Sword of Justice (White Knight Series) (15 page)

He finished off another mussel before answering. “Several, but one will do for now. I’m looking for a man called Mat.”

“Why?” Tilda asked. Her one-word question was too direct. Now it was her turn to be suspicious.

Drake’s first inclination had been to apply the term
whore
to a lady with such obvious talents, but she was much more than that. This uncommon
fille de nuit
was too smart to sell her body for mere silver. He said, “I owe him a substantial debt.”

“I should say so,” she said, chuckling.

Drake was not sure whether it was the wine, the shellfish, or her attentions, but he was prepared to follow her to the ends of the earth, even if it turned out to have a vertical descent. “Is it hot in here?”

“Always.”

She poured more wine and held the glass to his lips. “Between you, me, and the Devil,” she said, “Mat doesn’t exist.”

“Tell that to the bruises on my body.”

She looked askance and tried to hide the calculating smile that rose on her painted lips. Her profile appeared softer and more feminine than when she looked directly at him. Her skin was refined, absorbing shadows and candlelight that flattered the gentle scoop of her nose, the thoughtful repose of her brow, and the heightened color of her cheeks. Swept up from the nape of her neck, the tresses of her hair were caught in a comb that glittered like starlight and nicely set off the matching necklace encircling her throat. Though yet desirable, she was leaving the blush of youth behind, and in a few short years, would face a matronly existence. Drake wondered, however briefly, what the future held for women like her. Did they wind up on the trash heap? Or did mature gentlemen make them their mistresses, to use at will when their wives withheld pleasures of the bed?

After some thought, she finally said, “I should apologize for my men’s eagerness,” she finally said. “They oftentimes take their work too much to heart.” She fed Drake another mussel. “Mat is the name given to a merchant’s alliance.” Her fingers snaked their way back to the domain of his male member.

“And the members of this alliance?” he managed to croak.

“Put their capital to work in a string of taverns. Taverns not unlike this one.”

“For monetary gain?”

“Surely not for charity.”

Drake exploded with laughter. “What kind of perverted man would invest in gambling establishments and bawdyhouses like Hogshead Tavern?”

“You’d be surprised.”

Neither was in a hurry to end the meal. She perched herself on his lap and popped mussel after mussel past his lips. She ate sparingly and only then to make it a kissing game whereby she fed him of her takings and he partook of her offerings.

They started a second flagon of wine and a second loaf.

“Surely,” Drake said, feeling no more pain, “someone oversees this alliance. Its profits, losses, distributions, and monies owing.”

“Oh, aye,” she said, running her fingers through his hair.

“Mat,” he said. “Your invisible alliance.”

“You’re catching on.” After taking a few tentative moments, she said, “But there may be a way of satisfying your indebtedness by rendering a special service. Or mayhap two.”

Drake also took a few tentative moments before saying, “If I’m reading you rightly … a seasoned threat to one man … or two … who owe Mat a sum considerably more than I do.”

“Backed up by a well-honed blade?” Her eyes twinkled with mischief. “But let’s not talk of filthy lucre. Let’s converse on art, music, poetry, and the nature of love.”

“Oh aye, do let us converse on the nature of love.”

“But not overly much. Action,” she said, “is preferable to words.” She left his lap, floated across the room, and reaching into a chest, produced four silken tassels. They dangled them from her fingertips as an invitation to recreation of the naughtiest kind. She nudged her head in the direction of the four-poster bed.

“Oh, lady.” He girded himself by emptying his glass. Belching loudly, he stood up, slightly tipsy on his legs. Come morning, he supposed he would berate himself. But the pleasure he anticipated this night overshadowed any misgivings. Sometimes, he decided, a man couldn’t help but lose the tunic off his back and the braies off his nether parts in a single night.

* * *

Lying atop a filthy mattress, with his wrists and ankles trussed tightly to the four corners of a bedframe, Drake was akin to a double wishbone ready to snap for a foolish child’s wish.

At first he supposed it was a bad dream brought on by too much drink. But when he lifted a throbbing head and saw where he had been deposited—inside an underground hellhole that let in scant daylight from the floorboards above—he knew it was a nightmare. The addition of a coffin-sized crate conferred a dubious distinction to the windowless chamber. Wherever he was must be on the slum side of Winchester, someplace near the south wall and, by his nose, not far from the river. His clothes and possessions were noticeably absent. Duped in the worst way known to man, he let a woman get him blinding drunk so she could rob him blind.

The cathedral bells rang prime. By his reckoning, he’d lost six hours.

He tugged at the ropes. The knots tightened. He yelped for help, but a rag stuffed in his mouth and a gag wrapped tightly around the rag muffled his cries. His only answer was the far-off bark of a dog.

On the bed lay a dudgeon, dried blood encrusted on the blade. He shifted his body over and pinned the shank beneath his sweating backside. By moving his torso up and down against the shaft, he worked it slowly upward. The blade, honed sharp, nicked a bit of skin every now and then, small sacrifices against a greater good. After an exhausting effort, the dudgeon arrived at his armpit.

The bells rang tierce.

His head pounded. Sweat soaked the mattress. Acid burned the back of his mouth. He lay motionless for a spell, breathing steadily, until the nausea subsided and the ache in his head diminished to a dull throb. He stretched his fingers, impotently reaching for liberty and itchy hemp chafing raw the insides of his wrists. Further shifting of weight and nudging of muscle brought the dudgeon within reach of his fingertips.

Sexte rang.

Gnawing hunger replaced nausea. Flies buzzed somewhere in the room. The heat was oppressive. Saturated hair curled into his eyes. Quivering fingertips—weakened from wine, the soporific Tilda must have slipped into his goblet, appalling thirst, and the exhaustion that threatened to overtake him—touched the wooden grip. Freeing the bindings of the one wrist took forever. The rest were soon dispatched. He sat up, lifting a knee and encasing his face within a shaky hand.

Nones rang.

The door was barred on the outside. After several shoulder-wrenching shoves, Drake sank against the chill wall, collapsing into a heap of weariness. Having reached the limits of endurance, he studied his hand—turned palm up in his lap—and thought it the most magnificent object in God’s creation. Yet he was incapable of flexing a single finger.

He willed his head to lift and gazed blearily at a booted foot sticking out from behind the wooden crate. The foot was connected to a body. The body was neatly tucked between the wall and the crate. The corpse lay face up in a pool of blood. The locks of the dead man’s sandy hair were soaked darkest red. One of his eyes was stuck gruesomely open. Green flies were everywhere. Maggots had come for their share. The dead man’s throat was slit from ear to ear. Blood encrusted the gash and the sides of his neck. His fingers—frozen into position—clawed grotesquely for reprieve. He was as stiff as the door that Drake had tried to ram open.

Blinking in disbelief, Drake stared at the peaceful calm of a man gone to his Maker. The image was too horrifying to be real. He contemplated his hand. The dudgeon lay in the folds of his palm. On the blade, the dried blood of the corpse had intermixed with his blood. One by one his fingers closed over the haft.

Footsteps descended the stairs. A commanding voice shouted brusque orders. A battering ram demolished the door. Sheriff Clarendon and two of his sergeants stepped through the splintered opening.

Drake craned his head upward. He was too exhausted to say a word, and since there was no escaping his predicament, words would have been useless.

In his hand he clutched the dudgeon used to kill the man lying at his feet, Winchester’s top sergeant—Drogo Atwell—town bully and childhood playmate.

Chapter 13
                  
 

DRAKE STIRRED PAINFULLY AS HIS
befuddled mind raced to catch up with time and place. Wherever he was, it was damnably cold.

He moaned, pried open eyes gritted with uneasy sleep, and sat up on reflex. Manacles weighed down his hands and feet. They clanked. He collapsed back to the hard shelf at his back and waited for the dungeon to stop spinning. Two cresset lamps fluttered and whirled, then slowly unwound and came into focus. The air rustled. A cloth of mean material covered him. A moment before, he had been naked. He turned his head, too abruptly for comfort.

Sitting on a stool, Randall of Clarendon stared down at Drake, hands folded between splayed knees. He waited for the most recently installed prisoner of Winchester Castle to come to full awareness before saying, “What am I going to do with you, Stephen … or Drake … as the case may be.”

“Lock me in an underground hellhole and throw away the key?” He pressed a hand against his forehead. The chains rattled. “Come to think, that’s been tried.”

A maniacal grin formed on Rand’s lips. “Even better, a double hanging and not a single fitzAlan brother to trouble Winchester again.”

“I’ll opt for the hellhole.”

The sheriff kneeled beside Drake and unlatched the manacles. He held Drake’s hands in his and turned them over, studying the blood-encrusted, rope-burned wrists. Rand took from his tunic the frayed ropes, stained with Drake’s blood. Further noting similar bloody formations on his ankles, Sheriff Clarendon gently fingered the nicks along his side. Saying not a word, he went back to the stool and tossed Drake a change of clothes. “You didn’t kill Drogo.”

“I was hoping I did.”

“Don’t you know?”

Shaking his head, Drake slipped Stephen’s chainse over his head. “Why do you think I didn’t?”

“You would have been covered in Drogo’s blood, not just your own. And”—he chewed a fingernail—“unlike the other three, Drogo held onto his manhood.”

“Oh.”

“Since I believe you’re Drake and not Stephen, that fact holds significance. But as to what, I’m at a loss.”

He paused for Drake’s reaction, which came as a single intake of air.

“Of course, I have no way of proving who you are one way or the other.”

Drake released his breath and felt his face wash over with three separate rushes of relief. He pulled on Stephen’s hose.

“You’re not absolved yet.”

“Your reasoning was going so well.”

Randall ran a hand through his limp hair. “Witnesses at Hogshead claim you had a confrontation with Drogo.”

“Untrue. He had a confrontation with me.”

“Who won?”

“He did.”

“Then what?”

“I was bounced into the soothing arms of a lady.”

“What’s the last thing you
do
remember?” Rand’s stare was unnerving.

“A flagon of wine, a bowl of mussels, a canopy bed, and four scarlet tassels.”

“Was it Mat?”

“A lass named Tilda.” Even as he said it, he knew.

“Mat,” Rand confirmed. “Short for Matilda.”

“Mat is supposed to be a man,” Drake said. “He doesn’t exist. He’s a figurehead.”

“True enough.
She
is the front for the Merchants Alliance Trust, which is cunningly called Mat, in honor of the madam.”

Drake whistled. “And what a front.”

Rand grinned the way a man does when in the company of like-minded men who think of nothing but women. “After the four tassels, what do you remember?”

“Waking up in the hellhole where you found me, thence being transferred to another more odious hellhole, but this one containing no corpse save my own. For which I have yet to thank you.”

“You’re welcome. And the dudgeon?”

“Wasn’t mine.” Drake tugged on Stephen’s boots.

“How convenient.”

“Just as
I
thought. At the time.”

“Which is where you acquired all those nicks, cuts, and scrapes?” The penetrating stare returned. As sheriff, Randall of Clarendon was an expert interrogator. His eyes alone must have coerced countless confessions, both true and false. “And not in a fight to the death with Drogo?”

When Drake laughed wryly, a twinge in his side made itself known. “If I’d been in a fight to the death with Drogo, it wouldn’t have been in a barred undercroft.”

“There’s a certain logic to that.”

Drake grimaced as he pulled on Stephen’s tunic. “How did you find me, anyway?”