Defiant (39 page)

“These cannot be pleasant for you,” Peter said gravely. “But they will be proof, my lord.”

Jamie looked up sharply. “Do not call me that.”

“I
am
calling you that. You must claim what is yours.”

Jamie sat back on his heels. “No.”

Peter looked at him sharply. “You must. You must claim Everoot.”

“No,
curé.
I will not. I am leaving. I go with Eva, if she will have me. I am done.”

“You do not have that luxury, Jamie of Everoot. You cannot decline.”

“Watch me.”

Peter’s gaze grew stern. “Everoot is not a gift, Jamie. ’Tis an obligation.”

Jamie gave a faint smile. “Now you sound like a proper churchman.” He looked down at his father’s surcoat in his hands, let it drop into the bag, and sat back on his heels. “Is this why you came back?”

Peter raised his eyebrows, and Jamie touched the bag. “For this?”

“Yes, that,” Peter replied crankily. “That, and the thing I have spent the last year of my life in pursuit of. The one thing that may rescue this land from incessant warfare. The charter.”
His regard of Jamie grew harder and more intent, which, coming from a man well into his sixth decade, was quite hard and intent indeed. “A charter you are going to help bring to fruition, Jamie, when you claim Everoot.”

He shook his head. “You have been too long among books and monks, priest. A piece of paper will not stop either the rebels or the king. It will never hold.”

Peter’s eyes fairly snapped fire. “Either you are very stupid, or you think I am.” Jamie laughed. “Of course it will not hold on its own,” Peter said firmly. “’Tis
parchment
. But neither can a castle wall do much good if it is unmanned. It takes
men
to make it hold. It will take men, powerful, influential men, to make this charter hold. Men with the internal resources to see it through. Men with castles and vassals and money. Men with courage.”

Their eyes met and held.

“I am not that man,
curé,
” Jamie said quietly. “I am sorry to disappoint. I am nothing like my father.”

Peter dropped back on the pillows with a grunt of disgust. “You are like him in your complete and utter stubbornness. If only your mother were here.”

“If only,” Jamie echoed, getting to his feet.

“You and Eva shall make a fine pair,” he added bitterly. “She is as hard-headed as you.”

“You are both very stubborn men,” said a quiet voice from the doorway. “But I am glad to see you and your very hard head.”

Jamie felt Peter’s heaviness lighten. “Ah, Jamie, you brought me Eva. That was well done,” he said quietly, then turned his head to the door.

She came into the room, her gaze touching on everything, Jamie sitting at the bedside, the faint red smear on one side of the linen sheets tucked in around the priest.

Then she was hugging him, talking softly, saying nothing of the sheets or that he was dying, for Eva was wise enough not
to waste time on the things that could not be changed. Jamie sat back and watched them a moment, these old friends, Eva tucking and fussing and chatting, Peter waving her off, shaking his head.

“Stay with Jamie, now, Eva,” Peter said after a few minutes, his eyes closing.

She stood beside the bed, her fingertips resting lightly on the sheet above his chest. “But of course.”

“And Roger?” he asked, his voice fainter even than a moment ago.

Eva didn’t reply. Jamie looked up and saw her face was fixed as rigidly as iron, her jaw tight, her eyes staring, as little shivers trembled her head all the way down to the ends of her hair.

“Is safe,” Jamie answered for her. “And brave. He will be a boon to whomever he serves. You and Eva raised him well.”

Father Peter’s lips pursed slightly, his eyes still closed. “’Twas all the hardheaded woman’s doing. I said he was a lost thing. She insisted no and brought him back.”

Eva’s emotions spilled over in two tears, down her face. But she smiled and said, “I sketched a picture for someone last night. Of his mother. He said it was well-done.”

Father Peter patted her hand once, faintly. “All you do is well-done, Eva. I am proud.”

He was quiet after that. Jamie stood beside Eva, his hand on her shoulder, and they waited in silence. It didn’t take long for Peter to die.

“I think it made his passing right, to have you here,” Jamie said.

She reached up for his hand. He took it, and they both said their prayers for Peter of London.

Ry burst through the front doorway, breathing hard, clutching the doorframe. Blood poured from his split lip. One eye was pulsing red, swelling shut.

“They took him,” he gasped.

Jamie was already striding out the door by the time Ry said, “You must come now.” Eva was fast on their heels. They took off running down the street, pushing people out of their way.

“The rebels?” Jamie shouted.

“No. The king.”

Everything Eva did from that moment on was as if it took place underwater, as the decision took shape inside her. Took more effort, felt slowed and wavery and as if she were swimming against a great force.

Although it wasn’t so much a decision, she realized through the water haze. It was more like uncovering something put in the ground a long time ago, something buried, like roots of your garden, or bones of your loved ones. In this way, the uncovering was not so much a revelation as a reminder:
You forgot about me, but I did not forget about you.

The seed had sprouted. Roger was in danger, Jamie was in danger, Father Peter had been murdered, and the binding cord of her promise was cleaved.

She was going to kill the king.

T
hey fought their way out the town gates as everyone else was pushing in, but they were too late. Far too late. They stood on the hilltop, Ry with his bashed and bleeding face, Angus looking grim, staring at the road below.

Eva backed up a few unsteady steps until she sat, abruptly, on the grass. The world was rocking like a little boat under her feet, and she could catch neither her breath nor her footing. She stared straight ahead. The green grass hurt her eyes.

J
AMIE
stared ahead into the distance, the way the king’s men had ridden. A day’s ride to Everoot. Whose horses were faster? His or the double agent Chance’s? They’d have to see.

“I must go after,” Eva said calmly, as if she were reporting the need to gather herbs.

“Aye, we will go.”

Ry’s hand fell on his shoulder. “You cannot, Jamie.”

“Cannot what?”

Ry’s face was hard. “Are you going in as Everoot?”

Jamie said nothing.

“Jamie if you go to the king, you must go as
you.
As Everoot. If you go as Jamie Lost, the king’s knight, you will never make it through the gates alive.”

Jamie looked down the hill.

Ry’s voice hardened. “King John will kill you. Do you see what they did to me? Be assured, I was released only as a message to you. This”—Ry gestured to his bashed and battered face—“is the message. John will eviscerate you.”

Eva stepped forward. “That is what the blond woman said to me, also. She said John would be hunting you.”

“Someone is always hunting me,” Jamie said shortly.

Ry’s eyes narrowed. “Had you ever a doubt in your mind as to the king’s plans for you, Jamie, you can no more. He no longer trusts you.” Ry’s bloodshot eyes bored into Jamie’s. “You cannot go in without the protection of Everoot upon you. Claim it now, Jamie. ’Tis time. Or they will kill you.”

“They will try.”

“God’s
mercy.
” Ry grabbed a handful of Jamie’s tunic, shouting, “I cannot protect you in there!”

They stared at each other for a long moment, then Ry stepped back. “You will not claim it even now, will you, not even when so much is at stake?” Cold, hard fury filled his words like a glass ball. “You neither claim nor let it go, Jamie. That is wrong.”

“That is right,” Jamie said, his voice lethally low. “I do neither. I have claimed Eva.”

“That is not good enough.”

“I do not care. You dare speak to me of claiming? You, who have a father and a family, a
heritage
, yet have renounced it all. You, who have seen me at my worst—”

“You were eight years old!”

“—you with a woman waiting, should you only choose to reach for her—do not think I forget Lucia—and yet you renounce all those things. Instead, you are here, with me.” Jamie jabbed the tips of his fingers into his own chest.
“Me.”

If all the timbres of shame could have been rounded up like
ponies and herded into a syllable, they would have been penned inside this one of Jamie’s.

Then, sitting on the grass, Eva understood. Jamie could not fathom why someone would choose him. Why Ry chose him. Why she chose him. Because he had not yet chosen.

Silence echoed on the hill.

“I do not know why you stick,” Jamie said coldly. “Go protect the family you abandoned.”

“I cannot—” Ry’s voice cracked. “Save them.”

Jamie stepped forward, moving in so close their chests touched.
“I am not to be saved!”

Ry took a step back, then another. He turned away, head down, and for a long moment it was silent. Then they heard the hiss of a blade sliding past metal, and Ry turned back and lifted his sword to Jamie’s neck, flat side out. A twist of the wrist would turn the cutting edge against his vein.

“I ought to do it now,” Ry said quietly, his red-rimmed, exhausted eyes holding Jamie’s. “What you’ve been trying to do for years, I should just do it for you now.”

Lightning energy crackled through the air on the hill. Neither man moved, their gazes locked.

“Do it, then,” said Jamie.

Eva got to her feet and walked over, placed the tips of her fingers on the cold blade, and pushed it away.

“Swords are sharp,” she murmured. “Let us use them only if small children will die should you refrain. Since you are both very angry, and there are no small children about, we will stop and breathe, rather than kill each other and give our enemies great joy.”

Ry let her push the blade down. Its tip raised a miniature puff of dust as it hit a bare spot on the earth. Angus cleared his throat.

For a moment nothing happened except the blowing breeze. Then Ry resheathed his blade and walked away, down the hill. He did not look back.

They watched him go. Eva felt stunned. She turned to Jamie. “Is he—?”

“Not coming back,” Jamie said grimly. “I know where they are going,” he said, almost to himself. “Everoot.” He looked down at her.

She nodded. “Then we had best leave at once.”

“Angus, stick with Ry,” Jamie said as he turned and strode down the hill. “God knows what he’ll do just now.”

They separated at the bottom, Angus to find Ry, Eva and Jamie for Everoot.

A
day and a half later, they drew rein just to the south of the Nest, the impregnable, indominable
caput
of the vast Everoot earldom.

Its stony towers thrust like fists out of the earth into the bright blue sky, towering over the valley and village below. No pennants snapped along the ramparts; the king was not announcing his residence. He would hardly wish to announce he’d fled Windsor. Eva assumed few knew he was here. This would be to her benefit.

Nonetheless, a stream of people came and went through the heavily guarded gates, on foot and horse, some with carts. It was impossible to keep the king a secret long.

Jamie’s gaze stayed unmoving on the towering gray spire of the main keep. It was a twisted homecoming for Eva, but she could not begin to imagine what Jamie must be feeling.

“I should leave you here,” he murmured.

She nodded. “Of course, but this will not occur. You are headstrong, and do not always do as you should.”

The faintest smile lightened his visage as he looked down. “You do as I say, every step, Eva. Do you hear me?”

“Very loudly,” she said, nodding. That did not mean she would obey, but that was for later.

Even from here they could see a line of people who did not seem to be dressed in armor walking the baileys.

“The place is busy,” Eva noted. “This is to our benefit.”

Jamie, fully armored, mail hood lying in a pile of crumbled mesh links at the back of his neck, sat in his saddle, saying nothing. One arm was bent slightly, so his palm could grasp the hilt of his sword with its swirling silver lines. His other hand was loose on the reins, his gaze locked on the castle. His horse’s proud head hung tired and low. His clothes were dark and nondescript, his cheeks and jaw darkened with hair. He looked like a weather-beaten warrior after a campaign, alone with his horse and the wind.

“Let’s go.”

T
HE
porters, who knew Jamie well, had apparently not yet been alerted that Jamie was now an enemy of the king’s.

They quickly opened the small door in the north tower of the barbican to let him and Eva pass through. The tower soared up sixty feet, and they stepped into its cold shadow with a wary exchange of glances.

“Where is the king?” Jamie asked.

“Not yet arrived, sir.”

Jamie nodded. “Good,” he said, then whispered in Eva’s ear, “We have time.” They hurried through the outer bailey. “This is when things get dangerous,” he said, guiding her to the edges of the vast inner ward.

Despite the king’s coming in secret, people moved everywhere through the baileys, servants and squires and merchants. But even when John’s resplendent entourage of servants and courtiers was added to the mix, it would not have filled up the wide sweep of Everoot’s vast baileys.