A March of Kings (15 page)

Still, a part of him felt compelled to find the answer. Maybe if for no other reason than to make amends to his father, to make up for his wasted life. If he could not have his father’s approval in life, perhaps he could gain it in death.

Godfrey sat there, rubbing his head, trying to think, trying to get to the bottom of something. Something weighed on the dark corners of his consciousness, some message, persistently nagging at him. It was an image; maybe a memory. But he could not recall precisely of what. He knew, though, that it was important.

As he sat there, racking his brain, drying to drown out the laughter of the others, suddenly, it came to him. The other day. In the forest. He had spotted Gareth. With Firth. The two of them, walking. He remembered thinking at the time that it was strange. And he remembered that they had no answer for where they were going, or where they had been.

He suddenly sat upright, electrified. He turned to Akorth.

“Do you remember the other day, in the wood? My brother, Gareth?”

Akorth furrowed his brow, clearly trying to summon it through his drunken haze.

“I remember seeing him walking with that lover boy of his!” Akorth mocked.

“Hand-in-hand, I suspect!” Fulton chimed in, then burst into laughter.

Godfrey tried to concentrate, in no mood for their jokes.

“But do you recall where they were coming from?”

“Where?” Akorth asked, perplexed.

“You asked them, and they didn’t tell you,” Fulton said.

An idea was solidifying in Godfrey’s brain.

“Odd, isn’t it? The two of them walking there, in the middle of nowhere? Do you remember what he was wearing? A cloak and a hood on a hot summer day? Walking so fast, as if he was heading somewhere? Or coming from somewhere?”

Godfrey was convincing himself as he spoke.

Akorth looked at him, puzzled.

“What is it you’re trying to put together?” he asked. “Because if you’re asking me to figure it out, you’ve come to the wrong man, my friend. I would just tell you that if you want to get to the bottom of something, drink another ale!” he shouted, and roared with laughter.

But Godfrey was serious. He was focused. This time, he would not be distracted.

“I think he was going somewhere,” Godfrey added, thinking out loud. “I think they were both going somewhere. And I think it was with ill intent.”

He turned and stared at his two friends.

“And I think it has something to do with my father’s death.”

Akorth and Fulton finally stopped and looked at him, the smiles dropping from their faces.

“That’s quite a leap,” Akorth said.

“Are you accusing your brother and his lover of killing the King?” Fulton asked.

The bartender stopped in his tracks and stared, too.

Godfrey sat there, working it out, his mind reeling, feeling electrified, feeling a sense of purpose, of mission. It was a feeling he wasn’t used to.

“That is exactly what I’m saying,” he finally responded.

“That’s dangerous talk,” the bartender warned. “Your brother is king now. Someone hears you say that, you can go to the clink.”

“My
father
is King,” Godfrey corrected, steel in his voice, feeling himself overcome with a new strength. “My brother Gareth just had a crown put on his head. He is not a king. He is a prince, just like I. And a failed one at that.”

The bartender slowly shook his head and looked away.

“Where were they going? What is out there, in that wood?” Godfrey asked Akorth with a sudden urgency, grasping his wrist.

“Calm down, my good man, there’s no need to get upset—”

“I said, what is out there?” Godfrey demanded, shouting.

Akorth stared back at him with a look he had never seen before. One of shock. And maybe, even, of respect.

“What’s gotten into you? I don’t have answers for you. I have no idea.”

“Wait a minute, there
is
something out there,” Fulton said.

Godfrey turned and looked at him.

“Not there, exactly. But near there. Blackwood. A few miles away. There are rumors of a witch’s cottage.”

“A witch’s cottage?” Godfrey repeated, slowly. The thought of it hit him like a spear.

“Yes. So the rumor goes. Do you think that’s where they were going?”

Godfrey stumbled up from his barstool, knocking it over, and hurried across the room. His two friends jumped up, too, hurrying after him.

“Where are you going?” Akorth called out. “Have you lost your mind?”

Godfrey yanked open the door, the harsh morning light hitting his face, making him feel alive for the first time in he did not know how long. He stopped and turned and looked inside the ale house one final time.

“I’m going to find my father’s murderer.”

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Steffen cowered beneath the whip of his master, bending over and bracing himself as he was lashed across the back yet again. He braced his hands over the back of his head, trying to shield the worst of the blow.

“I ordered you to remove the chamber when it was full! Now look at the mess you’ve made!” his master screamed.

Steffen hated to be yelled at. Born deformed, his back twisted in a permanent hunch, looking prematurely old, he had been yelled at from the time he was a child. He had never fit in with his siblings, with his friends, or with anyone. His parents had tried to pretend he didn’t exist, and when he was just old enough, they found a reason to kick him out of the house. They had been embarrassed by him.

Since then, it had been a hard, lonely life for Steffen, left to fend for himself. After years of working odd jobs, of begging in the streets when he needed to, he had finally found a job in the bowels of the king’s castle, toiling with the other servants in the room of the chamber pots. His task, for years, was to wait until the huge, iron chamber pot was filled with sewage from the floors above, then carry it out while it was overflowing, with the help of another servant. They took it out the back door of the castle, across the fields, to the river’s edge, and dumped it in.

It was a job he had over the years learned to do well, and as his posture was ruined before he arrived, the lugging of the pot could not have affected it anymore. Of course, the stench of the waste was unbearable, though, over time, he had learned to block it out. He had taught his mind go to other places, to escape in fantasy, to imagine vivid alternate worlds and to convince himself that he was anywhere but here. Steffen’s one gift in life had been a great imagination, and it didn’t take much to send him off to another realm. His other great gift was observation. Everyone underestimated him, but he heard and saw everything, and he took it all in like a sponge. He was much more sensitive and perceptive than people realized.

Which was why, the other day, when that dagger had come tumbling down the stone chute, into the chamber pot, Steffen had been the only one to take notice. He heard the slightest difference in the splash, something landing in the water that sounded not human, but metal. He’d heard the tiniest bit of a clang as it settled to the bottom—and he had known immediately that something was wrong. Something was different. Somebody had dropped something down the chute, something he wasn’t supposed to. Either it was an accident, or, more likely, it was on purpose.

Steffen waited for a moment when the others weren’t looking and stealthily approached the pot, held his nose, rolled up one sleeve, and reached in up to his shoulder. He fished around until he had found it. He had been right: there was something there. It was long and metal, and he grasped it and pulled it up. He could feel, before it even reached the surface, that it was a dagger. He extracted it quickly, glanced it over, made sure no one was looking, and bundled it in a rag and hid it behind a loose brick.

Now that things had quieted down, he looked around, made sure no one was looking, and when he felt sure the coast was clear, he hurried over to the brick, loosened it, unwrapped the weapon and studied it. It was a dagger unlike any he had ever seen, certainly not one for the lower classes. It was an aristocratic thing, a piece of art. Very valuable, and expensive.

As he held it up to the torchlight, turning it every which way, he noticed stains on it, stains which would not come out. He realized, with a shock, that they were blood stains. He remembered back to when the blade had fallen down and realized that it had come down on the same night of the assassination of the King. His hands shook as he realized he might be holding the murder weapon.

“How stupid are you?” shrieked his master, as he whipped him again.

Steffen hunched over and quickly wrapped up the blade, keeping his back to his boss, hoping and praying he had not seen it. He had left the chamber pot untended while examining the blade, and it had overflowed. He had not expected his master to be so close.

Steffen took the beating, as he did every day, whether he did a good job or not. He clenched his jaw, hoping it would end soon.

 “If that pot overflows again, I will have you kicked out of here! No, worse, I will have you chained and thrown in the dungeon. You stupid deformed hunchback! I don’t know why I put up with you!”

His master, a fat, pockmarked man with a lazy eye, reached up and beat him again and again. Usually, the blows ended; but tonight he seemed to be in a particularly belligerent mood and the blows just kept getting worse. They never seemed to end.

Finally, something inside Steffen snapped. He could stand it no longer.

Without thinking, Steffen reacted: he grasped the hilt of the dagger, spun around and plunged it into his master’s rib cage.

His master let out a horrified gasp as his eyes bulged in his head. He stood there, frozen, looking down in wonder.

Finally, the blows stopped.

Now Steffen was furious. All the pent up anger he’d felt over the years came pouring out.

Steffen grimaced, grabbed his master by the throat, and squeezed it with one hand. With the other, he pushed the blade in deeper and slowly dragged it higher, cutting him up through the sternum, all the way to his heart. Hot blood poured out over his hand and wrist.

Steffen was shocked at what he had summoned the courage to do—and he reveled in every second of it. For years he had been abused by this man, this horrible creature, who had beaten him like his play thing. Now, finally, he had vengeance. After all those years, all those abuses.

“This is what you get for beating me,” Steffen said. “Do you think you’re the only one with power here? How do you like it now?”

His master hissed and gasped, and finally collapsed into a heap on the floor.

Dead.

Steffen looked at him, lying there, just the two of them down here this late in the night, the dagger protruding from his heart. Steffen looked both ways, satisfied the room was empty, then extracted the dagger and wrapped it back in its rag, and stashed it back in its hiding place, behind the brick. There was something about that blade, some evil energy to it, that had goaded him to use it.

As Steffen stood there, looking at the corpse of his master, he was suddenly overwhelmed with panic. What had he done? He had never done anything like that in his life. He did not know what had overcome him.

He bent over, hoisted his master’s corpse, heaved it over his shoulder, then leaned forward and dropped it into the chamber pot. The body landed with a splash, as the filthy water spilled over its sides. Luckily the pot was deep, and his corpse sank beneath the rim.

On the next shift, Steffen would carry the pot out with his friend, a man so down and drunk, he never had any idea what was in the pot, a man who always turned away from it, holding his nose from the stench. He wouldn’t even realize that the pot was heavier than usual as the two of them carried it to the river and dumped it. He wouldn’t even notice the mass in the night, the body floating away, down the current.

Down, Steffen hoped, towards hell.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Gareth sat on his father’s throne, in the vast council chamber, in the midst of his first council meeting, and inwardly, he trembled. Before him, in the imposing room, seated around the semi-circular table, sat a dozen of his father’s counselors, all seasoned veterans, all staring back at him with gravity and doubt. Gareth was in over his head. The reality of it all was starting to sink in. This was his father’s throne. His father’s room. His father’s affairs. And above all, his father’s men. Each and every one of them loyal to his father. Gareth secretly wondered if they all suspected him of having murdered him. He told himself he was just being paranoid. But he felt increasingly uncomfortable, staring back at them.

Gareth also, for the first time, felt the real weight of what it was like to rule. All the burdens, all the decisions, all the responsibilities, were on his head. He felt woefully unprepared. Being king was what he’d always dreamed of. But ruling the kingdom, on a daily, practical level, was something he had not.

The council had been going over various matters with him for hours, and he’d had no idea of how to decide on each one. He could not help but feel as if each new matter was raised secretly as a rebuke to him, as a way to foil him, to highlight his lack of knowledge. He realized too quickly that he did not have the acumen or judgment of his father, or the experience to rule this kingdom. He was woefully unqualified to be making these decisions. And he knew, even as he made them, that all of his decisions were bad ones.

Above all, he found it hard to focus, knowing the investigation was still ongoing into his father’s murder. He could not help but wonder if, or when, it might lead back to him—or to Firth, which was as good as leading to him. He could not rest easy on the throne until he knew he held it securely. He prepared to set into motion a plan to frame someone else. It was risky. But then again, so was murdering his father.

“My Liege,” another council member said, each one looking more grave than the next. It was Owen, his father’s treasurer, and he looked down at the table as he spoke, squinting at a long scroll. The more he unrolled it, the longer it seemed to get.