The Falcons of Montabard (2 page)

She eyed him coquettishly. Her hand went down between them and explored. 'About the size of your tally stick,' she said.

Amid flurries of laughter interspersed with lustful urging and gasps of pleasure, Sabin and Lora tumbled on the bed, shedding their clothes with abandon. The cord holding up Sabin's braies was knotted and there were some moments of exquisite torture while a giggling Lora unpicked the tangle with her sharp nails.

She gave a mock pout. 'You just don't want me to see the prize!' Her loose hair curtained her face and twisted in auburn ringlets to cover her lush, freckled breasts.

'Believe me, I want you to do more than see it!' Sabin said hoarsely.

'Then what do you want me to do?' Her voice was a throaty purr. 'Aha!' She prised the knot free and loosened the cord. His braies slipped down and her eyes widened. 'My, my,' she said with admiration.

Sabin grinned. 'I'm a man of deeds rather than words. I'd rather show you than tell you.'

She spluttered, then burst out laughing. He pounced, rolling her beneath him on the soft feather mattress.

Sabin was savouring the first tight, deep thrust when the door slammed back on its hinges and three soldiers burst into the room, one clad in mail, the others wearing the quilted tunics ofmen-at- arms.

Lora screamed in Sabin's ear like a fishwife. He was out of

her and off her in a single blur of motion, his hand groping for the sword on his discarded belt.

'Hold!' the mailed soldier bellowed. Swords hissed from scabbards and Sabin found himself cornered and looking down the length of three blades. His chest heaving against the steel points, he stared through his tangled hair at his assailants and lowered his hands. Lust withered more swiftly than a storm-toppled tree. On the bed, Lora whimpered and frantically sought to cover herself.

'What do you want?' Sabin demanded, but thought that he already knew. These weren't thieves out for his purse. These were the King's men. The poacher had been caught with his hand - and more - in the snare.

'If King Henry was less mercilui, your cock and bollocks,
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their leader snarled, confirming Sabin's suspicions. His blade lowered to Sabin's genitals to emphasise the point. 'You have played him for a fool and now you will pay.' He snapped his fingers at Lora. 'Get dressed, slut.'

Making small sounds in her throat, Lora struggled to don her chemise and gown. An abrupt command and Sabin's arms were grabbed and lashed behind his back. He was forced to his knees in the thick straw of the chamber floor.

'Don't hurt him,' Lora implored, her voice pitched high with fear.

'Christ, Arnulf, get her out of here and put her on the ship,' their leader snapped. One of the soldiers seized her wrist, yanked her from the bed and dragged her sobbing and screaming out of the door.

Sabin held himself rigid and felt his entrails dissolve. He knew it was going to be bad, and could only pray that they did not cripple him permanently.

'Now then.' The leader circled Sabin, his boots crackling through the fresh straw. 'I am authorised to take reparation for the insult you have given your King.' Picking up Sabin's pouch, he emptied it of the remaining coins. A magnificent cloak clasp of English silverwork fell out into his hands.

Sabin lunged and was brought up against a sharpened edge. 'That was my father's!' he burst out and struggled against his bonds. A sword was reversed and the hilt clubbed against his temple. He swayed, seeing stars. A booted foot slammed between his shoulder blades and his cheek hit the straw with bruising force.

'Was
is right.' The leader tucked the money and the brooch into his own pouch, latched Sabin's swordbelt around his own waist and drew the blade to test the balance. 'Decent, but I've seen better. Still, it should fetch a good price.' Sheathing the weapon, he laid his foot beneath Sabin's jaw. 'Pick him up, Richard. I haven't finished with him yet. In fact I haven't even started.'

Through the eye that was only half swollen shut, Sabin focused on the guttering flame of the candle in one of the niches. Its partner had gone out, and that side of the room was cloaked in darkness. If some parts of his body were not clamouring with pain, it was because they were still numb; the agony would come later. King Henry's men had known their business. Sabin was too high born and well connected to die, but not protected enough to be immune from a severe warning.

'Christ,' he groaned and struggled to sit up. His hands were still tied behind his back and he was naked. A purple bootprint stained his ribs, and his abdomen felt as if someone had been using it as a threshing floor. It was not the first time in his life that he had suffered such punishment, but usually his assailants had come off worse.

The charcoal fire had died to grey and the November chill was seeping into the room. How long had he been lying here? He knew not, save that the candles had been fresh when he and Lora had been shown to the chamber and now he was about to be left in darkness. He struggled to his feet, collapsed, fought his way up again and wobbled to the bed. The effort opened up a drying cut on his lip and he tasted fresh blood. Sabin fell face down on the mattress, turned his head to one side so that he could breathe and let oblivion swallow him.

When next his awareness returned, pallid dawn light was threading through the shutters. He was chilled to the bone, stiff as a corpse, and someone was kneeling over him.

'Is he dead?'

Sabin recognised Simon's frightened voice.

'Not yet, sir,' replied the landlord, 'but I doubt he's in the land of the living either.'

There was a sharp tug at Sabin's back as the landlord used a whetted dagger to sever the cords binding Sabin's wrists.

Sabin groaned. His arms had set in their trussed position and to move them was at first impossible, then agony. His entire body throbbed with pain, sharp and dull, incapacitating.

'Bones of Christ, what happened to you?' Simon came around the side of the bed. His thin adolescent features were puckered with worry and his complexion was sweaty and pale in the aftermath of his drinking session.

'King Henry's hirelings,' Sabin croaked and felt his lip sting and bleed again. 'I was with Lora . . . God, stop boggling at me like a witless sheep. Go away. Let me die in peace.'

Ignoring him, the youth hovered anxiously. 'I said you shouldn't chase her.'

Since he couldn't get up and walk away, Sabin closed his good eye and hoped that Simon would take the hint.

'The
Blanche Nef
sailed without us.' The youth's tone was despondent. He had been looking forward to voyaging on the finest galley in King Henry's fleet. 'The other ships have all gone too. We'll have to find a wine transport to take us home.'

Sabin grunted. Practicalities were beyond him for the nonce.

The tavern-keeper's wife arrived with a bowl of warm water, a cloth and some salve. A judicious application of leeches reduced the swelling around Sabin's eye and the cut on his lip was treated with some disgusting grease that nevertheless did its job and prevented the wound from splitting open every time he tried to speak.

In pain and great discomfort, but not at death's door, Sabin was able to dress and shamble into the tavern's main room

where he partook gingerly of bread soaked in milk and a cup of watered wine. He missed the customary weight of the sword at his hip and he had to borrow Simon's spare brooch to pin his cloak.

'My mother won't be pleased when she sees you.' Hunched over an almost untouched cup of wine, Simon studied Sabin's battered visage. 'There isn't an inch of you that's not black or blue or red.'

'Your mother never is pleased to see me,' Sabin retorted, pushing another morsel of milk-sodden bread between his lips whilst striving to open them as little as possible. His jaw was aching ferociously and at least two of his teeth were loose. 'You know as well as I do that she'd prefer I'd never been born.'

'She's always been fair to you.' Simon's tone was defensive. 'You've never lacked for anything.'

Sabin shrugged and paid for the movement with agony. Simon was right. The lady Matilda, Countess of Huntingdon and Northampton, had always been fair: so even-handed that no one could accuse her of neglecting her duty or shunning her husband's child, bastard-born of a novice nun, begotten on the way home from the great crusade. What was lacking was the warmth that she bestowed freely on the children of her own body. For him the smiles had always been forced; for Waltheof, Maude and Simon, they were wide and joyous. Her offspring could do no wrong. Sabin, by quirk of fate and sometimes a petulant demand for attention, was usually caught out in transgression. It had not mattered so much while his father was alive. There had been the balance of his affection, albeit tinged with guilt, but after he died, that balance had been removed and Sabin had found himself trying to run up a steep and slippery slope. Sometimes he thought that it wasn't worth the battle, and that he should just slide quietly down into hell. Then again, perhaps he had already arrived there.

'Why did you do it?' Simon asked.

'Do what?'

'Chase Lora when you could have had your pick of the court

women.' A hint of envy flickered in the youth's blue eyes.

'I like playing with fire,' Sabin said flippantly, pushing his bowl aside, the sops half-finished. 'I might as well ask you why you drank last night until you dropped. You knew it would give you a head like the bottom of a pond this morn, you knew it would make you sick, but you still went beyond enough and into too much.'

'It was good wine' - Simon was still on the defensive — 'and I don't like sailing — even on the best galley in the fleet.'

'Not because your stepfather would disapprove of you getting roaring drunk in a dockside tavern and you felt like defying his rules?'

Simon's throat flushed red above his tunic collar. 'I didn't get drunk to spite my stepfather.'

Sabin said nothing, but his look was eloquent. Two years after her husband's death, the lady Matilda had wed David MacMalcolm, Prince of Scotland: a political match, to be sure, but one from which deep affection had developed. The marriage had been blessed with several offspring, the eldest only six years old. Prince David took his parental responsibilities seriously and that included dealing with his stepchildren. Being the bastard of Lady Matilda's first husband, Sabin was on the periphery and only the most heinous of his misdemeanours were brought to Prince David's attention. However, they were numerous enough to have earned him a reputation and last night's incident was certain to add to it.

Simon pretended great interest in a dubious stain on the trestle.

Manoeuvring his cup to avoid his cut lip, Sabin finished his watered wine. 'I went after Lora because I liked the way she laughed and I wanted to unbind that hair of hers and run it through my hands,' he said. 'She wasn't jaded like some of the women at court. And yes, perhaps I did want to see if I could persuade her to abscond Henry's bed for mine. I admit that I might have overreached myself but—' He stopped speaking as the landlord's wife returned from a visit to the fishing boats,

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her basket filled with two large crabs and half a dozen flounders. Her complexion was grey and she was trembling as she sat down heavily at one of the trestles. Her husband hastened to her in concern, demanding to know what was wrong.

She looked up at him through welling eyes, then across at Sabin and his brother. 'The
Blanche Nef,'
she said. 'I have just heard that last night she hit the Chartereuse rock and sank.'

There was a brief silence while the three men stared at her.

'You are sure?' Her husband was the first to break it. He gestured at her basket. 'You know that Thomas trades more false gossip than he does fish.'

'I didn't hear it from Thomas,' she said with tearful indignation. 'Emma told me. Her husband was out fishing and rescued a man from the sea at first light. He told them that the
Blanche Nef had
foundered on the reef and, when they tried to prise her off, she sank.' She waved her arm. 'Go and ask for yourselves if you do not believe me. Go and look. They say that pieces of wreckage have been washed up by the Point and at least one body. All those young people ... all those we entertained last night. . . every one of them drowned, including the Prince.' Covering her face, she began to weep in earnest, rocking back and forth on the bench.

'Holy Christ on the Cross,' Simon whispered and signed his breast. He gave Sabin an appalled look. 'We should have been with them.'

Sabin stared blankly at the door that the woman had left open in her distress. Raw November cold blew into the room. Across the rectangle of pallid light he watched people going about their business and heard the screaming of gulls over the landed catches from the fishing boats.

'Perhaps it isn't true,' Simon said. 'False rumours always spread like wildfire.'

Sabin heaved himself to his feet and moved stiffly to the door. The wharfside was as busy as it had been last night, but now it was filled with clusters of townsfolk, bartering opinion and speculating on the news. As Simon said, it might not be

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true, but there was a cold knot in his belly that told him it was.

There was a sudden flurry as people began running towards the shore where a fishing vessel was beaching, the master and his lads splashing barelegged and knee-deep in the water. One of the youths was shouting and gesticulating. Thrusting past Sabin, Simon sprinted towards the vessel. Sabin lurched after him, the wind tearing into his mouth, making his loose teeth ache all the way to his eye sockets.

The fishermen were lifting something out of their craft and bearing it onto the firm shore above the waterline. Sabin saw his brother crane to look and then abruptly turn away.

'It's Lora,' Simon said, swallowing. 'Dear God, I didn't believe it was true ... I didn't.' Bending over, he retched.

Sabin pushed his way forward, heedless of his superficial pain, for a far deeper one was gathering inside him - as if someone had seized his soft, vital organs in a fist and twisted.