Sword of Justice (White Knight Series) (21 page)

The first priority was to perform on the battlefield as no man or beast was meant to perform. To attack and fend off attack. To chase and not be caught. To kill
and not be killed. To outmaneuver and outrun. To be agile, swift, and indestructible. And, on occasion, to enchant and amaze lords and ladies, brigands and thieves, and even dubious young women with shiny brown hair and glowing skin.

Other skills were soon added. To don the hauberk and helm of a knight, to carry shield and lance, and sword and mace, but not lose mastery over the horse. To spur the mount on either flank with equal action and reaction. To put the horse into a gallop on a whim. To stop on the rim of a penny. To give free rein, urge along, and wheel around with no more than a thought and a prayer. To move forwards, sideways, backwards, diagonally. To brake, spin, and head back the other way. To swerve at the last possible moment, every maneuver effortless and invisible to foe and friend alike. To couch lance so the blow is struck with precision, a notch left or right the difference between victory and defeat, life and death. Every movement of muscle, the speed of the horse—in wind, rain, heat or cold—demanding unmatched horsemanship, quick timing, and quicker thinking.

He pulled in the palfrey’s reins and sauntered around to ride beside her. Drake was out of breath, his face wet with sweat and enthusiasm. “To fight chivalrously and not so chivalrously. To live by the knightly virtues of
largesse
,
pité
,
franchise,
and
courtoisie
. To be noble and low-down, romantic and vicious, and hardened to pain.”

When she chortled at that, he laughed with her.

“To sleep in driving rain. Or on horseback. Or go without sleep altogether. To practice and train from sunup to sundown and in your dreams. To learn the arts of fencing, archery, wrestling, running, and jumping until you’re bloody and exhausted. At the end of the day, to be too tired to sup yet game for more punishment and looking forward to what the morrow will bring and how much closer your training will bring you, not to perfection, but to mediocrity. Only that. Then to learn the courtly arts, to play the lute and sing …”

“You sing?”

“Don’t laugh.”

She did.

“To compose songs, to write verse, to quip in four or five or six different languages. That is, if you want to keep up with King Richard.”

“Excepting English,” she countered reprovingly.

“He understands more than you think. As they say,
Rex illiteratus asinus coronatus est
. An unlettered king is a crowned ass.”

“
Do
they?”

Again, this uncommon daughter of an alewife had reduced a daring knight to a boy. He bowed his head to hide the smile. “Have it your way: an unlettered …
knight …
is a crowned ass.”

“As you say.”

Dotting the terrain, villeins worked cornfields coming on to harvest. Sheep grazed near crofts neatly fenced off. Clouds were gathering for a storm.

“You
like
being a knight,” she said, startled by her own revelation.

“I was born to it. I will be no other.”

“You see yourself as another Roland of Roncesvalles? Senselessly sacrificing your life for your king?”

He smiled winningly. “More like Beowulf, reborn from the sea after slaying the dragon.”

A breeze fanned her hair. Aveline gazed out at the cloud-banked vista. “I’m not sure
I
like a man whose sole purpose in life is to kill other men.”

He disagreed. “A man whose sole purpose in life is to defend his kin, his home, his country, his fellow knights, his king, and his God in that order. That’s what Stephen forgets. That’s what I remember.”

She peered behind the bruises and contusions. In her eyes appeared a fleeting understanding of what he was trying to convey, the kind of man he was, and the rewards he wanted to take from life and give back. Her gaze shifted away, and he lost her again, to that stubborn pride she wrapped around herself like a mile-high fence.

They rode on. A refreshing summer rain blew across the land, but sheltered as they were by the woodlands at Itchendel’s northern reaches, they progressed unhindered by the windswept cloudburst. In the pelting of rain on treetops, Drake almost missed the beat of hoofs approaching from behind until the rider was almost on top of them. The path having narrowed, it was ripe for a trap. Drake motioned silently to Aveline. She took cover behind a brake while he stayed behind and reined in a palfrey as wary as its master.

As the hoof beats drew nearer, the rider slowed his pace and sniffed the air. Reckoning a snare had been set, he heeded the call and halted. Everything was deadly still. Even the birds had flown off to safer hunting grounds. After a time, he took his chances and dug spurs into the horse.

The horseman came abreast of Drake’s position, his face half-shrouded by hauberk and coif but the body recognizable by its bulk and height. Drake almost felt sorry for the bastard. The stallion tripped the rope Drake had lashed low across the path. Rider and horse went down with equal impacts, the horse screaming and the rider swearing. Stunned by the fall, the horseman was gathering his wits and swearing all manner of invectives when his jet-black eye ventured a gander up at a knight’s formidable stance. He didn’t move. He didn’t dare. Not when the edge of a lion sword was making an impressionable indentation on his throat.

“William’s orders,” Mallory croaked.

“Are you the archer with a sense of horseplay?”

“The what? God’s eyes, Stephen, I wish I knew what you were talking about.”

“Hmm.” He kept the sword exactly where it would do the most harm should the
chevalier
try anything but speech.

“If you don’t want me to save your arse, which needs saving by the bye, then I won’t.”

“I can take care of myself.”

Mallory cautiously rubbed his shoulder. “If your spar with Graham is any sign ….”

“I’ve learned a thing or two since then.” Drake leaned into the sword. “Behold the evidence.”

Mallory rasped, “God’s eyes, Stephen! You win.”

Drake savored the victory a bit longer, then sheathed Stephen’s sword.

“You win by knavery, but you win.” Acknowledging Aveline with a courteous nod, he clambered to his feet and brushed the road from his garb. “You’re going to London, then? For the coronation?”

“I am, if it’s any affair of yours,” Drake said, retrieving the rope.

“No longer an affair of mine, ’twould  seem.” Rubbing the reddening mark on his neck, Mallory d’Amboise was clearly worried. “Stephen, for your father’s sake ....”

“You don’t have to warn me.”

“Providence willing, but I’m obliged to. ’Twill be more perilous for you in London than it has been in Winchester, which has been perilous enough, I daresay.”

“Why is that?” Drake gave Aveline a leg up.

“The king is there. Not only the king, but his keenest foes.”

Drake mounted the dappled gray and looked down on Mallory. “Your point being?”

D’Amboise went to fetch his destrier. “If that is your parry, methinks I can say no more.” He wheeled the horse around, nodded with respect toward Aveline, and rode for Itchendel.

Aveline watched the
chevalier
disappear into the wood. Her eyes turned on Drake. “What he says is sound.”

“Is it?”

“Don’t get your back up,” she said. Part of her was incensed. The other part was worried.

Drake drew the palfrey abreast Aveline and bestowed upon her an intense gaze.

Not in the least cowered, she said, “All that has happened to you has nothing to do with happenstance or ill fortune.”

“Aye, the fitzAlan brothers are but a diversion, a distraction, a tool. Worse, a nuisance and plain inconvenient. The real target is the king. I know that. I’ve known it for some time.”

Her face filled with surprise and perhaps a measure of respect.

“What?” he asked.

“You’re a surprising man, is all.”

He chucked her chin, and leaning close, kissed her. For once she was unable to come up with a pithy rejoinder. Well-pleased, he spurred the palfrey toward Winchester.

Chapter 18
                 
                

A SMOOTH HAND
SMELLING OF
the outdoors clamped over his mouth. The trespasser found himself instantly on his back with a damascened dagger at his throat. A cloak concealed the intruder’s face. Drake imagined it pocked and scarred, belying the pleasant odor and gentle touch. When he flung back the hood, he said, “Jenna!”

Drake and Aveline had returned to Winchester at half-tierce. Though he wanted to leave for London straightaway, the palfrey needed a rest, as did he. The instant he rolled into Stephen’s bed, he fell into a deep sleep and didn’t awaken until the bells of nones rang.

“Are you going to slit my throat, then?” she said, her chest heaving. Perspiration dewed the flawless pores of her complexion.

His first inclination was to kiss her, but he turned aside temptation and said, “No, Jenna, no. I thought you were somebody else.” He climbed off her. She sat up, warily looking at him as if she did not recognize him. When he took one of her trembling hands into his, a smile brushed across her lips and just as quickly faded. Her fright, he realized, was not from surprise but something else. She was worried. And troubled. Encircling a comforting arm around her, he would have embraced her more affectionately but for his disguise, even though her bold kiss on market day informed him, in a roundabout way, she knew him to be Drake. “I didn’t hurt you?”

“Who did you think I was?” Worry clouded her eyes. Her face was pale. She wasn’t the carefree girl of his childhood but a fearful woman in need of reassurances. Alas, he couldn’t give her any such reassurances. All he could offer were weak platitudes, and so he said nothing. She asked, “Did you think I was Graham? I heard that he tried to … to kill you. Are you all right?”

“I am.”

Clearly something weighed on her mind. “I have a favor to ask of you.” Her voice was tremulous. Her hands hadn’t stopped shaking. “I know you’re traveling to London.”

“Aye. For the coronation.”

She reached under her cloak and handed him a parchment, folded and sealed. “Would you deliver this to court? To the king’s brother?”

“John?”

“There is no other.” Dimples puckered the corners of her lips. “Could you, Stephen? I would be forever grateful. It … it’s from my father. He wouldn’t have asked, but I’m asking for him.”

“I could never refuse you anything, Jenna. Being Drake’s betrothed and all.”

She smiled secretively, but then her brow folded and her mouth turned down.

“What is it?” he asked. “What’s wrong?”

She shook her head. Then, as if a thought struck her, she climbed off the bed and whipped off the cape. After untying the laces at her throat, she slipped out of the gown and let it drift into folds on top of the discarded cloak. Without hesitation, she stripped to chemise, and removing even that fine piece of linen, lowered her arms languidly to her sides. She pushed a naked foot forward, knee slightly bent, chin lowered, and eyes swimming in tears. She stood out like a statue of alabaster, serene and distant. Reaching up to her hair, she unwound the braid that fell over one shoulder, shook her head, and let the golden tresses hang freely and unadorned. Jenna didn’t need ribbons to be the most beautiful woman in all of Winchester.

Drake eased her back into bed. She undressed Drake the same way she had disrobed herself, with methodical precision and languid aforethought. Lying down beside him, she said, “Hold me. Just hold me.” Jenna always carried with her the fragrance of eternal summer; the colors of yellow daisies and midday sun; the sounds of gently lapping waters; the call of lazy finches perched in treetops and the buzz of bumblebees collecting nectar. She poised her oval face above him, her glittering hair cascading like a rippling waterfall over his bare flesh.

They came together.

Afterwards, mumbling nonsense against his chest, she slept. He didn’t. Instead he held her close and counted the steady beats of her heart. She stayed with him until half-nones before withdrawing from his embrace and dressing. Drake watched with admiring half-slit eyes. She sent him a gift: a coy smile framed by golden tresses. She stooped beside the bed, folding her arms across the mattress and dropping her chin onto snowy limbs. “Had I known a simple lie would lead to murder ….”

“Jen?”

“Too late, too late.” She parted with a final kiss.

“What lie?”

But she was already tripping away on soft-padded shoes. Gaily, she turned and said, “Did you hear? John has wed Isabelle.” She closed the door with nary a sound.

Drake picked up the missive Jenna wanted him to deliver to the brother of the king and held it against ambient window light. The parchment was folded in a unique manner: the corners creased inward, twice, and the binding cord sealed with purple wax and stamped with the matrix of her personal seal: G for Geneviève.