I think he intends to kill him.”

Reeve Folsham turned, and they both raced toward the meadow.





Chapter Twenty-Three


Westley and his father spoke with some of the traveling minstrels they had hired. When they had arranged for them to stay through the evening to entertain the crowd and had decided on a fair wage, he headed to the meadow where Evangeline and the others were supposed to sing. He wanted to make sure the stage his men had just built was holding up well.

Westley plunged into the crowd but could see neither Evangeline nor Reeve Folsham, who was supposed to keep watch over her. Nicola was nearby, talking to another servant at a booth selling silk scarves. He took a step toward her, and a tall burly man stepped in front of him. Something sharp stuck into his back and a voice behind him said, “We have Eva. If you don’t come with us, we will kill her.”

Westley clenched his teeth as a hand clamped down on his arm and turned him away from the crowd. The two men pressed in close on either side of him, as if trying to hide him from view, as they guided him toward the trees.

“Who are you?” Westley ground out.

“Just keep walking.”

The knife point pressed harder into his side. If it was only the one man and his knife, Westley would risk grabbing the knife handle and wrenching it from him. But since there were two men and Westley had no weapon of his own, he would wait for a better opportunity.

First he needed to find out where they were keeping Evangeline.

John Underhill and a few of his men stood in the middle of the trees. John’s face and eyes bore a dark look that was never there when they were children. Even his lips looked thinner, giving him a harder, colder expression.

“John. Why are you doing this?”

“Don’t pretend you don’t know.” The sneer on his face transformed him even more into someone Westley had never seen before.

“What have you done with Eva?”

“My father was right and you were wrong all those years ago.” John stomped closer, sticking his finger in Westley’s face. “He knew we were too soft on the villeins and servants, and they would turn against us. But you said that was not true. You said the better we treated them, the better off we would all be. And then it was not half a year later that they slaughtered my father.

“Then when my father was not even cold yet, your father was giving out extra food to the peasants, paying them wages for work they had always done for us as an obligation.” John lowered his finger but snarled, lifting his top lip like an animal. “My father always said, ‘If you don’t take control of the villeins, if you don’t weigh them down with more work than they can do, then they will take control.’ And he was right.”