Noble Hearts 03 - The Courageous Heart (27 page)

“He’s breaking his fast,” one of the guards replied, opening the door for him. “If you go up you’ll be just in time.”

Ethan
nodded and
pushed past him and into the White Tower. The hall that had been stuffed full of nobles every day for more than a month now was eerily quiet. A dozen or so
soldiers
sat or stood cleaning their weapons or enjoying breakfast. The scene was almost comfortable.

Ethan ignored it, ducking into the first stairwell and circling up in a spiral.
His pounding heart caught in his throat as he burst out into the banquet hall on the second floor. A long table was set with a morning feast, the scents of meat and sweet mead mingling with that of the flowers that had been set
about
the room. A dozen
of King Richard’s closest confidents
sat around the table, eating and laughing, but in the large room that number of people seemed miniscule.

King Richard sat at the head of the table, a purple robe lined with ermine draped over his shoulders to keep out the morning chill. As
the king
turned away from the conversation he was having with his mother in the chair to the left of him
his face lit
with
a smile
. “Ethan!
Good of you to join us. I was wondering when you would arrive.
”
H
e
motioned for Ethan to come to the head of the table.

Ethan strode
up the length of the room
, searching for Joanna as though she would be hiding under the rushes. He abandoned his search when he reached the king and bowed
to his knees
.
The time had come to speak out, to set the wheels in motion that would take him and Joanna home to safety.

“Your majesty. I am pleased to see you looking so well
,
”
he began with the necessary pleasantries.

“And you,
Windale
.” Richard nodded and motioned for him to rise. “
We were just talking about Acre
.
Do you remember how wretchedly ill we all were when we arrived?
”

“
Yes, my liege. We were all certainly
ill
.
Your majesty, I have something of great importance that I need to tell you.
”

“Oh?” Richard showed vague interest. “What about?”

“It is about one of your prisoners, my liege, Sir….”
His words trailed away as Joanna entered the room from the stairway he had just climbed.

Joanna’s eyes were downcast and her face was ghostly pale with bright splotches on her cheeks. She carried a tray with a steaming tureen and pot. From across the room Ethan could see that she was shaking.
Every protective instinct he had flared to life
.

Richard laughed behind him. “I see some things never change.”

Ethan pivoted back to him, bowing his head low. “I am sorry, your majesty. Forgive me.”

“Nonsense.” Richard dismissed
him with a wave. “I would forget what I was saying too if presented with such a pretty face.”
Ethan wasn’t sure if Richard was staring at him or at Joanna with that sparkle in his eyes.
“
Do you remember the fair faces that met us in the port of Acre
?”
the king went on. “Saladin’s men may have been fierce fighters, but they were a treat to look at.”

“They were, my liege,” he agreed without thinking. “But I have to tell you-”

A gasp and a clatter drew the attention of everyone at the table to the far end of the room. Joanna had slammed her tray down on a side table and stood with her eyes wide and her mouth open, staring at Ethan. She clamped her mouth shut and curtsied lower than Ethan had ever seen, mumbling, “Please forgive me.”

“She begs your forgiveness for the disturbance, your majesty,” Ethan translated.

“Does she now?” the king replied, stroking his beard. He laughed and proceeded to ignore Joanna. “A
h well, accidents happen. But as I was saying, you
should have seen this man fight in Acre! He must have killed a dozen of Saladin’s men in one hour. Two dozen! I’ve never seen a braver knight.”

“Thank you, your majesty.” Ethan bowed low.
“But I-”

“When I was taken ill,” the king went on, “I called on Sir Ethan to bear my stretcher around the city walls. I wanted only the strongest knights surrounding me.”

Ethan
snuck a glance at Joanna. She was fidgeting with the tureen, setting everything on the tray straight.
Her hands were shaking. It didn’t make sense. She was far too self-possessed to be intimidated by serving the king’s breakfast. His pulse raced.
He continued to watch her out of the corner of his eye as he rose to address the king.

“My valor was a pale imitation of yours, your majesty.” He let the flattery invent itself. His attention was locked on Joanna.
“M
y liege, I have information….”

His words died on his lips. Across the room he saw Joanna
grasp at something small and
dark in her hands
, a vial of some sort
.
His
throat constricted
and
his mind filled in the blanks of
the danger she had been up to.
He watched her jerk the stopper out
of the vial
and swiftly pour the contents into the tureen.
Poison. It had to be. He scanned the room, half expecting to find Pennington hiding in the shadows.

“You flatter me
with your praise
,
Ethan
. But of course you’re right.” King Richard laughed and everyone at the table laughed with him.
“Those were fine days indeed!” Richard went on reminiscing. “Why, I remember when we were in Cyprus….”

It took every ounce of Ethan’s will to feign a smile.
Joanna stood hunched over her tray, her hand sliding towards her pocket. At last she straightened and took a breath. She lifted the tray and turned to walk towards the head of the table, avoiding Ethan’s eyes.

Joanna’s heart filled her throat as she
took one step at a time toward
King Richard. She could do this if she did it one step at a time.
Aubrey’s freedom and Crispin’s
and Jack’s lives were at stake. This would save them. She
repeated the words over and over in her mind to give her
self
courage
.

The king babbled on. The table of nobles roared with laughter as she neared
its head
.
She
flinched praying with everything she had that she wouldn’t drop
the burden in her ha
nds. She waited, arms aching.

As slowly as she’d walked the length of the table she raised her eyes. Ethan was watching her. He
had been speaking before
,
but now he was silent. His false
smile for the king
was made
grotesque
with
panic.
He’d seen her.
He knew.

“Heaven’s sake, child, put that tray down before you drop it,” the queen mother spoke
in English
across the table from where Joanna stood. She gestured for Joanna to set the tray before her son.

Trembling inside and out, Joanna stepped forward and placed
her burden
directly in front of the king. As her sovereign king chattered on, gesturing to Ethan and his nobles, Joanna removed the lid of the tureen and stirred its contents. Holding her breath, she
poured a ladle
full of the broth into a bowl and placed it
in the king’s place
.

All that was left to do now was wait and watch.
Ethan’s
smile had
vanished
. His hands clenched and flexed at his sides. He glanced down the table to the stairwell. Joanna followed his eyes, taking in the half dozen guards placed throughout the room.
He was telling her to go, giving her a way out. For once she wasn’t going to question him
.

She took a step back. One of the
king’s guests
was crossing behind her
.
S
he bumped square into him. Before she could gasp and apologize a tiny crash sounded from
the floor beside her. The vial
had
slipped out of her pocket and shattered.

“What’s that?” the noble she had bumped into said.

The conversation at the table stopped. Joanna’s heart stopped with it. The king turned to look at her, his stare curious and ready to turn deadly. She scraped into the most humble curtsy she could imagine while the noble next to her picked up the fragments of the vial.

“Poison?” he said
, sniffing the broken pieces
. “Are yo
u trying to poison our king?”

A murmur went around the table. Joanna didn’t dare look
at the king
, didn’t dare stand. The weight of failure and her imminent death
pressed
heavily on her. She squeezed her eyes shut and muttered, “I’m coming, Toby.”

She was wrenched to her feet as the king gave some sort of command.

“
I
t’s just a misunderstanding,
my liege
,” Ethan
jumped to her defense
. He repeated his words in the king’s language and held out his arm to stop the guards that were storming towards the head of the table.

The king spoke. The guards halted where they were. Even the nobles at the table went silent.
Ethan spoke several sentences to the king in a tone that tried to be casual, ending with a weak smile. The king raised his eyebrows and replied. Joanna’s knees wobbled to butter as the king shrugged and
turned to watch her with a sharp grin. Every set of eyes in the room shifted to her.

Ethan was pale and had more fear in his eyes than Joanna had ever seen.
He
took a breath. “I have explained to the king that
I gave that vial to you, that I asked you to put it in his broth and that you know nothing about its contents
.”

The blood drained from Joanna’s face.
Every man and woman in the room knew what she had just done and what the consequences would be. Ethan
had
just
condemned himself along with her. She wanted to scream in protest,
to
tell the king he was lying. She couldn’t move.

Ethan said something more to the king before facing her again. “I’ve explained that the vial is a harmless concoction of spices that I brought home from the Holy Land and that it was meant to
be a surprise, to
remind him of the time we spent
on campaign
. He
… he
has asked that you sample the broth to let him know if those exotic spices are to your liking.”

Joanna
sucked
in a breath.
Death by
poison
was a
gruesome
death
indeed.
She’d hoped to be long gone before
the king’s convulsions began
. Now she would feel the harshest death she could imagine for herself.

She nodded and curtsied low to the king one last time before stepping closer to the table. All she could hope was that once she started to writhe in agony the Tower guards would slit her throat to end her misery. She reached for the bowl.

“No.” Ethan caught her hand and held it suspended above the steaming broth. A murmur went up from the table. Joanna lifted her tear-filled eyes to meet his. He shook his head, dark determination giving him color again. “I can’t let you do it,” he spoke softly.

She knew the look he gave her. It spoke of long summer days laughing in the shade of Windale’s trees. It was filled with the wonder of sitting on the manor roof watching the farmers coming in from the fields as the sun set. It was warm with stolen kisses and nights wrapped in each other’s arms in the secret corners of the garden
when they were young
.
It was the life she had never wanted to say goodbye to.

Ethan
raised her hand to his lips
.
The
chaste kiss
said
more than any outpouring of words in any language could. For a moment he hesitated. Joanna swallowed, on the edge of begging him not to go. She should have begged him not to go all those years ago when he
left
to follo
w his king in the first place.

Ethan dropped her hand and picked up the bowl.