Conqueror (33 page)

Griffyn clapped him on the shoulder and took the steps to the outer door three at a time. He kicked open the door. Sunlight streamed in.

“Must you go?”

Griffyn had come up to their bedchamber to say good-bye. He came without his squire Edmund, the boy being engaged in swift preparation of Noir, and so Griffyn was tugging on his tunic himself.

“I must,” he replied, his words muffled by the fabric. Gwyn hurried up and unraveled the hem so he could pull it over his head, her fingers trembling with tension.

“But, now?” she persisted, thinking herself mad. Was this not a godsent answer to her prayers? Griffyn was leaving. She could visit Marcus. So why was she trying to convince him to stay? “’Tis just that it is so close…close to…”

He sat down on the bed and began tugging a boot on. “Close to what?”

She waved her hands in the air. “’Tis just a bad time to leave me!”

He buckled his spur on and dropped his foot. “Why?”

“Our wedding, I suppose,” she explained shrilly.

He rose, gave her a kiss, and sat back down to wrangle on the other knee-high leather boot. “Your yearning is lessened?”

“No!”

He looked up slowly, several tendrils of dark hair curling just past his temples and cheekbones. She suddenly realised she had to cut his hair. That was her job now.

“Good,” he said slowly. “Are you well, Gwyn? You’re not—” His face suddenly lit up. He reached out and touched her wrist. “You don’t think you’re with child a’ready, do you?”

“No!” she almost shouted.

He drew back, peering at her as if she’d sprouted a growth on her forehead. “Well, Gwyn. I cannot fathom the mood possessing you. I must go. If you’re worried about me and the fair maidens of Ipsile-upon-Tyne—”

“No!”

He looked over flatly. “’Twas but a jest. Would you please stop shouting at me?”

She nodded and fingered the tapestry, then snatched her hand away. “’Tis just, it’s so soon,” she finished lamely.

“I will be back.” He got his spur buckled on and rose. “We will be wed, and we shall go to Ipsile-upon-Tyne and any other northern town you develop a sudden interest in. We’ve over two weeks until the wedding, Gwyn. I will be back in two days.” He planted a swift kiss on her lips.

“Please don’t go,” she said again, in a whisper, but it wouldn’t have mattered if she’d shouted, because he’d already left the room.

The wooden sign swinging in the darkness outside the tavern had a red cock on it, or at least a cock, rutted, chipped, and pockmarked such that it might have once been red.

Fulk snorted. “I doubt anyone ever went to the effort of painting it, my lord. Mayhap ’tis blood, and they just stuck it up there anyhow.”

“That I’d believe,” said Griffyn in fervent agreement.

They stood outside the Red Cock Tavern, pondering not only the wisdom of entering, but the wisdom of the man who would direct them there. Its thin walls listed precariously to the right. It was huddled between two other establishments of much the same ilk, and boasting much the same clientele. Fulk and he stood in an ice-encrusted puddle and stared at the slime-encrusted door.

“I’ve been in worse,” Fulk announced.

“So have I,” Griffyn said, just as firmly.

And they had, both of them, much worse. But neither wanted to go in here.

The night was cold and dark, and the mists were building. White ribboned ghosts swirled about their ankles like cats. The alleyway was narrow, and above them, the three-storey buildings lurched inwards, like old women over a cauldron. From between the shuttered windows of the tavern, small bright candles shone. A loud shout of laughter burst out, then someone opened the door and stumbled out. The door slammed shut. Griffyn looked at Fulk.

“At least they’re laughin’,” said Fulk grimly.

“Aye, but about what?”

They went inside. The tavern was mostly open space, filled with men in various stages of drunkenness. Seven or eight tables sat at odd angles across the crowded floor, and a long counter stretched along the length of the back wall. It was manned by two bartenders and strewn with drunk men, mugs of ale, and women covered in rouge and dilapatory pastes.

“Now
there’s
paint,” Fulk said, gazing reverently and solemnly at the buxom women.

Griffyn snorted. “Aye.”

It was an unruly, festive crowd. They were packed together like cows, loud like cows, and stinking like cows.

“And cow piss,” muttered Fulk as they crossed the threshold.

The men closest turned to regard them sullenly. In response to eighteen years of a civil war on the border between two hostile nations, the men of Ipsile had developed a fierce sense of community. They looked out for their own. Griffyn and Fulk were unknown quantities, and as such, treated with a polite regard that bordered just north of hostility. Griffyn did not care to enlighten them on the fact he was actually now their lord.

Fulk and he exchanged glances, then Griffyn shouldered his way towards an empty table he’d spotted, hoping Fulk was following behind. He glanced over his shoulder.

He wasn’t. Fulk had detoured to the bar, and was staring open-mouthed at the cleavage of one of the prostitutes, ignoring the bartender standing in front of him. Griffyn sighed and pushed onwards to the table.

He got waylaid by an argument between a few drunken townsmen. When the shouting escalated and he heard the words “Bloody fricking bastard,” shouted near his right ear, he stepped back just as a man’s body was flung through the air and landed with a sickening thud on a tabletop. The table shimmied convulsively, then its four legs folded. The table, with occupant, crashed to the ground. Griffyn stepped over the wreckage and continued on.

The table he’d spied was still open. He edged onto the bench behind it, back to the begrimed wall, and waited for Fulk, the mysterious message-sender, or Satan to approach him. He was making bets with himself on which would show first.

It was Fulk.

He plunked his armoured body down onto the bench next to Griffyn, two pints in his fists. “Truth be told, my lord,” he said, shoving one pint at Griffyn so hard a portion of it splashed onto the table, “those Scottish women are good to behold.”

Griffyn reached for the mug. “How can you tell, behind the cosmetics?” he asked, truly curious.

“Och,” Fulk said with a confident air, sitting back and pushing his belly out. “Ye can tell.” He took a long pull from his mug.

“Umm.”

A figure pushed through the bodies filling the room and approached their table. “My lord,” the man said in a low voice. “You came.”

“Call me Pagan,” Griffyn said swiftly, then his eyes focused and his breath jammed back into his throat.

De Louth. It was de Louth, Marcus’s henchman, the one who’d tried to kidnap Guinevere on the London highway, the one who almost killed Griffyn.

Griffyn pushed to his feet, his breathing slow and controlled. His hand moved to his sword. Fulk rose beside him. Tension pushed out of them like waves into the air, ready for a fight.

“De Louth,” Griffyn said, then flicked his gaze around the pub. It was crowded and smokey. Men stood in small herds everywhere, leaning over each other’s shoulders, guffawing, clicking dice across the tabletops. No one seemed interested in this little corner of the room. He shifted his gaze back.

“You’ve nothing to fear from me,” de Louth said quietly. “I give you my word.” He stood a few paces back from the table, his hands near his hips, but palms turned forward, splayed. He had no weapon. At least not in his hands.

Griffyn’s eyes ratcheted back up to de Louth’s. “You sent me a message?”

“I did.”

“Why?”

“That’s what I’m here to tell you.”

“You, or
him
?”

De Louth shook his head. “Not him. Just me.”

“He doesn’t know you’re here?”

“If he knew I was here, he’d cut off my tongue. And my prick.”

Griffyn smiled thinly. “So, your lord cannot trust you, but I should?”

De Louth dropped his hands. “Sir, you’ll either believe me or you won’t. But what will it hurt to listen?”

Fulk crossed his arms over his chest. “It might hurt the backs of our heads, if we were to get smacked upside them with a club while we were listening.”

“I’ve come with no tricks, or men.” He looked to Griffyn. “So, aye or nay? Do you want to hear what I’ve got to say?”

Griffyn felt the hilt of his sword butting up against his wrist, a comforting pressure. De Louth might be dirty, or not. There was no way to know except to listen.

He slid his gaze deliberately down to de Louth’s thigh, where he’d punched through the flesh and bone with an arrow on the king’s highway. De Louth was waiting for him when he looked up again.

A twisted smile lifted a corner of the knight’s mouth. “It still hurts, if that’ll make you happy.”

“Some.”

Griffyn looked around the room one last time, then gestured them to sit. Fulk took a deep drink from his mug. Griffyn sat back and said, “So? What do you have for me?”

De Louth reached inside a pouch hanging at his waist and held something aloft in the air between them. It was a chain. At the end swung a key.

Griffyn’s heartbeat slowed. Thick and ponderous, it knocked out a beat that made his blood churn and head spin. A key. It looked lighter than the one around his neck, and he saw it was silver.
Steel.
And it would fit. He knew it would fit. It was as if the knowledge flowed through his blood, as if the key were already in his hand. This little steel key would fit inside his larger iron one, and the puzzle key, the one that would open the chest of the Hallows, would be one step closer to being complete.

“How did you come by this?” he asked hoarsely.

De Louth lowered the chain to the table. “I took it.”

“From whom?”

“Endshire.”

“
Marcus?
How in God’s name did Marcus come by it?”

“He stole it. From the countess. Last year. I watched him.”

“He took it from her?” Griffyn repeated in a low voice.

“Not off her person. She was gone by the time we got there. But it was lying on the floor of her bedchamber. Looked like it’d been left behind in a hurry. An accident.”

“And Marcus found it,” Griffyn said slowly, trying to picture the moment when Marcus realised what he had. “He must have been pleased.”

De Louth snorted. “He looked like he was sucking on ice in Palestine. It mattered, to him.” He sat back in his seat. “To you. To whoever tried to buy it from me last week.”

Griffyn went still. “What?”

“Someone tried to buy it from me about a week ago.”

“Who?”

De Louth shook his head. The firelight from candles glinted off a few grey hairs speckling his beard. He glanced at the mugs of ale. “I don’t know. We met in a dark alleyway. He didn’t speak much. I wouldn’t know if he was sitting at the next table. There was one thing, though. I saw it when he was reaching for the bag under his tunic.” De Louth’s eyes met his from across the oaken tabletop. “He had a tattoo. A bright soaring eagle, inked right over his heart.”

Griffyn and Fulk looked at one another.

“He was willing to pay a lot for that.” De Louth nodded towards the chain and key, laid like a spiraling, linked snake on the table. A fat candle burned beside it, slowly spreading yellow wax like a sluggish volcano. “An awful lot.”

“So why didn’t you give it to him?”

De Louth shrugged. “I didn’t trust him.”

“You’ve developed quite a conscience over the past year,” Griffyn observed coldly.

De Louth shrugged again. “A conscience? I dunno. I needed the money. And it wasn’t Marcus’s to begin with.”

“So why didn’t you sell it when you could?”

De Louth’s gaze wandered back to the mugs of ale, then he poked his finger into the yellowish wax. More hot wax came chugging down into the recess, covering de Louth’s thick, calloused finger. He pulled it free. “I don’t think my answers will suit, my lord, but they’re the only ones I’ve got. I didn’t trust him.”

Griffyn’s face stayed hard. “Why are you doing this?”

“He took it from the countess. It’s hers. Not his.”

Griffyn’s eyebrows inched up. “Truly, now: why?”

De Louth scowled. “I said you’d believe me or no. So, ’tis no. I don’t much care. That belongs to the countess. Or,” he added, sitting back, “you. But it sure as hell isn’t Endshire’s.”

“And you’re just so tired of all the stealing, is that it?” Griffyn’s words were mocking, but his tone wasn’t. Nor was it kindly. He was impassive. Blank. Pushing. Appraising.

“I’m tired of people getting shit on, my lord,” de Louth replied. “I’m tired of watching it.”

“Why?”

His face went red and he flung out his hand. “I don’t know! I had a child. My wife died. I don’t know. Just take the damn thing, will you?”

Griffyn swept up the key. Fulk slid his mug of ale across table to de Louth, who nodded and drank deeply.

“And why did you contact me?” Griffyn asked. He slid his thumb over the smooth, cool steel.

“I told you, I saw him take it from the countess. I knew where it belonged. From Everoot ’twas stolen, to Everoot ’tis returned.”

“But you didn’t send a messenger to the countess, you sent one to me.”

De Louth looked at him in confusion. “You
are
Everoot, my lord.”

“Call me Pagan,” he said shortly, although no one could or would be listening in. It was loud and tumultuous, getting more crowded, and the room was practically tilting sideways with all the drunken revelry. Soon the fights would break out. Time to go.

“I knew your father.”

Griffyn came out of his thoughts with a start. “What did you say?” he asked coldly.

“Your father,” de Louth said. “I knew him. He didn’t like Endshire much.”

“No. He did not. How much? For the key.”

De Louth set down the mug and wiped the back of his hand across his mouth. “I was going to name a price that would have beggared you. At least, one that would buy me a corody with the Templars for my old age. Since I’ll likely go lame before my time.” He patted his thigh, the one Griffyn had shot through with the arrow. “But I think I’ll leave it at this: Take my daughter when she’s of fostering age. As one of the countess’s ladies. Raise her up right, and safe. I surely cannot do it.” He smiled bitterly. “I cannot even choose a good master.”