Light Casts No Shadows, part 7

       The next morning was terrable.
   I still remember lying in that dark, dank cellar. All sence of time and place were lost. It was as if I had woken in some one else's tomb. My head ached, to the pint where i could not think with a single degree of clarity. My throat and mouth were so dry it was asthough I had been salting buckets of sand.
   It reminded me of when I had marched all day though the barren country side of southern Spain under a relentless summer sun. But it was worse.
   Because I had drank too much wine.
   When one drinks more than one should, one often wakes with a sence of dread and guilt. Happy is the man who searches his cloudy, drunken memories and finds that, in fact, he has done nothing to be ashamed off. I, however, was aware that my crushing dread was (in so many, but not all, ways) justified
   Desperately thirstly, I found the nearest source of liquid. Half of a smashed bottle of wine which still held a mouthful of wine. i drank it, and regained some capacity for thought.
   My first ration thought was of the girl in the cell next to me. she would require water and food.
   It was not my intention to starve her to death.
   I set off in search of the kitchen.
   Jacques sat on the steps leading up from the cellars. He had a bottle of wine, two full glasses and a wolfish smile.
   "Good afternoon Captain!' he called out. "More wine?!"
   Silently, I brushed past him.
   Searching the ground floor of the manor, I found that all of the servents had deserted their posts. Quite reasonable of them.
   Soon I located the kitchen and parlour. First I found a tray, a glass and a jug.  I filled the jug with water, and the tray with bread, cheese and fruit. As an after thought, I drank a little water myself and stuffed some bread and cheese in my pocket. Then I put the jug and glass on the tray and took it down to the cellar. I put it down on the floor before I opened her door, incase she rushed me.
   She did not. she lay huddled in one corned of the room. I decided to give her a blanket later, she seemed so cold.
   She seemed to ignore me as I placed the tray on the floor, but as I left she glanced up at me.
   "Madman,' she hissed.
   I locked her door behind me.
   She was always pretty when she was angry.
   I retired to my gold hoard and ate my bread and cheese. this cleared my mind further. I realised then that I would need to improve the conditions of her confinement before they became unsanitary.
   It was my intention to keep her, not destroy her.
  

Light Casts No Shadows, part 6.

   Now, I recall little of that first night in Thornton Manor, for the first thing I looted was Thornton's wine cellar. 
   In my rsge, I smashed open bottles with my sword and quathed from the shattered glass.
   Then I went from room to room, gathering all of value. Gold, silver, gems, diomonds. plates, clocks, cutlery, chests of coin, bags of money, weapons, jewelry. There was plenty.
   Half blind with wine and rage I roamed about the manor, hunting like a demented beast. I smashed open anything that was locked, defaced every painting of Thornton or his kin. Some things I destroyed simply for the joy of seeing them break. The greatest, wildest joy came from knowing that I took from Thornton.
   I carried arm-fulls of it down to the cellars, and piled it in an empty vault between the wine cellar and the cell where I had placed the lady.
   I thought little of her that night, nor do I believe I heard her weeping.
   After gathering my hoarde I selected the finest bottle of red, opened it in the conventional manner, and took it to the cell that held my collection.
   There, I sat upon my treasure, like a dragon on its hoarde, and drank. Suddenly time and labour caught up with me, my boiling blood became ice, and I was exhausted. Empty and exhausted. I drank from his wine. 
   At the darkest and coldest time of night, just before sunrise, Jacques joined me.
   "How does it feel, now that you have all that you wanted?" he asked.
   "I feel nothing,' it was true, my heart was but a lump of slag in my chest.
   "Come now, tell me. How does it feel? I have lead you here, guilded you in your hours of weakness. Where is my reward?"
   "I feel nothing.
   He cursed in French. How I hate that language.
   "Thornton took all I had from me. He stabbed me in the back as I served my country. Now I have taken all that he had from him. That is all, it is over."
   I finished the last drop of wine and lay down on my gold.
   "What of the girl?" he asked with a smile.
   "What of her?"
   "What will you do with her now that you have her?"
   "Nothing."
   "Nothing," he snarled. "What sort of a man are you? I know exactly what I would you with her..."
   "You are foul," I growled. "Why couldn't you have stayed in France?"
   "I often ask myself the same question."
   Then, I believe, I passed out.
 

Light Casts No shadows, part 5

   The staff seemed strangly unmoved by the sudden and brutal death of their lord. Later, I learnt that he had not been a kind master.
   His lady, however, was rather more emotional. She rushed from the door and knelt beside his bleeding corpse. Weeping. Quite uncontrolably.
   Jacques was by then at my side.
   "You know what to do," he said in his silky smouth, almost sickly, French accent.
   I swept her up and my arms and carried her inside. She was too shocked to resist. Hastily, I located a secure room in the cellar and placed her on the stone flagged floor.
   Only then did I really look at her. She had grey-blue eyes, as bright and hard as ice. I still recal how they wept. Her hair was long, now wild, and jet black.
   The resemblance between her and my lost Annabel was striking, but it only moved me for a moment. I turned my back on her and locked her in that cell.
   'Now do you have what you have been hunting?" Jacques asked.
   I tried to ignore him.
   As the servents set about burying their master, I set about looting his home.