The Warrior's Game (2 page)

“Perhaps you’ve forgotten, sire,” he continued from his humble pose, “but you promised her to me when I first became administrator of her estates. As we agreed I’ve paid two pounds a year for the past four years so she wouldn’t be given to any other man.”

“So you have,” John agreed, sounding like a reasonable man, something Ami very much doubted he was. “What a quandary. Give us a moment to ponder some way that might do justice to both of you.”

Yet standing but arm’s reach from Ami, Michel de Martigny shifted. The impatient movement caught her attention. She watched from the corner of her eye as the common mercenary's gaze bored a hole through the metal that covered Sir Enguerran’s back. There was something in the shift of Sir Michel’s mouth that said the warrior thought little of Enguerran d’Oilly. He wasn't the only man at court who held that opinion of her neighbor.

“Ah, We have just the solution,” John announced too quickly, sounding far too pleased with himself for Ami’s peace of mind. “Sir Enguerran, you must prove to the lady just how much you want her. What do you think, Lady de la Beres? Would two hundred and fifty pounds be bride price enough to make you reconsider Sir Enguerran?”

The sum made Sir Enguerran collapse from his knees to sit flat upon the floor with a thud and a rattle. Ami gaped at John. Two hundred and fifty pounds? That was an amount appropriate for a baron’s first daughter or an earl’s second lass. Why, all Ami’s properties together never generated more than twenty pounds a year. Once alms were distributed, her folk provided for, and John had collected his ever-increasing amount of blanche and taille, the king’s traditional taxes, there wasn’t anywhere near enough left to make a payment on such a sum. Enguerran would have to be mad to agree; it would take his lifetime, and his son’s after that, to repay the amount.

“But sire, she’s not worth that much!” her neighbor blurted out, echoing however bluntly Ami's own thoughts as he staggered clumsily back to his feet.

“Tut, what a thing to say in the lady’s presence,” John chided. “Pardon, my lady. We cannot think what’s come over our man. He’s usually far more amenable. Malleable, some would even say.”

That unseen trap still grabbed at Ami. She again bowed her head into a woman's humble pose and crafted a safe reply. “For love of you sire I can but forgive him.”

Enguerran bent a swift look in her direction. “I have no need of your forgiveness,” he snapped.

Ami took note. This would be the pattern of their marriage should she and Sir Enguerran wed. Her dull-witted, tuft-hunting husband would crawl on his belly before his betters then redeem his aching pride by abusing his wife with his tongue, and likely his fists as well.

As Enguerran once more faced his king he stood like the mercenary, his head held high, his shoulders a defiant line. “She’s worth the forty-five pounds I agreed to pay for her four years past, and nothing more. Deducting what I’ve already given you, I can produce notes guaranteeing the remaining thirty-seven pounds by week’s end.”

“What’s that you say?” the king replied, a gentle silkiness to his tone. “You don’t intend to pay us the original forty-five pounds We requested?”

“But I am giving you all,” Sir Enguerran cried, his brow creasing. “What I paid to hold her aside was part of her bride price, sire.”

“Hardly so,” John countered. “That amount only held her for you. Ah, but that’s neither here nor there now that she has a new price. Perhaps We are asking too much for her, but how much too much? Sir Michel, you have no stake in this. Have a look at the lady and tell us if you think our price is too high.”

Enguerran’s back instantly bent into a toady's curve. For John to request Sir Michel’s opinion on an issue that should be solely between him and his subject was an insult of the deepest sort. John’s words struck at Ami with no less impact. The king had no right to disparage her and her estate by asking a commoner to assess her value.

“Sire, I am your ward,” she protested. “Only you can determine my bride price. Moreover, your mercenary is a foreigner, an outsider.” She forgot herself and gave the word a cutting edge. It was no less than any other Englishman did these days, so prevalent was the resentment over how the king elevated men from other lands over his own folk. “You cannot expect him to give a good opinion of my properties when he knows nothing of me or my estate.”

Michel de Martigny eyed Amicia de la Beres, the gently born English bitch in whose hands his future resided. Damn, but she had just proved herself as clever as some claimed, and courageous beyond most of her sex. There weren’t many men, much less women, with gall or heart enough to scold a king, not even when afforded a shield of logical protest behind which to hide rightful outrage.

John only lifted his shoulders in a shrug. “But madam, only a few moments ago you reminded us that We can do with you as We please.” There was enough amusement in his tone to suggest the lady would pay no greater price for her audacity than this mild rebuke.

Still, Michel had seen John’s quietest reprimands force England’s noblemen to their knees while a single cross word could bring men like Enguerran d’Oilly to their bellies, crawling like the worms they were. Not this woman. She met her king’s gaze without flinching.

“Sire, I bow to your wisdom,” she said, “praying only that I don’t unwittingly become the cause of aught that might tarnish your repute.”

However subtle, it was another chide. Grudging admiration stirred in Michel, even though the lady’s fearlessness didn’t bode well for him or their future.

She wasn’t only bold, but lovely as well. Framed by a modest white linen headdress held in place with a golden circlet, her face was a smooth oval. Wings of rich chestnut hair swopped down against the lift of her cheekbones before traveling back into the confines of her headgear. Her mouth was generous, her nose strong and straight. Dark brows as bold as she slashed above green eyes.

Beneath her blue mantle, her rich scarlet under- and overgowns were trimmed with thick golden embroidery and laced just tightly enough to reveal the curve of her breasts. A finely tooled leather belt encircled the turn of her waist, catching her skirts in fashionable pleats. The folds weren’t bulky enough to disguise her flat belly, a belly that Michel knew had never once stretched to accommodate a babe although she’d been married for six years to her first husband. The possibility she might be barren had concerned him until he learned her previous husband had been thirty years her senior, old enough to be either seedless or incompetent.

Too bad Amicia de la Beres was a Englishwoman, born and bred. On the whole Michel found the well-born bitches of this backward isle more bigoted and devious than those of his homeland.

John looked at him, the corners of his mouth lifted just a little. His expression was evidence of a lurking trap. Then again, with John there was always a trap.

“What say you, Sir Michel? Can you prove our ward wrong about you and render a fair value for her hand? Nay, do better than that. Tell us what price you’d pay for her if you were the one seeking to have her to wife.”

Wondering if his patron would dare breach his vow of secrecy regarding Michel’s interest in the lady, Michel did as bid and studied the lady. She not only met him eye-to-eye, she glared at him, her chin lifted to an imperious angle.

He knew exactly what the court said of him and his black mail. Christus, he’d started that rumor himself, hoping to prevent another raft of nuisance duels like those that had plagued him at his last position. It hadn't worked. Michel was heartily sick of wounding beardless noble lads armed with swords they didn't yet know how to wield. Still, between his vicious repute and his common blood he wasn't accustomed to a woman meeting his gaze.

In the next instant Michel’s regard for her dimmed as he recognized her posture for what it was, a reflection of an inflated sense of her own standing. She looked at him and didn’t see a knight, her equal in rank, but an upstart commoner. Such arrogance required a worthy retort; if she thought him no honorable man then he'd play the churl for her. Michel took his time studying the lady's body, from the curve of her breasts to the floor and back again. When their gazes once more met, he let the corners of his mouth rise so she might read in his expression the only worth he found in her was what pleasure she might bring to his bed.

She had no trouble discerning his message, or so said the way her eyes widened then spit green fire at him. She snatched her mantle more closely around her, then bowed her head, retreating from this battle of theirs. Bitter amusement tugged at Michel. Rage as she would, she was already his and when the time came she'd have no choice in the matter of their bedding.

“Well, Sir Michel?” John prodded.

“Sire, no matter how long I look upon the lady I cannot offer the opinion you require,” Michel said with a small shake of his head. “I’m a bachelor knight, hardly the sort of man qualified to determine a wife’s worth.”

Sir Enguerran grinned and shifted into a more comfortable stance as if he thought Michel’s comment in some way benefited him. Appreciation for Michel’s subtle dodge flashed in John’s dark gaze but the set of the king’s jaw said his mercenary wouldn’t slither so easily from his royal grasp.

“How humble of you,” John said. “Of course you would be reluctant to give your opinion, being as you are but a merchant’s son,” he added, using the reminder of Michel’s base birth to again jab at Lady de la Beres’ already bruised pride.

If John meant the blow to strike Michel as well, the king missed his target. A lifetime of being despised for his tainted blood left Michel beyond visible reaction. Even his own cousins loathed him, having never forgiven their grandsire for advancing the common offspring of their disparaged aunt. It was only Michel's skill at swordplay and his growing repute as a warrior that convinced them to included him in their ranks.

“Still, even commoners must know something of a woman’s value,” England’s king persisted. “What of whores? Even you must assess a tart’s worth before you pay out good coin for her services.”

Although Lady de la Beres’ head was yet bowed, she gasped and swayed as if struck. And, so she might. Until this moment the lady had owned a stainless repute despite that she'd been known to play the game of courtly love with some of the king's male wards. Now with his few words John had destroyed what she'd striven to maintain, lowering her to the same level of a daughter of joy.

Michel wasn't the only one to take note of what the king did. Sir Enguerran threw back his head and stared at the woman he expected to wed. Instead of offering a defense, he eyed her as if he now thought her sullied.

The unfairness of what John did shot through Michel. He marshaled his thoughts, wondering what defense he could offer to the woman who would be his wife, only to catch back his urge to retort as he studied his royal master. All the pleasure had drained from the king's face.

Relief and no little triumph stirred. John's insult had been a final and wild assault made by a man who knew he was defeated and now tantrummed over his loss. For this brief instant Michel was the master of England’s master, and he would at last reap the reward he’d been promised.

It had been at the siege of Nantes, after Michel presented the king of Paris’s cousin to John as a hostage, that John had offered Michel any reward he desired. What Michel wanted was a wife, a woman who brought with her fertile lands, wealth enough to free him of his common roots, and a bloodline capable of lifting his sons into a genteel future. John, being John, had offered his mercenary an heiress too rich and too noble for Michel. But then, it wasn’t his mercenary’s happiness that concerned the king.

What John wanted was to craft Michel into a weapon with which to punish the lazy, cowardly Englishers who had refused to come to their king’s aid in John’s French war. It was at his subjects' feet that John laid the loss of his Continental patrimony, all of it gone, from the Aquitaine to the fractious barons of Poitou and even Normandy, which for the first time in almost two hundred years no longer paid homage to the king of England.

Michel was no man’s pawn nor would he wed such an heiress when he knew he wouldn’t survive the union. It had taken a month of sifting through John’s available wards before he'd found the woman he needed, a woman of middling importance with only a insignificant keep, two manor houses, and a few mills to her name, and an orphan, meaning no family to protest their kinswoman’s degraded marriage. Michel cared not that some other man had broken the lady’s maidenhead before him.

It was only Lady de la Beres that Michel would have to wife.

Now Michel met John's gaze and chose his words with care. “I frequent the stews as often as any man, however the value a man places on a whore’s tricks isn’t the worth he awards his wife. You asked for my assessment of the lady’s wifely value. As regards that all I can say is no knight’s daughter can be worth the sum you named, sire. In all truth I doubt I’d pay the forty-five pounds you originally asked, for I believe her value cannot be as high as that.” It couldn’t hurt to plant the idea in Sir Enguerran's mind that he'd agreed to an inflated sum; nor would it hurt for the lady to believe Michel had no interest in her.

“Do you hear, Majesty?” d’Oilly cried. “Even your own man says she isn’t worth what you ask for her.”

Michel's teeth gritted. He suppressed his urge to draw his sword to slay yon idiotic worm. Everyone, even Michel whose acquaintance with John had been of but a few years, knew better than to rub the king’s nose into a defeat.

Just as Michel expected, John’s mouth quirked downward into a stubborn line. Damn his Plantagenet blood. Once challenged, John simply couldn’t admit to being bested, even if persevering meant destroying himself.

“Nay, We cannot agree with either of you,” John said. “Any man can see that Lady de la Beres is a woman of spirit and intelligence. To our mind that is worth a great deal. If you want her Sir Enguerran, you’ll pay me every pence of that two hundred and fifty pounds.” John’s voice was cold but Michel recognized the childish sulk in that icy tone.

Sir Enguerran’s face flushed. “But sire, you yourself named your mercenary as objective. You must heed him when he renders his opinion,” he cried, proving himself an even greater idiot as he drove his insult deeper beneath John’s skin.

A small sound escaped Lady de la Beres. Her head was still bowed but her shoulders were set in a harsh line and her profile could have been chiseled from granite as she heard herself named worthless again and again.

John’s expression flattened. His eyes narrowed. “Sir Enguerran, do you dare to imagine yourself our councilor?”

D’Oilly’s head dropped so fast and hung so far forward that Michel wondered that the man’s beard didn’t catch in his mail. “Begging your pardon, sire,” the toady muttered, belated panic filling those quiet words.

“As you should,” John announced to the room as if he stood among a crowd instead of only five other souls, if Michel included John’s body servant hovering in the corner in the count. “Now leave us not to return until you have notes guaranteeing us the full amount. Aye, and until that day you are also relieved of your position as administrator of Lady de la Beres’ estate.”

That brought Sir Enguerran’s head snapping back up, his eyes wide. “Majesty, what reason have you to do so? Is there someone who says I’ve misused the lady’s properties? If so, let me know that man’s name so I can call him out and restore my honor.”

Nothing of his previous subdued amusement remained in the king’s face. “No man speaks against you, nor do We accuse. We simply don't wish you to be tempted to use the lady’s properties to raise the amount We require for her. What you give us must come from your own resources. Now leave us.” A brusque flick of the royal hand dismissed Sir Enguerran.

Reclaiming his slump, Sir Enguerran backed his way to the chamber’s door, bowing with each step. Once the door closed behind the man John turned to Lady de la Beres.

“You may leave us as well,” he said, dismissing the gentlewoman as bluntly as he had his knight.

The widow raised her head to look upon her king. Although her shoulders were yet tense there was no sign on her face of the humiliation she’d just experienced, whether through Michel’s appraisal, John’s unfair insult, or Sir Enguerran’s protests. Instead, the lady’s pretty eyes were filled with consideration.

“A question if I may, sire?” she asked, her voice reflecting only the gentle meekness men expected of all females.

The king gave his ward an impatient nod. “Speak.”

“Sire, if Sir Enguerran is no longer the administrator of my properties, who is?”

John looked at Michel and grinned. All royal petulance left his face. Michel barely stopped himself from gnashing his teeth in frustration. Damn d'Oilly and the widow.

“Why my lady, We give the management of your estate to Sir Michel de Martigny.”

His words had all the impact John hoped and Michel feared. Shock drove the lady back upon her heels then, her hands clenched and she glared at Michel. Just as John intended, she believed Michel would do to her estates what his fellow Frenchman and mercenary Gerard d’Athlee had done with the estates the king had given to him: strip them bare for his own profit.

Without so much as a nod to her royal master, Lady de la Beres turned and stormed toward the door, her mantle snapping at her heels. If she meant the manner of her departure to insult her monarch, she failed.

“My lady, I cannot tell you how disappointed I am our game was interrupted,” John called after her, laughing and dropping royal formality for a manner and tone too intimate by far for Michel’s tastes. “You may be certain I look forward to another match between us in the not so distant future.”