Conqueror (21 page)

Usually Gwyn shivered and hurried by. But now she went directly towards it. With chilled, trembling fingers, her lantern held high, she ripped off the pocket stitched to the inside of her skirts and pulled out little golden key.

Heart beating fast, she thrust it in into the dragon’s mouth. Dust rose up as if steam were pouring from its steely nostrils. She twisted and something clicked. The key turned smoothly, the padlock sprang free. The dragon’s jaw dropped open.

So. It did open something.

“Come,” she called softly to Adam.

Inside, it was just a simple storage chamber, like all the rest. Rock walls, slightly mouldy, echoing and cold. Why had she been so reticent to enter?

Why was it guarded by such a ferocious lock?

They quickly set up a place for the prince in the shadowed recesses of the chamber, Gwyn fussing over straw piles and how his feet were arranged.

Suddenly, his long, mailed arm came swinging up. She almost screamed. His hand closed weakly around her wrist.

“Who are you?” the prince croaked. His eyes were barely slitted open.

“My lord prince,” she answered, her voice shaking. “I am the lady of Everoot. You’ve been brought here for safekeep—”

“Save me,” he groaned. The parched inside of his mouth crackled. His hand fell away. His eyes closed.

A swift chill started by her ears and raced downwards. Adam met her gaze and said nothing. She began fussing helplessly at the pile of dirty rushes laid beneath the prince, then sat back on her heels. She would have to bring clean linens and medicines and someone to administer them.

She had to bring everything or he would die.

“My lady?”

She looked up to find Adam’s level gaze trained on her. Inhaling deeply to steady herself, she said, “You’ve come a long way for your king, with a perilous package, Adam of Gloucester. He will be grateful.”

He dropped an inscrutable glance to the felled prince. His eyes were troubled. “’Tis nothing compared to what you are being asked to do.” He extended his hand.

She took it. When she rose, though, he did not release her, but clasped her fingers tighter. “I say you do not know what you are being asked to do, but ’tis said you are a loyal lady, and you will do it anyhow, with a service beyond reproach and deserving of great honour.”

She was startled. “What do you mean? I know what I am being asked to do: save my lord prince, and thereby the kingdom.”

He released her hand and bowed his head briefly. “My lady. The best way out?”

She gestured her head back to the storage cellars. Barely visible through twenty yards of darkness was a stairwell, leading up into the shadows above. “That way.”

“To where does it lead?” The attendant stood behind Adam, chewing on a piece of food recovered from his teeth. He stared impassively at Gwyn.

“The lord’s chambers.” She paused. “My chambers.”

They followed her up the towering staircase in silence. Three flights they climbed before reaching a small landing, then up another series of stone steps. By now William the attendant was grumbling in the background. They finally reached the top and climbed aboard a small landing, cut deep in the rock. An arched door was before them, carved into the stone, dark and silent. They stopped.

“Let me see if the way is clear,” she whispered, and twisted the latch. The door swung outwards, crowding them out to the far edge of the landing. If one of them stepped wrong, ’twould be a long time before he landed, some four stories below, perhaps bouncing off the curving staircase along the way.

“My lady, if you’d hurry,” suggested William in a tight voice, eyeing the black descent, his boot dangerously close to the edge.

“Think you I am dawdling?” she snapped.

“Nay, not a’tall,” he vowed heartily, still peering behind him. Adam watched her in silence.

Gwyn stared at the back of a tapestry that shielded the entryway on the interior side. It hung on one wall in the lord’s bedchamber, and was the most exquisite piece of hand-dyed silk imaginable, stitched through with scenes of foxes and wolves and greening hills, and a distant stream of smoke, as if home was over the hills. Something in it had tugged at her when she first saw it at a fair two years ago, when there was money in the coffers and hope for her future. She’d bought it on an impulse. It had seemed like a message, beckoning her, fortokening all the pleasures of home and hearth awaited her, if only she would climb the ridge.

Now it just looked like a limp layer of cloth between her and the rampaging world.

By the time she had gotten the three of them back down to the hall and the squire outside to round up the horses, she was bathed in sweat again. Her hands twisted around themselves as she waited with Adam at the edge of the hall.

“You’ve royal permission to do as you see fit, my lady,” Adam said quietly.

She nodded.

“’Tis a most burdensome honour you’re taking on.”

“I gave my word. Everoot holds to its word. Papa would have taken the burden.” She swallowed thickly. “Roger would have. My brother, Roger. Prince Eustace was his friend. If my brother were running the estate, if he were aliv—” She pressed her lips together rather than let the heavy press of onrushing tears pour out. “They would have done a great deal more. I can do no less.”

“Still, some would rather not,” Adam said quietly.

“Some prefer to enjoy the fruits of other’s labour, and consider themselves well fed,” she said firmly.

He ran his hand over his hair-roughened chin. “Aye. But sometimes, my lady, we don’t recognise the spice until after we’ve eaten. One must be most careful what is on one’s plate.”

She lifted her eyebrows. “Now you’re speaking in riddles, Adam of Gloucester.”

The thoughtful look passed. “I don’t mean to. Be careful, be safe and be well, my lady.”

She walked with him to the door. A few eyes strayed to the pair, but no one really wanted to know what the grim-faced soldier had to say. If anything of import had occurred, they would know of it soon enough. He was just one of many messengers who hied themselves north to tell what news from the wars in the south, or to beg money to start another one. More often than not nowadays, no news was good news.

By the time Adam sat astride his horse again, the wiry, impudent squire at his side, the gatehouse had already been alerted to their departure. Gates to both baileys were raised, the drawbridges dropped. Gwyn stood midway up the keep staircase in the shimmering waves of heat. Adam edged his mount close and reached up a hand.

Surprised, she touched the tip of her fingers to his, smiling down at the kind, grim man who’d brought her such a doubtful treasure. He leaned sideways in his saddle and she crouched down to him, the heat from the sun burning hot on her back.

“Be careful what is on your plate, my lady.”

A chill felt its way up under her dress. He dipped his head in a brief nod, then reined away. They cantered under the arched gateway and disappeared in a cloud of dust and shimmering heat.

Gwyn unbent her knees. She felt as if she was about to faint, and shook herself. She was giddy from the heat, that was all. And there was some small consolation, she realised bleakly: for the first time in ten months, she hadn’t thought of Pagan.

An hour of peace from the restless, passionate memories, from the awful, agonized regret of the choices she could never unmake.

That made three people she’d killed.

Where the moisture came from, she did not know, but her eyes filled up with tears, and she stumbled sightless back into the castle.

The day before Michaelmas, 28 September 1153

Northern England, Ipsile-upon-Tyne

The conspirators met in an alley. The huge harvest moon had already crested and slunk down past the tops of the buildings. It filled the alley with dark, slanting shadows.

“How much?” asked the first, who had requested the meeting. He was lean and muscular, taller than average. Other than his build, identifying features were hard to make out. The only distinguishing aspect of him was a small but brilliantly vivid tattoo inked on his left chest, evident for a brief second when he reached inside his tunic to yank out a bag of coin.

“You don’t waste time,” said the other, looking back to his would-be customer’s eyes.

“I have no time to waste. I want the key. How much?”

“Why do you want it?”

The tattooed man took a step forward and said in a low voice, “I’m willing to pay. A lot. That is all that need interest you. Do you have it?”

He nodded coolly. “I’ll ask again: why do you want it?”

The tattooed man reversed his step and crossed his arms over his chest. “I know the rightful owner. He’ll want it back.”

He glanced down at the bulging pouch of money in the man’s right hand. “Mayhap I’d get a better price from him directly, than you. Did he send you here?”

The tattooed man moved forward with the grace of a leopard. He wrapped his mailed hand around the other man’s neck and crashed him against the town wall rounding behind them.
“Where the hell is it?”

“I don’t have it here—”

“You said you had it,” he said in a dangerously quiet tone. “Are now you saying you do not?”

The man with the key thrust his fingers up, inside the band of strangulation around his neck. He jerked free, furious and gasping. “
God’s bones,
I have it, but not here—”

“Fool.”

Without looking back, the tattooed man turned and strode away into the darkness.

The man with the key gasped for breath a few more moments, alone in the grimy alley. Then he pushed off the stone wall. Briefly, he dipped his hand into his pocket, felt the small steel key resting coldly inside, and continued out.

Next customer. This one had been mad. He would go straight to the source this time.

The day after Michaelmas, 30 September 1153

Outside the Nest, Northumbria, England

A cool puff of autumn air exhaled across the battle camp. For months now, it had been only hot, dry air—the drought-like conditions of the summer had not abated with the onset of autumn and the harvest—so the sudden coolness drew everyone’s attention. Griffyn barely noticed. He was staring at the dark, turreted battlements of the Nest.

Home. Somehow, through eighteen years of anarchy and a shattered heart, God had seen him home.

Camped before his own castle walls with an army, of course. He smiled grimly. Not the homecoming he’d planned, but in truth, the one he’d always known must be.

The soaring walls were exactly as he recalled. The forest eaves, two leagues away, were as beckoning at twenty-eight as they had been at eight. He leaned his shoulder against an oak tree with sweeping branches and watched the darkness unfold.

Alex came striding up the hill as darkness fell fully and stood next to him on the small rise of land. They were the only two upright figures in all the warm, dark land.

The village was darkened humps on the plains below. Small fires burned here and there throughout the army camp, but the men had pushed away from them as soon as the food was cooked, and now lay sprawled in dark bundles. The unexpected autumn breeze cooled the night, but it was still too warm to huddle with anything that didn’t moan beneath their battle-hardened bodies.

Suddenly Griffyn straightened. A single shape appeared on the battlements, motionless. Another weary wind blew up, gathered from the forests behind. It lifted the fabric of the figure’s gown in a long, billowing sweep.

A woman.

She stood a moment longer, then took a step and stumbled on the ramparts. Righting herself, she disappeared over the inner side.

“She’s gone,” said Alex quietly.

Griffyn passed him a look in silence. Aye, gone. Down a set of steps or perhaps flung herself off the battlement walkway in a fit of despair. The thought did not amuse. He planned to see to her punishment himself.

He wasn’t certain if she’d seen him, but he hoped so. Hoped she had seen him and known the moment of despair. Hoped she felt as wrecked as he had when he’d learned his home was lost forever to his once-beloved foster-father, Ionnes de l’Ami, eighteen years ago. As wrecked as he’d been when he learned he’d been betrayed by the daughter, too.

He turned to Alex, refocusing with effort. “When did you get back?”

“Just. I rode a day’s ride south. The news of a royal army coming to cut off our rear guard was but a rumour.”

Griffyn turned back to the castle. “Good.”

They were quiet a few moments, then Alex said, “We should attack the west side. I know you plan otherwise, but—”

“No.”

“Pagan, the wall is weak, and will fall like chaff.”

“It’s my home,” he murmured. Alex fell silent.

They stood like this until pre-dawn greyed the edges of the horizon. The camp stirred. A cold meal, then the men took their positions. Griffyn mounted Noir as the first streak of pink scratched across the sky, ripping open the dark night still domed overhead.

A dawn breeze pushed free of the wood behind them and rustled the dry grasses at their feet. The sounds of the horsemen heading off were muted. Noir stamped his hoof and pulled on the reins.

Griffyn pulled his helm down over his face. “Let’s get this over with.”

Gwyn heard them before she saw them, even though she stood with her marshal and captain of the guard, Fulk, atop the easternmost tower, waiting for war to swoop down on them. The sound was like wind rushing through trees down a mountainside.

There was no hope in outlasting a siege, and so, after consulting Fulk and her heart, she’d agreed to send out a fighting force. Too few were holding on, too few cared to. If King Stephen lost this castle in the north, the world would be like leeches hung from his heart from here on out. His son, the prince, lay dying in her cellars. She had no choice. Everoot must fight.

The gates swung open and her knights and men-at-arms marched out, even as the invading force appeared atop the far rise. She squinted to see. They paused, and their leader cantered to the front of the vanguard. A huge, raw-boned black horse, billowing mane, prancing, high-stepping, arching its spirited neck.