Resentment against Michael was instantly overwhelmed by guilt. “I do not know,” Maggie hissed back. “How can I? I never saw his face. I never saw the bandits!” The ever-present dread and panic welled in her, banishing her aching head and saddle-sore limbs. “What if they did not want him for the Ormingham treasure?”
Images of Michael dead in a ditch by the side of a forest road played vividly before her closed eyes. Ignoring any further questions or looks from her companion she lurched forward, wanting to rush into the night and bawl her brother’s name over and over.
Where is he now? What if he does not come here to Ormingham? How can I search?
The huge task suffocated her and she sank to her knees.
“Hold up, lass. We shall find him.”
There was an arm about her waist, supporting her, giving her time to find her feet again. A pair of steel grey eyes swept over her face, bracing as a summer shower of rain. “Good, you will do.”
He touched her cheek with a warm thumb and leaned away slightly as the muted colours of the solar sprang back into brightness. Blinking, she saw the painted birds and beasts of the room and Conrad’s solemn face. His lean, chiselled face seemed as blank as a statue but he had stayed by her. He had held her.
“Do you make a habit of rescuing peasants?” Her voice was not as sour as she would like, but she urgently needed to put some distance between herself and the handsome steward. We have nothing in common, only Michael, and soon Conrad will tire of seeking him.
She had sought to offend, but he merely smiled, shedding ten years as a pair of dimples in his tanned cheeks winked out at her. “When they tumble into scrapes and escapades as often as you do, I must,” he replied steadily.
“Laugh at those later,” he murmured, indicating the cross-eyed unicorn on the closest wall. “Come.”
He manhandled her, rather than politely offering his hand, but Maggie did not care. Grateful for the sheltering crook of his arm, she crossed the threshold of the great hall with him. Glancing over the greater mob of warriors, another thought struck her. “You know the stranger tonight could have swapped clothes, or sneaked off.”
“Agreed,” Conrad said, “But a search may reveal something, and the effort will not.”
Whatever final comfort he was about to give her was interrupted by a mighty bellow from the great table on the hall dais.
“Conrad, my brother! Well met!”
Chapter 5
From long usage, Conrad neither frowned nor flinched. He sent an open-handed, wide-armed salute to the laughing knight who had just vaulted from the lord’s chair straight onto the high table, his spurred boots ringing against the silver salt server.
He did not need to speak. As always, his brother said plenty, kicking his heels on the server. “My brother, free of his ledgers and parchments for once! Again, I say, well met!”
“He has your brows and forehead.” Maggie slid into what had quickly become her place at his right side. “With a more studied, artful ease. He must have swept in with the newcomers. Is he the eldest heir of your kin?”
“He is.” My parents’ darling, the one for whom everything drops into his lap, now capering on the table like a jester.
“Off on crusade until now, and settling on the lord’s chair and then the main table without a by-your-leave.”
There was no censure in her tone, but Conrad sensed that his bedraggled companion was less than charmed. Accustomed to being compared to his older brother to his detriment—“Richard has such lively blue eyes, not your nondescript greys,” and “His hair is like tarnished bronze, with copper tips, much richer than your dull ditch mop,”—Conrad nodded, saying, “Yes, and we are brothers, though not many realize, unless Richard acknowledges it.”
“He is a lion!” Conrad heard one of Lady Ygraine’s damsels exclaim behind her hand, as Richard jumped down onto the rush mats to the applause of a thunder of wooden cups against the lower trestle tables from the carousing knights and squires. With a wince, Conrad saw Davie happily thumping his goblet against his table along with the rest. They all cheer Richard.
Why can you not be more like your brother? A constant question and taunt throughout Conrad’s childhood.
“A tidy lion,” Maggie observed, raking his brother up and down. “One who has changed from the ride.”
“Richard likes to be clean,” Conrad agreed, a part of his heart stinging that his newly-returned sibling had not sought him out at once, had indeed taken time to don clean trews, tunic and soft pointed shoes, all in deep blue wool and leather to set off his fair colouring. And what is Richard doing in Ormingham?
“Will he resume the role of Sheriff from your stewardship, now he is back from crusade?”
That was a far sharper question than he expected from a peasant. No, not a peasant. Maggie. Her name is Maggie. She had a missing brother, he a prodigal one, and both of them were trapped by family duty.
He turned to her, glimpsing again a strange echo, resemblance, to someone he knew in the way she pointed her hand, three fingers extending, her thumb resting on her little finger. She turned to him and the mystery of who she reminded him of vanished like mist in the flame of her beauty. In a green and red gown, with gold trimmed sleeves, she was Yule come early. Even with her grieving, drawn features, she stunned him. Her piercing gaze, marked by black rings of tiredness, shone out from a face more beguiling than any kohl-eyed captive in an eastern harem, and her lush mouth—
“God’s breath, brother, kiss the wretch and be done with it!”
They moved as one, he and Maggie, drawing close as if in a dance, her face lifting to his, her golden hair spilling on his shoulder as he bent his head. They embraced, a soft greeting of lips, light as two moths tumbling together and wondrous to him as the touch of a unicorn. Around them, the rough comments and caterwauls of the hall fell away, as if the onlookers were also affected.
It could not last, of course. Richard would not allow any to steal his torchlight.
“My turn! Brothers share.”
“Lord William, what news of our search?” asked Conrad loudly, before Richard could rush past the benches and the central fire pit.
“What?” Clearly the lord had forgotten or dismissed their earlier agreement.
“No sign,” rapped out his lady, snapping her fingers at a page to bring her a cloak. “We keep a wholesome house here. As I said earlier, the girl was confused, especially after what befell her on the old bridge.”
Maggie’s ordeal dismissed, because she is not noble. Is it any wonder we struggle for justice in this land?
“What is this?” cried Richard, approaching with two hunting dogs bounding by his heels. “A tale of deeds?”
“Scarcely,” the noble matron answered as she also approached, bestowing a warm smile on her latest guest. “But you shall hear it from me.”
“Gladly, my lady.” Richard swept a bow and offered Lady Ygraine his arm.
Conrad hissed through his teeth in relief as the stately couple turned back toward the high table, glad he had not needed to quarrel with his brother. But does Maggie know I would never let him maul her? Does she believe we “share” as Richard claimed?
He risked a look at her and saw her pensive, blue eyes down, seemingly studying the rush mats, hands stiff by her sides. Though not yet clenched into fists, thank the Lord Christ. “Richard spins tall tales,” he began, praying she would understand.
Maggie sighed and gave her head a shake, the lightest gold of her hair seemingly to fly upward from her, like sparks of fire. “Whatever he thinks of as good for him, he takes as excellent, and the same for you,” she said at last. “Michael is…similar, if less merry.”
Under cover of a loud snort and then a peal of ringing laughter from Richard, she moved to the side of the great hall, slipping sideways in a silent, unobtrusive way he had seen before in her. And in one other, but who? Puzzled, Conrad chose to follow her, whispering to a server to bring them warm ale before leaning against a crossbe
am.
“Shielding me again, my lord?”
Conrad shrugged, though it was true his larger body hid hers from the general view. “Say your piece,” he said, wanting to bridge any gap between them.
Maggie quietly thanked the page who brought them drinks and blew on the steaming brew. “You were shocked when your brother proposed a share of me. I saw your expression.”
She knows I am not a heartless wencher, like Richard, or father. Relief made him suck in a huge gulp of ale and he almost choked, the liquid fiery in his chest and nose. I shall never be courtly and pleasing, like Richard.
“You did not know he would come here?” Maggie went on, when he had his coughing under control.
“I did not know he had returned to England, or the north.”
At her raised eyebrows, Conrad elaborated. “Richard, like our parents, prefers to keep close to the royal progress and the richer courts of the south.”
“As the heir, he will be expected to be seen in such places.” Her comment seemed as colourless as water, but still Conrad bridled.
“He does not need to love it so much,” he rapped back, before he had considered what he said.
Why do I admit such matters to her, a low-born girl I hardly know? Perhaps because she listened, as Joan used to, perhaps because she too had troubles and they were allies, of a sort.
“So what draws him to Ormingham?” Maggie asked.
Conrad cracked his knuckles together, a habit he had since a lad and one he had never lost, in spite of his mother’s scolding. Richard never does such a brutish thing.
“To join in the spectacle of the priest’s holy service?” she went on.
Maggie is a clever lass, but you knew that already. Still, her question prompted a reply. “The jewelled plate will draw the bandits, as we have guessed, but my brother enjoys people—the rich, the renowned, the powerful.”
“Is that why he went on crusade?”
Conrad felt himself flush in shame and old remembered anger. He wanted to avoid the question but her eyes urged him to speak. “It is.”
“Was he sheriff then?”
“He was, and still is.” The old rage almost choked him but he kept it down. “I became his regent.”
“A guardian for others.”
“Better than Richard.” He should not have admitted anything, but it felt good to speak the words. Just for once let me say the truth. He knew already that she was no gossip. “He loves the show, not the substance.”
“Will the revelation of the so-called treasure of Ormingham church be enough of a show?”
“Yes, but such a godly service and mass is not enough bait for my brother,” Conrad answered absently, part of him amazed at how straightforward it was to talk to Maggie, before the words turned in his head like a key in a lock and he understood. “Someone else is coming!”
A famous lord, no doubt a prince of the realm, but who, and why? Conrad did not waste time questioning how Richard knew this—his brother was as adept as seeking out useful gossip and news as a pig is at rooting out truffles—but who could it be?
Whatever Richard knows I will not ask him.
• ♥ •
The assassin huddled behind the massive wine barrel, staring morosely at a skinny dark-skinned tumbler practicing cartwheels beside one of the small fires in the retainers’ camp. His master chuckled and the assassin stilled for an instant, then, still in a crouch, skated about to face the man and ducked his ginger head into the dirt.
His master smirked at the assassin’s show of obedience, then spoke straight to business. “Tell me the mistake you made tonight.”
“I failed.” The ginger head dipped lower so that the milk-white forehead scraped the frozen earth. “I struck too soon.”
“Did I order you to strike? Two hours, only, we have been in Ormingham. You attacked without discovering if that was part of the plan.”
A pale, anguished face rose to meet his master’s. “I had to! It was the changeling! I recognized the creature when it was on the old bridge!”
The master sighed, tapping a booted foot. With one stupid comment from Baldwin the armorer regarding their overlord—“The earl likes his wenches pretty and fair and puts enough bastard changelings in every class of household—” the assassin had been instantly convinced that this latest discovered noble bastard was an evil creature of faery, rather than the more earthy reason, that the girl had been born to a cuckolded husband through a liaison between Earl John and a past mistress.
My assassin has not been whole in his mind since we returned from crusade. Too much time spent with the knights Templars, with their strange notions of womenfolk and witches.
“You were wrong, Petit,” he said firmly, using the man’s name in the hopes of convincing him.
“But it is clearly a changeling!”
The worst of it is that Conrad’s girl looks exactly like a female version of Earl John, which is why this fool assassin acted as he did, choosing to destroy her from the moment he spotted her. Changeling indeed! Petit has spent altogether too much time brooding and indulging the eastern poppy, though the fellow is a useful tool and obedient.
Yet, if Petit was now unravelling…
“You do nothing, understand?”
Petit shivered. “But master, she is a devil!”
“Nothing,” his master repeated, reflecting that at least Petit had disguised himself, rather than attacking at once.
Which is fortunate for me. Earl John scattered his seed widely, but he took some care with his bastards. He would always give his lovers gold, to pay for a dowry for some unsuspecting fool to wed them. And if any children survived from their coupling, John would often do more for such offspring.
He will with this latest bastard, unless my assassin reaches her first.
So what to do? Would the northern prince be pleased to learn he had another heir of sorts, or not? Choose life or death? “Watch her discreetly, do not let yourself be discovered, and await my further instructions,” he commanded.
“Yes, master.”
“Be off with you.”
Petit rose, skirted around the wine barrel, and slipped off into the darkness of the retainers’ camp. The master nodded, pleased to be in control again, satisfied he had a choice. Such was the nature of court life and politics, and all would be to his benefit. I will ensure it.
Chapter 6
The word was out. A great prince of the land was coming to Ormingham, whether as part of a clerical party or his own was not yet known, but in the excitement, nobody cared.
Maggie, tasked by Lady Ygraine with stuffing straw into linen pallets and sewing them up, ready as beds for the lesser folk in the new lord’s party, bent over her pile of straw and debated leaving the castle altogether. Last night she had slept safely beside Conrad within the great hall, one of his cloaks beneath her as extra cushioning and his strong, broad frame encircling her.
“Still rescuing me?” she had teased him, but he had grinned in answer and picked out their space, between the stone wall and a roof beam, with great care. He does not speak of that assassin, but he does not forget. The thought had warmed her, even as she told herself that the would-be killer must surely have long fled. The search for the hooded man had found nothing, not even fresh tracks.
Today, however, with Conrad off hunting for fresh meat with Lord William and the newly-arrived Lord Richard, and two of Conrad’s young squires alternately shadowing and looking down their French noses at her, Maggie was less sanguine. She had not cared for the little she had witnessed of Richard, and the whereabouts of her own brother was still unknown. Worse, she dreaded that this entire enterprise in Ormingham could be wrong. If the outlaws did not make a play for the priest’s golden plate and treasure, with Michael as their scapegoat and locksmith, what then? He could be leagues away, and utterly lost to her.
Why am I stuffing straw when I could be searching?
“Your fingers are bleeding again.” The small, spiteful voice of Conra
d’s younger squire shocked her from her panic but did not give any comfort. So far, although the pair were meant to be for her protection, Maggie was unimpressed.
“Straw can be sharp,” she replied evenly, disliking the smirk of triumph the pimply youth exchanged with his taller fellow, but overall, too concerned for Michael to care greatly for such petty snobbery. These knights and squires and ladies, all thinking they must strive so hard. How many of these in the hall have ever felt real hunger or cold?
Lady Ygraine’s disfavour, her appointing Maggie to making pallets instead of decorating the hall with Yuletide boughs of holly and greenery, along with the other damsels, meant little. Maggie glanced at the open doors of great hall. She could slip away from her two guards, out into the wider world.
And then? What if the assassin is still out there? Why was he after me? Faster still on the heels of those thoughts, running with the drumming of her heart-beat, came a sterner choice. Sir Conrad has saved you and sworn to help. Will you break faith with him by leaving?
The thought pained her, sharper than a straw cut, and in that instant of realization, Maggie accepted that she would stay. She rose off her knees and approached Lady Ygraine.
“The pallets are filled,” she announced, once the noble-woman deigned to look at her. “Shall I trim the greenery for the decorations?”
Whatever slow, reluctant answer Lady Ygraine was about to fashion was halted by a thump on one of the large doors. By the unneeded drama, Maggie guessed who had returned.
“Excellent sport, my lady!”
Richard strutted into the hall, his shoulders draped in furs, snow and three dead partridge, the bird’s heads bobbing with his easy stride. “We have deer!” he cried, standing in a gleam of sunlight that caught his bronze hair, spinning it to pure gold, and bowing round the hall as the ladies burst into applause.
He comes ahead to show off.
He was taller than the hooded man, she was sure, and for that small mercy, Maggie was glad. The rest of him, the way his light blue eyes constantly passed over her, the way he bowed to her after the other ladies, the way he nodded to her two protectors, made Maggie suspicious. After his greeting and embrace of Lady Ygraine, his gifting of the partridges to her, he means to make similar courtesies to me, and for what reason? I sense he is not only Conrad’s brother, but his ancient rival.
Sir Conrad and the Christmas Treasure Page 4