by Jude Chapman
“Someone else murdered Maynard. Someone with a vicious kick.”
“Tell me more.”
“The sword that did in Maynard was not my sword. You saw it.”
“Not much to see. Most of it was inside Maynard.”
“Not the haft.”
“That I saw, aye,” said Baldric. “Not much different from most.”
“I was carrying the sword King Richard gave me. There’s not another like it in the land, the haft gilt of pure silver and gold.” He touched Stephen’s sword, damascened with a rampant lion. “Identical to this, but with a dragon.”
Baldric turned the evidence over in his mind. “‘Twas the only unclaimed sword about.”
“Think about it,” Drake coaxed him.
“The killer. Aye. Has a shiny new sword, so he has. Bound to show it off sometime or other.”
By now, Drake had made a fifth sweep of the four walls and espied neither a valuable sword nor a suitable place to hide one. “Now that you know, you had better keep a sharp lookout.” He replenished his goblet. Fermented cow dung was growing on him.
“From the likes of you, pleasingly woven tale or no.”
Not appreciating the imputation, Drake raised an eyebrow. “You saw for yourself. I left Rufus and Seward alive when making my escape. Not to mention intact.”
“True enough. But who’s to say you didn’t go back later?” His muddy eyes took hold of Drake’s. “Or Stephen?”
“Or you?” Drake watched the knight’s face for any change, any glimmer that would give him away, but the hard-chiseled features remained unbroken.
Baldric opined, “De Lacy then?”
“Graham de Lacy lacks sufficient courage for a hanging much less getting his hands dirty with blades, blood, and body parts.”
“At a stalemate, we are.”
“Seems so.” Drake pondered his goblet. “Who took my ring?”
“That bauble, that trinket, that blinding article of nobility?” His eyelids drooped to near closing. “Ask Graham.”
He was no more asleep than Drake, but the subsequent snore roared like a gale, his way of bidding goodnight.
* * *
The sky was gray with the coming light of dawn. The palfrey, waiting patiently for his master’s twin to return, whinnied, the kind of whinny that warned of danger.
Drake swung around and instinctively reached for Stephen’s sword. Two goons swiftly closed in on him and twisted his arms back. His bellow of pain was cut off with a wallop to the midsection deftly delivered by a third goon. A black patch covering his left eye, he cranked Drake’s head to his seeing eye and said, “Pay up what you owe Yacob the moneylender, Stephen fitzAlan, or you’ll soon find yourself in a dark underground hole.”
To send home the threat, the Devil’s guardians tightened their grip while the pirate punched him with a methodical set of leather-padded fists. Drake grunted with each punishing blow, saw blood soak into the straw at his feet, and felt parts of himself break apart and slide around. Black-patch could have drawn out the punishment indefinitely. Drake had limitations, even with the kind assistance of the Devil’s own.
Outside the open doorway, a blind man tapped by, cloak concealing his face and a dirty rag, his eyes. A dark strand of hair strayed out from under the hood. Nighttime or daytime held no meaning for him, nor did the sounds of a faceless stranger receiving a thrashing inside an abandoned livery.
Somewhere in a world outside knuckles and fists, a dog barked.
A whoosh and a suck changed the dynamics. The pirate grunted and did a hopping dance. An arrow stuck out from his hind quarters. Trying to grab hold of the shaft, he pivoted gracefully but to no useful purpose. The Devil’s own released Drake, and the three started yelling all at once. The pirate screamed for the Devil’s guardians to draw out the arrow, but the way they were pulling and tugging wasn’t sitting well with the pirate. The shank cracked. The yelling stopped. Feet scrambled. Two horses rode off at a gallop. A third followed well behind.
Drake was staring at a pile of horse dung while his feet and arms shifted in a pathetic attempt to get up. The dung inched ever closer to his nose. He felt something wet on his ear. A yellow-furred cur was licking him, whining and barking.
One of the goons returned. Feet tiptoed into the livery and stopped short of Drake’s blinking eyes. The goon’s delicate feet were bare though well-manicured. The toenails were painted vivid scarlet. Lavender drifting in the goon’s wake informed Drake the bastard was not everything his coarse appearance told. A gentle hand levered Drake into a sitting position. Washed in blood-red hues, the livery spun at a fast clip. A murderous goon did not lurk on the other side of the crimson blur but a brunette with a handsome face and a worried smile.
Aveline Darcy helped him to his feet. Offering a steadying arm around his waist, she urged him along with melodious words of encouragement, the lavender acting like a narcotic. He hadn’t noticed before, but she was nearly as tall as Drake yet owned a natural gracefulness not unlike a skilled swordsman. It had to do with the set of her shoulders, the transit of her limbs, and the carriage of her posture.
The dog led the way, guiding them out of the livery, into the street, and toward the alehouse, its long snout smiling cheerfully back. Blood droplets splashed along the path. Aveline was kind enough to wait for Drake to be sick.
“Can I swoon?” Drake asked her.
“Not yet.”
Her stabilizing influence kept him on track. Not wanting to make a fool of himself by falling flat on his face before an attractive woman who granted favors a half night a throw, he ascertained each step was secure before taking the next. Concentrating on the swirl of her sorrel-dyed skirt, which nicely set off the pale ivory of her slender feet, gave him enough incentive to keep going.
The blind man tapped his way around the corner of Staple Gardens and High Street.
“You have a wicked way with bow and arrow,” Drake said to Aveline. “Where did you receive your training?” She regarded him strangely. He didn’t press for an answer but concluded the blind man couldn’t have been his savior. Even the dog was a more likely candidate.
After shooing away the two brawny lads of last night, intent as before on protecting their older sister with fists if necessary, she led Drake upstairs. “My brothers, Arlo and Jehannes,” she explained.
“Do you always walk around barefoot?”
“Only after bathing.”
“Oh, lady!”
In one of the infamous upper chambers, she sat him down on a featherbed and began to undress him.
“This might not be the best time for you to have your way with me.”
She frowned. After stripping him to braiel and breeches, a man’s modesty not in the least inhibiting her, she took note of the green and yellow bruises fading like last year’s rosebuds and the new bruises blooming afresh. She also noticed the birthmark on his hipbone. It had the look of splashed wine, one of the few distinguishing marks separating Drake from his brother. Her head cocked curiously. Then one side of her mouth quirked.
A rush of comprehension enlightened Drake. Not only did Aveline Darcy have intimate knowledge of his brother’s anatomy, but she and Stephen must have had intimate relations. No doubt she invited him into her bedchamber for one or more of her half-night sessions. No doubt she knew the features of his brother’s body more intimately than any, excepting Drake and their nursemaid. He was supposed to be Stephen, but all the signs told her he was an imposter.
“I’m surprised you’re not well gone from Winchester by now.”
“So am I.”
“And your brother?”
“Posing as his brother’s keeper.”
“I see.” She did not smile but went on with his physical denouement now she had his identity laid bare.
“You guessed last night,” he said.
“I did.”
All that remained were his braies. Drake was hoping she would spare him the embarrassment, but she removed those with alacrit
y and more familiarity than a woman ought to possess, until he reminded himself that she was known to dispense favors a half night a throw.
She laid him down on the featherbed and hiked up his feet. He stared at the ceiling and tried to make it stop spinning. She applied a wet cloth. The water in the basin turned a lovely tint of rose, then a deeper shade of madder, and finally a resplendent scarlet.
“My nose, is it still in the middle of my face?”
“Hmm,” she said as she studied both profiles. “Let me put it this way: you were much too pretty before.”
“Is that a compliment?”
“Not where you’re concerned.”
His left eye was already swelling shut. She applied something cold and slimy to his eyelid. “A leech,” she explained. The thing crawled, anchored itself, and sucked. Drake vomited again, but Aveline was ready with the basin. The leech clung tenaciously. She changed the soiled bed linens, turning him gently onto one side and then onto the other before covering him with a quilted counterpane. She studied his face with concern. “You need sutures. Here. Above your brow.”
“Leave it. It’ll add more character.”
She went away and returned with her sewing box. “You wouldn’t want your beautiful face scarred for life, now would you?”
He opened his mouth to protest, but she stuffed it with a leather pad and squelched the “Aye” forming on his tongue. Drake grunted a different word.
“I agree with you on that score. I am a bitch.” She threaded a fine ivory needle. Before setting to work, she poured wine from a flask into a small vessel.
He went to remove the leather pad, his tongue already licking his lips in anticipation. Then he yelped. “God’s blood, woman! You’re supposed to put the wine in me, not on me.”
She patiently replaced the pad and sewed up his wound. He scarcely felt any pain since the lingering sting of the wine blotted out the prick of the needle. He forced his thoughts to other things. Such as Aveline Darcy’s penchant for fine featherbeds and the color scarlet, and how much the half-night nocturnal interludes brought in yearly.
When she finished her embroidery, he asked, “Can I swoon now?”
“Aye.”
He did.
Her soft-padded feet tiptoed out.
Checking in on him from time to time, Aveline Darcy became his measure: if she didn’t cover his face with the counterpane, he must still be among the living. Sweet of her to care so much. He said so on one of her visits. “It’s only that I don’t want the trouble of disposing of your corpse,” she said.
The rest of the day passed like a bad dream. He awoke only to use the chamber pot she delicately placed next to the bed and to drink ale from the ewer she placed next to the chamber pot.
Aveline Darcy didn’t have much of a bedside manner.
Chapter 8
DRAKE DREAMT HE WAS SUFFOCATING. Upon waking, he became aware of the toddler-sized thumb and forefinger pinching his nose with giggly playfulness. The four-year-old was the image of her mother except for opaque green eyes. By the time Drake reasoned out the solution, she slapped her sticky paws over his mouth.
He was on the verge of blacking out when her mother yelled, “Pippa!” Pippa scampered away, laughing the distance. Aveline gave her a scolding and a tap on her behind before checking in to see if the invalid was still breathing. He was. Barely. She stayed with him until he fell asleep, which took enough time for her to pull up a chair.
He awoke at nones, the bells of Winchester Cathedral clanging in his ears. Freshly laundered, Stephen’s clothes lay at the foot of the bed. Drake dressed and limped down to the kitchen.
Gobbling up scraps, the yellow cur looked up once before starting her second course. Drake watched both bitches in silence. The taller, a forest-green kirtle nicely setting off her luminous tresses, vigorously scratched the ears of the shorter and muttered doggy-talk that seemed ill-favored for a flea-bitten canine of dubious parentage. Sensing he was standing in the portal, Aveline said, “There he is. Does my Lazarus want something to eat?”
He limped to the trestle table. “Wash your hands. I won’t have a filthy beggar sitting at my table. And why are you limping?”
“The limp comes permanently attached to the leg.”
She let out a sigh and reprovingly shook her head. Aveline Darcy was a hard woman to please.
He dried his hands and returned to the trestle like another of her obedient pups.
Two windows placed high above the postern door cast abundant southern light into the homey setting. Casseroles were neatly stored on a side table. Bronze caldrons sat on trivets in the fireplace. A kettle boiled above the hearth fire. Cooking pots and skillets hung from overhead hooks. Crocks, ewers, and goblets were stacked neatly in the cupboard. Dried herbs hung from the rafters. An enclosed passageway led to an outbuilding conveniently placed on the other side of the double-sided hearth.
“You live well for the daughter of an alewife.”
“And why should I not?” Her expression remained unceasingly bland. She was a proud woman. “Might I ask who used you for drubbing practice? I won’t ask why, since it’s public knowledge you merited it.”
“Take your pick.”
Setting before him a trencher of stale bread and a goblet of warm mead, she said, “The whole of Winchester? Eight-thousand townsfolk? I hardly imagine …” She stopped herself from saying more. Her amber eyes gazed unblinkingly into his.
Whatever her ways—biting or sympathetic—he was uncomfortable in her presence. So uncomfortable he wanted to kiss her three times over just to show her who was lord and master. “Three goons,” he admitted. “Sent from someone named Yacob the moneylender.”
She shook her head and returned to her work. “Yacob doesn’t employ goons who beat hopeless knights to a pulp.”
“Hopeless?”
“You were beaten to a pulp, were you not?”
“But …”
“I repeat. Hopeless. Utterly and completely hopeless.” Aveline’s locks swayed freely about an implacable oval face. “Yacob ben Yosel is a gentleman, more so than those that call themselves such.” The way she slapped a spoon, a knife, and a bowl beside the trencher told him he was not a gentleman. Her brow knit in thought. “Tell me. Did one look like he’d been in one too many sword fights and the other two like guardians at the gates of Hell?”
“You saw them, then?”
“No, but I do know those particular goons belong to Mat. Mat runs Hogshead Tavern but never shows his face. If I were you, I’d stay clear of Hogshead. It’s known as the chanciest game in town, where a man can lose the tunic off his back and the braies off his nether parts in a single night.”
“Much like the London Way Alehouse and Inn. Or so I’ve been told.”
She propped a hand on her hip and glared at him. Aveline was about to say something when a knock at the door prompted her to pile food into a spare trencher. With a gloved hand and a grunt of thanks, a beggar sheltered by a heavy cloak in the heat of a summer’s eve took the handout through the portal. She shut the door and threw the latch.
“If those goons belong to Mat,” Drake said, “why did they say they were sent by the Jew?”
“Why ask me about your bro … your affairs?” Cheese, bread, and butter were soon set before him.
“Because you’re the daughter of an alewife. Because you hear everything there is to hear. Because you grant favors in the upper chambers a half night a throw.”
Reddening from her chest to the top of her hairline, she slapped a hand onto the table and went eyeball to eyeball with him. “I overestimated you. You’re not as clever as you appear at first glance.”
“Where? What?” He was at a loss. “If you mean the half-night remark ….”
“An insult, an offence, a slur … and plain rude. You will apologize, sieur.”
He did, most profoundly, as a knight and a gentleman. She forgave him with words but not with heart. She turned away. More food arrived. A galantine, a capon, an
d a mixture of greens and herbs from her garden. Peas, beans, more bread, a compote, and a flask of raisin wine.
“Are we having company?”
“We already supped. These are leftovers from two days past.” She sat down and plunked a rounded chin onto an upraised hand. “Aye, that is how you rate, as fitzAlans go.”
“Any fitzAlan in particular?”
“One is like the next.” Her mouth curled into a smile. She was playing him for a fool, but he was no fool.
He boldly gazed at her, but she was unfazed by the directness of his stare. She was a pretty maiden, fair of face and shapely of body. But she had a sharp tongue and sharper wit. She could slice a man in half with a glance, like she was doing now. A man would be plain crazy to take up with the likes of her. But it would be interesting to try. “Aren’t we tempting damnation? Eating meat on a fasting day?”
“Not we. You. The Church gives dispensation for the sick and infirm. You are sick and you are infirm?”
“Most sick and most infirm.”
“I guessed as much.”
“You and my brother,” he started to ask. “Have you …?” He twirled a finger in a suggestive manner.
“You probably don’t know,” she said, “since you and your brother haven’t been back in town for very long, but the shire’s been in terror of your friend Graham and his band of thieves for some time, they having bled tribute money from every lord within sixty miles, using Drogo Atwell as sanction and highwaymen as muscle. Something to do with the Saladin Tithe and who knows what else. I don’t follow gossip that closely.”
“Tell me now.”
“It’s common knowledge.” She folded her arms on the table and challenged him with a direct look. “They’ve been helping themselves to tax revenues collected from the gentry, so much to lose track of and so much to gain.”
“Isn’t that the sheriff’s duty?”
“You would think.”
“Then Randall of Clarendon must have sanctioned it.”
“No one trusts him.”
