“You should have.” That was Conrad, blunt as a boulder, warrior to warrior, stalking to stand beside her and braced as if he was ready to take on every man in the place. He probably is. The foolish thought made her smile.
“Agreed,” the man admitted, tilting his head as he measured Conrad. “She is with you?”
“Yes, my lord. Rather, we are with each other. We seek her brother Michael the locksmith.”
The stranger was clearly used to courts, for his clean-shaven face showed no surprise at this news. Rather, he offered information. “A dark, intense young man, shorter and leaner than yourself, sir? I encountered him once at a country fair. He wrestled all comers and then did not trouble to collect his prize money.”
His memory wrenched tears into Maggie’s eyes. “Yes, that is Michael.”
“Half-brother, I think,” observed Conrad, glancing from her to the stranger and back, making the sign of the cross between them, as if he could not credit their likeness to each other.
Maggie however could not let his words stand. “Brother,” she said, hoping her tone was clear to everyone.
Conrad pierced her with a quizzical look that changed his grey eyes briefly to silver and nodded, recognizing her determination. So it seemed did the stranger, who brought his hands together in a clap.
“I shall give all possible aid to your search,” he said.
“He was taken by bandits and they are said to be coming here,” said Maggie swiftly. She did not yet believe in this amazing twist of fortune, but recalled what her father—or was the kind ploughman she had known throughout her life in the village really her step-father?—had warned her and Michael about the whims of princes. “If they offer anything, do not wait for them to act on their vows. They may fulfill a small part, but only what is for their show and advantage.”
So I will hope for the best, but not expect too much from this prince, whoever he is.
“Your help will be most welcome, my lord—?” added Conrad.
“Earl John,” came the reply. “Lately visiting this region.”
“Most welcome indeed,” went on Conrad, in that brief exchange deftly telling Maggie who the stranger was and also shoring up the earl’s promise by again showing his own support.
“So be it.” Earl John made a circular motion with a finger and when she and Conrad had obediently turned so that all in the hall could see their faces, he waited a moment until even the dogs were quiet. “May I present to you my daughter,” he announced, and raised an eyebrow, as if to prompt her.
“Maggie,” she whispered, understanding his silent command even as she felt adrift from everything she had known, at sea and drowning in a whole new world. As was his habit, Conrad gently squeezed her shoulder and his touch grounded her, or at least convinced her she was still awake. And how often, how naturally, I call him by his name…
“My daughter the Lady Margaret,” Earl John continued. With that casual amendment of her title Maggie knew her life had changed forever, except in two important ways.
I still must find and recover Michael.
Conrad is always my protector, whatever my status, whoever are my parents.
She clung to that last thought for comfort as the hall burst into cheers and applause, as Richard yelled out, “The lady, what a lady!” and men struck their fists and cups on the trestles. As Lord William called for more wine and squires and pages threw their caps into the air in celebration, Maggie swore a new vow.
If I can protect Conrad in turn, I will.
But what was coming next?
• ♥ •
The master studied his reflection in the silver salt server on the high table. Noon, and the trestles in the great hall were filled with diners. He nodded to his ginger assassin, allowing Petit to bask in his approval, and checked his smile in the salt server one more time.
Hair ordered, teeth clean, tunic spotless, rings shining…I am ready for the show and to be the show. It was a fact so few men understood. Even Earl John did not appreciate how to keep composure in the grip of shock.
That pretty golden toy really is his daughter. Recognized at once by her father and now seated beside him. What other gifts would John send her way, and how could he seize advantage from them? Thank the rood that Petit and his changeling obsession got no further than his ridiculous attack in the bath house.
The master glanced along the table to the next person seated beside the new Lady Margaret. A tall, plain figure who sipped at his wine and watched everyone through narrowed eyes, his darkness a shadow to his golden companion. Her protector? That would bear more study.
Talk between Earl John and Lord William had the master placing the venison pie on his trencher instead of eating it. He needed to hear what the pair were saying, everything they said. The fact they spoke in French was a sign that important information—or better yet, secrets—were about to be told.
“King Richard is missing, probably imprisoned.” Earl John admitted this startling news after Lord William asked after the royal court. “He was returning from crusade, as many here have lately done, but there has been no sight or word of him since he crossed into Austria.”
“Who would have dared to capture the Lionheart?” spluttered Lord William.
I can think of several, the master reflected, taking a golden spoon from the table and dipping it into a dish of frumenty to disguise his lack of eating. King Richard has made many enemies, including most dangerously among his family.
“And no word of where he is?” Lord William continued. “Is anything being done to recover him?”
“None, and not to my knowledge,” said the earl crisply, “though events move swiftly.”
“His crusader companions have no ideas?” rumbled Conrad, revealing he knew French and was listening.
Lord William started but Earl John merely shook his head. “How is it you declined to go on crusade, sir?” he demanded.
“I could ask you the same, but to speak truth, I saw no glory in it,” came back the barbed reply.
“Unlike your brother, then.”
“My brother wished so ardently to leave for Outremer that he made me his steward.”
But such issues were becoming too close for the master. Families are not a happy matter for me.
He needed to remain close to Earl John, close to the reins of power. Once the earl has completed his progress of the north and seen the treasure of Ormingham, then we can return south, to civilization, to Winchester and London. The master could hardly wait.
Chapter 9
Maggie touched the small, brown hard boiled egg in the middle of her trencher. A hen’s egg in December! Not really a rare thing—but a treat all the same—and presented to her because she was Lady Margaret, the natural daughter of an earl. I should feel glad, but I do not.
The ploughman she had called Da in her childhood, who had carted her from the fields on his shoulders and gone with her to pick holly in the woods at Christmas, was still her parent, as much as her mother, and she had promised them to look after Michael.
She had hoped to be searching for Michael. She wanted to speak to Conrad, who believes in me, concerning plans to rescue her brother. Even to talk of the treasure here, how to draw the outlaws to it, how to place a huge locked chest in the church to tempt Michael, would be a start.
Instead, Earl John spoke in French, a language she did not know, and not even Conrad translated for her. The other women sitting at the table smirked, clearly recognizing her discomfort. She wanted to howl in frustration.
Time passes, winter grows colder, and where is Michael?
“Would you like me to strip it for you?” a soft voice breathed by her ear, loaded with meanings that she understood all too well.
“I will peel the egg for her.”
So Conrad can speak English, at least when he spars with his brother!
She knew the thought was unfair but she could stand this inaction no longer. Maggie pushed back her chair, catching her middle on the wooden ar
ms, since she was used to sitting on benches or stools, and surged to her feet, leaning away from the looming Richard.
“Richard—” growled Conrad.
Earl John smoothly rose. “Daughter, have you seen the treasure of Ormingham? Recently I have heard it is a great wonder, indeed it is one of several reasons I chose to visit here during my progress of the north.”
Finally! “No, sir, though if it is kept in a locked treasure chest, my missing brother Michael would be most keen to see it.”
“Clever lass,” muttered Conrad, in a low tone not intended to be heard, but Maggie’s ears were sharp. He also left the table, turning to Lady Ygraine. “Your pardon, may we leave you for a little while, my lady, to see this treasure?”
“Of course!” boomed Lord William, and he beckoned to a slim, dark priest seated at the first of the trestles below the dais high table. “Show it to them, yes?”
“At once, my lord.” The priest set off for the doors.
• ♥ •
Inside the church Conrad noted that his brother and the earl were most keen to see the treasures within its crypt. In contrast, Maggie—or Margaret—was intent on the stout door of the underground chamber, the narrow stone steps leading down to it and the huge key the priest produced from his surplice to unlock the sanctuary.
“No one has ventured here for a while, thank our Holy Mother,” she observed, as the priest shouldered open the thick door and Richard and Earl John jammed together in the small opening in their haste to be first into the crypt.
Would be funny, I vow, were my girl’s plight not so serious.
“Why do you say that?” Conrad asked aloud, interested in her and her reasons rather than the costly trinkets stashed within.
Maggie smiled, her eyes less strained than he had seen them for two days, and pointed down. “Dust and cobwebs on the steps, before the Holy Father walked down,” she answered, “which means no thieves, either, so we can set a trap for them here.”
“Snares have no places in the house of God!” protested the priest, while Conrad could only think she said we. She is glad we work together. In that instant, his joy burned as fierce as the newly-lit torches.
“By all the saints, look at this!” Richard’s loud excitement over-rode the cleric’s disgust and the earl rocked back and forth on the heels of his two-tone coloured shoes, murmuring, “My, my, such handsome works.”
Curious where he had not been greatly intrigued before, merely staying with Maggie to ensure she was safe, Conrad waited for the smoke of the priest’s spitting, damp torch to settle, and then looked for himself.
So much bright gold, was his first thought, while Richard, naturally stretched out sticky fingers to paw at the pieces and Earl John intoned, “Roman, or earlier, and fit for a king.”
“This is the holy moon torc of Saint Oswald!” snapped the priest, keen to put the church’s ownership beyond doubt, “Discovered in a pond near here by my great-grandfather!”
“I have heard tell of such sacred wonders before,” said Conrad, hoping to prevent the priest and earl from saying more in anger or gold-greed that they could not take back.
“It was a woman’s,” said Maggie softly beside him, glancing once at him to share her thought.
“Why do you say that?” asked Conrad.
She pointed. “Because of the safety chain.”
Earl John heard her that time and half-turned. “A pleasant idea, my dear, but safety chain or not, the weight of such a torc is surely for a king.”
“Saint Oswald was of a kingly house, and a king when he was martyred,” said the priest.
Looking at the earl and his daughter, their profiles sharp in the flickering torchlight, Conrad wondered how he had not realized earlier who Maggie was. Their determined expressions were the same, the gold of their hair and blue of their eyes as brilliant as the treasure’s.
I was a fool not to have realized sooner. I knew she reminded me of someone, but then after only a few hours in her company I became interested in Maggie alone, and rarely considered the riddle. And the earl has been out of the north until this month.
Stifling a snort of laughter, Conrad tore his eyes from the pair and hurriedly studied the treasure anew, placed on a small altar in the middle of the needle-slim crypt. A tapestry embroidered with crosses had been tucked beneath the gold, but Conrad sensed that the torc with its attendant bracelets were far older.
Drawing every scrap of light to itself, the torc, thick as a man’s thumb, displayed strands of twisted gold plaited into a circle. Finished by two dragon heads set with sapphire eyes, it glowed with an elegant opulence.
Also on the sturdy altar sat two bracelets of a paler colour, a metal somewhere between gold and silver, which Conrad believed was called electrum. Made in the same twisted, plaited style as the torc and finished with teardrop ends, the bracelets looked as fresh as when they were first worn.
“Impressive work.” Maggie had crouched to trace the lines of the torc’s dragon heads with a finger in the air, being careful not to touch. In the chamber, her voice remained a respectful whisper. “All made by the same hand, I think.”
“Yes,” said Conrad and Earl John together, after which they nodded to each other.
“How has this been tucked away here?” Richard asked, sounding petulant for not being the centre of admiration for once. “Such treasure is worthy of greater renown.”
The priest and Conrad both shook their heads, but it was Earl John who answered, “There is more than the value of two kings’ ransoms here. Lord William is wise, unusually wise for him, to be somewhat discreet—although its fame is acknowledged here in the north.”
“The torc was laid in the pool here. It belongs here,” said Maggie, speaking aloud for the first time since entering the crypt. Conrad felt the hairs on the back of his neck rise in response to her absolute statement—As if an angel passes by, Joan would have said. The memory of his wife brought comfort, not grief, and he too spoke. “You have the right of it,” he agreed.
“Pah, a fool idea!” began Richard, but Earl John raised a narrow hand to silence his complaint, fixing a brilliant blue stare at each man in turn.
“If I hear any word, any whisper of this at court in London or Winchester I shall be heartily displeased,” he announced, smiling as Maggie breathed out slowly and the battle-stiffness left her body.
He does this for her and how can I compete?
Conrad did not question his thought, nor his response. “Still, we must use this as bait. Do you display the torc and bracelets during holy days?” he asked the priest.
“Of course, it is part of the splendour of God and his saints.”
Conrad nodded. “Yet, there is no great locked chest to store the torc between such occasions.”
The priest scowled, his dark flush visible even in the shadowy light. “There was until last All Hallows Day, when I discovered the base of the chest was rotten with woodworm,” he admitted slowly. “I told no one but our carpenter, who is fashioning a new one, and our painter who will decorate it.”
Maggie raised a hand to her mouth. Trying not to laugh at the idea of cross-eyed saints, the naughty wench.
But such foolish pleasures could wait. “Then, I have a plan.” Conrad flicked a glance at his brother. Could he trust Richard in this? He fears Earl John, but does he fear enough?
The earl caught his look and cleared his throat. “It grows cool here, even with the narrow walls and torches. Lord Richard, Steward, Lady Margaret, let us return to the hall. I have some wine and some very special spices I would have your opinions on.”
Spices laced with the eastern sleeping poppy for my brother, I hope.
Leaving the priest to lock the crypt, the party filed out.
Chapter 10
A cousin of Earl John and King Richard, the master had witnessed many treasures. In Outremer, he had even been exposed to the “miracle” of a leper who claimed she was cured after bathing in a sacred spring. Not one to be easily duped or
impressed, he had declined to join the shuffling party wending to the church. He hated walking, preferring to ride wherever possible, and already he knew the relic of Ormingham would be worthless.
No doubt it is a blob of gold, a few cracked garnets, and little else. He had seen the dismal wall paintings in Sir William’s solar and knew what to expect. Earl John had gone since the man was as curious as a crow, and the northern sheriff, Lord Richard, oozed greed from every pore, but he had too much sense to be tempted.
The group returned, exclaiming admiration that the master knew to be false. Even Earl John was as shameless as the rest.
“A treasure Constantinople would be proud to possess,” he observed, to Lord William’s clear preening, and now he bowed to his new daughter. “I have similar, though none so splendid, that I wish to see adorn your throat, my Lady Margaret.”
“Lord Earl, you are beguiled.”
At those muffled words, the master instantly left the high table and marched down the hall, motioning to the fellows seated on either side of the ginger—only being fools they did not understand his silent order to remove the assassin. The glassy-eyed Petit was deep in his cups, so far gone that he had spoken to a noble without permission and used terms to address Earl John wrongly. The height of discourtesy and incorrect, too, since no one says Lord and Earl together.
“Petit,” he warned, frowning as his servant lolled back on the trestle but still struggled to gain his feet as his master closed in. He usually sleeps in a corner when he is so drunk, so why does he not do so today?
Worse, the new Lady Margaret detached herself from Steward Conrad’s arm and took a step forward, closer to the fool. “I do not know you, sir, but you appear to know me.”
The master almost groaned. This will fling the fat into the fire! He hurried faster, calling out, “Petit, man, you are drunk.”
His admonishment failed. With a final wrestle of his limbs, Petit blearily dragged his forehead off the bench and tottered up, one hand flapping as he tried to point.
Sir Conrad and the Christmas Treasure Page 6