With Tuppence by her side, Isabel approached the two men with her heart rising in her throat and a broad smile on her face. When they reached Sir Alexis, the man spoke.
“Cousin,” he said, “this is my ward Lady Deirdre, who humors me by allowing me to call her Tuppence. And this is Lady Isabel, who travels under my protection and who I also would take as ward if she so seeks it. I ask only one boon of you, that if anything ever should befall me that you take these young ladies in as your own wards and look after them as if they were your own kin.”
“Oh, happily.” Baron William’s words were warm and threaded with emotion. “They are evermore welcome in my home as friends and family, no matter what comes.”
Isabel felt happy tears form in her eyes and found herself nodding wordlessly as the baron, who very much resembled Sir Alexis, save younger and more slender, looked Lady Isabel and Tuppence — no, Lady Deirdre — in the eye, each in turn. “You ladies are my kin now,” was all he said to them.
The two men then embraced and chatted some moments more about topics Isabel understood not, and then came the voice she’d dreaded to hear.
“And what of my cousin!” Sir Etienne de Margot nearly screamed aloud. “Murdered by a scoundrel and his noble body left for the wolves to harry! Is this the type of man you are, Baron de Vere?”
Alexis de Vere’s reply was loud, but even and tempered. “My cousin is the Baron de Vere, sir knight, and he has just this morning arrived, as have you. Your beloved cousin in his haste offered me up an insult and a challenge that could not be refused, and he was killed in honorable combat….”
De Margot nearly screamed and was only stopped from attacking Sir Alexis by an enormous knight beside him. The sounds that erupted from de Margot were more animal than human, and over those feral shrieks, Sir Alexis again spoke, his voice stern and insistent.
“In honorable combat, sir, as witnessed by more than one-hundred knights, including your cousin’s own comrades.” Alexis raised his voice further in the face of de Margot’s rage. “And none here are at fault but Sir Everett’s own retainers and men-at-arms for not standing vigil over his body at a time when….”
By that time, Etienne de Margot was a man out of control. Isabel’s heart raced at what would happen next, for when it came, it was shocking and sudden. From nowhere, de Margot produced a dagger, turned, and slashed at the small party of his own men who restrained him. His eyes filled with murder and weapon in hand, the man lunged at Sir Alexis.
✽ ✽ ✽
Deirdre grabbed Isabel and hauled her up the rise to a spot behind the nearest clump of trees. She’d seen bloodlust in men, and neither of the women were safe at that moment as the moot dissolved into a scene of anarchy. The key now was to keep quiet and keep out of sight. Men in a battle-rage could do most anything.
Still, she bit her lip to keep from laughing aloud. It was the Fiend, all the Fiend. Something in her exulted even as another part cringed.
Several times she caught sight of Sir Alexis amid the churning scrum in the field below, swinging his sword in powerful overhand strokes and shoving and kicking men aside. She was not the least worried for him, but he and his cousin, Baron William, were in the worst of it. All of the men were armed, but none were wearing armor beyond a chainmail byrnie or hauberk. Some few had little more than a leather doublet to protect them.
Glancing about to try and discern the location of Baron William, she saw an enormous form dragging itself arm-over-arm from the press. The massive bulk was that of Armand de Bois-Guilbert, the great dolt of whom Sir Alexis had spoken so fondly. The poor wretch had been cut down by his own liege lord as he again had tried to dissuade de Margot from violence, from breaking the sacred peace of the moot.
Peacemaker. Ha.
But cut down by his own lord? She wanted to ignore the man — he was just a Gheet, and a knight at that — but a will other than her own propelled her down the rise to where the man struggled.
She soon felt another form beside her, and then a third. She, Isabel, and a newly-arrived Birdy dragged the gargantuan warrior, who was more muscle than fat, but weighed like a year-old ox, back to their hiding place amid the trees. As Birdy watched over them with his mace in hand, she and Isabel nursed the silly and valiant oaf, who was bleeding dreadfully from a deep laceration to his neck. She hoped she was doing the right thing by helping the man, but it didn’t matter. She couldn’t persuade herself to do anything different.
The melee was over nearly as quickly as it had begun, and soon the survivors were sifting through the mess trying to find family, friends, and fallen comrades. Before she knew it, they were back at the tents of Baron William, Sir Armand with them.
For all her many shortcomings around violence, Lady Isabel was a whirlwind as a healer, and she soon was giving orders, demanding pure alcohol and boiled water, and insisting on how the wounded were to be treated. Deirdre helped as she was able, but in less than a quarter bell she found herself getting in the way and went outside to find Sir Alexis. It took her some minutes to spy him on a nearby hilltop, where he was looking off to the east.
As she approached him, she already could hear the din in the distance, the noises of flight, pain, and terror. When she crested the rise and stood next to the ersatz knight, the panorama before them was anarchy, complete pandemonium. Billows of smoke from fully a dozen fires were visible in the distance, refugees clogged the roads, and squadrons of knights and men-at-arms rode here and yon. It was a bloody hellscape.
The Fiend raised his arms before him, palms heavenward, like an artist regarding a favored portrait. “This is my finest work, Tuppence, my masterpiece. And I couldn’t have done any of it without you.”
Without her? A thrill ran through the lass, an ethereal something that told her the Fiend referred to more than just their agreement. She couldn’t put it into words. But it was clear that all of this was in some way her doing. More, there was something the Fiend hadn’t told her, something about him that she should have seen from the beginning. It dawned on her now like the rising sun.
She wanted to speak, to cry out loud of her discovery. But for the moment, her prudence and caution got the better of her raw excitement, and she instead pointed to the moot ground. “What happened down there?”
“More than I ever could’ve dreamed. I knew de Margot schemed with Dupuis to skim tax money headed for the crown — and evidence of that will be made public soon — but I hadn’t realized the extent of his plans until he arrived. He is a powerful and rich man, and with Dupuis’ help, he intended to land a place at court. The king is weak, and in a few years, he may have usurped him.”
“Again,” she asked patiently, still concealing her excitement, “what happened?”
He looked down at her and smiled, and when he did, he draped an arm over her shoulder and pulled her close. “Neither of the de Vere baronies were especially large, but when I ceded to cousin William all I owned, that made William the single largest and richest landholder in Albion. William now has great tracts of land, castles, fortified towns, and control of the second largest port in the country. He even has lands here in the south. When de Margot realized that, he snapped. Everything he’d planned since arriving from Ghitland a dozen years ago went up in smoke.” The Fiend began to chuckle.
Deirdre finally gave up hiding her glee and laughed with him. “Are you eating his chitlins, tonight?”
“Mmm … no. I thought it best to let him go for a time.” He forestalled her protest. “I’ll get to him someday, soon — maybe Reverend Ainsley will take his confession. But until then, he’ll be a source of conflict. When the king finds out of his plotting, de Margot will have to raise arms against him. Likely William and other barons will side with the crown, but the war between them will be long and bloody, and your people….”
“If they are brave and strong….” She left the rest unsaid.
“If they are brave and strong,” he repeated. “I can’t predict the future, Deirdre. But now your folk ha
ve a chance.” He gave her a squeeze. “Speaking of courage, I’m proud of what you did to help Sir Armand. You have an enormous heart, and you helped him even without knowing it was to our advantage to do so.”
She shook her head in confusion, and the Fiend continued speaking.
“Armand is a great and lovable oaf, but he’s also honest and is admired after a fashion. When he tells his tale of de Margot’s cutting him down, cutting his own men, and breaking the peace of the moot, people will believe him.”
She looked up at him. “What are we to do now?”
“Hmm…?” He glanced down. “Don’t you want to return to your home?”
“I can’t,” Deirdre whispered. “I cursed my parents before I left. I cursed everyone. Besides, you and I have a deal.”
The Fiend ignored her last words. “Families can be understanding, far more understanding than we sometimes imagine.”
She shook her head again. The Fiend knew so much, but he didn’t know this.
But she knew something and realized it was time. She braced herself. After three long breaths, she asked the question that had occurred to her only moments before. “You’re not really just a Fiend, are you?”
Sir Alexis said nothing and gave only a wispy smile as Deirdre continued.
“But you’re not the Walking God, either … are you? For just a moment, I thought you might be, but … no. You’re the Other One.”
He again looked down with an affectionate smile. “Bards, priests, and poets, they so often mix up our stories, his and mine. I should have known you’d puzzle it out, Tuppence. But whatever you do, don’t tell Lady Isabel. The folk of her world are even more afraid of my kind than are the people of this one.”
To Deirdre’s shock and amazement, the counterfeit knight’s revelation didn’t frighten her, not in the least. It was a complete mystery why — she should have been petrified.
“How….” But neither did she know what to ask. Her lips moved several times without making a sound.
It took him only moments to show her charity.
“The difference between me and this Walking God of yours is not about good and evil. It’s about …,” he shook his head gently several times as he often did, “… it’s about the difference between servitude and freedom … what some fools might call order and chaos.”
“And you’re chaos?”
“Tuppence, you know the answer to that better than anyone.” He again chuckled. “No. I cannot claim perfection, far from it. I am of a tribe that believes that a world in which folks have freedom to choose their own paths will be a world happiest for all.”
“But only if they’re strong?”
“Yes, if they strive to make their lot better,” he said with a nod. “Because otherwise, what’s the choice? The cold, dead, and miserable hand of the law, of rules and regulations — of tyrants and kings?”
He turned to meet her gaze, his hand still resting gently on her shoulder.
“Tuppence, my people have one thing that the other godly tribe will never own: We know what it is to care, fully and irrationally, for someone other than ourselves. We know what it is to hold friendship in esteem, to value loyalty — and we know what it is to love. That other creature that was left on this world with me, that so-called Walking God, sits in a marble palace even now in Etruscia and does nothing but adheres to the rules, no matter how damnable. If the rules required that he dice up his own mother and chuck her in the cooking pot for stew, he would do so without hesitation and then rush back to his salon with nary a thought of it after. Is that any sort of world worth living in?” Her companion again shook his head. “They call us evil, but I would never do harm to anyone I love. Ever. I’d burn this universe to a cinder first, and if that makes me evil, then it’s a brand I’ll wear proudly.”
Deirdre felt a deep warmth run through her, but she had to ask, to hear it with her own ears. “Then you’re not ever gonna eat my chitlins?”
The smiling knight, his eyes glossy with emotion, delivered a tender kiss to her forehead. “Sweet Tuppence, as long as I have a body to shield you, no harm will ever come to you.”
For just a fleeting moment, the screaming rage that had seized her those many weeks past abated, and an enormous wave of relief washed over her. This was what she needed — it was all anyone really ever needed — one person, just one person who was in her corner, one person who always would be in her corner, come what may.
What did it matter if that one person for her just happened to be the Devil?
The End
Wergild Page 11
