The Conqueror

by Kris Kennedy

  Griffyn felt the hilt of his sword butting up against his wrist, a comforting pressure. De Louth might be dirty, or not. There was no way to know except to listen.

  He slid his gaze deliberately down to de Louth’s thigh, where he’d punched through the flesh and bone with an arrow on the king’s highway. De Louth was waiting for him when he looked up again.

  A twisted smile lifted a corner of the knight’s mouth. “It still hurts, if that’ll make you happy.”

  “Some.”

  Griffyn looked around the room one last time, then gestured them to sit. Fulk took a deep drink from his mug. Griffyn sat back and said, “So? What do you have for me?”

  De Louth reached inside a pouch hanging at his waist and held something aloft in the air between them. It was a chain. At the end swung a key.

  Griffyn’s heartbeat slowed. Thick and ponderous, it knocked out a beat that made his blood churn and head spin. A key. It looked lighter than the one around his neck, and he saw it was silver. Steel. And it would fit. He knew it would fit. It was as if the knowledge flowed through his blood, as if the key were already in his hand. This little steel key would fit inside his larger iron one, and the puzzle key, the one that would open the chest of the Hallows, would be one step closer to being complete.

  “How did you come by this?” he asked hoarsely.

  De Louth lowered the chain to the table. “I took it.”

  “From whom?”

  “Endshire.”

  “Marcus? How in God’s name did Marcus come by it?”

  “He stole it. From the countess. Last year. I watched him.”

  “He took it from her?” Griffyn repeated in a low voice.

  “Not off her person. She was gone by the time we got there. But it was lying on the floor of her bedchamber. Looked like it’d been left behind in a hurry. An accident.”

  “And Marcus found it,” Griffyn said slowly, trying to picture the moment when Marcus realised what he had. “He must have been pleased.”

  De Louth snorted. “He looked like he was sucking on ice in Palestine. It mattered, to him.” He sat back in his seat. “To you. To whoever tried to buy it from me last week.”

  Griffyn went still. “What?”

  “Someone tried to buy it from me about a week ago.”

  “Who?”

  De Louth shook his head. The firelight from candles glinted off a few grey hairs speckling his beard. He glanced at the mugs of ale. “I don’t know. We met in a dark alleyway. He didn’t speak much. I wouldn’t know if he was sitting at the next table. There was one thing, though. I saw it when he was reaching for the bag under his tunic.” De Louth’s eyes met his from across the oaken tabletop. “He had a tattoo. A bright soaring eagle, inked right over his heart.”

  Griffyn and Fulk looked at one another.

  “He was willing to pay a lot for that.” De Louth nodded towards the chain and key, laid like a spiraling, linked snake on the table. A fat candle burned beside it, slowly spreading yellow wax like a sluggish volcano. “An awful lot.”

  “So why didn’t you give it to him?”

  De Louth shrugged. “I didn’t trust him.”

  “You’ve developed quite a conscience over the past year,” Griffyn observed coldly.

  De Louth shrugged again. “A conscience? I dunno. I needed the money. And it wasn’t Marcus’s to begin with.”

  “So why didn’t you sell it when you could?”

  De Louth’s gaze wandered back to the mugs of ale, then he poked his finger into the yellowish wax. More hot wax came chugging down into the recess, covering de Louth’s thick, calloused finger. He pulled it free. “I don’t think my answers will suit, my lord, but they’re the only ones I’ve got. I didn’t trust him.”

  Griffyn’s face stayed hard. “Why are you doing this?”

  “He took it from the countess. It’s hers. Not his.”

  Griffyn’s eyebrows inched up. “Truly, now: why?”

  De Louth scowled. “I said you’d believe me or no. So, ’tis no. I don’t much care. That belongs to the countess. Or,” he added, sitting back, “you. But it sure as hell isn’t Endshire’s.”

  “And you’re just so tired of all the stealing, is that it?” Griffyn’s words were mocking, but his tone wasn’t. Nor was it kindly. He was impassive. Blank. Pushing. Appraising.

  “I’m tired of people getting shit on, my lord,” de Louth replied. “I’m tired of watching it.”

  “Why?”

  His face went red and he flung out his hand. “I don’t know! I had a child. My wife died. I don’t know. Just take the damn thing, will you?”

  Griffyn swept up the key. Fulk slid his mug of ale across table to de Louth, who nodded and drank deeply.

  “And why did you contact me?” Griffyn asked. He slid his thumb over the smooth, cool steel.

  “I told you, I saw him take it from the countess. I knew where it belonged. From Everoot ’twas stolen, to Everoot ’tis returned.”

  “But you didn’t send a messenger to the countess, you sent one to me.”

  De Louth looked at him in confusion. “You are Everoot, my lord.”

  “Call me Pagan,” he said shortly, although no one could or would be listening in. It was loud and tumultuous, getting more crowded, and the room was practically tilting sideways with all the drunken revelry. Soon the fights would break out. Time to go.

  “I knew your father.”

  Griffyn came out of his thoughts with a start. “What did you say?” he asked coldly.

  “Your father,” de Louth said. “I knew him. He didn’t like Endshire much.”

  “No. He did not. How much? For the key.”

  De Louth set down the mug and wiped the back of his hand across his mouth. “I was going to name a price that would have beggared you. At least, one that would buy me a corody with the Templars for my old age. Since I’ll likely go lame before my time.” He patted his thigh, the one Griffyn had shot through with the arrow. “But I think I’ll leave it at this: Take my daughter when she’s of fostering age. As one of the countess’s ladies. Raise her up right, and safe. I surely cannot do it.” He smiled bitterly. “I cannot even choose a good master.”

  “You could choose another one, now.”

  De Louth got to his feet and shook his head. “No. I made a pledge.”

  “You stole this from him,” Griffyn pointed out.

  De Louth scowled at his incredulous tone. “Who’s to say getting this thing out of his hands is not a way of honouring him? I saw the way he wanted it. The way the tattooed man wanted it.” He glanced at the key. “’Twasn’t a restful thing. So, we’ve a deal?”

  Griffyn nodded. “Safe haven for your daughter when she’s ready to be fostered.”

  “Aye. In seven years.”

  Griffyn looked up in surprise. “How old is she?”

  De Louth pulled his cloak over his shoulders. Someone jostled him from behind, walking by with a fistful of mugs. He stepped closer to the table. “She was just born. Two weeks ago. I’ve got to go.”

  He turned and disappeared into the throng, just another pair of cloaked shoulders, then not even that.

  Fulk and he walked side by side back to their inn. Griffyn had lodged his men at the monastery’s guest hall just outside the town walls, but he and Fulk had needed to stay inside, to attend this meeting that occurred long after the gates were closed and locked for the night.

  Their bootheels clacked loudly over the wet cobbles. The moonlight glistened on the streets and lit the alleyways in an eerie silver glow. The scent of wet hay mixed with damp leather and the faint odour of blood: Tanners Row was three blocks over, but its stench carried much further. A cat slunk out from a shadow.

  Griffyn said quietly, “Where is yours, Fulk?”

  The Scotsman nodded, as if he’d been waiting for the question. He stopped walking, reached up and unbuckled his gambeson. The corner of the heavy quilted doublet flapped down. Expressionless, he yanked on the collar of the tunic ben
eath and held the lantern in his left hand aloft. There, in the soft crevice where his collarbones met, just below this throat, was a small, brightly inked, soaring eagle.

  Griffyn nodded. Fulk buckled up and they walked on. After a moment, Fulk said, “We get ruined every so often too, my lord, just like everyone else.”

  “Do all Watchers have the tattoo?” Griffyn asked grimly.

  “Aye. But not in the same place.”

  Griffyn looked his query, in the form of a sidewise, raised-eyebrow glance. Fulk elaborated.

  “We choose. We didna choose the duty, but we choose how it marks us. Or we’re supposed to. Our power over the power of the thing.”

  Griffyn’s gaze dropped to Fulk’s chest, where the tattoo now lay hidden beneath his armour. “Why there?”

  “It lies halfway between my head and my heart. Exactly where it’s supposed to,” he added dourly.

  They walked in silence for another few moments and turned down a small, crooked alleyway. It was dark in the buildings overhanging the street, all candles extinguished by command, the couvre-feu, to prevent fire. In a few buildings, on the third floors, a rogue flame still burned here and there, but mostly they made their way by the lantern in Fulk’s hand and the wet ground reflecting moonlight.

  “And you’re certain Gwyn knows nothing of it?” Griffyn asked.

  Fulk shook his head. “Lady Gwynnie knows nothing.”

  “I suspect I owe you for that.”

  Fulk stopped walking, his gaze sharp beneath his bushy, grey-flecked eyebrows. “Ye owe nothing, my lord. I’m paying off old debts myself. Ye may not want to hear this, but if I could have, I’d have told Lady Gwyn everything. I think she’s a right to know.”

  “I think that would be unbelievably dangerous.”

  Fulk nodded. “Aye. Every way ye turn, there’s danger. Ye’re the Heir. That’s the way of it.”

  Danger was the least of it, Griffyn thought. It was the unveiled craving he recoiled from. He could already feel it building inside him. He ran his finger over the serrated edge of the steel key, still cupped in his hand. That made two. Two of the puzzle keys.

  “There’s three, Fulk?” he asked suddenly. “Three puzzle keys.”

  Fulk grunted. “Aye. Three keys that, when fitted together, open the gate to the resting place of the Hallows.”

  So why had his father given away two of them? Why make Griffyn hunt down his destiny?

  He ran the key between his fingertips thoughtfully. “What do you remember of my father, Fulk?”

  “Well, now, I recall he changed. He grew…hard.” Fulk looked over briefly through the reflected moonlight. “I know ye think ye know yer father well, Pagan, and I’m sure ye do, but ye only know that part of him.”

  “Which part?”

  “The part after the Crusades. He was different upon a time. Before.”

  “How?”

  “Well, now, he and your mother, they sure did love each other. ’Twas as clear as anything.”

  Griffyn’s mouth fell open. “What?”

  “Dearer than that twice-blooming rose she was to him, and that’s saying something. And you and he were inseparable upon a time, that ye were.” Fulk pinched his eyes half-shut and peered at Griffyn’s shocked face. “About two weeks before the coup that put Stephen on the throne, your father up and left for Normandy. The only thing he took with ’em was ye and yer mother. Now why would he have done that?” His eyes never left Griffyn’s. “Take yer wee self, and leave everything else behind.”

  The rhetorical question hung in the air between them.

  A familiar surge of anger flooded Griffyn’s limbs. Indeed, his father had taken him, and his mother, and had left behind such a brutal legacy that his name was still remembered among the Norman tenants and noble neighbours as an accursed thing, Mal Amour: “Bad Love.”

  “And recall this,” Fulk was saying. “Ye were thirteen when your father died. And he did not want ye Trained. I dunno what ye make of that, but there it is. And who knows, mayhap he was right. For centuries these things have laid quiet. Perhaps for a thousand more. This is ancient treasure. There’s no rush.”

  “Not for my father, surely,” Griffyn said bitterly. “He wanted to keep it all for himself. Thought he’d live forever.” He paused. “Could he? Could something about the Hallows make him live forever?”

  Fulk glanced around. It was dark and silent and empty. The lantern swung back and forth in his gloved hand. “There’s a powerful lot o’ rumours, aren’t there, Pagan? The most I can tell ye is what ye already know: ’tis pure power.”

  They finished their frosty walk, passing darkened storefronts. The wooden platforms that served as shelves during the day were drawn up tight. As they passed one narrow building, Fulk muttered, “Agardly, the goldsmythe. That’s where Lady Gwyn’s harps were taken.”

  Griffyn pulled his mind to the present. “Harps?”

  “Her mamma’s little harps. Sold for seed. Probably gone now.”

  They reached their inn. Fulk swung the door wide, peered inside, sword in hand, then stepped back to let Griffyn enter. They trudged up the stairs to a small room at the back of the house, a luxury to have a single room, with two beds all to themselves.

  “’Tis shivering cold these nights,” Fulk grumbled as he sat down on one of the narrow, straw-filled cots that lined opposite walls. Griffyn unbuckled his belt with its array of weapons and threw himself on the other. There was enough space to sit and heave off your boots, if you didn’t mind your nose touching the other bed when you bent forward to do so.

  Fulk extinguished the single candle flame with a squeeze between his calloused finger and thumb. He punched his tunic around beneath his head and lowered his head with a grunt. “’Twill be good to be home again.”

  “Aye,” Griffyn said distractedly. “I need but to stop at that Agardly’s shop tomorrow, and we can be off.”

  Fulk’s grizzled head came back up. He was grinning. “Ye’ll make her real happy with that, my lord.”

  “That’s the plan.”

  Griffyn lay, arms folded behind his head. A sliver of the crescent moon was visible through the window. It was indeed getting colder. The mornings were bringing frost. Soon the snows would come, and Griffyn meant to spend Yule at the Nest this year. Henri fitzEmpress would have to summon him with an armed escort to make it otherwise. This year, he would be home. With Guinevere.

  She had not betrayed him. He could believe that, or spend the rest of his life suspecting everyone of everything. Half the time he’d be right. But half would be wrong, and if he was going to have Gwyn to wife, then have her he must. Wholeheartedly. He was in or he was out.

  And may God forgive me for being the fool a second time, he thought, but I believe she is honourable.

  Chapter Eighteen

  It was barely two hours after Griffyn had left, but Gwyn was already in the stables, tightening the cinch around Windstalker’s belly. Puffs of smoke appeared in front of her mouth with each exhale. Autumn had come with a vengeance.

  It was three hours to Endly Hall, three back again. She would be home before Sext tomorrow. Long before Griffyn returned.

  She must be quick, and no one could notice, not even for a moment, that she was gone.

  A summons to Jerv had brought him on the run. She’d posted him in the landing outside her bedchamber, admonishing him to ensure she wasn’t disturbed while she suffered a sudden, raging ‘headache.’ Jerv was instructed not to disturb her either. Her childhood friend was the only one she could trust to follow her instructions without question, and it was vitally important he ward off any potential visitors. Especially with Alexander about.

  “What are you doing?” said a voice at her back.

  She stifled a scream and spun. Jerv was standing there, not following her instructions whatsoever, looking confused and angry.

  “What are you doing?” he asked again, looking rather stubborn.

  “What are you doing?” she retorted, gathering her w
its. “You’re supposed to be posted outside my chambers.”

  “For your…headache?”

  She started to retort with a haughty “aye,” then stopped herself. That would be ridiculous and insulting. She turned to Wind and grabbed his reins. “I am going for a ride.”

  “Alone?”

  “Aye.”

  “Have you lost your mind?”

  “I have ridden these woods for fifteen years, Jerv. I know them. I will be safe.”

  “I will come with you.”

  “No.”

  She started to push past him, but he laid a hand on her arm, which he had not done since they were children, playing childhood games of tag and castles. This felt nothing like a game. She yanked on her arm. He didn’t release.

  “Gwyn, what are you doing?”

  “Keeping an oath,” she snapped. “Unlike you, who cannot follow simple instructions.”

  He let go her arm. “What kind of oath?” he asked slowly.

  “The kingly kind.”

  Jerv’s eyes narrowed. “Gwyn, what is going on? What are you doing?”

  Tension had already squeezed the muscles in her neck and chest and back tight. Much more and she’d begin to collapse in on herself. Fear was working hard to make her back out of this oath. Jerv must not be allowed to assist.

  “I am keeping faith,” she whispered through gritted teeth. “I have no choice. Leave me to it.” She pointed. “Go back inside. Guard my door.”

  He reached for her again. “You come back inside and—”

  “And what?” She jerked away and fought to keep her voice at a whisper. “Forswear my oath? Prove faithless to my lord king?”

  “Faithless? To Stephen? What are you doing in Stephen’s name?”

  “Making good on old promises.”

  Jerv stared. “God’s bones,” he said in a low voice. “What are you doing, Gwynnie?”

  “Don’t call me that!” They called her Gwynnie in tenderness, when they loved her. That would ruin everything. “But ’twas a deed done before Griffyn ever came,” she added, hoping that would matter to him. To her.