Bare buttocks were flashing again.
As fast as lightning, Liselotte leapt up from her seat and swiftly made her way over to the collection of knights where Chad was exposing his bare buttocks for all to see. She happened to pass by the hearth as she went and, quickly, snatched a fire poker that was leaning against the stone. With the iron rod in hand, she made her way over to the men who were now singing another bawdy tavern song about an old whore named Rose. Chad still had his breeches down but at the sight of his mother’s approach, the breeches quickly came up.
Still, that didn’t stop Liselotte. She pushed through the group of singing, happy men, rod in hand, and Chad bolted away from the woman, begging her to spare the rod. But Liselotte didn’t listen; she chased him all around the room and out into the ward, where Chad finally made a break for the keep where his wife and daughter were lodged. It seemed like the safest place for him to go. Once Liselotte saw him head into the keep, she lowered the rod and headed back into the hall. But she couldn’t hide the grin on her face.
When Alessandria heard, from her husband’s own lips, what had driven him out of the hall and back into her waiting arms, she laughed until she cried.
And so did Chad.
* THE END *
THE THUNDER WARRIOR
Book Two – Lords of Thunder Trilogy
A Medieval Romance
By Kathryn Le Veque
Author’s Note
The Lords of Thunder Trilogy takes place in the year 1258, which was the year that saw Simon de Montfort come to power in his struggle against Henry III. It is a pivotal year in English history and Simon de Montfort was a true visionary on how government should be run. Did you know that an image of him is in the United States House of Congress? He is considered the man who held the first democratic gathering (at least as democratic as Medieval England can get!).
Maximus’ story takes place during the month of May, the month that Simon de Montfort held what was referred to as the “Mad Parliament”. It’s a fairly complex period in time and there were a lot of measures and provisions leveled against the King by de Montfort and his supporters, but the Mad Parliament was a gathering that really set forth rules against the king that defined the next several years of his reign.
In this novel, you will hear the characters refer to de Montfort’s “gathering” quite a bit – it’s the Mad Parliament they are referring to. Although I don’t have a scene involving this parliament, as this would really make this book more of a history lesson and less of a romantic novel, the Mad Parliament is an underlying plot set against the love story of Maximus and Lady Courtly Love de Lara.
There are less politics in this book than in Gallus’ book, THE THUNDER LORD, because Gallus’ book was essentially establishing the foundation of the series and the political upheaval that was going on at the time. This book is much more about Maximus and how a man, so dedicated to war and politics, can fall in love – and fall hard. While Gallus’ book was spread out over four months, Maximus’ is a snapshot of his life during the month of May. It is much different from Gallus’ book but just as exciting and complex, if not more so.
Happy reading!
Hugs,
Kathryn
PART ONE
WINDS OF FATE
May
“In days of old,
With men so bold,
A storm was brewing brightly.
These men, it was told,
As knights so bold,
Were known to tame the lightning”
~ 13th century chronicles
CHAPTER ONE
Year of our Lord 1258 A.D.
Reign of Henry III
Oxford, England
It was a day of days, a mild spring day that was perfect in every fashion. The sun was brilliant against the deep, blue expanse of sky with nary a cloud to hamper the view. Days like this were rare, neither hot nor cold, but in that perfect temperature that seemed to bring out the best in both man and beast. A breeze, as soft and caressing as a child’s whisper, whistled through the busy and proud town of Oxford.
The Street of the Merchants was a bustling road that was lined on both sides by close-quarters buildings, stalls and shops that were manned by aggressive salesmen determined to push their wares upon a spend-happy public. Between St. Clement’s Church and the castle stretched the main thoroughfare through the town, and travelers spilled into the Street of the Merchants, just off the main road. This created a crowded bottleneck at the head of the street.
Four armed knights pushed themselves through the bottleneck and ended up in the crowds shopping along the avenue. The smells from the bakers on the next street wafted heavily in the air, the scent of yeast and of hard, brown crusts making for hungry shoppers at this time in the morning. Near the middle of the avenue near a fabric vendor’s stall, a man playing what looked like a crudely made vielle stood in the tiny gap between two buildings while his daughter, a round girl with a big mouth, sang quite loudly and somewhat off key. All of it, the sights and smells of the day, contributed to the hurried setting.
“Licorice root, wasn’t it?” one of the knights asked the group. “And spiced wine?”
The knight in the lead, a very large man with massive shoulders and a crown of dark, wavy hair replied. “Wine with marjoram,” he said. “She was specific. It settles her stomach, as does the licorice.”
The knight who asked about the licorice root made a face. “Have you ever tasted licorice?” he asked. “It is most foul and turns your tongue black.”
The knight in the lead turned to look at the licorice-hating knight, who was now sticking his tongue out to demonstrate his aversion. Sir Maximus de Shera, a brawny beast of a man with enormous shoulders and a granite-square jaw, shook his dark brown head at his younger brother’s antics.
“It does not matter what you or I think of it,” he said. “Jeniver is feeling ill from her pregnancy and Gallus asked us to find her some.”
Sir Tiberius de Shera put his tongue back in his mouth but he still wasn’t convinced. The very tall, lean, muscular brother was animated to a fault and opinionated until the very end.
“The spiced wine would do better,” he said. “Moreover, why are we running Gallus’ errands for him? His wife is the one feeling ill. He should be the one to come and fish for stinking roots and rotten wine for her.”
Maximus grinned. “Will you tell him that to his face?”
Tiberius shook his head. “Not me,” he said. “Much like you, I do as I am told by our illustrious, older brother. Let us get this over with. I will head down to the end of the avenue and see if I can find an apothecary. You stay here and see if you can locate the wine with all of the dried weeds in it.”
Maximus merely waved Tiberius on and the man headed down the street with another knight in tow. Maximus cocked an eyebrow.
“He does not understand,” he said to the knight who had remained with him. “He is not yet old enough to realize that a man will do anything for the woman he loves. He’s not yet had experience with love like that.”
The knight who had remained with him, a hulking man named Sir Garran de Moray, glanced at Maximus with his onyx-black eyes.
“You speak as if you have known an affair such as that,” he said. “I did not know that about you, Max.”
Maximus pulled his muscular rouncey to a halt and dismounted. “It was a long time ago,” he said, muttering, as if he did not want to spare thought to those memories. “I was seventeen years of age and she was fourteen. We were madly in love.”
“What happened?”
Maximus grunted. “A de Shera cannot marry below his station,” he said, somewhat sarcastically. “She was the smithy’s daughter. When my father found out, he sent both her and her father away. I heard that she died later that year of a fever. I have always wondered if….”
He trailed off, disinclined to continue, as he tethered his horse to the nearest post. Garran dismounted beside him, unwilling to push the subject of his y
oung and tragic love. Garran had known Maximus and this was the first time he’d heard such a thing, but he wasn’t surprised. Maximus tended to keep silent on personal matters. He wasn’t one to wear his heart on his sleeve or speak on things even remotely private. Keeping that in mind, Garran pointed to the building in front of them.
“A wine and spice merchant,” he said, changing the subject. “It is my guess we will be able to find a myriad of things to settle Lady de Shera’s belly. If the wine doesn’t make her drunk enough to forget her ills, then we shall find a spice that will make her giddy enough to not care.”
Smirking, Maximus moved into the shop with Garran on his heels. Inside, it was dark, cluttered, and smelled of great and exotic lands. Mustard, nutmeg, and cardamom were in great baskets lining the walls, and there were spices from The Levant, Egypt, and darkest Africa. It made him sneeze. The merchant, a fat man dressed in silks and speaking with an odd accent, tried to sell them all manner of mysterious ingredients, including flakes of gold that were said to ward off the demons of sickness.
Maximus didn’t want golden medicine. He simply wanted licorice root for his brother’s wife’s nausea. The merchant, however, steered him towards chamomile and assured him that it would soothe an upset belly, so he ended up buying that as well. As the merchant tried to interest him in some dark seeds that looked like bugs, seeds that also promised to ease Lady de Shera’s bellyache, screams could be heard out on the avenue.
At first, Maximus didn’t pay any attention although Garran did. As Maximus paid the spice vendor for the products he had acquired, Garran went to the door of the stall and casually looked out to see what the fuss was about. He caught sight of it about the same time a massive wave of smoke blew into the spice merchant’s stall, catching Maximus’ attention.
“What is it?” he said to Garran. “Where is the smoke coming from?”
Garran’s features were bordering on concern as he pointed to the south. “A building is on fire,” he said. “It looks as if people are trapped.”
Thanking the merchant, Maximus went to the door, looking in the direction that Garran was indicating. Across the avenue and on the corner of the street where several hostels were located, smoke was billowing out of the first floor of a three-storied building. The entire area was filling up quickly with smoke and people were beginning to panic. A fire such as that, in the cramped quarters of the city, could spread quickly. Already, merchants were starting to pack up their wares with the intention of fleeing. As people began to run away from the fire, Maximus handed his recent purchase back to the merchant for safekeeping as he and Garran headed towards the flames.
As the knights drew closer, they could see that the first floor of the building was quickly becoming engulfed. A layer of heavy smoke was clogging the avenue and they could see through the haze that there were people on the second and third floors of the building that was burning. There didn’t seem to be any flame on those levels but it was only a matter of time. Smoke was already filling the rooms, swirling from the windows as the people inside began to throw their possessions out the windows. In fact, people were starting to come out of the windows as well.
Two women and a small child jumped onto the street below, suffering no injuries by pure fortune. The crowd gathered at the base of the building was carrying buckets to extinguish the fire, encouraging the people trapped inside to jump. As Maximus and Garran came to the west side of the building, the side that fronted the Street of the Merchants, a young woman and a girl appeared on the third floor above.
The young woman, coughing as the smoke swept upward, had what looked to be a rope of material of some kind in her hands. It was clear that she had tied items together to form a rope, a very clever and resourceful action, and Maximus and Garran ran towards the rope as she lowered it.
“Make sure you secure the end of it,” Maximus shouted up to the young woman. “Tie it tightly. We will help you!”
As the young girl cowered in the window, the woman disappeared inside and they could feel the cloth rope tugging.
“Hopefully she is tying it to something sturdy,” Garran said, squinting up at the smoke-filled window. “What is this place, anyway?”
Maximus, holding on to the end of the rope, glanced about. “I am not sure,” he said. “A hostel, mayhap? People are throwing capcases and satchels out into the street.”
Garran glanced around, too, and was forced to agree. There were possessions strewn out all over the avenue. As he watched, a pair of children stole a few items in the mud and ran off with them, disappearing into the quagmire of alleyways and avenues beyond. Garran cocked a disapproving eyebrow.
“And they are making it easy for thieves,” he commented, returning his attention to the women above them. “She had better hurry, the fire is gaining. It will reach the upper floor soon.”
He was correct. It had already reached the second floor and had engulfed at least two of the rooms. More people were jumping, landing in the mud and hard-packed earth of the avenue below, but those on the third floor, as this woman and girl were, had a bit more of a challenge. It was more of a jump. As they seriously began to wonder what happened to the young woman, she suddenly appeared into the window next to the girl.
“Hurry down the rope!” Maximus yelled up to her. “Send the little one down first!”
Already, the young woman was rushing the girl onto the rope, but the girl was frightened. She wept and struggled a bit, fearful of the general chaos going on around her. The young woman was firm, however, and she coughed, laboring against the smoke, as she forced the girl onto the linen rope.
Once the girl was on the rope, she froze, crying, as the young woman encouraged her to slither down. Garran, seeing that the girl was very uncertain on the rope, positioned himself underneath her should she fall. His instincts had been correct, for the girl had hardly moved at all before she lost her grip and, screaming, tumbled right into his arms. A flailing fist caught Garran in the mouth, drawing blood, but he didn’t utter a word about it or even acknowledge it as he carried the girl away from the burning building. He was well clear when he set the terrified child to her feet.
“Are you well, lass?” he asked her, not unkindly. “Did you hurt yourself?”
The girl sniffled, wiping her running nose with the back of her hand. “N-Nay,” she stammered. “I did not hurt myself. But you must help my sister!”
She was pointing to the third floor where the young woman was trying to mount the rope. The smoke was thicker now, billowing out of the window in great, black clouds and swirling around the young woman as she tried to get a good grip on the rope, repeatedly trying to gain purchase on it. It became evident that her palms were sweating, or perhaps injured, because she was having a difficult time grasping it. The more she tried, the more it seemed to slip through her fingers.
Maximus was standing directly beneath the rope that the young girl had attempted to use. He could see that the woman was nearly swamped with smoke at this point and flames were beginning to shoot from the windows of the chamber next to hers. There was no more time to delay, sweating palms or no, and he took hold of the end of the linen rope, holding it steady.
“Lass!” he boomed up to her. “Come now! Use the rope!”
The woman was hurrying. He could see it. Her movements were quick, determined, yet futile in most instances. Maximus could see the orange glow behind her now as the flames made their way into her chamber and the woman, feeling the heat behind her, made a desperate leap onto the rope.
Unfortunately, her grip wasn’t very strong. As the flames began to flick out from the window, the woman tried to lower herself down the rope. She slipped, but caught herself, desperately attempting to hold on to the linen that seemed as slippery as silk. Maximus held on to the other end of it, holding it steady, as she lowered herself slowly and precariously.
“That’s it, lass,” Maximus called up to her, encouragingly. “One hand over the other. Do not panic, steady, lass, steady.”
<
br /> The woman was able to lower herself to the second floor level, which was a miracle considering her weak grip and uneven progress. She was valiantly trying to descend and Maximus watched her with some concern as she made progress. Gazing up at her feet and at the dark green surcoat as it blew about in the wind that the firestorm was creating, he realized he could see up her skirt and was trying not to look at her very shapely legs. He could also see the hem of her fine white shift and, as it billowed about, he’d caught a glimpse of naked buttocks.
Maximus wasn’t hard-pressed to admit that he found the show tantalizing, but he knew his thoughts were grossly out of place considering the circumstances. Therefore, he tried to focus on her hands and the upper, well-covered portion of her torso. Anything to keep his gaze from wandering to her legs and smooth arse. Unfortunately, the Winds of Fate had other ideas.
Abruptly, the linen rope went slack as the fire burned through whatever the young woman had anchored it to. All Maximus could see was the woman as she came sailing down upon him. The skirt, caught by the wind as she fell, belled out and Maximus soon found his head covered by it. Her feet hit his shoulders and glanced off, her heels sliding down his shoulder blades as her bum came to rest on his collarbone.
It was a hard hit against his throat and he pitched backwards with the momentum of her fall, realizing that a woman’s pink, tender center was suddenly in his face. It was the only thing he could see. As he hit the ground, the woman fell atop him, her fuzzy notch squarely on his face.
Maximus lay there as the woman essentially knelt over him in an extraordinarily provocative position. From the way they had fallen, her skirts were tangled around them so she couldn’t rise immediately. He was trapped, his face against that sensual core, and in spite of the circumstances, it was the most arousing experience he’d ever known. Had he stuck out his tongue, he could have easily lapped her. But she was grunting unhappily, struggling to climb off him, and Maximus had to pull himself away from that rather beautiful sight to restore the woman’s dignity. He shifted so she could at least pull her skirts out from underneath him.
Fearsome Brides Page 66
