Noble Line of de Nerra Complete Set: A Medieval Romance Bundle

by Kathryn Le Veque

  Although the weather was cold, there was no snow on the ground and Val wondered why they had returned to the inn for their cloaks. Men bearing mail and heavy tunics were often quite warm in these temperatures, so it seemed odd to him. It was nearing late afternoon and, soon, Vespers would be upon them at the cathedral, which meant Becket would be there to perform the mass. Val couldn’t really think of anywhere else the four knights would have gone so he and his men quit the inn, mounted their horses, and tore off in the direction of the cathedral.

  Being that they were in the days approaching the Epiphany, a day that was celebrated as the Three King’s feast, there were more people gathering near the cathedral than normal. Clusters of pilgrims swathed in wool against the cool temperatures were drawn to the warmth and light emitting from the cathedral like a moth to the flame.

  The city of Canterbury was walled but so was the cathedral, with a fairly large barrier that was built around it and then inside, a vast open bailey with a cloister and the massive cathedral in the middle of it. It was an extraordinarily impressive monument to England’s veneration of God and even though Val had been here before, he was still impressed with the size and architecture of the cathedral and even the surrounding city. Canterbury was a very cosmopolitan city.

  The faithful were gravitating towards the entrance to the cathedral but Val paused at what was called Christ’s Gate, a massive gatehouse which had a statue of a dove representing the Holy Spirit. This was the main entry, and he plus eighteen heavily-armed men made quite a conspicuous sight. Not wanting to create a massive uproar by charging into the grounds and terrifying everyone, he turned to Kenan, the only knight that had accompanied him.

  “You and I will go in,” he said. “We will take ten men with us. It should be enough to do what needs to be done. Have the rest wait out here with the horses and prepare to fend off any papal soldiers who try to intervene.”

  Kenan nodded firmly, relaying the message to the soldiers behind them. A fearless man, Kenan hadn’t taken issue with Henry’s directive in the least. He wasn’t a great supporter of the church, feeling that it was more a hotbed of greed for men pretending to be pious, so he was more than willing to help Val subdue Canterbury. Once the orders were delivered and he selected the men to accompany them inside, he turned to Val.

  “Awaiting your move, my lord,” he said quietly.

  Val silently dismounted his horse, handing the reins over to one of the soldiers remaining behind as he, Kenan, and ten men proceeded onto the grounds of Canterbury Cathedral. They were armed and it wasn’t usual to enter a house of worship armed, but since Val was here on official business, he maintained his weapons and so did his men. He also brought with him the warrant for Canterbury’s arrest, preparing to read it to the man before he took him into custody.

  “Canterbury should be heading into the cathedral from the cloister by now,” Kenan said, looking around the grounds and spying papal guards spread out over the area. “Shall we intercept him before he gives mass?”

  Val, too, was very attuned to their surroundings but he was mostly looking for the four knights who had come ahead of him. “Nay,” he replied. “We wait until he is finished and arrest him when he emerges from the cathedral. He will return to the cloister and that is where we shall wait for him. The less attention we draw to this, the better. I want to get the man out of Canterbury before we are mobbed by those trying to protect him.”

  Kenan understood. He could tell Val was on edge, which had him on edge as well. There was prudence in a sense of fear in this situation. Fear equated to caution and, for something like this, they needed an abundance of it. This had the potential to be more volatile than they could imagine. Kenan quietly relayed the orders to the soldiers behind him, men bearing the colors of de Nerra of Hampshire.

  Since it was dark, most of the worshippers had already gone into the cathedral as Vespers was about to begin. Only a few people saw the gang of soldiers led by two knights heading towards the cloister. But Val knew that, sooner or later, word would get around regarding their presence and it could, quite possibly, alert Canterbury or, worse, his guards.

  Val had the law on his side but Canterbury had the church, and they were on church grounds, so the sooner they get in and out, the better. He fought down the apprehension he felt. Instead, he focused on what needed to be done. The moment was upon him and he would not fail. He and his men were just approaching the cloister entrance to the cathedral when they began to hear grunts and cries.

  It sounded like a fight. Men were crying out and moaning. And the unmistakable sounds of weapons could be heard. Val and Kenan looked at each other in shock before breaking into a run, dashing to the cathedral entrance and entering into the dark, cold corridor that connected the cloister to the cathedral.

  It smelled like earth and death in the corridor, linked to the vaults as well as the church beyond. Smells of the dead were permeating the very walls. Even though the corridor was weakly lit by intermittent torch light, they could immediately see a body prone on the ground, surrounded by men with weapons.

  As Val watched in horror, someone – it wasn’t clear because of the darkness of the corridor – brought their weapon to bear on the prone form’s head. Bone and tissue went spraying onto the floor. The blow was so hard that a piece of skull ended up right by Val’s foot. Shocked, he unsheathed his weapon and charged forward only to see men he recognized standing over the body.

  De Morville… FitzUrse… le Breton… de Tracy.

  As their features became clearer in the weak light, Val could hardly believe the scene he was witnessing. Horror turned to confusion until he looked at the body on the ground and saw the unmistakable regalia of an archbishop – deep blue robe, red lining, and white under garment. Bile rose in his throat.

  “Stop!” he gasped, reaching out to grab the man’s hand before he could come down again on the clearly dead body. “Clearly, this man will arise no more. What in the hell have you done?”

  It was Hugh’s hand that he had grabbed. At the sound of Val’s voice, Hugh and the three knights looked at Val with great surprise.

  “Val!” Hugh gasped. “You – you have come!”

  Val’s astonishment and fury was written all over his face. “You knew I would,” he boomed. “You gave Calum Henry’s missive and told him that I should follow you to Canterbury with all due haste and here I am. But – dear God, what havoc have you brought about here?”

  Moans and gasps caught his attention. It was becoming evident through the weak torchlight that there were other men who had been wounded in the fight. Val could see at least four priests, possibly more but it was difficult to tell in the weak light. Priests who had undoubtedly been attending Canterbury as he’d headed into the cathedral for Vespers and men who had fought back when the knights attacked. Of the four men Val could see, two were not moving, one was cringing against the wall in shock, and the last man – cut across the shoulder brutally – was trying to push himself into a sitting position.

  “They have killed him,” the man wept, blood staining his clerical tunic. “Our most holy lord has been murdered!”

  Those words hit Val as surely as if they had taken the form of a fist, driving into his chest and expelling the breath from him. He was stunned. He looked down at his feet, at the man in the archbishop’s robes whose head had been bashed in. The features were barely recognizable but in that mess of tissue, he saw features that were familiar.

  It was Thomas Becket.

  “My God,” he breathed. “Hugh, tell me what happened.”

  Hugh was breathing heavily, still worked up from the fight. He struggled to answer the question. “It happened so quickly.”

  “Tell me!”

  Hugh swallowed hard. “This morning, we tried to convince Canterbury to surrender to you,” he said hoarsely. “We – all of us – had hoped to deliver him to you peacefully but he refused, so we returned this evening with weapons in the hope of forcing him to surrender. He… he fought
back, Val. We had no choice.”

  Val’s jaw ticked as he gazed down at the bloodied head. There was so much emotion pent up in him at the moment that he hardly knew where to begin with it.

  “Was he armed?” he asked, teeth clenched.

  Hugh glanced at the knights around him, the three he’d been in collusion with. “That staff,” he muttered. “That holy staff. He tried… I am not exactly sure, but I believe he tried to ram Reg with it. After that… after that, I do not recall what happened. It happened so quickly.”

  Val looked around and saw no staff. At least, not obviously. He pointed to the dead man. “You killed him,” he hissed. “You lost control and you killed him. By all that is holy, Hugh, do you realize what you have done?”

  Hugh just stared at him, either unable or unwilling to answer. He seemed to be in a degree of shock, just like the others. It was as if they’d all been in a bloodlust frenzy, something they were only now coming to realize. They were all looking at Val as if the man held all the answers but Val had no answers to give, at least not at the moment. But he knew he had to come up with something.

  As he stood there, several monks who had heard the commotion came down from the quire of the cathedral and down the stairs to see what had happened. One look at Canterbury on the ground with his brains spread out over the stone and they retreated back into the cathedral in a panic. Val could already hear their cries. He knew they had to get out of there.

  “Go,” he commanded, turning Hugh for the door that led out to the courtyard. “Get on your horses and get out of here. Ride back to Henry and tell him what you have done. I will follow you and if you do not tell Henry, I will tell him in your stead. If you think to kill me to silence me, I have eleven men with me who have seen this also. Get out!”

  He shoved Hugh, hard, and grabbed Reginald behind him, yanking the man to the door. William and Richard quickly followed and, soon, the four of them were fleeing into the darkness of the evening, murderers who had committed the most atrocious of crimes. But Val remained even as Kenan tugged at him.

  “We must leave, too,” he whispered urgently. “Word will get out and we shall be blamed!”

  Val almost argued with him but thought better of it. They could proclaim their innocence but to a mob looking for satisfaction, they would more than likely be ignored. He looked at the man with the bad shoulder injury, realizing that man was his only witness that he, in fact, had not killed the archbishop. He had the presence of mind to understand what needed to be done and he gestured to the man.

  “Take him,” he told Kenan. “He may be our only hope. Let us get him to a physic and return him with us to Winchester. Henry will need proof of what has happened.”

  Kenan grimly agreed, collecting the man and passing him over to two soldiers as the group of them fled the corridor and moved out into the cold night. The soldiers backed out, all of them fleeing back towards Christ’s Gate where their horses await, but Val remained for a moment.

  Standing over Canterbury, he just stood there and stared. Something in that man on the floor cut him to the bone. Perhaps it was because he knew how devastated Henry would be, losing an old friend in such a terrible manner. Perhaps it was because he knew he was going to be blamed for this, no matter what really happened. He was to be responsible for four knights who lacked self-control. Whatever the outcome of all of this, it was going to be devastating for all concerned.

  Val knew the worst was yet to come.

  He was the last one out of the corridor, racing across the courtyard of the cathedral and back to Christ’s Gate where Kenan and one other soldier were the last ones waiting for him. Everyone else had already fled.

  Leaping onto his steed, he spurred the horse out of Canterbury, finally catching up to his men somewhere in the dead of night. They continued to ride through the night, stopping near dawn to rest the horses for a few hours before continuing on to Selborne. On their last leg of the journey, it snowed all night, covering the ground with a blanket of snow and slowing down their travel.

  Winter had finally arrived, signaling – it was whispered by many – the death of a martyr.

  Canterbury was dead.

  CAHPTER THIRTEEN

  Eynsford Castle

  One Week Later

  Sitting by the window in Lady Eynsford’s solar, Vesper could clearly see the bailey of the castle, now covered in about a foot of snow. It was the first real snow of the season, so the soldiers had taken to building an army of snowmen to fight each other. It was rather funny to watch and Vesper had been enjoying the antics all morning, even when she almost got hit with a snowball from the snowman siege. The windows of the solar were only on the second level and a far-reaching throw could easily hit the keep.

  Even though the snow had come all night, the day had dawned cloudless and bright. So it was a beautiful sight to look out over the winter-white landscape even though Vesper had no real desire to go out in the snow. She was content to sit by the window in the overly-warm solar and sew on the bodice of a new gown for Lady Eynsford.

  But the truth was that since her return to Eynsford, she hadn’t had much drive or energy to do much of anything other than sit and sew. It was as if the memory of Val was too heavy for her to move around, the weight of it crushing her. He was the last thing she thought of at night and the first thing she thought of in the morning. And all of the space in between, she was either reliving her short memories with him or dreaming of him. Everything about Val de Nerra was closing in on her until she could hardly think.

  Misery was an apt word.

  She began to second guess herself, too. Perhaps, she shouldn’t have suggested the separation. Perhaps, she should have let him sup with her the night before she departed Bishop’s Waltham for Eynsford. Perhaps, she should have kept the necklace. All of these thoughts rolled around in her mind, causing her to doubt her decision, but she hadn’t wanted to make a mistake and she hadn’t wanted Val to make one, either. That would have been worse had they acted hastily. Now, they were separated to decide whether or not to pursue this courtship.

  Vesper was in favor of pursuing.

  Separation from Val had made her forget all of her reasoning for their separation in the first place. She had been afraid that his association with a murdering family would become common knowledge and ruin him. But now she was convinced that their feelings for one another could see them through anything. At least, she hoped so. She’d known the man such a short time that it was difficult to know just how strong their bond was, but as far as Vesper was concerned, it was like granite.

  She missed the man with every breath.

  “Good day to you, Vesper,” Lady Eynsford suddenly entered the solar with her two old maids trailing after her. “It seems that I have slept very late this morning. The cold always makes me so sleepy that I never want to get out of bed.”

  She giggled and Vesper smiled. Lady Eynsford was her age, a giggly and sweet girl lacking any brains. Her name before she married the elderly Lord Eynsford had been Lady Maude FitzStephen and, much like Vesper, had been a ward of the first Lady Eynsford. But the first Lady Eynsford, Isabella, had died of a fever two years ago and barely six months after her death, Lord Eynsford married Maude. She was younger than his daughters with Isabella, creating something of a family flap, but she was a genuinely kind girl so the resistance of Lord Eynsford’s children to her was waning. Not much, but a little.

  Family animosity had been a difficult thing for Maude to live with.

  Rumor had it that Lord Eynsford was trying to impregnate his young wife and have more sons. But in the eighteen months since their marriage, Maude had yet to conceive. However, the woman spoke of her bedroom activities with the lord, running off at the mouth constantly, and Vesper had probably learned more about marriage and sex in that time than most people learned in an entire lifetime. Maude wasn’t shy about confiding in Vesper and the two other wards, Lisbet d’Vant and Eloise l’Aigle, of her husband’s inability to perform and how Maude
would spend hours tugging at his limp manhood in an attempt to arouse him.

  It was enough information to embarrass any maiden, Vesper included.

  Nay, she wasn’t eager to hear more of that this morning because she knew just by Maude’s tone that it had been another long night of a husband who had kept her up to feed his desires. Vesper knew that as long as the old maids were around, two women who had been brought by Lord Eynsford from Maude’s home to tend her every need, that Maude wouldn’t speak of the dirty details of the bedchamber. But that changed quickly when Maude sent the women out to bring her food. Once they were gone, Maude sighed with exhaustion.

  “Finally, they are gone!” she said with relief. “Where are Lisbet and Eloise?”

  Vesper shook her head. “I believe they are in the kitchens dyeing thread. At least, that is what they told me they were going to do after we broke our fast in the hall. Shall I send for them?”

  Maude shook her head. “Nay,” she said. “I will tell you, Vesper, but you must not tell them anything!”

  Vesper knew that was a farce; Maude would tell them everything, anyway, because she could not keep her mouth shut. But Vesper was genuinely in no mood for sordid talk this morning.

  “You know that I do not repeat what you tell me,” she said evenly. “But… why don’t you wait until they return? That way you will only have to tell your story once. Meanwhile, come to the window with me and see what the soldiers have done. They have created two armies of snowmen.”

  It was enough of a lure to distract Maude briefly, but only briefly. She went to the window to see the snowman armies but it did not hold her attention for long.

  “Last night was terrible, Vesper,” she moaned. “He tried something new and I have never been so ashamed in my life.”

  Vesper tried not to roll her eyes. “My lady, I am quite sure that Lord Eynsford would not be happy if he knew you spoke of your private life with him. What if he did the same about you? Told all of the men of his bedchamber conquests?”