Sword of Justice (White Knight Series) (27 page)

Drake had run out of words.

The sheriff stormed out of the cell, taking candlelight with him and leaving the cell dark as a grave. Drake decided that it was easier to let go and let the waves of pain take him under.

* * *

He awoke to the light of a flame. Beyond the flame, he made out the stern visage of his father.

When the fetters fell away and Drake stood unsteadily, his father supported him. He braced a hand on William’s shoulder. “It’s been a pleasure, Sheriff, but your accommodations need improvement.”

“Here I thought they were perfect as is.” Randall of Clarendon held the door open for father and son. “Next time you’re a guest of the king, possibly we’ll have refined the lodgings to your tastes. More likely not.”

Aware of the increasing pressure Drake was putting on his shoulder, William slipped a supportive arm around his back. They climbed the spiral staircase side by side, William augmenting what little strength remained in his son with his own. When they stepped into the night and Drake took his first breath of fresh air, he promptly collapsed into his father’s arms.

He flashed back to childhood and those countless times he would feign sleep in the great hall so he might listen to William and his knights drink into the night and exchange tales of valor. It was usually well past midnight when his father carried him above stairs and tucked him into bed next to Stephen, who had usually trotted off hours before. Nothing had changed. It was well past midnight of a day that began well before the previous midnight when William fitzAlan deposited his grown son into Stephen’s bed at the alehouse.

Aveline ladled mulled wine down his gullet. And there, in a dazed recollection of spirits and awareness, he said, “Graham. Have you seen Graham?”

He tried to get up, but William flattened a broad hand against his chest. “It can bide.”

Drake sank into the pillows. “He was supposed to watch over Jenna. He …. Oh God! What have I done?” Hiding behind his hands, he choked on a sob.

Aveline said, “Let Stephen sleep.”

“You needn’t play the fool with me. I know my sons, and which one is which.” Then as an afterthought, he said, “Most of the time.”

Curling onto his side, Drake let his hands fall away from dry eyes that stared blankly into his own guilt. William stayed with him until he slept and through most of the night. Every time he stirred, every time the nightmarish visions resurfaced, the strong hand reassured him he was not alone.

* * *

When he awoke, bright green eyes stared down at him. Pippa propped a mangy head on a tiny fist and let out a huge sigh. “Mummy told me to tell you it’s time to wake up.”

“She did, did she?” He rolled over and gazed squint-eyed at the window. The yellow bitch rolled over and gazed squint-eyed at the window. They both remarked it was daytime. “What day is it?”

“The day after Tuesday.” Drake groaned. He found Jenna on Monday.

He corrected the midget. “Wednesday.”

“What I said, the day after Tuesday.”

“You must be a changeling,” he told her.

The eyes blinked twice. 

“A sweet darling,” he explained, “that your mummy exchanged one dark and gloomy night for the little devil staring down at me now.”

“Uh-uh,” she denied. “But
you
are. You look just like the other one. He has eyes like mine, too.”

“Not at all like yours.”

He stiffly sat up. The bitch stretched her paws. The tyke repositioned her chin on the other fist. “Oh, aye, Mummy calls it sea-green.” She didn’t give up easily, a veritable miniature of her mother. “Are you my da?”

“Da is your da.”

“Da is Mummy’s da. I don’t have a da. But
you
have a da.”

“I do.”

“Then why can’t you be
my
da?” Her logic made too much sense.

“Your mummy wouldn’t like it.”

“Sure she would. She’d like it a lot.” She giggled behind her hand and scampered off.

Aveline was an expert at plying food into convalescent knights. Since she’d had so much practice with Drake, she ought to open her own Knight’s Hospitaller. He told her so.

“I’m not one for celibacy,” she said, adding salt to her potage.

“Where’s William?”

“I’m not his keeper.”

“Somehow I got the impression you were.”

Over a prim shoulder, she glared at him with those bronze eyes that said so much with so little.

“The way you sneak glances at one another when no one else is looking? As if you can’t stand to be near each other?”

“You know naught, Drake fitzAlan, the same as your father, and the same as your brother.”

“Then tell me William is not Pippa’s father.”

“William is not Pippa’s father.”

“Then—”

“And we’ll leave it at that.” She began to bang caldrons and skillets.

“Did you—?”

“What!” She spun around, hands poised on hips, eyes afire with anger.

“I only wanted to ask … did you stay with me while I slept?” Her eyes melted. “It helped,” he said. “More than I can say.”

The clanging tattoo reaffirmed itself though not as loudly. Out of the cacophony, her voice emerged compassionately. “I’m sorry about Jenna. She’s being buried this morn.” Drake was nearly out the door, when she added, “And you look ridiculous in that outfit.”

“You should have seen it with the feather.”

Her eyes narrowed critically. “I’ll see what I can do.”

* * *

In unhallowed ground not far in
distant from the Berneval manor house, pallbearers lowered Jenna into the cold, cold ground.

When Rosaline de Berneval looked up from the grave and saw Drake standing a respectful distance apart from a family bereft of one bright and shining soul, she marched determinedly toward the presumed brother of a presumed murderer. Toes of shoes tapped toes of boots. Two unflinching eyes unknowingly glared up at the man her daughter intended to marry before all others.

“They say she committed a mortal sin. They say she died by her own hand. They say her body and soul have forever been defiled by wantonness. They say she departed without God’s grace. No priest will allow her body to desecrate hallowed ground. No man of God will say Mass for her eternal soul. Only her kin can pray for her salvation. And will, to the end of our dying days.” Her voice nearly broke, but she held herself steady for a last terrible act.

She took his hand in hers, turned it palm up, and deposited in its center two items: a betrothal ring and a dragon amulet, both encrusted with his beloved’s blood.

“Not in life, not in death. Tell Drake. Tell your brother he sent Geneviève de Berneval to everlasting Hell.”

She tramped back to her husband’s side. Henri de Berneval placed a protective arm around his wife and led her, sobbing uncontrollably, into the family manor.

Drake carried a single wild flower the color of Jenna’s hair. Approaching the grave, a depthless hole soon to enclose a gentle creature who left the world much too soon, he released the blossom. It drifted slowly, slowly down and landed on the deerskin shroud that held the girl-turned-woman he had adored forever. A bright circle of gold along with a dragon amulet followed the daisy.

Perchance not in life, but surely one day in death.

Chapter 25
                
 

RACHEL BEN YOSEL
SAT AT
Aveline’s kitchen trestle. As if to keep herself warm, she clutched a leather-bound sheaf of parchment to her bosom. A cup of hot mead sat before her. Sitting across from her, a similarly untouched cup of mead at her elbow, Aveline placed a comforting hand over Rachel’s. Neither woman spoke. Standing not far distant, three men, members of her community, men who were brawny and grim, stood guard.

When he entered, Drake sensed something afoot and sat wordlessly beside Aveline.

“Yacob has been killed,” Rachel said. “In the London riots. His ledger, which he always takes with him, was taken and probably destroyed. The house where he was staying, the house of his cousin, was burned to the ground. The cousin, his wife, and their three small children also died, cremated along with all their worldly possessions.”

Her hands shaking, she passed the book to Drake as if it contained the Torah of her faith, something holy and consecrated.

“He wanted you to have it,” Rachel told him. “The original was recorded in Hebrew. Yacob inscribed this one in French and kept in a secret place only he and I knew. I hesitated. I thought … forgive me … my husband believed you to be a good man … but I thought—
What can a Gentile do? Why should he care? Can he bring my Yacob back? To his children? To me?
He cannot
.”

“But something changed your mind,” Drake said.

“We buried Yacob yesterday. Upon returning to our home, our house, the place where Yacob and I … where we bore our children … it too ….” Her voice faltered, but she went on. “The brigands were driven off before they destroyed everything built over a lifetime. After much scrubbing and painting, we shall be able to move back in as if ….” She stopped, realizing that nothing would ever be the same again. “He had a premonition, you see. He wasn’t afraid. He only regretted.”

Tears overflowed. She didn’t bother to wipe them away. Aveline squeezed her hand. Rachel sent her a fleeting smile of gratitude. “They didn’t find it. They failed to burn it. Yacob had good reasons for leaving this to you. I believe you will serve his memory.”

“And so I will.”

She stood and tightened the black wimple about her head.

“Who was it?” he asked. “Who attacked him?”

“Two men, they say. One with a broken nose. The other pocked.”

Drake stayed at the table after Rachel left. While Aveline went quietly about her work, he turned over leaf after leaf of Yacob’s precise script. The ledger was the reason Yacob ben Yosel had been murdered. It was also an indictment of the man responsible. One name stood out, the single source for countless loans, loans doled out to the sons of the barony like sweetmeats, not just in Winchester but up and down England’s coast. Enormous sums no one man could possibly support, except perhaps one, or possibly two.

Drake got up from the trestle table and strapped on sword and dagger.

Aveline called softly after him. “Be careful, Drake fitzAlan.”

He went to her, gathered her in his arms, and kissed her on the lips, quick and to the point. He was out the door before she had the chance to raise a protest.

* * *

“I was just about to come for you,” Sheriff Randall Clarendon said when Drake entered his office at Winchester Castle. The above-ground chamber looked much like the holding cell below except for the addition of two arched windows.

“Come for me?”

“I have a warrant for your arrest.”

Drake took a deep swallow. “For what crime?”

“Jenna’s murder, surely.”

“Jenna killed herself.”

“With your dagger?” He picked up the damascene and flourished it with morbid delight.

“Not mine. Drake’s. Graham stole it from him the day of the tourney and later used it to stab me. You remember. Outside the alehouse. You left as soon as you were sure I was still breathing. I thought we settled this before.”

“We settled nothing, irrespective of the lord of Itchendel protecting his eldest son.” Rand set aside the dagger and cleared off a space at his writing desk, stacked with writs, warrants, orders, and lists. “Come. Sit. I have your confession prepared. All you need do is affix your signature. You can write? If not, an X will do.”

With a single finger, he pushed a sheet of vellum across the table. Drake hesitated. Rand nudged it closer. Drake cranked his neck and read.

I, Drake fitzAlan,

do hereby confess to murdering Maynard of Clarendon

on Saturday, the 19
^th
of August, in the year of grace 1189,

of murdering Rufus fitzHugh on Sunday, the 20th
^th
of August, in the year of grace 1189,

of inflicting mortal injuries upon Seward Twyford on the same date, which ultimately led to his death,

and of murdering Geneviève de Berneval on Monday,

the 4
^th
of September, in the year of grace 1189.