The Last Knight

by Candice Proctor

  A warm wind gusted up, rustling the oak leaves overhead and billowing the hem of the dead courtier's surcoat out around her. She watched the summer breeze ruffle the knight's dark hair where it lay against the taut, tanned column of his neck, and she knew a strange, swift sensation, as if everything in her world had shifted suddenly, then realigned itself in an unfamiliar, frightening, yet somehow exciting pattern. Perhaps it was the male clothing she wore or the strange company with which she rode, but she felt …

  She felt as if she were someone else, she decided. As if she were moving through someone else's life. A swift thrill of exhilaration tingled through her at the thought. She knew it made no sense; she had never been more frightened in her life than she was at that moment. She was worried about the threat to Stephen's life and to his liege lord, the English king; she was worried about Walter's wound and about her own safety. And yet she also knew that she hadn't felt this alive, this free in years. She felt as if she had escaped. Which was odd, since she hadn't even realized, until now, just how hedged in she'd come to feel as she'd grown from the rather wild young girl she had once been into the affianced wife she had become.

  A flock of swallows arose from the valley floor ahead to dart screeching across the sky. Looking up, Attica saw the knight check the black Arab for a moment, his hand resting on his sword, and she realized there was a definable edge to his watchfulness. She cast a quick, nervous glance around and spurred her horse up beside his. “You don't think they're still about, do you?” she asked. “The routiers, I mean.”

  He brought his gaze to her face, the edges of his lips lifting in a wry smile that flashed, then was gone. “They're still around. They wouldn't leave without robbing their own dead back there, if nothing else.” His eyes narrowed as he stared off down the valley. “We'll ride across the fields from here, I think, rather than follow the road past that clump of trees. No reason to present ourselves for an ambush simply because they've prepared one for us.”

  She straightened in her stirrups, trying to peer in the direction he'd indicated. It might have been her imagination, but for a moment she thought she saw something move in the stand of birches that stood just where the road flattened out into the valley. A brown, shifting shadow that appeared, then was gone.

  All the soft warmth and heady sense of adventure she'd known just moments ago suddenly vanished from the afternoon. She remembered the chilling hiss made by the crossbow bolt as it flew through the air to sink into Walter's flesh. She remembered the routiers’ ugly taunts and the savage malice twisting their faces as they reached for her. She remembered the ripped and bloodied bodies of the women in that burned village, and before she could stop it, a violent shiver shook her.

  She darted a quick glance at de Jarnac, hoping he hadn't noticed that betraying moment of weakness, but to her dismay, she discovered him watching her. “Don't worry, little lordling,” he said, his voice unexpectedly soft, his expression unreadable. “I'll see you to Laval.”

  She found she could not say anything, perhaps because there was, after all, nothing to say. She was afraid, and he knew it. Their gazes met and held, and it was as if she could feel his eyes upon her, piercing her, judging her. It unnerved her, the way he looked at her. She found it unsettling enough, simply being near him. He was so fierce and intense, he frightened her. And yet she knew, in that moment, that she would not change her mind. Whether she was comfortable with him or not, she desperately needed his escort to Laval.

  She could only hope that he would not change his mind and decide to leave her at the monastery after all.

  They came to the Benedictine monastery of Saint-Sevin shortly after terce.

  The monastery lay at the edge of a wide water meadow flanking a broad stream that flowed slowly down toward the Vilaine. Creamy white sandstone walls, still new enough to show their crisp chisel marks, encircled a compound dominated by the great stone mass of the church tower rising up as tall and solid as any castle keep.

  Above the dull tramp of their horses’ hooves in the dusty road, Attica caught the distant pearling of the stream, just visible as a ribbon of sparkling light through the trees and rushes. Cattle lowed in the pasture, brown heads swinging up to stare solemnly at the riders as they passed. From somewhere out of sight came the high-pitched shouting of children—the nutriti, dedicated as young boys to a life of seclusion, holiness, and scholarship.

  She had not expected the air of peaceful serenity that hung over this place, for she had heard the terrible tale of its founding often enough since coming to eastern Brittany. How some threescore years before, during the reign of Louis VI, a darkly handsome but ruthlessly ambitious knight by the name of Lothar had murdered his brother, raped his brother's wife, and blinded their son—his own nephew—in order to seize the boy's inheritance. According to the tale, Lothar had lived a long and prosperous life, untroubled by either repentance or punishment. Only on his deathbed did the dark knight begin to fear retribution for his hideous crime. And so he had endowed the monastery of Saint-Sevin to buy his way into heaven. As they drew to a halt before the monastery's new gatehouse, Attica stared up at that massive church tower and wondered if it had worked.

  A crow wheeled, cawing, above them. She turned her head, watching it, only to have her gaze captured by the dark, restless knight beside her. A knight who, like Lothar, had killed his own brother.

  A profound sense of disquiet rippled over her, a fear that she tried to calm with reason. She told herself that, unlike Lothar, de Jarnac had not mutilated his nephew or seized the boy's inheritance. The nephew still lived, secure in his castles, while it was de Jarnac who roamed the world, dispossessed, haunted. He was not like Lothar. He was not.

  “Porter,” he called, tipping back his head, his gaze assessing the monastery's gate and walls. His voice was not loud, yet Attica wasn't surprised to see the porter come hustling out of his lodge, his tonsured sandy head bent, his long black robes hitched up with one hand as he hurried. Few men, even monks, she thought, would fail to respond to the implacable authority in that smooth, cold voice.

  “Do you need shelter for the night?” asked the porter, his fingers still anxiously clutching his robes as he skidded to a halt a safe distance from the big knight. He was a young monk, with the soft white face of a man who has spent most of his life indoors, and he peered up at them with pale, myopic eyes that widened at the sight of Walter, slumped unconscious over the saddle.

  De Jarnac's elegant black horse fidgeted. “No, but we have a wounded man. Might we enter and entrust him to your infirmarer?”

  “Yes, yes, by all means,” said the porter, his pale eyes opening even wider as he stepped back quickly. “The infirmary lies just beyond the gardens, to your left. I will have Brother Infirmarer sent for, if he is not there already.”

  De Jarnac nodded and nudged his horse forward through the gatehouse.

  Clicking to the roan, Attica followed him into a forecourt littered with great piles of sand and stone. Dust and the scent of freshly cut timber filled the air, along with the familiar thwunk-chink of mallet striking chisel that echoed across the court from the mason's lodge hugging the south side of the nave. She remembered having heard it said that most of the immediate funds provided by Lothar had gone, at his insistence, into constructing the monastery walls and gate and the massive stone church that crowned the black knight's tomb—as if all that masonry might somehow serve to protect him from the wrath of God. They said the monks were still struggling to finish their cloister and replace the temporary buildings scattered about the compound. As her tired horse picked its way across the court, Attica looked around at the tumble of old timber buildings and decided the rumors were true.

  But the monastery gardens, when they came to them, were extensive and well tended. A heady mingling of scents wafted up to greet them, sweet lavender and pungent rosemary and an unidentifiable but delicious medley of other rich fragrances that washed over her like a cleansing balm. Attica felt some of the strain of the p
ast hours begin to ebb away, and in its place came an exhaustion so complete as to be almost numbing.

  “The good brothers of Saint-Sevin appear to be building themselves a new kitchen,” said De Jarnac, nodding toward the half-erected walls of brilliant white, newly cut stone rising on the far side of the gardens from the timber-built infirmary that stood looking quiet and empty in the afternoon sun. “I wonder if Brother Infirmarer is here”— reining in, the knight slid from his saddle in one graceful motion— “or if we must wait for Brother Porter to fetch him.”

  Attica didn't say anything. She couldn't. She suddenly felt so tired, she wondered if she had enough energy even to dismount. She watched in an envious kind of amazement as de Jarnac ran up the three short steps to the infirmary and disappeared through the open door. Her own body felt so weighted, her brain so sluggish, that it took an enormous effort of will simply to swing her leg over the cantle. As she lowered her weight, the ground came at her in a rush and she stumbled awkwardly, grasping the stirrup leather for support. She was glad de Jarnac wasn't there to see it.

  But his squire was.

  “Give me a hand with your groom; then I'll take care of the horses,” said Sergei.

  She lifted her head and looked at him. She had never seen anyone quite like this small squire. He had a strange, wide-boned face, with fair hair and skin still surprisingly pale despite the hours he obviously spent in the sun. But it was his eyes that fascinated her. Dark and tilted upward slightly at the corners, they seemed to stare at her almost unblinkingly, as if he had seen too many horrors, too young, to ever recover. She had no idea how old he was—surely no more than thirteen or fourteen, she thought, from the size of him. But looking at him, Attica could understand why de Jarnac had thought her so young if he had compared her to this lad. The squire might have the ruddy cheeks and smooth forehead of a boy, but his eyes were old.

  “Thank you,” she said. By gritting her teeth with determination, she managed to find the strength to push away from the chestnut and go help untie the bonds that held Walter to the back of the big roan.

  The sudden cessation of movement had brought Walter to semiconsciousness. As she reached his side, the groom groaned and lifted his head. His eyes fluttered open, then rolled back in his head.

  “Watch it,” she heard de Jarnac say from behind her. “He's going to fall.”

  She stretched out her arms to stop Walter Brie slipping sideways from the roan's back, but he came crashing down on top of her, buckling her beneath the impact of his unconscious weight.

  She heard the click of de Jarnac's spurs on the stairs and felt the overwhelming power and size of his man's body as he came up behind her, his strong arms enfolding her, his hard chest pressing against her back as he lifted Walter from her. “I've got him,” de Jarnac said, his face close enough to hers that the warmth of his breath ruffled her hair. “Move out of the way.”

  She ducked beneath his arm and backed away, oddly shaken.

  “I'll get his legs,” said the infirmarer, hurrying down the steps. He was an incredibly tall, thin monk with a long but gentle face and the almost emaciated form of a hermit. As Attica watched, the two men lifted Walter Brie's unconscious body between them and carried him up the steps.

  She followed them through the infirmary door, which opened directly into a small hall lit by four long, tall windows, their shutters thrown open to the midday sun. “Put him in here,” she heard the infirmarer say as he backed down a dark corridor to the curtained doorway of a small cell. They hefted the groom up onto the low pallet and he groaned again, a dark rivulet of fresh blood gushing from his wound to run over de Jarnac's supporting arm and drop in bright red splotches at his feet.

  At the sight, Attica made a thin, strangling sound in her throat. De Jarnac's head fell back, his brows lowering as he realized she had followed them into the cell. “There's no need for you to see this if it distresses you.” He straightened. “You might as well make use of the time to find yourself something to eat. You look as if you're ready to collapse yourself.”

  Attica shook her head. “I should stay with him.”

  De Jarnac shrugged and turned away to help the infirmarer, who had already begun to strip off Walter's tunic. “As you wish,” he said, no longer looking at her. “But be warned. I leave as soon as his wound is tended. And if you become too tired and hungry to keep up with me, I won't wait for you.”

  He would do it, she thought, staring at his hard, implacable profile. She could see nothing but ruthlessness in every set feature. Wordlessly, she turned on her heel and left.

  Attica knew she needed to eat, but it wasn't until she neared the door of the abbey's old timber kitchen and smelled the enticing scents of roasting meat and simmering pottage that she realized just how hungry she was. Her stomach rumbled louder than a waterfall, and it occurred to her that she probably felt faint almost as much from hunger as from exhaustion.

  In the end, she ate far more than she had expected, leaning against the warm trunk of an apple tree in the orchard and washing the food down with several droughts of watered ale. She might even have dozed, if the distant lowing of a cow hadn't brought back to her the passage of time.

  “Mother of God,” she whispered. She leapt to her feet, seized by the sudden terror that de Jarnac had already left, without her. Her heart pounding in her chest, she raced across the abbey's carefully tended garden and entered the infirmary at a quick half run.

  After the bright blaze of the June afternoon, the darkness of the hall almost blinded her. Her momentum had carried her halfway across the rush-strewn floor before she realized that the room was not empty.

  She saw the long, thin back and bowed tonsured head of the infirmarer first. He stood beside a table at the far end of the hall and was grinding something in a wooden mortar and pestle. But what brought her skidding to a shocked halt, the breath leaving her lungs in a noisy rush, was the sight of Damion de Jarnac, stripped down to nothing but his white linen braies and sprawled in arrogant negligence on a bench pushed up against the near wall.

  He had a magnificent knight's body, she thought, his shoulders broad, the muscles of his chest hard and exquisitely defined by hours spent at practice in the tilting yard. Against her will, her gaze roved over him, over the strong arms that could wield a sword to such deadly effect. Over the taut, smooth line of his stomach. Over the lean hard thighs that could ride a horse all day and never get tired.

  And then she saw the long, ugly cut that disfigured one powerful leg. She had forgotten that he, too, had been wounded in the fighting with the routiers.

  She wrenched her gaze up to his face to find him regarding her quizzically. As well he might, she thought. For here, she realized with a numbing sense of shock, was one aspect of her disguise as a boy that had not yet occurred to her. Traveling with Walter had been comparatively simple, for the groom knew her for a lady and had treated her accordingly. But it would be a far different matter to travel with this man. For this man—this big, virile knight— thought her just another male. And as Attica stood, frozen with chagrin, her imagination conjured up for her a host of embarrassing and potentially disastrous possibilities.

  She became aware of the silence between them lengthening, becoming awkward. Frantically, she cast about for some explanation for her seemingly odd behavior. “I … I was afraid you had left without me,” she finally said.

  Which was true enough, as far as it went.

  He gave her an easy, fierce smile. “Not without warning, lordling.” He jerked his head toward the corridor. “Your man is awake, if you care to see him before we leave.”

  “Yes. Thank you,” she murmured, ducking her head as she hurried toward Walter's cell.

  She found him looking drawn, but awake and surprisingly lucid. “Thanks be to God,” she said, sinking down onto the rush-seated stool beside his pallet. “You look far better than I ever hoped you might.”

  Walter shifted awkwardly against the pillows that held him lifted up to one
side to keep the weight off his wound. “It's not me I'm worried about, my lady—”

  “Sshhh.” She cast an anxious glance toward the partially curtained door. “No one here knows me for a woman. You must not give me away.”

  Walter jerked. “But you can't still mean to continue to Laval? Not alone.”

  “Lie still,” she said softly, resting a restraining hand on his shoulder. “You'll start your wound bleeding again. And you needn't worry. I won't be alone. I have found a knight to escort me.”

  “A knight? What knight?” Walter demanded, trying to twist his head around so that he could see through the doorway.

  “Stop moving. You can't see him. He was wounded slightly in the fighting and the infirmarer is binding his leg.”

  Walter brought his gaze back to her face. She saw his eyes, sunk deep with pain in their blue-tinged sockets, narrow with suspicion. “What knight?” he said again.

  In spite of herself, she almost smiled. Walter knew her too well. “The knight who saved us from the routiers and brought us here. Did you not see him? He helped the infirmarer tend you.”

  “No. Only the monk was with me when I awoke. Who is this knight?”

  Still Attica hesitated, although she could not have said why she found herself so reluctant to utter his name. “Damion de Jarnac.”

  She saw Walter's already pale face go a shade whiter. “God the Father and all the holy saints preserve us.” He tried to sit up again, gasping for air as if he'd just had the wind knocked out of him. “Damion de Jarnac? My lady, you cannot.”

  “Shhh,” she hissed again, pressing him back down against the pillows. “I have no choice, Walter. You must see that. With a knight such as de Jarnac to protect me, I should have no difficulty reaching Laval. Whereas alone …”

  “But my l—” He broke off to dart an anxious glance toward the empty doorway and dropped his voice to a hoarse whisper. “Who is going to protect you from de Jarnac? Do you know the things he has done?”