Sword of Justice (White Knight Series) (10 page)

“I’m surprised you’re not well gone from Winchester by now.”

“So am I.”

“And your brother?”

“Posing as his brother’s keeper.”

“I see.” She did not smile but went on with his physical denouement now she had his identity laid bare.

“You guessed last night,” he said.

“I did.”

All that remained were his braies. Drake was hoping she would spare him the embarrassment, but she removed those with alacrity and more familiarity than a woman ought to possess, until he reminded himself that she was known to dispense favors a half night a throw.

She laid him down on the featherbed and hiked up his feet. He stared at the ceiling and tried to make it stop spinning. She applied a wet cloth. The water in the basin turned a lovely tint of rose, then a deeper shade of madder, and finally a resplendent scarlet.

“My nose, is it still in the middle of my face?”

“Hmm,” she said as she studied both profiles. “Let me put it this way: you were much too pretty before.”

“Is that a compliment?”

“Not where you’re concerned.”

His left eye was already swelling shut. She applied something cold and slimy to his eyelid. “A leech,” she explained. The thing crawled, anchored itself, and sucked. Drake vomited again, but Aveline was ready with the basin. The leech clung tenaciously. She changed the soiled bed linens, turning him gently onto one side and then onto the other before covering him with a quilted counterpane. She studied his face with concern. “You need sutures. Here. Above your brow.”

“Leave it. It’ll add more character.”

She went away and returned with her sewing box. “You wouldn’t want your beautiful face scarred for life, now would you?”

He opened his mouth to protest, but she stuffed it with a leather pad and squelched the “Aye” forming on his tongue. Drake grunted a different word.

“I agree with you on that score. I am a bitch.” She threaded a fine ivory needle. Before setting to work, she poured wine from a flask into a small vessel.

He went to remove the leather pad, his tongue already licking his lips in anticipation. Then he yelped. “God’s blood, woman! You’re supposed to put the wine
in
me, not
on
me.”

She patiently replaced the pad and sewed up his wound. He scarcely felt any pain since the lingering sting of the wine blotted out the prick of the needle. He forced his thoughts to other things. Such as Aveline Darcy’s penchant for fine featherbeds and the color scarlet, and how much the half-night nocturnal interludes brought in yearly.

When she finished her embroidery, he asked, “Can I swoon now?”

“Aye.”

He did.

Her soft-padded feet tiptoed out.

Checking in on him from time to time, Aveline Darcy became his measure: if she didn’t cover his face with the counterpane, he must still be among the living. Sweet of her to care so much. He said so on one of her visits. “It’s only that I don’t want the trouble of disposing of your corpse,” she said.

The rest of the day passed like a bad dream. He awoke only to use the chamber pot she delicately placed next to the bed and to drink ale from the ewer she placed next to the chamber pot.

Aveline Darcy didn’t have much of a bedside manner.

Chapter 8
  
 

DRAKE DREAMT HE
WAS SUFFOCATING.
Upon waking, he became aware of the toddler-sized thumb and forefinger pinching his nose with giggly playfulness. The four-year-old was the image of her mother except for opaque green eyes. By the time Drake reasoned out the solution, she slapped her sticky paws over his mouth.

He was on the verge of blacking out when her mother yelled, “Pippa!” Pippa scampered away, laughing the distance. Aveline gave her a scolding and a tap on her behind before checking in to see if the invalid was still breathing. He was. Barely. She stayed with him until he fell asleep, which took enough time for her to pull up a chair.

He awoke at nones, the bells of Winchester Cathedral clanging in his ears. Freshly laundered, Stephen’s clothes lay at the foot of the bed. Drake dressed and limped down to the kitchen.

Gobbling up scraps, the yellow cur looked up once before starting her second course. Drake watched both bitches in silence. The taller, a forest-green kirtle nicely setting off her luminous tresses, vigorously scratched the ears of the shorter and muttered doggy-talk that seemed ill-favored for a flea-bitten canine of dubious parentage. Sensing he was standing in the portal, Aveline said, “There he is. Does my Lazarus want something to eat?”

He limped to the trestle table. “Wash your hands. I won’t have a filthy beggar sitting at my table. And why are you limping?”

“The limp comes permanently attached to the leg.”

She let out a sigh and reprovingly shook her head. Aveline Darcy was a hard woman to please.

He dried his hands and returned to the trestle like another of her obedient pups.

Two windows placed high above the postern door cast abundant southern light into the homey setting. Casseroles were neatly stored on a side table. Bronze caldrons sat on trivets in the fireplace. A kettle boiled above the hearth fire. Cooking pots and skillets hung from overhead hooks. Crocks, ewers, and goblets were stacked neatly in the cupboard. Dried herbs hung from the rafters. An enclosed passageway led to an outbuilding conveniently placed on the other side of the double-sided hearth.

“You live well for the daughter of an alewife.”

“And why should I not?” Her expression remained unceasingly bland. She was a proud woman. “Might I ask who used you for drubbing practice? I won’t ask why, since it’s public knowledge you merited it.”

“Take your pick.”

Setting before him a trencher of stale bread and a goblet of warm mead, she said, “The whole of Winchester? Eight-thousand townsfolk? I hardly imagine …” She stopped herself from saying more. Her amber eyes gazed unblinkingly into his.

Whatever her ways—biting or sympathetic—he was uncomfortable in her presence. So uncomfortable he wanted to kiss her three times over just to show her who was lord and master. “Three goons,” he admitted. “Sent from someone named Yacob the moneylender.”

She shook her head and returned to her work. “Yacob doesn’t employ goons who beat hopeless knights to a pulp.”

“Hopeless?”

“You
were
beaten to a pulp, were you not?”

“But …”

“I repeat. Hopeless. Utterly and completely hopeless.” Aveline’s locks swayed freely about an implacable oval face. “Yacob ben Yosel is a gentleman, more so than those that call themselves such.” The way she slapped a spoon, a knife, and a bowl beside the trencher told him he was not a gentleman. Her brow knit in thought. “Tell me. Did one look like he’d been in one too many sword fights and the other two like guardians at the gates of Hell?”

“You saw them, then?”

“No, but I do know those particular goons belong to Mat. Mat runs Hogshead Tavern but never shows his face. If I were you, I’d stay clear of Hogshead. It’s known as the chanciest game in town, where a man can lose the tunic off his back and the braies off his nether parts in a single night.”

“Much like the London Way Alehouse and Inn. Or so I’ve been told.”

She propped a hand on her hip and glared at him. Aveline was about to say something when a knock at the door prompted her to pile food into a spare trencher. With a gloved hand and a grunt of thanks, a beggar sheltered by a heavy cloak in the heat of a summer’s eve took the handout through the portal. She shut the door and threw the latch.

“If those goons belong to Mat,” Drake said, “why did they say they were sent by the Jew?”

“Why ask me about your bro …
your
affairs?” Cheese, bread, and butter were soon set before him.

“Because you’re the daughter of an alewife. Because you hear everything there is to hear. Because you grant favors in the upper chambers a half night a throw.”

Reddening from her chest to the top of her hairline, she slapped a hand onto the table and went eyeball to eyeball with him. “I overestimated you. You’re not as clever as you appear at first glance.”

“Where? What?” He was at a loss. “If you mean the half-night remark ….”

“An insult, an offence, a slur … and plain rude. You will apologize,
sieur
.”

He did, most profoundly, as a knight and a gentleman. She forgave him with words but not with heart. She turned away. More food arrived. A galantine, a capon, and a mixture of greens and herbs from her garden. Peas, beans, more bread, a compote, and a flask of raisin wine.

“Are we having company?”

“We already supped. These are leftovers from two days past.” She sat down and plunked a rounded chin onto an upraised hand. “Aye, that is how you rate, as fitzAlans go.”

“Any fitzAlan in particular?”

“One is like the next.” Her mouth curled into a smile. She was playing him for a fool, but he was no fool.

He boldly gazed at her, but she was unfazed by the directness of his stare. She was a pretty maiden, fair of face and shapely of body. But she had a sharp tongue and sharper wit. She could slice a man in half with a glance, like she was doing now. A man would be plain crazy to take up with the likes of her. But it would be interesting to try. “Aren’t we tempting damnation? Eating meat on a fasting day?”

“Not we. You. The Church gives dispensation for the sick and infirm. You are sick and you are infirm?”

“Most sick and most infirm.”

“I guessed as much.”

“You and my brother,” he started to ask. “Have you …?” He twirled a finger in a suggestive manner.

“You probably don’t know,” she said, “since you and your brother haven’t been back in town for very long, but the shire’s been in terror of your friend Graham and his band of thieves for some time, they having bled tribute money from every lord within sixty miles, using Drogo Atwell as sanction and highwaymen as muscle. Something to do with the Saladin Tithe and who knows what else. I don’t follow gossip that closely.”

“Tell me now.”

“It’s common knowledge.” She folded her arms on the table and challenged him with a direct look. “They’ve been helping themselves to tax revenues collected from the gentry, so much to lose track of and so much to gain.”

“Isn’t that the sheriff’s duty?”

“You would think.”

“Then Randall of Clarendon must have sanctioned it.”

“No one trusts him.”

“Why?”

“He was the sheriff’s reeve before taking over as acting sheriff. No one trusts a reeve. That’s why Winchester elected a mayor, the first ever hereabouts. The special tribute is for protection, so they say. As if the barony needs protecting.”

“How do you know all this?” Drake was astonished with the depth of knowledge she claimed not to own.

“As you say, I’m the daughter of an alewife. Men talk when soaked in liquor.
And
when paying by the half night.” She said the last as a jab.

Drake likened Aveline to the lass he lost his virginity to. A certain
demoiselle
who gave her body freely to any lad with pustules on his face and an itch in his braies. Stephen and Drake lined up of a Saturday night, penny in hand, and took turns with the other lads for her special favors, which were quick and to the point. She left town a year after disposing of Drake’s virginity. But first loves die hard, and he often reflected on her fate. He reckoned Aveline was the same kind of lass, a few years older and wiser but no less free with her favors, and hopefully not so quick and to the point.

As if reading his mind, she said. “A man can always dream.” She pushed herself up from the table.

“Is that she-devil yours?”

“Nay, I borrowed her from the lady down the street so she might torment you when I was busy.”

“Where’s her father?”

“Around.”

“Do I know him?”

She stared at him levelly. “Might.”

“What’s her name?”

“Pippa. Short for Philippia.”

His mother’s name. He changed the subject. “How much do I owe you?”

“Naught.” Scrubbing a pot, she explained, “Your brother rents by the month. In advance. And since
he’s
been exiled to God knows where, when it ought to be you,
you
might as well have use of bed and board.” She wheeled around and propped a hand at her hip. “I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking the daughter of an alewife cannot possibly keep a secret and by now all of Winchester knows you’re not your brother.”

“And doesn’t it?”

“I may have an unmade bed but not a loose mouth.” She returned to her washing.

“Why did Steph … that is,
I
… need to borrow money from Yacob the moneylender. Surely William …”