The Conqueror

by Kris Kennedy

  She threw her head to the side, crying out. She had no idea what she might have done next if Noir hadn’t shifted just then, away from the pressure.

  Griffyn did, though. He knew exactly what he would have done to her, starting with her parted lips straight down to her curling toes. But when Noir shifted, that woke him up. His hand shot out and grabbed the reins.

  He dragged his head up a bare inch and found her eyes almost closed. Only a thin glitter of green was visible. The rest of her face was suffused with incipient passion: red, parted lips, panting chest, flushed cheeks.

  A breath of air never tasted before.

  He let her go as if burned, released her onto obviously wobbly feet, his breath ragged, his very blood burning. Had he just almost ravished a noblewoman as if she were a strumpet, backed her up against his horse and gone to lift her skirts? Had he truly abandoned his mission on the eve of its execution? What had he become? A distractible man? A desirous man? A fool?

  Never before, and never, ever again.

  Groin pounding, heart thundering, he wiped his palm over his mouth. “That was wrong of me, Guinevere,” he muttered. “I was foolish, and I am sorry.”

  She kept her eyes downcast. “You were not the only fool.”

  “I have never—” He wiped his hand over his entire face this time. “I was wrong. Please forgive me.”

  She touched the back of her hand to her lips. “You’ve never what?” she asked in a small voice.

  “Pressed myself on…an unwilling…” He scratched his head briskly. “I am sorry.”

  She drew herself straighter and met his eye. “I was not unwilling.” Small tangled curls idled over her brow. She brushed them back. “’Tis true we’ve both done things tonight we’ve ne’er done before.” She paused. “For instance, you saved my life.”

  “Aye.” A small explosion of released tension took the form of a laugh. “Never done that before.”

  “So we can allow a few…”

  “Allowances,” he finished.

  She smiled, that enchanting, faerie-like smile which made him forget he had no heart. He was uneasy to realise he was quite willing to stand here all night in order to make her do it again. Smile, that is. Smile, and moan, and part her lips and then her thighs…

  “And now, you must go.” She said what he should have done ten minutes ago.

  “Aye,” he said, but didn’t move.

  “You have things to do. As do I.” Each word broke like a tiny ice chip. “So, please,” she glaciated. “Go.”

  He planted a swift kiss on her lips, then swung into the saddle and reined into the woods without looking back once.

  Gwyn watched for a long time, her breath fast and unsteady. Each breath birthed a small smokey puff in front of her mouth. She stood there so long the echo of Noir’s hooves merged with the sound of her own furiously beating heart, then silence.

  She was treading a very dangerous path tonight. All Hallows’ Eve, indeed. Doorways that lay closed every other night of the year were flung wide open. And she had just walked through one.

  Such beliefs were nonsense, of course, even though she’d grown up with them, tutored by her childhood friends, the Scottish villagers and servants. But they were old pagan beliefs, not of the Church—.

  She stopped walking. Oh, Lord. Pagan.

  She trudged back to the hut, her belly hot and flipping, which was absurd and ridiculous and most certainly immoral. It was also reckless, to be so focused on one errant knight when her beloved home was at risk. Recklessness, her besetting sin. Wayward, disobedient.

  A wretched disappointment.

  She tugged Pagan’s cloak tighter around her shoulders, grateful for its warmth, then spun sharply. If she was wearing his cloak, that meant he had none. She peered into the trees, but he was gone. Long gone. Far gone. Never to be seen again.

  She blinked away the sharp bite of tears the frigid temperatures must have brought to her eyes. Time to attend to what mattered. Pagan had his mission, she had hers: get word to the king. Only Gwyn could save Everoot now. It was all in her hands.

  In fact, she considered glumly, perhaps the whole debacle was a gift from God. A chance to do proper penance for one very old, very awful sin.

  And to do that, she needed to be somewhere, anywhere, other than this village with its milk cows and single swaybacked plough horse.

  I’ll never see him again, echoed inside her head as she pushed open the thin wooden door to the hut. She was surprised by the thought, considering she’d already forgotten him.

  But she was aghast at the emotion that followed: despair.

  The door swung wide and the villagers looked up.

  “I need a horse,” she said.

  Chapter Eight

  Griffyn looked up as the sharp, cautionary whistle dusted down through the dark night air. He whistled back, three trills and one long sustained note. Silence, then high on the hill, the manor gates creaked open, wood pressed hard against ancient wood. Hippingthorpe Hall was admitting its guest.

  It was a moody autumn night, stuffy. The atmosphere was thick and murmuring. Overhead the sky was clear, blooming with bright, glittering stars, but in the west, clouds huddled ominously. A gust of wind galloped across the plains, dragging a lock of hair over Griffyn’s forehead. He brushed it back impatiently.

  His heart still pounded, his loins still ached, but he would never have brought Guinevere here, not if she’d begged him. Hipping was a dangerous fool, and no one knew he’d already changed sides, secretly forsworn his oath to King Stephen and joined Henri’s cause.

  Some would call that traitorous. Griffyn even might have, in different circumstances, but he chose to call it prudence. Above all, it was a secret. No one knew Hipping had changed sides, but change he had, and he was an opportunistic turncoat. An heiress loyal to Stephen might be in true peril.

  Griffyn rode over the narrow bridge spanning the moat and ducked his head as he passed beneath the murderous wooden spikes of the portcullis gate hanging tautly overhead. If they lowered it now, he’d be skewered, skull on down. Helmed faces peered grimly at him from the narrow windows of the gatehouse, attended by crossbow quarrels aimed even more grimly, and directly, at his throat.

  He rode Noir about halfway into the centre of the dark, silent bailey and, swinging his leg over, dropped to the cobbled ground. Hipping’s burly figure appeared at the top of the stairwell, backlit by the torches burning on the walls behind him.

  “Welcome, Pagan,” he growled, grabbing Griffyn’s wrist in greeting. “We thought mayhap you’d changed your mind. Out doing dark, clandestine things, no doubt.”

  Griffyn smiled faintly. “No doubt.”

  Hipping threw his head back and guffawed, still pumping Griffyn’s arm. “Just as I like it.” His forearm spanned the same width as a sapling and his chest was half again as wide as a wagon wheel. Bushy grey and black hair hung down past his shoulders, and he had a wolf cape thrown over his shoulders. Glittering, shrewd eyes held Griffyn’s. “But your special guest is frothing at the mouth.”

  Griffyn lifted an eyebrow. “I’ve never seen Robert Beaumont froth from anywhere.”

  “You’ve not been looking hard enough, my boy!” roared Hipping in laughter. “From across the Channel, ’tis hard to see, I admit. From where I sit, I see every twitter and shake of the great ones.”

  Hipping hurried him inside the building. They paused at the top of a set of stairs leading down to the great hall. The air was stale and frigid. A few tapestries hanging limply on the walls looked like they contributed much of the mouldy odour to the room. It was dimly lit, but he could see that it was emptied of all retainers.

  Hipping stomped down a long corridor and pushed back a tapestry to his right, gesturing Griffyn inside.

  Robert Beaumont, Earl of Leicester, rose. A brazier sat near the rough-hewn table that dominated the centre of the room, and there were several fat candles plunged into puddles of their own wax on the tabletop, but otherwise the room w
as set in darkness. A jug of ale huddled in the centre of the table, and two wooden cups cast flickering shadows on the oak tabletop. One sat half-emptied before the earl.

  The middle-aged Beaumont stepped around the table and grasped Griffyn’s wrist warmly.

  Griffyn bent his head. “My lord. A pleasure.”

  “No, the pleasure is all mine,” said the most powerful earl in the kingdom. After a very deliberate pause, he added, “My lord.”

  Griffyn went still.

  “Is it good to be back in your homeland, Pagan? It’s been a long time.”

  Griffyn inhaled slowly and rubbed his palms together, looking down at them. Then he lifted his head. “I didn’t know you knew.”

  Beaumont spread his hands. “How could I not? You’ve his eyes.”

  “Ahh.”

  The earl glanced at Hipping, who’d paused at the door to speak to a servant, then lowered his voice. “Your father would ne’er have guessed it, Pagan.”

  “Guessed what?”

  “That you would be the hound to flush out England for the fitzEmpress. He might have been proud.”

  A side of Griffyn’s mouth twisted into a bitter smile. “He might have brutalized a convent before he said any such thing.”

  The earl’s intelligent gaze held him. “Your father was once a great man, Pagan. Earl d’Everoot. Lord of the most powerful honor in the realm, captain of great men, advisor to kings.”

  “That is one way to recall him.”

  Beaumont nodded slowly, letting the statement settle into quiet, before he sat, motioning for Griffyn to join him. He lifted a jug of Hippingtun brew and started pouring. “Your father built the earldom of Everoot into something more powerful than anyone could have dreamed, Pagan. Then he changed. Or rather, something changed him.”

  “Aye. Greed.”

  Beaumont shook his head. “Neither your father or de l’Ami ever said much about it, but I always suspected.”

  Griffyn’s heart started tapping out a faster beat. “Suspected what?”

  “No two men come back from Crusade like they did, Griffyn. Ionnes of Kent, a poor knight with nothing but a new name—de l’Ami—becomes rich beyond his dreams, blood-brother to one of the highest peers of the realm, Christian Sauvage, Earl d’Everoot. Your own father’s power expanding like a hurricane, they two as close as hounds, then—” Beaumont clapped his hands together. “Extinguished. The friendship gone, Christian Sauvage gone, Ionnes de l’Ami becomes the new earl of Everoot. Pah, something stinks. There’s something there.”

  “What?” he asked in a carefully measured voice.

  Beaumont ran his fingers over his short, greying beard. “Something your father and Ionnes de l’Ami brought back from the Holy Lands.”

  “And what would that be?”

  Beaumont’s reply was spoken so softly it barely disturbed the candle flame sitting on the table in front of him: “Treasures.”

  Like a river freezing over, Griffyn’s blood went cold. “A treasure? What treasure?”

  “Treasure?” Beaumont’s eyebrows arched up. “I said treasures, Pagan. Plural. The plunder from Crusade is legendary. And your father and Ionnes de l’Ami brought some of it back. Rumour says ’tis hidden in the vaults of the Nest.”

  Griffyn’s muscles relaxed in a hot wash. Beaumont did not know. No one knew, for all the rumours that flew about among the initiated. And Robert Beaumont, be he Earl of Leicester or King of Jerusalem, was not one of those. ’Twas all guesses, as people were wont to do when money or mystery was involved.

  Silent guesses, usually. Aloud, few dared whisper their speculations. Aloud, none ever mentioned a hallowed treasure over a thousand years old. And be it aloud or in their dreams, not one of them knew Griffyn was its Guardian.

  Except Ionnes de l’Ami.

  He’d been their family’s closest confidant, dearest friend, fellow Crusader and brother-in-arms to Christian Sauvage, Griffyn’s father. Then, with one, vicious swipe, he’d betrayed them all and broken Griffyn’s heart. Greed had destroyed Christian Sauvage, then crept up on little spider legs and stole Ionnes de l’Ami too.

  Oath-breaker. Thief.

  Griffyn’s hand went to the small, heavy iron key hung around his neck since his father had died, an instinctive movement.

  “Everoot is all the treasure that matters to me, my lord,” he said tightly.

  The earl’s perceptive eyes held his a moment, then said, “So be it,” just as Hipping stepped into the room.

  “Have you all you need, my lord?”

  “Indeed,” replied Beaumont. “Leave us to it.”

  Hipping nodded. “I will see to the gates.” He paused. “There’s something in the air tonight. My watchmen sent word there’s many more men than is wont on the highway, and some are riding off it. FitzMiles is in one of his raging rampages. The king’s councils are breaking up. All Hallows’ Eve. There’s something most odd in the air tonight.” He grinned and rubbed his hands together. “I hope ’tis something either brutish or beautiful. Or both.” He exploded in laughter and barreled down the corridor.

  “’Tis time, Pagan,” Beaumont said, but Griffyn was watching Hipping. “Convince me to have my men and castles waiting.”

  Griffyn nodded but his gaze lingered a minute, watching Hipping go. Hipping was like a trained bear. On most occasions, he’d follow your bidding, but never, ever turn your back.

  No, he’d never have brought Guinevere here.

  “Hippingthorpe’s hunting lodge is near here?” she asked incredulously.

  “’Bout half an hour’s hard walk down the river path,” gruffed the man Pagan had called Clid. He was obviously the patriarch, and Gwyn dealt with him.

  Behind his bearded head, an equally bearded man threw another log on the fire, then sat on the bench. Everyone was sitting, listening to the conversation. As if they could do much else—the room was as wide as a birthing-stall, and half was in fact a stall. A cow’s slow chewing provided rhythmic background, and chickens scratched through the hay.

  “Aye,” Clid said. Or grunted. “A couple miles north o’ here.” He slurped up a bit more brown broth, then eyed her doubtfully. “But why wouldn’t Pagan have taken ye there straight off, iffen that’s where he wanted ye?”

  But Gwyn wasn’t listening. Hope had sparked inside her, and she was mindless of any more mundane considerations, such as how she’d get there or whether it was wise. “What fortune! But, no,” she said, and slumped again. “’Tis no use to me empty. I need lords. Or at least hardy men with horses.” She looked at Clid. “Men loyal to the king.”

  He smiled, his rotted front tooth prominent. “Not many of them here in the Midlands, o’ course.”

  “No,” she agreed, and stared glumly into the firepit.

  “But Hipple’s lodge ain’t what ye’d call ‘empty.’”

  She lifted her eyebrows.

  “Hipping hisself rode in afore dawn, along with his accursed knights.” Clid ripped another chunk of bread free with his teeth and worked it between his jaws. “Burning and raping and takin’, and yer king doin’ nothing to stop ’em.”

  Gwyn’s heart leapt. “Hipping is there?”

  “Oh, aye, he’s there. And he’s not alone.”

  She beamed. “Who else?”

  “Leicester.”

  Her eyebrows crumpled together in confusion. “Robert Beaumont?”

  “Aye.”

  “The Earl of Leicester is at Hippingthorpe’s hunting lodge?”

  “Aye.”

  Earl Robert Beaumont, most powerful peer of the realm, was riding to the remote hunting lodge of a minor baron? Hadn’t he been in attendance at the king’s feast—was it truly only a few hours ago? No, she realised. He’d been strangely absent.

  “Robert Beaumont, Lord of Pacy-sur-Eure and Breteuil?” she added for clarification.

  Clid scowled. “He might be Guardian of the Lord’s pearly gates by now, I s’pose, the way his royal lordship throws around titles. What I know is that
he’s at Hipping’s lodge. Arrived a few hours ago.”

  She frowned. Why on earth had she not seen him or any of his retinue on the king’s highway?

  “There’s back ways to everywhere,” said Clid, shrewdly reading her thoughts.

  She considered this. It would be a dark and dangerous ride, what with the boars and wolves, and Hipping known as a wolf himself, but he was currently loyal to the king, and right now, nothing mattered more.

  She looked into the chieftain’s eyes. “I must get there.”

  He exchanged a few eyebrow-wagging glances with the men, then shook his head. “That’s a danger for us, missy. Best that the great ones don’t know we’re here. They’ve forgotten us, and I’d have it stay that way.”

  “They’ll never see you,” she promised. “We can share a horse, and you can leave me miles from the lodge.”

  “That’s where ye are now, missy. Miles and miles.”

  “But sir—”

  “Every time the great ones remember we’re here, it costs us. There’s not much ye can offer us to make it worth that.”

  Gwyn grabbed one of the felt bags around her waist, fumbled with its knot, and dumped the pouch open on the table. Gold and silver coins tumbled across the scarred wood, clinking loudly in the suddenly hushed room. They gleamed brightly in the dim hut. She looked up into Clid’s amazed eyes. “Please. I have to get there. Tonight. ’Tis my home at stake.”

  He ran his fingers through his grey-and-white beard. “Where’s home?”

  “In the north. Besieged.”

  He looked at her distrustfully. Behind him, the fire spat and crackled, then blazed brightly as a fresh log caught. “Pagan didna say anything about that.”

  “Be that as it may, you can see that I need to be on my way.”

  “Ah, well, and maybe not. Yer father will tend to it.”

  Her throat constricted. “I haven’t a father. I’ve myself and a dozen knights, and ever so many villagers and their children and if I can’t stop Lord d’Endshire—”