Crown of the Realm (A White Knight Adventure Book 2) (19 page)

She instinctively crossed herself. “Then Richard is
your kin as well as your king.”

“More king than kin.”

“Ah, I see the way of it.” She rocked him gently in her arms. “Another rumor has made its way to Aixe.”

“I can hardly wait to hear,” he mumbled
, close to dropping off.

“That it was the Old Man of the Mountain who sent Richard’s assassin.” The name rolled of
f her tongue, “Rashid ed-Din Sinan. They say a pact was made between him and Saladin. If he prevents Richard from sailing for the Levant, Saladin won’t rout the Old Man from his mountain citadel.”

“I
have heard,” Drake said, “that he fills his chosen assassins with something called hashish, and when they are intoxicated to the point of ecstasy, they come for their victim. A fanciful notion, though I have also heard their weapon of choice is a dagger and not an arrow.”

“Ar
row, dagger … they both kill.”

He moved his head on her shoulder. “If the Old Man sent the assassin, he enticed him with something other than hashish.
But what?”

“The only things man covets more than ecstasy. Power, position, and gold.”

UPON SEEING GRENDEL
of Poitiers arrive in her great hall, pale and only slightly unsteady on his feet, the vicomtesse of Limoges rushed forward. “Sieur de Poitiers, I am pleased to see that the prediction of your imminent demise was premature.”

She slid her eyes toward her son,
as foul-tempered as ever and standing with his back fitted irritably against a distant wall. “Gui,” she said, addressing him, “do not sulk so. It’s unbecoming.”

Obediently, h
e pushed himself away from the wall and stood loose-limbed, though the plains of his face puckered like rotten fruit.

The
discerning vision of Sarah of Cornwall took in the invalid’s condition. Tepidly, and against her better assessment, she said, “I trust you are feeling haler.”

“He doesn’t look at all hale,” said Gui d’Ussel,
clattering into the hall with his brothers. “He rather looks like a vineyard of varietal grapes, ranging from sickly purple to putrid green. When you ripen, Grendel of Poitiers, we shall ferment you into a fine wine.” He held up his hands. “How many fingers have I?”

“Eight,” said Drake, “not counting your thumbs.”

He turned to the intimate gathering. “You see. If he were hale, he would have said twelve.” His brothers laughed though no one else did.

The
vicomte left a chair of considerable comfort near the hearth and came astride his wife. “I hope, Sieur Grendel, that you will accept our sincerest apologies. My son should not have involved himself in another man’s troubles. He deserves a whipping.”

Wido reached a hand to his backside.

“A second whipping since the first failed to remove the sneer from your face. When Sieur Grendel is sufficiently recovered, he can do the honors. In place of lopping off your head, which you so richly deserve. That is, if he so agrees.”

Grendel of Poitiers took his time considering.
He reached a hand to his bad arm and rubbed it absently. Wido became properly horrified, his face mottling oddly. “He so agrees,” Drake said equably.

Wido bowed and resumed his petulant stance against the wall.

The vicomte went on to say, “Wido’s bed is comfortable, is it not?” and winked before again sending disapproval in his son’s direction. “It shall remain yours for the duration of your convalescence. In the meantime, I wish to introduce you to Louis of Blois, the son of Comte Thibaud.”

Slinking forward, Louis emerged from the shadows, his probing eyes peering up through
long eyelashes. He and Drake clasped fingers and nodded politely to each other. “You have a fine Arabian, Grendel of Poitiers.”

Drake shrugged in a disinterested way. “I won
him in a tournament. He is ill-mannered, and I have been trying to unload him ever since.”

“A man,” Louis of Blois said, “would give his arm for horse such as
that.” And taking his eyes off Drake’s broken arm, bowed again, a grin rising on his lips. “My pardon.”

The
vicomte flourished a hand in the direction of the trestle, laid out in its usual high form though with several less places. “Since the vicomte and vicomtesse of Ventadorn leave first thing in the morning, they will not be joining us this evening.”

The
vicomtesse of Limoges took Drake’s sound arm and led him to the dais. “And how is it, Grendel, that your mother named you for a mythical dragon?”

“She thought Beowulf a dull name.”

“A wise woman, your mother.”

The meal was morbidly quiet, which suited Drake’s mood. Like a mother, Alamanda spooned dishes into his trencher and cut up his meat. Gui
talked in his usual mirthful manner and repeatedly elbowed his brothers, who grunted but never complained. Louis sought Drake’s attention with indirect looks. Meanwhile the vicomtesse of Limoges drew the boy out by asking after his mother’s health, how his uncle the king was holding up after the loss of his queen, what he thought about the attempts on his other uncle’s life, and whom did he suppose was the traitorous villain.

“Could it be,
my lady, that he occupies this very hall?” Gui proffered innocently, any hint of his usual giddy person hidden behind a serious expression. “Possibly eating at your very table?”

“Whoever he is, he is not fit for company such as ours
,” Wido said. “Most likely he is a despicable Brabançon, Aragonese, Navarrese, or Basque, whom the Lateran Council have likened with pagans and heathens. Is that not so?”

Silence followed as everyone awaited a response.

Gui broke the quiet by saying, “Are you asking me?”

“My son, the one with his chin in his goblet
, is being disagreeable as usual,” Lady Sarah said. “But never mind. I know the way Wido thinks. He hates all men who do not hail from the Limousin but is indifferent when it comes to women.”

Alamanda commented, “I heartily agree where the Brabançons are concerned, but I hardly think the Aragonese, Navarrese
, or Basques are guilty of anything, other than speaking in a language other than the
lenga d’oc
.”

“Perhaps you are right,
chère
Alamanda. Perhaps we are too quick to judge those different from us. But as you say, the Brabançons are not exempt from such exhortation, and those that harbor them for their own wicked devices ought to be cast out with the rest. Glad, I was, to see the last of them leave us winter last, and may they never darken our hearthside again.”

Thus ended a desultory feast, followed by uninspired entertainment, not due in any measure to the troubadours, who sang their hearts out in fine fashion, but to
their dispirited audience. Drake fell asleep in a chair piled high with cushions and pillows, his feet propped up likewise on a stool, and his arm couched in a counterpane. When later Alamanda drew the empty goblet from his hand, he languidly opened his eyes. “Just leave me here, Alamanda, where I can die in peace.”

Her studied gaze traveled from Drake to Louis, who hovered sullenly over a goblet of his own
, before returning to the invalid. “A comfortable bed awaits, something no sane man can refuse. Come. I will feed you like the Old Man’s assassins, with soporifics that will drive away pain and awaken ecstasy.”

* * *

A single candle set down upon a coffer in the farthest corner flickered dimly.

The door opened on a click, and a trespasser bearing a dagger traipsed surreptitiously forward. He sidled around the foot of the bed and furtively approached the flank, where the curtain had been drawn back.
The dagger point leading the way, he reached out toward the sleeping form.

Attacked
from behind by a solid elbow and a teeth-crunching body slam, he flipped ungracefully and landed with a bouncing thud atop a collection of pillows artfully arranged. The steel was ripped from his hand and tossed harmlessly away. Before he was able to regroup, something hard like a cudgel and soft like a pillow clamped across his exposed throat and silenced his protesting bellow. Trapped beneath the weight of his attacker, he fought for breath. With a certain irony, he came to realize that the weapon of his demise was a splinted arm and that his assailant was watching his every failing trick with bemused green eyes. Unless rescue came within moments, he wasn’t long for this world. He would go soundlessly, though not peaceful, with none to care except his mother, who might never learn of his fate: killed at the hands, or more accurately, the broken arm of his bastard cousin.

Dread and hatred filling them, the
pupils of Louis’ eyes became tiny dots in vast seas of blue. His eyelids closed languidly. At last he succumbed, his head falling aside. And Drake, growling like a kicked dog, lifted his splinted arm from Louis of Blois’ neck and sat back, agonizing loudly from pain. When he climbed weakly off his comatose cousin, he motioned silently to Devon, who went to work. Grumbling and moaning, Drake moved about the chamber and lit several candles. He filled a cup with wine and set it on a table before pulling up a chair and easing his arm beneath his good hand. He waited.

In time, the captain of the Blois guard moaned and stirred. His arms jerked. A wheezing hack grasped his lungs. Trying to eject the remnants of suffocation, he attempted to sit up but found his spread-eagle arms inconvenienced by a set of ropes secured to the head posts of the bed. He stupidly tugged at his bonds, his fingers grasping helplessly at nothing. Upon focusing on his cousin, he intoned, “Saint
Barthélemy!”

Thereafter he became stupendously respectful since Devon had slipped the edge of a dagger against his blood-engorged throat. Suppressing needful coughing on peril of his life, he sputtered, “I didn’t … would you tell this maggot to get off me … he might stab me by mistake … and I’m accursed powerless as it is.”

At a gesture from Drake, Devon withdrew.

“God’s legs, what did you use on me?”

Drake lifted his slung arm.

“I
hope it hurt you more than it did me.”

Shifting uncomfortably, Drake said, “It did. But behold, look who is the trapped rat and who the complacent cat.”

“I didn’t come to do you harm, Drake fitzAlan, or Grendel of Poitiers, or whatever you’re calling yourself these days.”

“You were about to impale me with your dagger.”

Louis struggled vainly at the ropes. “I was about to awaken you, damn you to Hell!”

Skewered to the tip of Louis’ dagger, an unfolded parchment fluttered
in the draft. “To share this?”

“And defend myself, if need be, knowing the kind of scoundrel you are.
” He settled back but clenched his trapped fists as if he would like to punch Drake senseless with them. “Then you’ve read it.”

“
Cryptic but succinct.
The vultures gather
.
Twin lambs must be sacrificed
. The twin lambs, I take it, are my brother and myself. No signature thereon but a seal bearing the idolized likeness of your uncle, the king of France. You have shown this to the vicomte?”

His eyes
possessed the look of guilt. “I was directed to deliver it to Comte Ademar.”

“Who directed you? Your father? Your mother?”

“Neither. I came upon the missive through a … a stranger.”

“
I see, or rather, don’t. And you stopped by Limoges because …?”

“
I heard Ademar was attending the tourney.”

After f
olding the missive into his tunic, Drake lifted the wine cup and sipped. “You missed the comte by a day or two.”

“I found
that out when I arrived.”

“And saw my
Arabian in the castle stables. Hallelujah! Then you weren’t following me, per se, but were overjoyed in chancing upon my whereabouts, thus able to kill two birds with one stone, all for the bounty, honors, and accolades to follow.”

“That’s not the reason
I—”

“And so,
” Drake interrupted his cousin, “when you learned there was no fitzAlan brother hereabouts …”

“I surmised Grendel of Poitiers, who took a hapless fall down a flight of stairs, was you. How did you really break your arm?”

“I was searching for a lost brooch in the latrine and slipped. But we digress. We have established that you didn’t know where to find me but you did know where to find Stephen.”

“I …” He moved restlessly, his elbo
ws digging into the mattresses. “… came to free him myself.”

“Oh please.” Throwing back his head, Drake drained the goblet in a single gulp.
“You really expect me to swallow that as I did this?”

“I swear to you, Drake.”

“The name is Grendel, if you please. Who was the messenger? Who delivered your king’s pithy note and directed you to this chance locale.” He got up to pour himself another drink.

“Philippe’s chaplain.”

Drake spun around. “Andreas Capellanus? By God, I almost believe you.” Staring down at the putout face of his cousin, he chortled. “I’ll wager it was your mother who sent you on this noble mission since neither you nor your father have any honor.”

“I wouldn’t mind having some of that wine.”

Drake raised the goblet as an offering.

“Humiliation deserves a swallow or two
to wash down the gore.”

Feeling generous,
Drake approached his prisoner.

“My hands. Not much I can do without the use of my hands.”

“Lift head and pucker lips.”

Narrowing his eyes, Louis took his fill,
but spilled more on his tunic than down his throat. After licking his lips, he said, “My men are camped two miles east.”

“Dear God, Louis of Blois
….” Sitting delicately beside his cousin, he bent and kissed him on the mouth. “That was for your mother, not you.”

“Thanks
be to God.”

Drake was thinking. “What was your plan? How did you intend to liberate Stephen? With your charm? Your wit? Your dozen swords?
Vos jolis yeux bleus
?”