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.”
“I’m sorry your father was killed, John. No one, least of all me or my father, would ever have wanted that to happen. We would have done anything to prevent it.”
“You didn’t care about my father. He always said you were too soft. He didn’t even want me to play with you as a child, but I believed my father was wrong. I would sneak away and go fishing with you. I listened to you, but my father was right and you were wrong.”
Westley tried to remember those conversations. “Your father loved you, John, and you loved him. That is a good thing. God would not—”
“Shut your mouth! Don’t talk about my father, and don’t talk to me about God!” John stabbed his finger at Westley’s face and spittle flew out of his mouth as he yelled, “You were wrong, and now I want you to admit it. Admit you were wrong!”
Madness seemed to shine out of his bloodshot eyes. A dark vein in his neck bulged as if ready to explode; another swollen purple vein at his temple throbbed.
“You and Lord le Wyse killed my father. With all your softness and talk of all men being equal in God’s eyes. You filled the villeins with these notions, and they rose up and killed my father. And I blame you.”
“Then why are you trying to hurt Eva? What did she do?”
“I was only using her to lure you here. But if she doesn’t do as I say . . .” He curled his lip again. “She must have seen me when I pushed you in the river. I wasn’t planning to kill you. You just made me so angry. But now . . . You will admit you were wrong about the villeins, that your father was wrong, and that my father was right.”
“Sabina must have been lying.”
“I didn’t know Sabina then.” He actually smiled. “But when I explained to her that you are not the perfect man everyone thinks you are, she told me she was sorry she ever helped that other girl save you. Now she wants to be my wife.” His smile grew wider.