Sword of Justice (White Knight Series) (13 page)

“One of Queen Eleanor’s gaolers,” Drake said.

“Until of late, though he didn’t much care for the duty. The queen, on the other hand, couldn’t abide his presence an hour longer than need be.” He released a dispirited sigh. “Such is the life of men in modern times when being an ally to one king means being a traitor to the next. Now that he’s been dismissed and disgraced, his future looks bleak.”

“Jenna would never betray Drake,” Drake said.

“How would you know?”

“Further, Drake is not a murderer.”

The sheriff shrugged. “Who’s to say?”

“Me, who knows him better than anyone. He’s not the kind of man to mutilate another man, whatever the offense.”

“What of Rufus and Seward? Any particular reason Drake would want to see them dead?”

“They would have hanged him had he not escaped their clutches.”

“Truly? Your brother told you this himself?”

“Drake took a beating, the worst I’ve ever seen in a man and live to tell of it.”

“A beating bad enough for him to exact revenge?”

“Bad enough for him to do whatever it took to escape their clutches. But when last he saw them, they were alive even if not hale.”

“And you know this how?” Without saying it aloud, the acting sheriff suspected that the man sharing a drink with him might be the infamous Drake fitzAlan himself.

“He told me himself.”

“And you believed him?”

“He’s my brother.”

“I see.” The sheriff crutched his chin against his fist. He rarely blinked. He didn’t censure. He merely posed questions and let others speak to the point of hanging themselves. He was the cleverest of men. “Do you think someone put them up to it?”

“Rufus and Seward are clowns in want of mischief. They aren’t ambitious lads but they’re always taking up with the lowliest troublemakers. Follies and misdeeds usually follow. They live from day to day on the stinginess of their fathers and wait, a little too impatiently I think, for the day they become fatherless. Aside from that, we go back some. The four of us, along with Graham, lost our virginity together in the spirit of comradeship.”

“Would I know the lady?”

“I forget her name, if ever I knew it.”

Not surprisingly, the sheriff grinned as if he knew the truth of it: men never forget their first experience even though they’d like to. Her name, Drake remembered, was Margery.

“Seward,” he went on, “was always one brain short and one cock in oversupply, though once in a great while he said or did something of merit. When we were still in wet pants, Rufus got the better of Drake in a wrestling match and never let him forget it. From then on, Drake fell out with him and the others, and they with him.”

“And you? Did you also have a falling out with them?”

If the sheriff of Hampshire were an ordinary man, Drake wouldn’t have been particularly wary. But seeing that the sheriff of Hampshire was cunning, Drake decided that honesty along with a straight face was the best approach. “We got along. I was the odd man out, the second son, disinherited from title and fortune. We had a lot in common.”

“Rather hard on yourself.”

“I see the way of it.” Indeed, Drake had never before seen the view from his brother’s side of the crib, but by posing as the younger fitzAlan, insight came to him like a wall of water beating down on him from on high. The more he posed as Stephen, the more qualms he had about birth order and birthright. He had always taken for granted his position as the elder and Stephen’s position as the younger. The light of day brought on pangs of guilt and an uneasy conscience.

“And Graham de Lacy?” Rand pressed.

“Graham is gutless. He instigates others to do the dirty work for him.”

“Bringing us back to …” Here the sheriff paused, intending his meaning to hit the mark. “… your brother.”

“I helped Drake get away. When we rode off, Rufus and Seward were hurting but would have gone on to hang other men. Tell me. Are you and Drogo playing a game of good sheriff, bad sheriff?”

Clarendon rubbed a thumb along his lower lip. “Drogo,” he said. “He oft gets carried away. But you gave him naught. Therefore you’re not about to tell me where your brother is hiding, either.”

“France is all I know.”

“A long ways away,” Clarendon said. “Aye. I can see we’re of similar minds. To protect our brothers, whatever the cost, even if undeserved.”

“In Drake’s case,” Drake said, “deserved.”

“But not Maynard’s?” Rand chuckled into his tankard. “I like you, fitzAlan, whichever one you are. Truly. It’ll be a sad day for Drake
and
for me when at last I catch up with him. As to the mutilations … they betoken personal rancor … wouldn’t you agree?” By switching the thread of the conversation so quickly, he was trying to trap Drake into making a mistake, and more likely, an admission of guilt.

Drake wasn’t falling for the trap. “Or were made to look so.”

“Be that as it may ….” He lapped up the last of his drink and stretched onto long legs. “I’m sure we’ll run into one another anon.” He left coins on the table, enough to cover the drink of both.

Drake squinted up at him. He was feeling the effects of drink along with a profound fatigue that made his many aches and pains cry out for a soft bed, the quicker the better. “Tell me, Sheriff, do you always employ drunken knights to bleed tribute money from their fathers?”

Clarendon’s eyes narrowed. “Come again?”

“Drogo and my boon companions. They’d been riding around the shire, extorting protection money under the guise of collecting scutage for the Crusade.”

“Tell me now.”

“It’s common knowledge, I’ve heard tell.”

“I haven’t.”

“So you claim.”

Randall of Clarendon showed displeasure with Drake’s insinuation. His eyes slanted away before angling back. He shook his head, peeved. And shook his head again, a grin curling on his lips. “On that note, I’ll bid you good eve, my fine fellow, and leave you with a bit of advice. Watch your back.”

“From you?”

“As prisons go, the dungeons of Winchester Castle offer more than most. The walls have housed Queen Eleanor for many a year, and I’m sure we can find something to your … or your brother’s … liking. The beds are hard and the food sparse, but the locks are sturdy. And you’ll be able to visit each other once a year, provided you don’t wind up sharing the same cell.”

After the sheriff left, Drake emptied his tankard without once taking his lips away.

Aveline swayed past, the wafts of lavender nearly leading him by the nose straight into her skirts. Giving him more encouragement than he dared hope, she motioned above stairs.

* * *

To his everlasting mortification, he climbed the stairs alone.

William was waiting for him in Stephen’s chamber, pacing like an expectant father. Except in this instance, the child was taller than the father and playing a chancy game. Without preamble, William bellowed, “What have you found out?”

Drake used the meager advantage of his height to assert a meager amount of superiority. “No halloo, how are you, what happened to your face?”

“Very well. Halloo, how are you, what happened to your face,
and
what have you found out
?” The reason Drake had never believed in the wrath of God was because William’s was more than enough.

Subsiding onto the bed as if his father’s fist had pushed him there, Drake tried to convince William that he, Stephen, had been working diligently at clearing the name of his brother, Drake, who was supposed to be in Chinon Castle at this very moment, hopefully a welcome guest in the royal apartments as opposed to a confined prisoner in the Tour de Moulin. In the telling of his doings over the course of the day, he became confused as to which brother he was charged to defend. He also found himself employing the sheriff’s manner of easing pain from his temples and wondering why he habitually protected his younger brother against his father, even now when he was supposed to be said younger brother.

When the recounting was done, William resumed pacing. Drake saw a way to make him stop. “Why didn’t you tell us about the tribute money?”

It worked. William sat on a stool. “Go on,” he said, subdued in a way Drake did not see often, if ever.

“Aren’t you exempt from the scutage? Because Drake and I took the cross?”

“God’s eyes, but you’re naïve! It matters not that my sons have pledged their lives for Christendom and king. I must also pledge my wealth. First it was the Saladin Tithe. Now that’s been spent, on God knows what for it wasn’t on the king’s damnable crusade, they come with their hands out once more.”

“By using Graham de Lacy and the others?”

“Turning sons against fathers to quiet the discontent? What else is new in this land and this age?” William let out a prolonged sigh that didn’t ease his temper much. “In any case, Stephen, welcome to the real world.”

Even though the reproach stung, Drake had to agree. He
was
naïve, but that was about to change. “I pose a question.” 

“Which is?”

“Who in Winchester has enough coin of the realm to dole out to men of need? Other than the moneylenders, that is?”

“Usury? Aye, you mean usury.” William stilled to ponder. He didn’t have to ponder for long. “You don’t mean to suggest …?” He stopped himself from saying more. To go on was to flirt with high treason.

A lender of local and substantial resources
, ben Yosel had said. Drake was aware of only one local and substantial resource, as unfathomable as it seemed.

William finished his thought. “You’re saying the Royal Winchester Treasury is not a pot but a siphon? Coins pour in one way and spill out the other … for profit?” Shaking his head, the lord of Itchendel stood and resumed pacing. “Gervase des Roches hasn’t the sense of a rat swimming in a whirlpool for something like that.”

“Gervase …?”

“… des Roches. The treasury’s over-conceited, underpaid dolt of a clerk. As sheriff of Hampshire and an
ex officio
member of the Exchequer, Bishop of Ilchester would never have stood for it. And neither will Godfrey de Lucé when he’s formally elected bishop and named sheriff.”

“Randall of Clarendon would.”

William looked at his son in a new light.

“And then there’s Graham de Lacy.”

“What of that son of a whore?”

“He was collecting the tribute, wasn’t he?”

William was slow to answer. “He was.”

“Along with Rufus fitzHugh, Seward Twyford, and Maynard of Clarendon?” William didn’t respond. “Three dead or close to death and a fourth running scared. It can’t be chance.”

“What does all of this have to do with Drake?
You
,
I would understand, but not Drake.”

Drake stared up at his father. “Why do you treat me differently than you do my brother? Surely the span of three breaths shouldn’t make such a difference …”

“Stephen!”

“… that you would regard Drake a prince and myself a cutthroat.”

“Don’t be an ass!” William’s eyes paled to near invisibility and silently accused. Not Drake, but the lad he believed him to be.

“I’m your son, too. I want your love as much as Drake. More.” The jolt of his father’s visit reached back into a ruptured past, jutted forward into an uncertain future, and owned up to nothing but happenstance and complex patterns of affection. The uncertainty of who he was, who his father was, who his brother was, or where he fit into the scheme of his own life took Drake by the shoulders and shook him to the core of who
he
was, there by the fate of coming down the birth canal first. A fortnight ago he was cocksure of everything. With the stroke of a sword not his own, the world and everything in it had collapsed.

“You have my love
.
”

Drake got up and approached the window. A sow on the street, her curlicue tail whipping in vigorous anticipation, scrounged for scraps and slops to make up a satisfying meal. William paced the bedchamber with the same energy as the sow. The two men went on avoiding each other, while an invisible third stood between, all possessing matched seawater eyes.

“Did you ever suppose,” Drake said, spinning around to face his father, “that it wasn’t the second son who caused the hemorrhaging, but the first?” His mother died the night she gave birth to her sons. Legend had it that she had laid eyes on the first but not the second, and her husband took it as a sign, which he carried to this day.

His accusation hung in the air, a gruesome thing with disquieting allusions. William was knocked back by a physical blow. For Drake, it was a moment suspended for eternity, something he reasoned out long ago but never possessed courage enough to blurt out, either for damnation or exoneration.

William found his voice. “Is that what you think? That I blame you for your mother’s death?”

His son’s silence was not the answer he wanted.