The Execution (29 page)

Straightaway,
he was painfully reminded of his purpose, that he was a pawn and
was performing for the sake of this evil sovereign. And he
had
performed, just as Duval had said he would. It was Duval
who controlled his captivity, his food, water,
sleep—freedom.

Enraged, he dropped his wooden weapon.
Ignoring the pain in his leg, he sprinted across the yard towards a
nearby weapons rack.

His behavior was so sudden, so
unpredictable, that he had within his hands a longbow and single
arrow before the guards swarmed him. He let fly with the one arrow
just as he was overcome by the mercenaries and struck hard to the
ground.

The arrow flew like a falcon and found
not the heart, but the arm of its prey.

* * *

Ravan’s deadly aim had been thwarted
by the urgency of the moment. A mere second longer and Duval’s
heart would have caressed the sweet barb. With sudden realization,
Duval knew this without doubt, that what he'd heard of the boy was
true after all.

Duval swore and bent over as he
grasped his arm. The arrowhead, having completely intersected the
flesh of the muscle, protruded from the back of the arm. Breaking
the shaft with an agonizing groan and blasphemous curse, Duval drew
the offending weapon from him. Arterial blood spurted and ran
bright red and urgently down his arm, dripping from his fingers. He
clasped the wound tightly with his other hand, leaving the wall to
find his physician and tend the wound.

Meanwhile, Ravan was tied to a timber
in the yard and beaten by the now conscious Renoir.

LanCoste watched, lest the vehement
Renoir permanently damage or kill Duval’s property.

Renoir, in fact, did not seem quite
right. He was unsteady as he beat the boy and by the grace of God,
or the Goddess of Luck, was shortly spent.

Ravan survived but sagged upon the
timber. His face and body were bruised and bleeding, his healing
left ribs fractured again. He fainted into a deep and deadly sleep
as the night became cold.

Duval ordered his body left on the
timber for the night as an object lesson. It was a risky order,
cast from rage, and could cost him his hard won mercenary to the
cold.

Along about ten o’clock, LanCoste knew
the foolishness of the order. As the temperatures fell, he stole to
the courtyard and cut the bindings with his axe.

The giant heard a groan. Ravan roused
only slightly as the axe fell so close to his ear. LanCoste hoisted
the young man over his shoulder and carried him inside to his warm
chamber.

Ravan groaned again, roused to
consciousness with the pain of being moved, and smiled, his face
contorted by Renoir’s handiwork. “Guess I made a good first
impression, don’t you suppose?” he whispered.

“
If you ever do such a
thing again? I will kill you,” LanCoste said. He was expressionless
as he deposited his burden unceremoniously onto the bed.

Ravan gasped with pain and splinted
his broken ribs, unable to breathe.

LanCoste left water, but Ravan was too
wounded to reach the urn and instead slept reposed again upon the
footsteps of death.

It was two weeks before Duval came to
see his prisoner. Ravan’s face was at that point almost
recognizable, the bloody pulp had lightened to purple and green
bruises. His eyes, however, were sharp and black as
pitch.

Duval, still pale from the massive
blood loss he’d suffered, fingered his bandaged arm thoughtfully as
he approached Ravan. “I thought you would be easier to reason with.
I didn’t believe you would be so reckless—so stupid.”

Ravan stood up slowly, painfully
silent. There was something about the way Duval was speaking, so
calm and quiet. It made him uneasy and gave him regret just now.
Duval’s pallor gave his disposition greater weight as well. Ravan’s
anxiety rose, a nasty feeling growing in the pit of his
being.

“
You will not be fighting
Renoir anymore,” Duval continued, waving his good arm in the
air.

Ravan shrugged as best he could under
the circumstances. His effort was one of indifference, an effort to
hide fear, but he was naive.

“
Oh—you care not? Well,
that is good. I have sent Renoir to kill the Innkeeper’s wife.” He
said it flatly, without emotion.

Initially, Ravan felt he had run
headlong into a stone wall. The blow of Duval’s comment crashed
hard against him so that he physically staggered back a step. His
shock turned to rage, his torment catching in his throat. He
lunged, reaching up with both hands. He would kill Duval with them,
with his bare hands, and he limped pathetically toward the evil
one, his right leg dragging behind.

LanCoste quickly stepped in, his broad
axe drawn, and pressed the blade against the young one’s
chest.

Ravan ignored the weapon and shoved it
aside with both hands as he lunged at Duval.

LanCoste reached an arm around the
wounded young man and easily overpowered him, holding him to face
Duval.

Ravan struggled helplessly against the
chest of the giant. First, he raged, then he begged. “Please—please
don’t hurt her. It is my foolishness that should be punished. Kill
me instead, please just kill me, I beg you!”

“
Now what would that
accomplish me?” Duval lifted his hands helplessly. “Besides, it is
quite too late—but your point of view is very interesting.” He
approached his captive.

Tears stung Ravan’s eyes as he watched
Duval absentmindedly stroke his beard, a thoughtful expression on
his face. He appeared to be only mildly interested in the anguish
displayed before him.

Ravan sensed his throat closing, and
his heart pained him with the torment one feels when helplessly
forced to watch a vulnerable or innocent creature tortured by
heartlessness. “You can stop him. Send word—please,” Ravan trembled
in LanCoste’s arms.

Duval suddenly changed, his face
writhing in anger. He spat into the face of his captive as he
clutched the chin of the young man, shaking his head roughly. “Know
this my impudent young fool, if you ever disobey me again, in any
way? I will kill every child at that pathetic little
orphanage!”

He shoved Ravan’s head backward into
the chest of LanCoste. “And, I will not wait for your answer! Do we
have an understanding? Because if we don’t, I will behead each one
of them and you can sleep caged with them until you rot
together!”

Ravan stared, stricken. Duval was so
suddenly enraged that it caught Ravan very much by
surprise.

Duval struck the young man across the
face as he repeated himself, “I said do we have an understanding,
because if we don’t, I will send my troops to that miserable little
orphanage today!”

Ravan shook his head. “No, No! I mean
yes—yes, we have an understanding.” He sobbed and dropped his head,
looking at his boots. “I will do as you say—there will be no more
trouble.” His eyes blurred as the tears welled in them, dropping
onto his boots. He hated this weakness, his inability to change
things, and hated his tears. He was suddenly swamped in grief for
her, oblivious of anything else.

Duval grinned, satisfied. “Good, then
we are in agreement.” He turned to go, but then hesitated. “Oh, one
last thing.” He looked over his shoulder. “Kill yourself and the
orphans are as good as dead. You are of no good to me injured or
dead. It will be in their best interest if you thrive.” He bellowed
a hollow laugh as guards entered again with food, leaving it on the
settee.

Everyone left and time stood still for
Ravan as the room slowly darkened. The smell of the food nauseated
him. He lay curled up on the bed, not moving as he sobbed quietly.
One hand held the braid of her hair, the other gently slid the ring
up and down over the silver necklace. Ravan closed his eyes and
finally quieted, listening instead to the soft ���whirring’ of the
ring.

CHAPTER
TWENTY-THREE

†

In 1346, England was weakened by over
a century of war on foreign soil. Lacking the resources to make
good their temporary sieges, the English were overrun by the
persistent French and despite having higher quality troops, there
was one such prolonged battle at Calais in which the daughter of
Edward III, Mary Plantagenet, was taken hostage. Mary was to be
ransomed back to the English.

It was sometimes more profitable to
ransom prisoners of sufficient means than to execute them or try
them for heresy, an ever increasing phenomenon of the times. Mary
fell into this category as her father was not only the battalion
commander, he was the standing King of England.

Prior to Mary’s ransom, however, a
young knight who’d tended her capture had fallen in love with her.
Lamond DeBourbon, a knight of substantial means, paid her ransom,
quelling the disparity between the sides. It was not only a kind
move, it was politically very savvy.

Despite Calais ultimately falling to
the English nearly a year later, De Bourbon married Mary
Plantagenet and inaugurated the joining of an incredibly powerful
French/English lineage. Establishment was set on both soils, and
the French lands became the royal house of Bourbon in Orleans,
south of Paris.

Lamond DeBourbon was, in fact, related
to Charles VI who sat the French throne. So, DeBourbon exercised
tremendous power in his domain. The history of this reign was
marked with periods of relative quiescence interspersed with bloody
and senseless savagery. DeBourbon was a good and brilliant man, but
suffered from episodes of mania. Nevertheless, the domain
flourished and grew.

The grandson of DeBourbon and
Plantagenet’s marriage, Philippe DeBourbon, eventually married the
niece of Edward the Black Prince. Edward the Black Prince was the
Prince of Wales, son of Edward III and so English blood on French
soil was even more firmly cemented in ‘Bourbon’.

Overall, it was like oil in water as
the rule of the domain was most often with an iron fist. The
Bourbon castle boasted soldiers and archers in excess of five
hundred with cannon all around. The surrounding villages were taxed
heavily but well protected. The commoner’s belief system became one
of, ‘We will thrive—or else.’

The Bourbon estate also paid nicely to
the papacy in Rome, such that the dominion did not fall too heavily
under the scrutiny of the church. In fact, the castle grounds also
boasted within its confines one of the largest, most ornate
churches in northern France, and the castle itself was
magnificent.

The surrounding countryside was
fertile and rich with resources, and despite the harsh
inflexibility of the ruling family, Bourbon flourished.

Eventually, the castle was ruled by
Antoine de Bourbon III, who married the Daughter of the first Duke
of Lancaster, Griselda Elisabeth Benedict II of Gloucester
perpetuating the Anglo-French rule. After two sons died in infancy,
they finally raised a third son, Adorno Benedict Antoine de Bourbon
IV.

Uncannily, he held remote patriarchal
characteristics. Like the first DeBourbon, he was vibrant and
animated, quite small and effeminate, with a shock of snow-white
hair, though he was barely twenty years old.

His thin, transparent lips held no
color and when he smiled it was unreasonably lopsided, revealing a
sharp incisor on the left side. His nose was long, narrow and
hawk-like. He was, in fact, most resembling of an adolescent albino
gargoyle as one could truthfully imagine.

Adorno was also an autocrat to excess,
insisting upon lavish banquets, ceremonies, and balls at every
turn. There was no detail nor expense spared on the Bourbon estate.
As he matured, the young Adorno’s reputation for extravagant
affairs, with bouts of sadistic and vicious cruelty, surfaced and
became widespread.

Stage presentations of the rape of
virgins were horribly realistic and there was a canyon dubbed
Prey’s Tomb, an overlook that more than a few of the victims had
‘accidentally’ stepped from.

Adorno also exercised increasingly
torturous punishments for the inability to pay taxes. These
punishments were immeasurably and publicly cruel at times, seldom
fitting the crime. Sometimes, the head of the household was left
blinded or with one or more limbs amputated, leaving the surviving
family indebted to the estate for several generations, never to
escape serfdom.

The horrible taxation effectively
added to the dynasty’s landholdings, but the price on the public
humor was not without great damage. If ever a man was hated, truly
and deeply hated, Adorno was, and deservedly so.

His lurid career as the only living
heir to the Bourbon dynasty gave him tremendous power. His father
became afflicted with intermittent fevers and bouts of hysteria, so
his parents allowed the young man to flex his authority and
tolerated immeasurable misdemeanors without obvious
notice.

He swiftly rose to power and despite
his youth made many of the important, though not necessarily
prudent, decisions of the landholdings. His wealth was so old and
ran so deeply that it afforded his rule much stability, despite his
excess and poor choices. It was as if Adorno had bred Gomorrah with
Elysium and the offspring was his kingdom.