The Last Knight

by Candice Proctor

  Struggling to swallow a sob, the woman nodded. “Those who were in the fields. Most of us fled to the woods. It was only those still in the village …” She turned to stare at what was left of her home, and Attica saw the woman's face crumple, become old.

  How will she bear it? Attica thought. How does anyone bear such anguish and loss and horror? How?

  “Attica. Attica?”

  She realized he'd said her name twice. She looked up into his face to find him watching her with narrowed, empty eyes. The wind blew his dark hair against the hard masculine planes of his face, and he was like a stranger to her. A cold, deadly stranger.

  I've done this, he'd said, his big hand with its bloodstained glove sweeping in an arc over the burned hovels, the slaughtered livestock, the slaughtered children. I've done this. She sucked in a breath of tainted air that seemed to shudder her frame. Oh, God…

  “We must go,” he said, a strange, bitter glitter kindling in the depths of his eyes, as if he knew what she was thinking. But then, perhaps he did. He said her thoughts always showed on her face.

  Her throat felt too tight to speak. Gathering her reins, she nodded, her knees urging the roan forward.

  They rode in silence between the rows of smoldering cottages, past the sprawled, bloody, violated bodies of the men, women, and children who had once lived in them. Past the guard dogs with their ripped bellies, and the bags of spilled grain, soaked with blood, and the broken sickles and hoes.

  Eventually the scenes of violence faded into the distance. Yet long after they'd left the ruined valley and begun to climb through the sweet green grass of the hills, she imagined she could still smell the place. The stench of burned thatch and rotting flesh seemed to cling to her, choking her. She swallowed hard, squeezing her eyes shut against the rising nausea, then opened them again abruptly when her mind's eye began to replay for her that hideous panorama of spilled blood and mindless destruction and grotesquely mutilated bodies.

  And one little girl's small, lifeless hand.

  With a strangled cry, she reined in, practically throwing herself from the saddle. She took two stumbling steps away, then hunched over and vomited into the daisy-strewn grass of the hillside.

  Her body quivered painfully with each heave. Her throat burned, and she had to brace her hands against her spread knees to steady herself. She felt hot and shivery at the same time, and it was as if the warm blue sky and wind-feathered trees had disappeared and her world had narrowed down to the memories of that village and her own physical reaction to them.

  She heard footsteps behind her, felt strong arms come around her waist from behind, warm and comforting. The low murmur of his voice was gentle and soothing in her ear. When the sickness she couldn't seem to control hit her again, she wrapped her hands around his brawny forearms and let him support her while the shudders wracked her frame.

  And then, when it was all over, she turned in his arms and wept.

  They rode in a silence filled only with the squeak of saddle leather and the muffled clomp of their horses’ hooves hitting the soft grass. In the end, it came to be too much for her, and she swung her head to look at him. “What do we do now?” she asked.

  He squinted up at the sun, and she realized he'd changed their bearing. Whereas before they'd been headed east, now they were tracking south. “We ride to Le Mans. And hope there's not an army in our way.” He cast her a quick, appraising glance. “Are you all right?”

  She felt her cheeks heat with a flush. “I'm all right,” she said, her voice raspy. “It won't happen again.”

  “No. That's the kind of reaction you have only once.”

  She looked at him. He sat his horse with the graceful ease of a born horseman, one gloved hand resting on his lean hip, his back straight and tall. She could not begin to imagine this hard, ruthless man vomiting with shock at the sight of a dead child.

  “Did you have it? That kind of reaction, I mean.”

  He met her gaze squarely, his lips curling up into that mocking smile of his. But in his face she thought she could trace the shadow of an old vulnerability, a phantom that was there and then gone. “Everyone does,” he said simply, and spurred the destrier on ahead.

  Toward sunset, they dropped down from a hillside thickly wooded with intermingled beech and birch, and came into a stretch of open meadow near a stream.

  A party of some fifteen or twenty men and women wearing the somber gray robes and broad hats of pilgrims were camped on the high ground just beyond the ford. They looked up, their faces wary, as Damion spurred his horse across the stream, with Attica behind him. Smoke drifted up from several scattered cooking fires, wafted by a breeze carrying the rich aromas of burning wood and roasting meat and simmering potage.

  One man moved away from the others, a man wearing the rusty black habit of a priest. Faint strands of gray streaked the dark brown of his hair, but his frame was big boned and tough, his face sun darkened, his eyes hard. He looked more like a middle-aged knight than a priest, and as he moved, Damion noticed that the man's right sleeve swung empty at his side.

  “Good evening, Father,” said Damion, reining in the bay charger. “We come in peace and mean you no harm.”

  The priest regarded him through still, enigmatic gray eyes. “You'll be wanting to camp with us for the night.” He swept his hand in a welcoming gesture toward the fires. “Come and join us in our evening meal. A strong sword arm would be most welcome, should any straggling soldiers chance to pass our way.”

  Damion reached down to pat his horse's sweaty neck. “You have encountered Philip's army?”

  “Dieu merci, no; but we have seen their work.” The priest shook back the left sleeve of his habit to extend a hand rough with old calluses left by years of swordplay. “I am Father Sebastian. I was leading this group of good pilgrims from Caen to the shrine of Saint Martin in Tours.” A faint smile touched his lips. “However, it seems our timing was infelicitous. They say that Henry has retreated to Le Mans, and Philip marches on Tours at this very moment.”

  “So I had heard.” Resting one elbow on his high pommel, Damion bent to clasp the man's left hand in his own. “Damion de Jarnac.” He nodded toward Attica, who was doing her best to hover inconspicuously in the background. “And this is Atticus d'Alérion, my squire.”

  “De Jarnac?” The older man's powerful grip tightened, and he did not immediately release Damion's hand. “Ah, I thought so. You have much the look of your brother.”

  Damion flung back his head, his jaw clenching with the effort to control himself beneath the priest's watchful eye. “You knew Simon?”

  “Before I took the cloth, I was a man of the sword. Your brother and I were squires together.”

  Damion eased his hand from the man's grasp and straightened to gather the bay's reins. “I will understand,” he said, his gaze focused fiercely on the man's face, “if you preferred that we ride on.”

  Father Sebastian laid a restraining hand on the bay's bridle. “My son, whatever I might have been in the past, I am now a man of God. And God's mercy is as infinite as his capacity to forgive. Please. Get down and join us. Later, perhaps, we shall speak of your brother. I have stories to tell that you might not have heard.”

  CHAPTER

  SIXTEEN

  Darkness fell quickly on the meadow.

  The setting sun streaked the sky with long, rippling trails of gold and pink and vivid orange that faded almost abruptly to aquamarine, then to a deep, rich purple sprinkled with stars. The air filled with the creak-creak of crickets and the lower, more somber croaking of a frog in the stream, while from somewhere in the wood-covered hills behind them came the trill of a solitary nightingale so achingly beautiful that Attica felt her heart catch.

  She sat in the warm glow of one of the pilgrims’ fires, a horn of ale clutched almost forgotten in her hand as she sleepily admired the way the ruddy light of the dancing flames glinted on the auburn highlights in de Jarnac's dark hair and glazed the powerful bones of his fa
ce. One of the pilgrims—a slim, fair-haired boy of about sixteen with a harp slung over his shoulder—had cornered the knight shortly after supper and proceeded to talk his ear off about vers and plainchant and cansos. Quietly amused, Attica simply leaned back against her saddle and listened.

  “If there is a way to indicate the length of notes,” said the harpist, his fair eyebrows drawn together in earnest concentration, “I do not know it. But as to the other, I have heard something…”

  De Jarnac, his head nodding encouragingly, drained his wine cup and reached for more. He had been drinking steadily through the evening, Attica had noticed, although it didn't seem to have affected him in any way—except, perhaps, to intensify that coiled, almost lethal quality that hung about him always.

  She sensed a wild, restless edge to him tonight that worried her. It was as if the mention of his brother had laid open an old, festering wound deep inside him. Glancing down, he caught her watching him and flashed her a wide, reckless smile. But his eyes remained brooding and dangerous.

  Her gaze sought out Father Sebastian where he crouched on the far side of the fire before an old woman so bent and crippled, she could walk only with the aid of two canes. He had one of the woman's twisted feet in his lap and was massaging the instep while he spoke to her, his voice a gentle murmur on the night wind.

  He must make a good priest, Attica thought, this man who knew life in all its joys and sorrows and agonies, who knew all the weaknesses and temptations and failings of men, yet still believed in the mercy of God and knew how to forgive.

  And she found herself wondering exactly what Damion de Jarnac had done, that needed God's forgiveness.

  “I have heard of an abbot in Rome who has improved upon the brilliant system of notation created by the Saintly Guido,” continued the fair-haired stripling in an eager voice. “I believe he has added a seventh note, a si—named, of course, for Sancte Ioannes.…”

  Her attention caught, Attica swung her head to look at the young harpist who stood on the far side of de Jarnac. She had assumed Damion to be simply enduring the youth's enthusiastic discourse on music. Now she realized she'd been wrong. Far from humoring him, de Jarnac had been systematically and very deliberately pumping the young harpist for information.

  She drained the remaining ale in her cup and set it aside. She would have spoken then, only she realized de Jarnac's body had suddenly tensed, his head lifting as his fierce gaze fixed on something across the fire.

  She swung about to follow his gaze and saw that Father Sebastian had left the crippled woman and now stood alone on the edge of the fire's light. His long black habit flapped in the wind as he stood, motionless and silent, as if waiting for someone.

  De Jarnac set aside the wine ewer and cup. “Excuse me,” he said to the boy, although his gaze never left the dark, one-armed figure across the fire.

  Attica started to scramble to her feet, but de Jarnac put his hand on her shoulder, stopping her. “It's late. You should sleep,” he said quietly, not looking at her any more than he'd looked at the young musician.

  She stared up into his taut, shadowed face. “So should you.”

  He shook his head. “There is someone with whom I must speak first.”

  His hand left her shoulder. She watched him walk away from her, the fire gleaming on the gilded spurs at his bootheels. Just beyond the circle of light, he paused beside the priest. She couldn't be certain, but she didn't think anything was said between them. Still, they turned together and walked off into the night, a tall, devil-haunted young knight who did not believe in the mercy of God, and the knight-turned-priest, who did.

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  Enthroned in the carved chair she had brought from Châteauhaut, Yvette let her bemused gaze drift over the collection of swords, daggers, maces, and lances that decorated the inner wall of Renouf Blissot's solar at Laval Castle. She could appreciate their fine workmanship, and she knew the value of their inlaid gold and silver and precious jewels, but she could see no beauty in these objects of death. It seemed a strange decoration.

  “Part of your collection appears to be missing,” she said, noticing an empty hook.

  “My niece took it,” said Renouf Blissot. “I suppose I should consider myself fortunate she didn't leave it in my back.”

  Yvette brought her attention back to the small, dark-haired man who sat on a three-legged stool beside the exquisite silver candelabra that graced the oak table in the center of the room. He was a handsome man, Renouf Blissot, with his slim, wiry body and flashing gray eyes. But obviously not, she thought with a sigh, as competent as one would think in looking at him.

  “How difficult is it?” Gaspard demanded, flinging his arms wide in that way he had as he paced up and down the solar, creating enough wind with his passing to flicker the torches in their wall brackets. “How difficult is it to keep one nineteen-year-old woman securely locked up?”

  Renouf propped his elbows on the table and rested his chin in his hands. “You tell me, Gaspard,” he said, his sardonic gaze following the other man's energetic perambulations. “You lost her before I did.”

  Gaspard whirled to point an accusatory finger at Yvette. “I told you. Didn't I tell you we should have come quicker? Why you must drag half the contents of the castle about with you, every time you travel—”

  Yvette selected a sweetmeat from the silver tray at her side and popped it into her mouth. “Do sit down, Gaspard. You're fatiguing yourself unnecessarily.”

  “They fled east, of course,” said Renouf Blissot, swiveling sideways to stretch his legs out before him. “Toward La Ferté-Bernard. A few days ago they killed two of my knights—at least, one assumes it was de Jarnac's handiwork. Whoever it was took one horse and one set of armor, and left the rest. No one has seen them since.” He shifted his gaze toward Yvette. “Did you know of Richard and Philip's plans for the conference?”

  “No. De Harcourt spoke to us of the alliance against Henry, but only in the most general terms.”

  Renouf grunted. “Too bad he wasn't as discreet with Attica.”

  “Do you know what documents he carried in that breviary?” Gaspard asked, helping himself to a cup of wine.

  The castellan shook his head. “No. But if they were for John, the results could be disastrous if they fall into the wrong hands.”

  “I think we must assume they already have,” said Yvette, pushing to her feet. “It's late. I shall retire now to that pleasant chamber you have prepared for us.” She glanced at her husband, who had his nose deep in a wine cup. “Don't stay up late, Gaspard. We leave early.”

  Gaspard sucked in a quick breath of surprise that caused him to inhale some of the wine and fall to coughing. “Leave?” he said when he was able.

  Yvette paused with her hand on the solar door. “If Attica has fled to Henry, it may not be easy to get her back. We'll continue on to La Ferté-Bernard and lay our case before Philip. He is, after all, Henry's liege.”

  “But I don't want her now,” said Fulk, rising suddenly from the window embrasure where he had been playing with a couple of half-grown puppies. “You can't expect me to wed her now, after she's been with this knight.” His lip curled as if he had smelled something foul. “Another man's leavings?”

  “Don't be a fool,” snapped Yvette. “You repudiate Attica now and we will have Robert d'Alérion as our sworn enemy rather than our ally.” She let go of the door to point a warning finger at her son. “You'll wed her all right, boy. Even if she's quick with child by this rogue knight, you will wed her, and make no mistake about that.”

  Attica awoke to the dark stillness that comes over the world in those hours just before the first lightening of dawn.

  The fire had burned down to a pile of pale white ashes, but the night was not cold. She rolled onto her back, her head turning against the soft velvet of the folded surcoat she used as a pillow, her gaze searching for de Jarnac's familiar form beside her.

  She was alone.

  Pushing herself u
p on her elbows, she drew in a deep breath of night-scented air, her eyes narrowing as she searched the huddled, sleeping forms of the pilgrims. Impossible to tell if Father Sebastian was among them. She lay down again, trying to close her eyes and go back to sleep. But she could not rest easy.

  Sitting up quietly, she pulled on her boots and then, wrapping the cloak around her, arose from the hard ground. She walked with no particular destination in mind, her footsteps carrying her almost aimlessly toward the stream.

  Away from the camp, the night seemed even darker and lonelier. She could hear the wind stirring the trees up on the hill and sighing through the meadow grass. But the creatures of the night had all quieted. It was as if the world held its breath, waiting for the new day.

  She saw him then, a solitary figure standing tall and broad-shouldered on a low rise overlooking the stream. She walked toward him, her footfalls muffled by the long, dew-dampened meadow grass. He had his back to her. He didn't turn as she came up behind him, but he knew she was there, for he said, his tone harsh, “You shouldn't be out here.”

  The very air between them seemed to crackle and heat with a mutually intense physical awareness, an aching need that brought a flush to her face and made her body suddenly, quiveringly sensitive. She knew she hovered on the edge of something beautiful and dangerous, knew she should turn around and leave him here, alone in the darkness, before it was too late. Instead, she took a step that brought her right up beside him. “Everyone in the camp is asleep.”

  He stood perfectly still. “That's not what I meant, and you know it.”

  She stared up at his hard profile. “I don't believe you'll hurt me,” she said, although it was a lie. He had already hurt her by riding into her world and showing her what life and love could be like. What it could be like if she were someone else. He would hurt her even more the day her honor and sense of duty forced her to say good-bye to him.