The Last Knight

by Candice Proctor

  “Damion,” whispered the abbess, the simple silver crucifix at her chest rising as she sucked in a sharp breath of air.

  Attica turned to find de Jarnac's gaze riveted on the abbess. The breeze ruffled the dark hair that hung down over the neck of the hauberk he'd taken from the man he had killed. He held himself stiff and unmoving, his face as blank and emotionless as that of the woman he confronted. Then he swallowed, and the sinews of his throat strained painfully beneath his dark skin.

  He took a step forward, then another. He reached out, his strong, battle-hardened hands closing over the slim white fingers of the woman before him. “Madam.” Slowly, he sank to his knees, his head bowing as he brought her hand to his lips. “I have come to beg your forgiveness.”

  “My son, my son …” She paused, her voice trembling, her hand twisting to grip his. “It is enough that you have come.”

  CHAPTER

  EIGHTEEN

  She was a stranger to him, this pious woman in the simple, austere habit of a Benedictine nun. Once she had been his mother. She had laughed with joy and pride as she watched him take his first steps, had guided his small fingers across the strings of a harp, had argued passionately with him about the conflict between Saint Bernard and Peter Abelard. Once he had hated her for betraying her husband.

  Once he had killed the man she loved.

  She looked up from the mulled wine she was preparing over a brazier in her abbess's quarters. The golden light of late afternoon streamed through the high windows to glance across the features of her face. Fourteen years. He hadn't seen her for fourteen years, yet she was still beautiful. Still wary of him.

  “Why now?” she said. “Why now, after so many years?”

  Damion sat on a crude stool beside the brazier, his eyes carefully narrowed to concealing slits as he watched her stir the wine. They were alone. Isabelle had invited his “squire” to join them for refreshment in the abbatia as well, but Attica had politely declined, saying quietly, “I think you need to see your mother alone.”

  He'd caught her hand as she turned to go. “I should have warned you. I'm sorry. I don't know why I found the words so difficult to say.”

  But she'd only pressed his hand, a smile gentle on her lips as her anxious gaze searched his face. “Don't you, Damion? I do.”

  Now he sucked in a deep breath rich with the sweet spicy scent of cinnamon and cloves and forced himself to answer the mother he'd been avoiding for fourteen years. “I've come for two reasons. One is personal, the other on King Henry's business.”

  “Ah.” She poured the wine into two simple wooden cups and handed him one. “Let's take care of Henry first, shall we?”

  Carefully sipping the hot, spicy wine, he told her what he knew of Philip's code and what he didn't know.

  “I've learned much of the principle behind it,” he said, “but without a system for indicating the length of the notes, it seems unworkable.”

  “There is such a system,” she said when he had finished. “It was developed by a Benedictine nun in Catalonia. But it is not well known.”

  He stared at her over the rim of his cup. “Do you know it?”

  She held his gaze steadily for a long moment, as if considering her reply. Rising gracefully from beside the brazier, she went to take a wax tablet and stylus from a shelf built into the plastered stone wall, near the arched plank door. “I will write it out for you,” she said, resting the tablet on a small oak table.

  She bent over the tablet and he set aside his wine cup to go stand beside her, his weight braced on one palm as he leaned over the table to study the symbols she etched on the tablet. “Yes,” he said after a moment. “I see how such a notation system could be used to develop a code.”

  The abbess pushed the tablet toward him. “Yet knowing the notation system is not the same as knowing the code.”

  “No.” He took the tablet in his hand. “But I have heard one of the melodies for which I later obtained the decoded message. If I match the message to its melody written out using this notation system, the code will be obvious.”

  “Hmm,” said the abbess, sounding unconvinced. “And if Philip wishes to communicate with an unmusical conspirator who lacks your ability to remember a melody he hears only once or twice?”

  He glanced up to flash her a wide smile. “Then I suppose the conspirator would need a jongleur to remember the melody and write it down for him. Your hypothetically unmusical conspirator would only need the key.”

  She sat very still, gazing back at him with troubled eyes. “I have heard Henry intends to reward you for your services by giving you the hand of his ward Rosamund, thus making you the Earl of Carlyle.”

  He straightened with a jerk, the tablet settling back onto the table with a clatter. “How the devil did you hear that?”

  She lifted one delicately arched eyebrow. “The devil had nothing to do with it, mon fils. The English king's chaplain is my cousin. Or had you forgotten?”

  Damion kept his voice level with difficulty. “Let us hope the man is not usually so indiscreet.”

  “Not usually. But he knows I am always eager to hear whatever news I can of you.”

  She said it simply enough, her hands folded quietly against the rough cloth of her habit, the serenity of her features never faltering. But in her words he heard fourteen years’ worth of pain and longing and endless, desperate hope, and he felt regret lay a bitter hand on his heart.

  “I'm sorry,” he said softly.

  The silence in the room stretched out, became something heavy and onerous. “Why have you finally come, Damion? Why now?”

  There were so many things he wanted to say to her. Too many. Too many things he had no idea how to say. The words seemed to clog his throat until it hurt and he had to turn away, walking to stare out the small window to the court below.

  These were the parts of the monastery where outsiders were permitted: the almonry, hospital, stables, and guest-house, all clustered near the gatehouse and abbess's quarters. He thought he might see Attica, but the yard lay empty except for the long shadows thrown by the westering sun.

  “Tell me, Damion: If you are set to marry one of Hen-ry's wards, what, then, is your interest in the young woman who accompanies you here?” Isabelle asked, her voice deceptively soft.

  He spun to face her. “How did you know?”

  “You mean, how did I know she is a woman?” She gave him a slow, almost indulgent smile. “Her heart is in her eyes each time she looks at you, Damion.” The smile broadened. “I decided either you had developed some peculiar tendencies while in the East, or your young squire with the big brown eyes and long legs must not be a squire at all.”

  He huffed a laugh and went to lift the mulling pan from the edge of the brazier. “Like some more wine?”

  She shook her head as he carefully poured a stream of the hot liquid into his own cup. “I take it the lady in question is not Rosamund of Carlyle?”

  He set the posnet down beside the brazier. “No. She is the comte d'Alérion's daughter, Attica.”

  “Ah. I did not think she had about her the look of a common ditch wife.” The abbess tilted her head to regard him with all the worldly shrewdness of a great-granddaughter of the Duke of Aquitaine. “How long has she been traveling alone in your company?”

  Damion propped his shoulders against the roughly plastered wall and blew gently on his cup before taking a deep swallow of the hot, spicy wine. “More than a week.”

  He heard the swift, startled catch of her breath. “Then I hope for the sake of your neck that you have not already plighted your troth to Henry's ward. For d'Alérion will surely demand you marry his daughter.”

  Damion met his mother's penetrating gaze. “I pray to God and all the saints that he will. For God knows I will never love another.”

  He saw understanding dawn in the depths of her eyes. Understanding, followed swiftly by concern and a deep, soul-felt compassion. “So that is why you have come,” she said softly. “Oh
, Damion, don't tell me she is betrothed already.”

  He nodded, feeling the reality of it, the gut-wrenching possibilities of it, rip through him to tear at his insides. “To a thirteen-year-old boy named Fulk the Fat, son of the vis-comte de Salers.”

  “But surely neither the boy nor his parents will want the match now?”

  “Now that I have sullied her virtue, you mean?” He shook his head. “The Alérions are a powerful house, and part of Attica's dowry consists of three castles of considerable strategic importance to Salers. For such a combination, Yvette of Salers would marry her son to a harlot with a harelip.”

  “And d'Alérion?”

  Damion pushed away from the wall with a quick, violent motion. “Salers seems to have defected to Richard, which means that if Henry triumphs, d'Alérion may well wish himself out of such an alliance, for he is Henry's man. But if the Old King is defeated … Well, Robert will need ties to Richard's camp.”

  He paused in his restless prowling to glance out the window again. One of the novices had come into the outer courtyard, a tall young woman who moved with an innate grace that was beautiful to see. Beautiful and familiar, for he knew who she was even before she turned, her head coming up as she watched a robin take flight.

  He knew she had only borrowed the dress of a novice, so that she might move more properly among this community of sequestered women. Yet there was something so disturbing, so terrifying, even, about the sight of Attica in a nun's habit that he had to grip the stone windowsill to keep from crying out in protest.

  His mother's voice came from behind him. “You did not tell her that I would be here?”

  He shook his head.

  There was a pause. Then Isabelle said quietly, “Does she know?”

  He understood what she was asking. Through the window, he could see the familiar figure hesitate, then sink down onto a low wooden bench beneath the spreading limbs of the old oak tree that shaded the courtyard. The novice's robes flowed around her, black and enveloping, and he felt his grip on the windowsill tighten. “She knows I killed Simon de Jarnac and why. That is all.”

  A silence descended on the room, a silence full of old memories and old hurts and a breathless, anxious waiting. He swung his head slowly to look at the woman beside the table.

  She sat with her hands folded in the lap of her habit, her back straight and tall, her head high. At forty-two, she was still beautiful, still brilliant, still glowing with an almost palpable vitality that made him wonder how she bore this narrow, cloistered life to which she had condemned herself. She had been fifteen when she had borne him, twenty-eight when he killed the only man she had ever loved, the man she loved more than life, more than honor, more than God. Twenty-eight when she came here as a humble novice, abjuring the world and all her wealth, abjuring life as she'd known it.

  “Do you still miss him?” he asked quietly.

  Her lips parted, as if she gasped in pain. “With every breath.”

  He swallowed, hard, but did not look away. “Why did you come here? As an act of contrition for what you'd done?”

  He watched in surprise as a wry smile lit up her eyes. “Oh, no. I came here seeking peace.”

  “And did you find it?”

  She hesitated. “Of a sort.”

  He felt his chest lift on a sigh. “Then I rejoice for you.”

  He went to her, sinking down on his heels beside her, his hands closing over hers. Her fingers felt cool and fragile to his touch, and very small. He didn't remember her being so small.

  “There is no way to ask a person's forgiveness for what I have done, but I am sorry,” he said, his gaze caught with hers. “Sorry for killing him, and sorry for turning away from you afterward in hurt and anger. But more than anything, I'm sorry for not understanding …” His voice roughened, broke, so that he had to swallow again before he could go on. “I'm sorry for not understanding that you were driven by something beyond your control.”

  “Damion.” Her hands twisted beneath his to grip him tightly. She stared at him forever, her eyes dark green pools of so many emotions. “I have prayed every day that you might find it in your heart to forgive me. But not like this. I would a thousand times rather that you had never come to understand my pain than that you should experience it yourself.”

  He felt his lips lift in a sad smile. “Perhaps it is my penance.”

  “Perhaps. Let us pray that it is only a penance and not your fate.”

  It was the abbey's chaplain, riding his donkey up from the village, who brought the news that Old King Henry no longer rode toward Normandy but had turned south, to Chinon.

  The fat little priest was still drinking Isabelle's wine and exclaiming over the unexpected turn of events when Dam-ion left the abbess's quarters and went in search of Attica. She was no longer in the courtyard. The rich, golden light of evening soaked the walls of the surrounding stone buildings and spilled over the trees and grass of the hillside beyond. He climbed the broad, shallow steps to the western facade of the church, pushed open the door, and went inside.

  He stepped into a dim, hushed world of incense and beeswax, of row after row of thick sandstone pillars and soaring vaults and great, echoing spaces. Steep steps, cut into the rock of the hill itself and worn shiny with the devout feet of the centuries led down from the nave to the cave of the holy anchorite, preserved below. He went slowly down them, his booted footfalls and rasping spurs falling harshly into the ancient stillness.

  She knelt on the flagstone floor, the dark skirts of her novice's robes pooling around her feet, her head bowed in prayer. Blessed candles blazed on the altar of SainteGeneviève, their hazy smoke curling up to a low ceiling blackened by hundreds of years’ worth of candles. In the faint light she seemed oddly ephemeral and beyond his grasp, simply one in an endless procession of black-clad, celibate women who had knelt here in prayer through the ages. As she made the sign of the cross and rose, the black cloth of her veil fell forward to hide her features and he felt it again, that unsettling whisper of shifting time, as if he looked at a vision of the future. A future that terrified him.

  She turned, a brilliant smile lighting up her face at the sight of him. The disturbing illusion shattered, became but a memory. Yet as he took her hand and walked with her up the stairs and into the sunshine, the memory lingered, cold and heavy on his heart.

  “Chinon?” She stared at Damion with wide, incredulous eyes. “Henry rides to Chinon? But … why?”

  Around them, the long, ripening grass of the meadow swayed golden and sweet in the early evening breeze. After leaving the church they had come here, to the meadow below the cluster of monastery buildings. Here he had told her some—although not quite all—of what had passed in the abbess's quarters. Then he told her of the chap-lain's news.

  She stood very still, looking out over the broad valley of the Loire below. He watched her eyes narrow with concentration, as if she thought she could somehow see the reason—fi nd it there, a week's ride to the south, where the castle of Chinon stood tall and strong on its bluff above the Vienne River. “Why?” she said again.

  “I don't know. It's the last thing I would have expected Henry to do.” He came up behind her, his arms sliding around her waist to draw her slim, warm body back against him. From here they could see the haze of smoke and dust that hung over the valley like a shroud of war. He rested his chin on her shoulder. She tilted her head sideways, and he rubbed his partially open mouth against her soft cheek.

  He ached for her, ached with the need to lay her down in the sweet, flower-strewn grass and make love to her slowly, tenderly, the way he had sworn he would do. Instead, he was leaving her.

  “I want to leave for Chinon at first light,” he said, his grip on her tightening as he breathed in the scent of her, the scent of sunlight and fresh air and woman. It was so hard, so hard to get out what he had to say next. “I would ask that you stay here.”

  She swung to face him, her lips parting in surprise and hurt, her chest he
aving as if he'd just kicked her in the stomach. “No. I want to be with you.”

  He snagged her arm when she would have jerked back. “Attica. Listen to me. Whatever is happening, Henry needs what I can tell him about Philip's code, and he needs it as quickly as possible. I can travel much faster if I'm alone.” He paused. “Faster and safer.”

  She searched his face, her beautiful brown eyes sad but resigned, for he had used the one argument he knew she wouldn't fight against. And he felt like the lowest kind of scoundrel for doing it, because he wasn't being entirely honest with her about all of his reasons for not wanting her with him. But he would do anything to keep her out of danger.

  “I don't want you to go,” she said, her voice low and broken. “I don't want you to leave me.”

  He entwined her fingers with his, drawing her up to him. “I know. I don't want to leave you.” He touched her cheeks, his fingers tracing the features of her face. His thumb snagged on the edge of her wimple, and with a guttural exclamation of impatience, he tore away both wimple and veil. Thrusting his spread hands through the hair at the side of her head, he framed her cheeks with his palms, held her steady for his kiss.

  He took her mouth in a deep, violent kiss full of longing and need and hopeless love, all tangled up with a man's surging desires and a deep, nameless fear that tore through him, lending a note of savagery to the way he moved his lips across hers and thrust his tongue between her lips. She let out a low whimper, only instead of pulling away from him, she leaned into him, her fingers digging into his shoulders, her body pressing urgently against his. She tasted of passion and heartbreak and fear, and he never, never wanted to let her go.

  The church bell began to ring, tolling the evening office, the great, hollow clang ringing out over the hillside. He didn't want to stop kissing her. His mouth left hers slowly, reluctantly, coming back again, then again, their breath mingling hot and damp, their eyes fixed with longing and need and the aching knowledge that he rode into danger, that this might be virtually the last time they ever kissed, ever touched. For one sharp, howling moment, he wondered wildly if he could bear it.