The Virgin's War (Tudor Legacy #3)(90)

“Witch Willow,” she called to Matthew. He swung his gaze at her, then realized what she meant and subtly adjusted direction.

It was a flat-out run for the tower. Pippa could feel each open wound on her back and gritted her teeth. She would not be the cause of their failure to reach safety. By the time Witch Willow could be seen through the gathering dark, Navarro’s horsemen were nearly within arrow range—a fact forcibly brought home by several distinctive swishes through the air.

Abandoning their horses and supplies, Madalena quickly led the way up the rickety exterior stairs while Matthew kept hold of Pippa’s arm. An arrow arced through the darkening sky and struck Matthew in the back, sending his body falling hard against Pippa. Even as he fell, a second arrow hit him in the arm. Madalena grabbed for him but his weight was too much for the women and Pippa was driven to her knees halfway up the stairs. The wood groaned and swayed alarmingly beneath them.

Another arrow clattered against the stone above them. “Go,” Matthew urged tightly. “Get inside. Bar that door.”

“Get up!” Pippa commanded.

Navarro and half his men were off their horses and crossing the ground. Only a hundred feet until the priest reached the stairs.

Matthew gripped her hand so tight her bones cracked. “Run!” he commanded, in the words that had sent her fleeing from him when she was fifteen. The message of the stars, the echoes of her vision. “Pippa, run now.”

To hell with the stars. “Matthew Harrington, if you do not get to your feet this second I will walk straight down these stairs and into Navarro’s hands. Get. Up.”

He got up. With Madalena’s help, they somehow managed to get him the rest of the way. Each step was an agony for Pippa, but she set her jaw and kept going. As the first Spanish boots touched the bottom of the stairs, Matthew collapsed on the floor of the tower and Madalena shot home the bolts of the door.

Between them, the women did the grim but necessary work of pulling the arrows out of Matthew. Madalena had managed to keep hold of her pack so they had a little water to clean him as best they could. She tore strips from her shift to bind the wounds that were, blessedly, not bleeding too freely. Then she turned to Pippa.

“Let me see your back.”

“I’m fine.”

“Pippa,” began Matthew, but she abruptly hushed him.

What windows there were in the tower were too high for her to see out of. She’d been listening to the Spanish coming up the stairs, trying to break down the door. Fists, feet, even a makeshift battering ram made little headway. The door was more than a foot thick and barred with iron in two places.

But none of that could stop fire.

Pippa closed her eyes. “They’re going to burn us out.”

A moment later came another pounding on the door, followed by an unmistakable voice. “Smell the smoke, Lady Philippa?” Tomás Navarro called. “My men have started a little fire. Little for now, at least…and at the bottom of the stairs. It will consume this old wood fast enough. The door is thick, I know, but fire purifies everything.”

They kept silent, since there was nothing to say.

“Here is my offer, Lady Philippa, made this once only. I’m going down now and will wait for five minutes. For those five minutes, the fire will be kept controlled at the foot of the stairs. If you surrender yourself within those five minutes, I will put out the fire. And I will let your husband and the renegade Spanish woman go free. If you do not appear, you all three die together.”

They heard his footsteps, good as his word, retreating down the stairs.

There was nothing to consider. Matthew had time only to say, “Don’t even think—” before she had unbarred the door and stepped out.

Madalena and Matthew scrambled after her, but she ignored their cries of protest. There was only this moment and then the next. Each moment so clear and perfect that she seemed hardly to be moving.

When she reached the ground, Navarro gestured to his men to douse the flames. She walked directly to him, completely and absolutely unafraid. He gripped her by the arm at the very instant the sounds of more horses galloping at breakneck speed came through the rising fog wreathed around them. Even before Pippa could see, she knew it was Stephen.

She could almost follow the trail of Navarro’s calculations. Enemies on horseback, Matthew coming blood-streaked down the stairs like vengeance personified—there was still one thing the priest could do.

Pippa didn’t see the dagger. It would not have mattered. She did not flinch when Navarro drove it toward her chest, but he misaimed. Rather than piercing her heart, she felt the dagger catch against a rib.

Before Pippa lost awareness, she performed her last critical act. She dropped every barrier in her mind, loosed every tie of control, and with everything in her heart and soul, reached for the thread that had bound her since birth and sent a call winging across the miles.

Kit.

—

Kit jolted out of an exhausted sleep in a cold sweat, heart pounding and pulse racing. It was dark before his eyes—all he had was an impression of fog and horses. It looked nothing at all like the inside of a tent.

Kit—a call, a plea, a flood of pain and fear.

In two minutes he was pulling on his boots, shirt thrown on and jerkin unlaced. Because he was concentrating on trying to reach Pippa, to let her know he was coming, Kit didn’t notice anyone entering his tent.