Roselynde (62 page)

"From whom do you come?"

Doubt showed in the man's face. "You are Sir Simon Lemagne?
Husband to Lady Alinor?"

William had started to raise a hand to scratch. The movement
checked very slightly and then continued. Lady Isobel's needle hung for a brief
instant idle. The news of the marriage had not yet been spread. Quite
reasonably, Simon desired that his new vassals and castellans hear of it one at
a time in his presence so that he could take fealty of them before they had a
chance to combine against him, if rebellion was in their minds. "I
am."

"I come from Sir Giles, castellan of Iford Keep."

Simon dropped his eyes to the letter again. "Very well. Go
below and take what rest you can, and some refreshment. You may need to ride
back again in haste." There was silence as Simon read the few lines.
"He begs me to come to him most urgently on a matter he dare not
write."

"Could Alinor have told him of your marriage?" Isobel
asked.

"She might, for some reason I do not know," Simon
replied, "but surely it would be told in confidence to an old friend. It
would not be a thing to spread among the men-at-arms."

"Something stinks!" William exclaimed. "Do not
go."

"Something stinks to high heaven," Simon agreed,
"but go I must, and at once, as soon as I have spoken to the Queen."

"Then I go, too," William said, getting to his feet.

Isobel took her lip between her teeth, but she said nothing.

"No," Simon refused promptly. "If you come, nothing
will happen, and I will not learn who my enemy is."

There was no difficulty in obtaining access to the Queen. Simon
was a little annoyed. Of late, she had often sent a message that she was too
busy to see him when he asked for audience. He had hoped she would do so this
time so that there would be no chance for her to deny his request for leave to
go. He had prepared a letter explaining everything. The effort of writing it
had not been wasted, however. It permitted him to present the situation briefly
and with great clarity.

"Madam, I beg you to let me go. I must—"

Simon stopped abruptly. The Queen looked so white, so old, so
frail that he dropped to his knee and took her hands in his own and kissed
them. She permitted the attention passively, then freed one hand and laid it on
Simon's head.

"Dear boy," she said softly, "if you must, you
must." The hand trembled on his hair. "I have tried to keep you safe,
but you will not thank me for that. And you are not a boy, Simon. Well— Well—
God has foreknowledge and each man must meet his own fate in his own way. Go
then. God keep you."

That was the most peculiar dismissal Simon had ever had. The Queen
had sent him off to tourney and to war hundreds of times. Sometimes she had
been affectionate, sometimes troubled. Most often she had told him briskly to
have a care for himself. But to say she had tried to keep him safe, to speak of
God's foreknowledge— This was no scheme of any of Simon's personal enemies nor
of any man who wanted him out of the way to have Alinor. There was only one
person in England from whom the Queen might say she tried to keep him safe or
whom she would be reluctant to oppose—John.

Although it was already late in the day, Simon summoned his troop,
armed himself, and rode off. There were two ways to Iford. One was the direct
route; the other entailed a detour of some thirty miles and led through
Roselynde. Simon rode through the night and arrived with the dawn at the great
stone walls. He recognized the intensity of the fear he had felt only by the
enormity of his relief when the drawbridge rattled down promptly. What had
terrified him to the point that he blanked it from his mind was that John held
Alinor hostage within and would not open to him.

Simon's relief was short-lived. Brother Philip cut short his
orisons to bring him the letters Alinor had left. Simon read them with some
difficulty. The light of the tapers that Brother Philip held wavered as if in a
high wind from the shaking of his hands. What the old monk had seen in Simon's
face when he said Alinor was gone almost shook his faith in God. He prayed
silently, fervently, crushing the doubt in his heart.

"What shall I do?" Simon cried aloud.

"Pray," the monk whispered. "A way will open. A
guide will be sent."

The eyes Simon turned on the old man were brilliant, and quite
mad. He lifted a mailed fist as if to strike. The old man put a gentle, shaking
hand on Simon's wrist. "God does not abandon the good," he affirmed.

"He has allowed many saints to be martyred," Simon spat
bitterly.

"Alinor is no saint," Brother Philip said, almost smiling.

"You do not understand. She is in the hands of a devil. I
dare not besiege the castle while she is hostage in it. Even if I dare, I have
not the men. If I call up Alinor's vassals, it will be treason. Worse, in the
time it takes them to gather, who knows—"

"My son, I do not understand many things," Brother
Philip interrupted. He had stopped trembling. At least God had answered his
prayers for strength. "What does this devil desire of Lady Alinor that he
should hold her?"

"Something that is a trifle to you, but that she would dare
her life to hold—her lands."

"But you are her husband," Brother Philip protested
uncomprehendingly.

The innocent remark applied a brake to the whirling wheel of
Simon's terror. John knew Alinor was married—not only the Queen's manner but
the knowledge of the messenger from Iford proved that. Thus, Alinor was
worthless until Simon himself was dead. He drew a deep, shaken breath of relief
and gripped Brother Philip's hand so hard that the old man had to set his teeth
to keep back a cry of pain. He did not fear. Reason had returned to Simon's
eyes.

"You are right. You are right," Simon muttered. "I
have a guide."

The trap to kill him must be laid at Iford. If it had been set on
the road there, the messenger would have tried to divert him into that road,
but he had ridden with them to Roselynde without protest. Simon cursed under
his breath. He had told Alinor it was not safe to leave castellans in the same
keep for generations. If he could lay his hands upon Sir Giles, there would be
no trouble convincing him to tell his men to obey Simon.

The thought of that convincing made Simon laugh aloud. He hoped
Sir Giles would not yield too readily. He would begin on the thighs and peel
the skin from him like a grape, adding salt and wine to the bare, quivering
flesh—Simon jerked his mind from that future pleasure to remind himself that he
would also need to wrest the secret of how Sir Giles was to communicate the
success of his venture to John before dispatching the treacherous castellan to his
just reward in Hell. Once he knew that, he could make his plans for obtaining
entrance into Kingsclere Keep and for his further actions.

Now his mind worked smoothly enough. He dismissed Brother Philip
kindly and thanked him. He summoned the master of the castle guard, gave
low-voiced instructions about the messenger who had accompanied his party. When
the master of the guard returned, several hours later, he was grinning. With
him he brought the messenger's clothing and certain information he had wrung
from the man before he died. Simon questioned him briefly about who and how
many men had accompanied Alinor. They were good men, Simon thought. If they
were still alive, they would be helpful. He had already figured out what time
he should reach Iford if he had started this day instead of the previous
evening and had traveled by the shorter route without undue haste. Simon went
to the window to glance at the sun. Soon, soon they could go.

Simon and his troop rode over the drawbridge and under the
portcullis into Iford just after dusk. The men had been warned and were ready,
but ordered not to attack unless violence was offered them. There were some
very nervous moments in the outer and inner baileys where missiles could be
launched at them from the walls, but nothing happened. Sir Giles, Simon
supposed, did not wish to risk a war inside his castle. The attack would be
against Simon alone and in private. So much the better. He smiled and agreed
with real pleasure when Sir Giles met him and urged him to come inside.

Simon's first doubts rose when no attempt was made to delay the
men who followed him up to the Great Hall. The doubts increased when Sir Giles,
all unarmed except for his eating knife, urged Simon, still mail clad and with
his sword at his side, into a wall chamber. When Simon saw the place was
completely empty, that no band of armed assassins waited, he could scarcely
believe his eyes. Perhaps they would rush in through the doorway? Nonsense! His
own men were outside. One at a time he could cut down many, many men before
they could overpower him. Also, with their unarmed master as his hostage, it—

"My lord, my lord," Sir Giles whispered, breaking into
Simon's befuddled train of thought. "I did not know what to do. I hope I
have not done ill, but I could think of nothing else, no other way to warn you,
and I dared send no second messenger lest that henchman of the Lord John should
discover it."

Struggling to reorient his thinking, Simon could only stare at the
man he had been casting in the role of villain.

"I beg you not to be angry," Sir Giles continued,
"and to pardon me if I judged wrong, but it seemed more dangerous to
refuse his offer outright and throw it in his teeth as I wished to do than to
seem to accept. If I refused, he would try elsewhere, I feared, or perhaps
conceive of another foul plan."

"Whose offer of what?" Simon got out.

"Lord John offered me vassalage to hold directly by his
authority if I would bring him your dead body."

Simon gripped Sir Giles's arm, his eyes lighting. "In fact? You
mean you are really supposed to bring my body?"

Sir Giles was taken aback at the joy in Simon's face. "Yes,
my lord," he faltered.

"Marvelous! Marvelous!" Simon barely restrained himself
from shouting aloud. Perhaps there were spies among Sir Giles's servants. He
could not restrain himself from catching the man to him and kissing him
soundly. Sir Giles stiffened in his arms, wondering if the stress of hearing
that the King's brother wished him ill added to the strain of years on Crusade
had driven his overlord mad. Simon added a little to Sir Giles's fear by
bursting into harsh laughter when he saw the expression on his castellan's
face, but he redeemed himself swiftly by an explanation of the situation. Then
the two men drew chairs together and sat down to plan.

Well after midnight but before the false dawn of the following
day, a man called across the moat to a guard on the wall near the gate of
Kingsclere Keep. The guard seemed a little surprised, staring anxiously through
the dark, but he called to another who summoned the master of the guard. A
question and answer were exchanged. Then Sir Giles came forward, identified
himself, and called a peremptory order backed by a sharp threat of Lord John's
anger if the order was not obeyed. The master of the guard hesitated briefly,
but the party was far too small to raise fear, and the drawbridge began to
crawl downward. Sir Giles came over first, followed by six men-at-arms. Behind
them a rough horse litter carried a rigid form in a rent and bloodied surcoat, the
stiff hands folded over a naked sword, a cloth over the face. Beside the horse
litter rode the man who had called across the moat.

Kingsclere Keep was much smaller than Iford or Roselynde. There
was no inner bailey. The keep stood directly behind the dike that had been
thrown up out of the earth dug from the moat. As soon as he came abreast of the
master of the guard, the man who had called across the moat swung off his
horse.

"I will go with you to wake Lord John," he said
hoarsely.

The master of the guard raised a hand to signal a guardsman
carrying a torch to come closer. The hand of the man beside him twitched
surreptitiously toward his knife, but the master of the guard did not turn
toward him. He reached toward the cloth over the corpse's face, lifted it. He
looked down at Simon's fixed and stony features, nodded and smiled.

"I will not stand out here all night," Sir Giles
growled. "Nor do I think this should be left here. I will have it carried
within."

The man who had called across the moat moved closer behind the
master of the guard, reached around him with his left hand, and twitched the
cloth back over the dead face. The guard's master jerked, and then stood very
still. The six men-at-arms who had come with Sir Giles detached the horse
litter from the two animals that had drawn it. Four carried it toward the keep.
One took the torch from the guardsman's hand and another led the horses around
toward the stables at the back with the help of the guardsman. Sir Giles and
the other two men followed those who carried the litter closely. Inside the
forebuilding, the cortege stopped abruptly. The man who had called across the
moat clapped his hand across the mouth of the master of the guard. As he moved,
torchlight gleamed briefly on the knife he held in his other hand pressed to
the master of the guard's side.

The corpse moaned faintly. The master of the guard gave a
convulsive shudder. Red appeared on the knife blade. The corpse slid its sword
over the side of the litter and sat up briskly and then got to its feet.
Muffled sounds came from behind the hand that held the master of the guard's
mouth. Sir Giles chuckled.