Sword of Justice (White Knight Series) (17 page)

“Tilda, Tilda, you’ll never convince anyone you’re a
demoiselle
in distress.”

“You can’t condemn the lady for trying.”

One easy flick of his sword arm and the bodice of her lovely gown split open, revealing rosy skin untouched by sun but not untouched by man. Drake sheathed the sword and laid the scabbard across her lap. Leaning over her, he rearranged the pillows at her back. “Comfy?” he asked.

Her eyes became colorless. “I can think of better things to be doing with my time.”

“I don’t doubt.” His eyes were distracted by the painted headboard, a Bacchanalia of men and women engaged in libidinous pastimes with unlikely partners of human, godlike, and animal origins. He forced his eyes away from the prurient display. “Your calm in the face of requital is laudable.”

Her expression lay flat on underlying bone, but her skin shone with perspiration. She wasn’t quite as unruffled as she wanted him to believe.

“You,” he said, spreading out the flapping wings of her rent bodice, “didn’t tell me you were Mat.”

“And you,” she said, drawing up her knee and laying it across his lap, “didn’t tell me you were Drake.”

He laughed without humor. “Then you know how skilled I am with a sword.”

She had the forethought to blanch with apprehension.

“A murderer who emasculates another man before he kills him is quite a different sort of murderer from one who reverses the order of, shall we say, execution.” Drake had no way of knowing which way the real murderer had emasculated his brethren, but his version put a gruesome spin on her plight. “A murderer like that … well … who knows what he might do to a whore who left him for dead.”

She opened her mouth but thought better of saying anything in her defense.

“What was the point of the henbane potion and exportation to an underground chamber?”

“Any dolt asking a lot of damn-fool questions about the alliance receives the same treatment.”

“How many has that been?”

“Too many to count.”

“And how many of your victims never emerge from that hellhole?”

“I never took a survey.”

Drake roamed to a nearby table inlaid with gold leaf, grabbed a flask, and poured wine into a goblet. He resettled himself on her bed and held out the cup. She took a cautious sip. He forced her to take an incautious sip. Once satisfied, he finished the contents with a single gulp and directly poured another. “How did you remove me without anyone seeing?”

“We put you in a crate. For your purposes, a coffin.”

“By ‘we’, you mean the guardians to the gates of Hell?”

Drake heard footsteps. Someone came in. He squelched Tilda’s shouts for help with a kiss. Her muffled exclamations transmuted into passionate moans. As he slid a hand beneath the splayed bodice and fondled a delectable part of her body, Drake winked at Tilda’s flummoxed chambermaid, who discreetly closed the door after herself. The kiss went on. Tilda’s moans descended in pitch, rasping satisfyingly against her throat. For no better reason than spite, she bit his lip. Drake jerked his head back and sucked blood but let his hand linger on her breast. She laughed raucously.

“Do you leave keys for all your captives?”

She left off laughing and looked perplexed.

“The dudgeon,” he explained. Drake reluctantly removed his hand and sauntered around to the other side of the bed. “The dudgeon that took the life of a renowned sergeant. The dudgeon I later used to free myself.”

She thought it over and said, “Drogo? He’s been killed?”

“Not by me.”

She knit her brow, baffled, yet understood the rest of the meaning with rare intelligence. “Why should I want to implicate you for murder?”

“Everyone else does.”

“Is that so?”

“But since I know I didn’t kill him, your guardians to the gates of Hell must have.”

“How do you come by that conclusion?”

“Because Drogo’s dead body was dumped in the same hellhole as my drugged one.”

“Not by my orders.”

“Then whose?”

“How should I know?”

Someone else opened the door. He took up the same position as before: his mouth on her mouth and his hand … not on her hand. With his back to the door, Drake was unable to see the intruder, but Tilda’s wintry eyes flashed distress toward her likely rescuer. She tried to call out lucid phrases of warning, but her praiseworthy efforts escaped only as passionate groans. The voyeur became transfixed. She became determined, beating her feet on the mattresses and shrieking unintelligible invectives. Drake deftly repositioned himself across the length of her body and tugged her legs between his. Her eyes opened wide while her breath panted through flared nostrils. He placed his arm, the one not occupied with more enjoyable pleasures, around the small of her back. She arched spontaneously. Her shrieks once again descended into ardent rasps, persuading the visitor to take his or her leave. The door closed and latched. Footsteps beat madly down the stairs.

Many more kisses later, Drake tore his mouth away. Tilda’s eyes begged him to finish what he started. His body made the same demand, but he chivalrously resisted temptation. Honor was to be observed when it came to ladies, even ladies of Tilda’s sort.

“Untie me and I can show you an especially good time.”

“No doubt you can show me a better time bound and gagged.”

Drake sauntered to the foot of the bed. Grinning, he produced the matching set of tassels. He grabbed her feet and yanked her down from the pillows. Her arms stretched into an open triangle. He hastily tied each ankle to opposite bedposts. Only one of her kicks connected where it hurt. Resembling a double wishbone ready to snap for a foolish child’s wish, she called him a name that insulted his mother. Rummaging through her wardrobe, he produced braies and hose. The braies he stuffed into her mouth. The hose he plunged between her lips and knotted at the back of her head. She spit out a string of unladylike denunciations. To anyone listening outside the door, her muffled voice resembled wails of bliss.

“Vengeance may be the Lord’s prerogative,” he said, “but when you take it into your own hands, it reaches achieves a certain sweetness.”

She growled, then spit out three syllables—
I hate you!
—or something very like. The relationship was not meant to last.

Drake retrieved Stephen’s sword and started to leave.

On Tilda’s escritoire lay a book, not large. The goose quill, ink drying at the tip, overlapped facing pages. The leather-bound covers were finely tooled. The parchment was of the best craftsmanship. The stack of sheets suggested this was a manuscript to save for posterity. The neatly ruled columns and rows, the meticulous script, and the strings of Roman numerals could have easily secured the scribe permanent employment in a local monastery if only the nuns overlooked a besmirched past.

Drake casually read the most recent notations and flipped back through the vellum leafs for more of the same. When he glanced in Tilda’s direction, her eyes clouded with dismay. Struggling to release herself from her bonds, she merely succeeded in drawing the knots tighter.

“The pleasure,” he said, “has been all mine.”

He tucked the journal under his tunic. As he left, two muffled syllables assailed his back. He smiled even more.

* * *

Drake locked the door, took the key, and slipped out unseen. 

In the undercroft, Sheriff Clarendon idly sat on one of the coffin-sized crates, visually measuring it for Drake’s height and breadth. “Settle your differences with Tilda?”

“We’ve come to a basic understanding, aye.”

“Is she up to naming two gentlemen of her acquaintance?”

“As luck would have it, she’s tied down the rest of the evening.”

“Then you’ll have to do.”

Hunting was an abiding passion for Old King Henry, who built Royal Hawk Mews in the forestlands northwest of Winchester so he could indulge in pleasure and sport between wars, and more, to forget he was a king with an ambitious wife, powerful enemies, traitorous sons, and uncertain allies. Hawks and hounds once ran riot here, as did the king and his
mignons
. Since a more sumptuous palace had been built in nearby Clarendon, these once-exclusive hunting grounds were left to rot and weeds.

Randall of Clarendon led Drake to a spot north of the crumbling timber-and-stone Hawkeye, what had once been the king’s hunting lodge.

Drake smelled the bodies before setting eyes on them. Even covered in insects, the faces were recognizable as the one-time guardians to the gates of Hell. One lay at the base of a tree as if he had hugged the trunk in those last frightful moments preceding death and then slid down to the knobby, moss-covered roots to breathe his last. The other lay a few rods distant as though he had run for his life after seeing the cruel fate visited upon his partner. They both lay sprawled in similar positions, on their bellies with arms curled above their heads.

“That’s them. Tilda’s goons.”

The attacker had been powerful enough to drive a blade into their backs, under their ribs, and through their hearts. The skin of their faces and necks had turned a ghastly reddish-green. Spiders, mites, and millipedes feasted on the beetles and maggots that had gone before. By now the one-time guardians to the gates of Hell had taken up their former employment with their former Employer.

Staying downwind of the corpses, Drake asked, “Any theories?”

Holding a cloth over mouth and nose, the sheriff was kneeling near the guardian beneath the oak, studying the state of his body and the position of his demise. When he backed away, he said, “Well, either the fitzAlan brothers have six notches on their sword pommels, or the odds are poor of ever finding out who did in these two. Or why.”

“Oh, I know why,” Drake said.

“Do you now?”

“They killed Drogo.”

“Did they?” The sheriff hooked his eagle eyes on Drake. They were of the same height, taller than most men and equals, even though one could have locked the other in an underground dungeon and thrown away the key.

Drake took a seat on a nearby boulder. “Like I told you before, Maynard, Seward, Rufus, and Graham were collecting a tax from the barony, a sort of tribute for protection, and Drogo was helping them.” 

“Were they now? Was he?” In the waning light of day, Rand’s eyes matched the setting sun: copper-bright and distended. “Well, no longer. As to whether these two killed Drogo, and at who’s behest, they will take witness to their graves.”

“Protection from what, is the burning question?” Drake pursued. “Seems to me, the ones offering protection were the ones in dire need of it.”

Rand likewise took a seat, finding a clear spot on the turf and draping gloved hands over crossed legs. “Aye, the wind has informed me about the tribute. It was neither ordered nor sanctioned, officially or unofficially, by the sheriff’s office.”

“Then why was Drogo riding around the countryside collecting an illegal scutage?”

Rand looked up at his one-time prisoner, his eyes tired with lack of sleep. “I was making inquiries well before Maynard was murdered. What he and Drogo and the others were up to reflected poorly on my family and my office.”

“Corruption has a way of doing that.”

His tilted his head and considered Drake with those same tired eyes, now keen with a measure of respect. “As younger brothers are accustomed, Maynard didn’t take kindly to my interfering ways.”

“They rarely do.”

He ran a hand through his hair. “I’ve formed my own theories as to who ordered the collections, though I’m still unclear as to what purpose. All I know is, silver is a powerful stimulant in men, sometimes for good, usually for bad.” Rand pushed to his feet.

Drake bided his time and scratched his jaw. “You wouldn’t have knowledge of any improper dealings connected with the Royal Winchester Treasury, would you, Sheriff?”

If Rand found this interesting, he didn’t show it. “Such as?”

Drake shook his head and likewise rose to his feet. “Far be it for me to tell you your duty.” Gathering the reins of the palfrey, Drake mounted up. “For all I know, you had Drogo killed. For instigating the murder of your brother but also for jeopardizing your position as sheriff.”

“Acting sheriff.” In the gloaming hush of a summer’s twilight, the acting sheriff of Hampshire mulled over Drake’s allegation. “An interesting notion, that. I’ll have to think on it.”

“You do that, Sheriff.”

Drake wheeled the gray around and headed back toward Winchester.

Chapter 15
                   
 

“FIRST RULE,” DRAKE SAID, “ALWAYS
watch your backside.”

From the moment he entered the town walls through West Gate, Drake knew he was being followed. For the length of High Street, the clip-clop of a knight’s destrier matched the leisurely gait of Stephen’s palfrey. After stabling the gray in the livery, Drake climbed to the hayloft, skimmed down the trundle rope, and skipped around the building to the front. The knight’s back was to him. Then, suddenly, it wasn’t.