Sword of Justice (White Knight Series) (30 page)

“Your hair, it’s all sorts of colors.” Her face swirled with a
mélange
of emotions. Some, he understood. Most, he didn’t. “Chestnut, wheat, corn ….”

The emotions he was able to grasp made her even more attractive to him than her comely face or shapely figure. Whenever he gazed into her amber eyes, he saw himself reflected back as the man she saw. The way he charmed her in odd ways. The way he appeared both boyish and devilish. The way he moved with intensity and purpose yet remained graceful as a fawn. The way his hands gesticulated, revealing the essence of a man poised at the threshold of untold possibilities. “The sun, every summer,” he muttered drowsily, “turns it into a motley potage. It’ll grow out and turn dull brown in winter.”

 “I noticed,” she said.

He looked up at her, his eyes nearly swollen shut from exhaustion, drink, and fight. “Why is it you never wed Pippa’s father?”

“Pippa’s father!” Flustered, she busied herself at the hearth.

“Pippa is Stephen’s, is she not?” He was testing her. “She is either sister or niece, and I mean to find out which.”

“You’re still drunk as a lord.”

“Aye, I am, but you haven’t answered my question.”

“And never will.” She stirred the potage but stirred him more. He was sizzling, and the source of the heat did not emanate from the hearth fire. With water sluicing off his body, he stepped out of the tub and gathered Aveline in his arms. She resisted his embrace, her face flushing as dark as the madder of her kirtle, while his hands enjoyed the many luxuries of her fine physique. Her voice took on a warbling tone. “Stephen would never marry my kind, as well you know. Nor would Drake fitzAlan.”

He probed her face.

“Drake,” she said not unkindly, “you are the product of your birth, as I am of mine. If it comes to a lad and a lass coming together for warmth and comfort, then each knows what is afoot and neither expects an attachment of more than a night. It is no more complicated than that.”

He took breath to protest.

“And even if it were, that is the way it is, notwithstanding a child standing in the middle. The fact is, you love Jenna.”

Drake gasped and dropped his arms. “I will always love Jenna.”

“But you haven’t cried for her.”

“I have,” he defended. “In my own way.”

“Not to grieve. Or mourn her loss. And not to bid her
adieu
.” He must have been trembling, or else Aveline was, or both were. “She’s dead, Drake. And nothing
you can do will bring her back. Not the ghost, not the glimmer, not the least of that poor girl can you replace with the daughter of an alewife.”

He cried out and sank to his knees. “Oh, God!
Jenna, Jenna
.”

Throwing a towel around him, she held him close.

“It’s my fault she’s dead.”

“’Tisn’t your doing.”

“I delivered the lamb into the wolf’s jaws. I entrusted her to Graham. Instead he ….”

“You couldn’t have stopped it in any case.” He let her kiss the tears away. “Jenna fashioned her own fate with her own two hands.”

He sought her lips, blindly, urgently. She let him and kissed him back in the heat of the moment, a sympathetic gesture, to lessen the emptiness of his heart. His passion was different: a hunger that went beyond courtesy.

The flat of her hand met his cheek. “You’re despicable, Drake fitzAlan!” And so he was.

Chapter 27
                 
 

HE WAS HUGGING
A FEATHER
pillow when a hand shook his shoulder. He told Aveline to go away. Rudely. Then a pair of rough hands dragged him out of bed and flung him against the wall. Rudely. That fairly well woke him.

A sergeant flanking his side, Randall dangled a set of heavy iron shackles custom-fit for Drake’s delicate wrists. “Either you come with me dressed or you come with me as you entered this world.”

Quickly donning tunic and hose, Drake looked about the room. Stephen was nowhere about. As Rand’s sergeant secured the shackles, he asked, “What is it? What’s happened?”

“Someone used Tilda for drubbing practice. The only name we can get out of her is yours.” Rand smiled cheerfully. “Aren’t you going to ask which name?” He had made his point.

Her attacker had punched Tilda about the face with as many punches it took to turn it into pulp. The way she was cradling her arm meant it was broken. She opened one eye to a swollen slit, groaned, and reached out with her good hand.

“For mercy’s sake, give her something,” Drake said.

“I tried,” her chambermaid wailed. “She willna’ take it until she’s talked to you.” She pushed the draught into his manacled hands.

Tilda found solace in the crook of his arm, the chained links of his shackles rattling beneath. She took one sip and tried to speak. “Drink first. Then tell me.” He dribbled the liquid past bloodied lips. She swallowed obediently, afterwards pushing the goblet away.

“Yernel,” she managed to say. “Wants the yernel.”

“What did she say?” Randall asked.

“Tol’ Malric … din’ hab it.”

“The rest,” he ordered.

After drinking, she crooked her finger closer. “Yervase. My brother … tha’s why. Mastard, may ‘e murn in ‘ell.” Not much later, her eyelids closed and she went limp in his arms.

He removed himself tenderly and said to her chambermaid, “I’ll send Aveline Darcy. Keep plying her with this. Don’t let her awaken.”

She curtsied. “Aye,
sieur
.”

They descended the back staircase, Drake clanking the distance. In Hogshead’s undercroft, Randall put a solid hand on his shoulder and motioned his sergeant to wait outside. They sat on one of Tilda’s coffin-sized crates.

“You have another journal?” Rand said. “Tilda’s?”

Drake settled tiredly against the wall, the chains heavy in his lap. “Remember when Graham wounded me with Drake’s knife?”

“Outside the alehouse. You were sharing drink with your father’s captain. A lengthy conversation, I’m told.”

“You were having me watched?”

Rand smiled broadly.

“God damn you, Rand Clarendon, you were having me watched.”

“Damn your cock, fitzAlan, that’s why you’re still breathing. The journal saved your backside.”

Slack-jawed, Drake stared at the ceiling, still irked. “You were having me watched.”

“So,” Rand said, “if I can translate what Tilda said: the advances she extended to the sons of the barons were backed by Gervase des Roches, who just so happens to be her brother.”

Reluctantly Drake looked over at Rand. “Seems so.”

“He reneged, then.”

“Seems so.”

“Leaving Tilda holding the debt.”

“You’re good at this, Sheriff. Anyone ever tell you?”

“Yacob ben Yosel … ’twould seem he wasn’t practicing his penmanship for his benefit alone … in which case, the only recourse for Tilda and Rachel is to demand immediate repayment.”

“From a ruined barony, aye.”

“So you say.”

“Sinking good coin into bawdyhouses? Finding their investments gambled away? Being saddled with obligations they can scarcely repay? And profligate sons who filched the rest? The Saladin Tithe prior? Scutages in between? Rents to the crown? And God knows what else?”

“You made your point. All right, then. They’ll throw up their hands and plead poverty. Then what?”

“You forget. Ben Yosel supported loans from Exeter to Dover. And Tilda extended credit through a network of brothels and gambling houses from Cornwall to Kent … but only to the most worthy of men … nobles and sons of nobles investing in those same brothels and gambling houses.”

“And so,” the acting sheriff said, “all along England’s coast, castles and manors will topple, one after the other, nothing to stop the momentum, unless …” He let the sentence hang in midair.

“Aye,” Drake said. “It’s the ‘unless,’ isn’t it?”

Rand finished the sentence. “Unless by coincidental and providential intervention, someone offers restitution in exchange for allegiance. But who?”

“You have innocence down to a fine art, Sheriff.”

“John,” the sheriff said, nodding. “For whosoever owns the southern coast of England … owns England.”

“What took you? Anyone you chanced upon in the street would tell you John.”

“By the God above, how are we going to prove any of this?”

Drake sat forward, the chains jangling. “We?”

“Do you know who killed Jenna? And why?”

“Even if I knew for certain, which I don’t, folk would make her out a harlot.”

Rand studied him and respectfully nodded.

“Now you know it wasn’t me who assaulted Tilda, you can take these damnable things off. They’re chafing the scabs from the other times.” Drake pushed out his manacled hands and waited for the appearance of a key.

The eyes of the acting sheriff sparkled. “Graham is missing. Plus there’s a confession that lacks a signature.”

Drake threw back his head and allowed himself to be led away.

Rand’s sergeant was standing guard outside. Drake importuned Randall, “You’ll send Aveline?”

“Aye. I’ll send her. And after I get you locked down, I’ll find whoever this Malric is …”

“Baldric. The man you’re looking for is named Baldric. He’s the giant who helped Rufus and Seward take me captive. What are you going to do about Gervase?”

“Install you in the same cell where he now resides.” Rand answered Drake’s look of surprise. “Aye, Gervase des Roches strolled into the office of the treasury bright and early this very morn, claiming a case of the grippe put him abed these past days. So far, he admits to nothing. But after he’s been quartered in the same cell as a known murderer and mutilator … sorry … brother of a known murderer and mutilator, who’s to say.”

Drake smiled broadly. It wasn’t because he appreciated the humor but because eyes beheld a vision that neither Rand nor his sergeant saw: his twin image, bruise for bruise.

They timed their joint attack with fitzAlan precision. Drake threw up his shackle-encased wrists, hopping with the momentum, and rapped Randall on the point of his chin. Rand fell like a rock. Stephen dispensed with the sergeant using the pommel of his sword. The sergeant fell like a rock. Winchester’s finest, sworn to uphold the king’s peace, had been incapacitated by two knights on the run.

Stephen need say only one word to remove the gleeful smile from Drake’s lips. “Aveline.”

* * *

At the alehouse, Hell was frothing at the front gate.

Aveline’s brothers were out for blood, didn’t matter whose. A couple of well-connected punches left Drake and Stephen dazed, but after Agathe Darcy sidestepped her vapid sons and shouted something about journals and a giant, they gathered their wits right soon. Drake grabbed Stephen and shouted for the river. They covered the ground on foot, racing through the mud-slopped streets of Winchester.

Drake went ahead while Stephen stayed behind to cover his back. Drawing sword, he ducked through the open portal into the hut.

The darkness of the hovel blinded him after bright sunshine. The hut looked the same as he remembered except for three additions. Where a fortnight ago Drake had plodded over a dirt-packed floor, now he trod lightly on oaken planks. Where a fortnight ago, the only furniture had been a slipshod trestle and a couple of stools, now a finely hewn table and chairs with arms and high backs stood in their place. Where a fortnight ago Drake had shared fermented cow dung with an uncouth giant, now Aveline was seated on one of those master-crafted chairs, bound and gagged. She tried to speak, but the panicked look in her eyes said everything.

The floor creaked behind him. Drake spun around. Stephen stood in the doorway, a poniard swept menacingly across his throat and Baldric gripping him as a shield. “Ah,” the giant said, “two for the price of one.”

Drake glanced back at Aveline, her arms straining inside their bonds and her complexion awash in fear. The pawn, the prize, and the innocent in this deadly game.

“Throw the sword down, Drake!” Baldric drew a thin line across Stephen’s throat; blood welled and dripped. Aveline screamed a muffled scream.

Wrath charged through Drake’s mirror image. With an elbow thrust, Stephen released himself from the fleshy bonds of his captor. His steel blade clattered to the floor. Dancing with the same impetus and the same fluidity, Drake threw Stephen his sword, Stephen swept forward, and Drake somersaulted toward Baldric. Baldric’s defense was not as elegant but more effective. He kicked out and lowered his arm. His fist thumped Drake on the skull, the same spot where Aveline’s skillet found its mark the night before. Drake went down on his elbows. Blood flooded his eyes. He squinted ahead. The hilt of the poniard was within reach. His fingertips touched the carved ivory handle. A massive foot stomped his knuckles. He yelped in agony, and the point of a sword descended sharply between his shoulder blades.