The Last Knight

by Candice Proctor

  The boar squealed and spun around, Attica's dagger embedded in its left shoulder. De Jarnac was already scrambling to his feet, his sword singing as he swung it from its scabbard. “God damn it, Atticus. Get out of here,” he cried as the boar, shaking its great head, crazy now with pain, charged straight at him again.

  Attica bit down hard on the scream that rose in her throat. In horrified fascination, she watched, helpless, as he simply stood there, deathly still, his mighty sword held aloft in both hands as he calmly awaited the boar's rush. It seemed to her as if time had slowed and stretched out, her world narrowing to this sunlit patch of grass, to this dark, motionless knight, defiantly facing the bunching muscles and gleaming, deadly tusks of the animal hurtling toward him. The thud of the boar's hooves digging up the ground seemed to jar through her, its heavy, labored breathing keeping time with her own as de Jarnac waited, waited. At the last possible instant, when she knew he would surely be gored, he leapt sideways.

  The boar's momentum carried it forward, past de Jarnac, who pivoted about, driving his great sword down, deep into the juncture of the boar's neck and shoulder blade as it rushed past. The boar screamed, staggered, swung about, its ugly head shaking, blood streaming from the sword protruding from its thick hide.

  De Jarnac faced it, weaponless, vulnerable, his chest heaving as he sucked in breath, his face hard and expressionless. “No,” Attica screamed as the boar gathered itself again, prepared to charge. And collapsed in a groaning heap.

  A silence so complete that it almost ached hung over the clearing. She felt the gentle wafting of the breeze, brushing her cheek and bringing her the smell of sun-warmed earth and the coppery stench of freshly spilled blood. Slowly, she lifted her gaze from the now still boar to the knight who had killed it. They stared at each other.

  “You saved my life. A second time. And after I behaved so churlishly toward you.” She tightened her face against a sudden rush of foolish tears and forced herself to go on. “Thank you.”

  She saw his jaw harden, as if he had remembered something that angered him. “And this is the second time I've told you to run,” he said, “and you didn't.”

  “I don't run.”

  Something flashed in his eyes, something that was there and then gone, hidden by the lazy droop of his eyelids. “No, you don't, do you?”

  She looked at him, standing there with his feet planted wide apart, his gloved hands resting on his lean hips. “Why did you come back?” she asked suddenly.

  “I am a man of my word. And I said I would see you safely to Laval.”

  “So you did.” She felt a queer, trembling smile pull at her lips. “Not only brave and strong but also true. I fear perhaps you are a more chivalrous knight than you care to pretend, monsieur le chavalier.” Then her voice cracked, and she had to turn away before he saw just how close to tears she had come.

  “Attica,” he said softly, and she knew he had come up behind her, for she could feel his presence. It was more than just the heat of his body; it was an awareness of this man's very essence. She waited, afraid he would touch her, afraid he would not.

  She felt his hand, strong on her shoulder, pulling her around, gathering her into his arms. A shudder ripped through her and she went to him, as naturally as a river to the sea. Her hands slid around his waist, clutched him to her, his body hard and hot beneath the fine cloth of his tunic and shirt.

  “I am not normally so weak,” she said shakily as she buried her face against his broad chest.

  “Weak?” he whispered in disbelief. He stripped off his gloves, his big hand cupping her head, his fingers tangling in her hair. “Splendor of God, woman. Whatever possessed you to throw your dagger at that boar?”

  She simply shook her head, glad he could not see her face. “You called me Atticus when you were swearing at me.”

  He laughed softly, and she felt the rumble of it, deep in his chest. “Believe me, I don't think of you as a lad.”

  She caught the change in his inflection, the subtle quickening of his breath, and knew she should pull away from him. But it felt so wonderful to be held like this, breathing in the sun-warmed scent of his skin, surrounded by the strength of his arms. She had received casual, affectionate hugs from her father and brother; even her mother had embraced her on rare occasions. But in all her life, Attica couldn't remember anyone actually holding her— simply holding her, offering comfort and the tangible proof of their caring.

  “Look at me,” he said.

  She felt his fingers tighten in her hair, coaxing her head back until she was staring up at him. She smiled softly and saw the creases beside his mouth deepen. He had a beautiful mouth, delicately sculpted. Before she'd thought it hard and maybe even a bit cruel. But now it seemed almost soft, full, and she found herself watching his lips move as he spoke.

  “Was it Stephen, then, who taught you to handle a dagger?”

  She shook her head. “No. Walter, my groom. Indeed, Stephen never forgave the poor man for it. My dear brother has always claimed that it's an unseemly talent for a lady. But the truth is, he's simply jealous.”

  She saw his lips quiver, and held her breath, waiting for another smile. “It was the summer after he first went as squire to Sir Baldric,” she continued. “Stephen came home for a visit, insufferably full of himself and showing off. I was very envious.”

  His eyebrows lifted in surprise. “You wanted to be a knight?”

  She felt her cheeks heat. “I had always spent more time wandering about the countryside with Stephen than my mother considered seemly. His newly refined talents bothered me more than you might expect.”

  “So that's when you decided to become a master of the short blade.”

  She nodded. “I knew I couldn't tilt or swing a heavy sword, but I didn't see any reason why I shouldn't be able to throw a dagger, and I pestered Walter until he taught me. I practiced every moment I could. And the next time I saw Stephen, I bet my dagger against his saddle that I could beat him.”

  “Did you?”

  “Oh yes,” she said, feeling shyly proud of herself even as she added modestly, “Stephen is a bit shortsighted, you know, so it wasn't all that difficult. But he didn't take well to being bested by his little sister. He immediately challenged me to a different contest, and …” She hesitated, remembering the nature of that contest. “I lost. In fact, I conceded defeat without competing. I didn't have the right equipment, you see.”

  “And what kind of a contest was that?”

  Attica pressed her lips together and shook her head, an uncomfortable warmth enflaming her cheeks.

  “Go on,” he said. “What was it?”

  She couldn't look at him and say it. So she swung her head away, her gaze fixing on a blue dragonfly hovering over the breeze-ruffled surface of the pond. “A pissing contest.” She pushed the words out with difficulty.

  He laughed then, a deep, husky laugh that brought her gaze back to his face. Her ignoble defeat hadn't seemed funny at the time, but it did now, and she laughed, too, the lighter notes of her voice entwining with his richer tones to drift away on the breeze. And then he wasn't laughing anymore. He was staring at her mouth, and she saw that his face had taken on an odd, tense quality, as if the dark skin had been pulled taut, accentuating the sharp line of his cheekbones, the strength of his jaw, the determined slant of his lips.

  His fist tightened in her hair, drawing her toward him. She read desire in his face. Desire and a strange kind of wonder. And she was very much afraid that what she saw in his face was reflected in her own. Her heart pounded fiercely with want and fear and the painful knowledge of what she must do. His head dipped.

  She drew back, gently pressing her fingers to his mouth, stopping him. “No,” she said, her voice hushed and thick. “You mustn't.”

  His fierce green gaze caught hers and held it, and she knew a strange shifting inside her. His eyes were like the forest around them, she thought: deep and mysterious and dangerous. And for a moment she lost hersel
f in them.

  Still holding her gaze, he brought his hand up to capture hers and cradle it against his lips. “There is a reason,” he said, his mouth moving softly against her fingers. “A reason lovely damsels are kept locked fast and well guarded in their castles, far away from dark, dangerous knights.” He let his lips trail down her fingers, pressed a kiss to her palm. “You would be wise to remember what that reason is.” He curled her hand into a fist still held within his own.

  “I don't believe I have anything to fear from you,” she said, her voice husky.

  She saw something leap in his eyes, something hot and reckless. “Believe it, my little lordling,” he said. “Believe it, and guard yourself well.” He kissed her hand again, his breath soft and warm against her flesh.

  And let her go.

  They faced each other, the wind blowing hot and dry between them. She stared at him, at the hard tilt of his mouth and the heat that still glowed like a banked fire in his eyes. He was like lightning, this man. Wild and free and dangerously, frighteningly attractive. She knew an ache in her chest, a fierce wanting for something that would never be. Should never be.

  But oh, God, she had glimpsed it, and she knew with a painful kind of certainty that her life would never be quite the same again. Once, she had faced her coming marriage to Fulk with a fatalistic resignation sustained by the knowledge that her choice was the honorable one, dictated by duty and God. Only she had never truly understood either the nature or the extent of her sacrifice. Now she had been allowed to suspect what could be, what she would be giving up. And she was terribly afraid she was going to spend the rest of her life wishing and wanting and regretting.

  It was after nones by the time they dropped down out of the hills into the broad valley of the Mayenne River and saw the walls of Laval in the distance.

  It had taken time for them to find the frightened roan, and de Jarnac had gutted and hung the boar before leaving the pond. And then he paused at the first hamlet they passed to tell the villagers where they might find the meat.

  “What are you grinning at?” he asked, catching her eye upon him as he swung back into the saddle.

  She let her grin broaden into an open smile. “I'm looking at a dark, dangerous knight, so lost to the virtues of chivalry that he succors the helpless and goes out of his way to be generous to the poor and weak.”

  He grunted and cast her an exaggerated scowl that only made Attica laugh out loud.

  As they crossed the valley of the Mayenne, high clouds began to appear on the horizon, bunching up to become thicker and darker. “Looks like a storm coming in,” said Attica, lifting her face to the wild caress of the wind.

  Something in the silence that followed—some strange, tense quality—made her swing her head to look at him.

  She found him staring at her, his face oddly dark and fierce, his eyes glittering with a man's longing, a man's hunger. She felt her cheeks flush, her breath catch in her throat. But she could not look away. He warms me with the heat of his gaze, she thought in wonder. He looks at me and my breath quickens, and I feel such stirrings within. Such wild, impossible wants. And still she could not look away.

  Thunder rumbled low and distant over the mountains behind him. His gaze swung away from her, and the moment shattered, became a memory.

  The cathedral city of Laval rose up before them on the crown of a low hill on the western slopes of the river. Side by side, they rode toward it through cleared pastures and vineyards, through gardens and orchards and ripening fields. The traffic on the road became increasingly thick as they joined the steady stream of fair-goers headed for Laval: knights and their ladies on richly caparisoned palfries; black-robed monks on trotting donkeys; farmers in roughly woven tunics, their feet brown and bare in the dusty road.

  “Have you ever been to the fair at Laval?” de Jarnac asked.

  “Only once.” She steadied the roan as a flock of geese fluttered, honking in protest, out of her way. “My mother brought my brother and me when we were children. It's not as large as the Champagne fairs, of course. But many merchants come here on their way to the Hot Fair in Troyes.”

  By now they had reached the cleared space before the town walls to find the open meadows filled with brightly striped tents and wooden stalls and a colorful, noisy, shifting sea of people. A stiltwalker in a bright yellow-and-red-skirted tunic trundled by on wooden legs taller than de Jarnac's head. Attica threw the white-masked lute player behind him a coin and laughed when he tilted his head and yapped like a happy dog. “Pepe the stiltwalker thanks you!” he called after them.

  They entered the town between the twin towers of the porte de Rennes, the clatter of their horses’ hooves on the cobbles echoing loudly through the dark archway. The gate opened onto a wide, sunny street paved with smooth stones and swarming with people. Housewives haggled over fluttering chickens and squealing pigs. Peddlers hawked their wares—wine and sweetmeats, garlic and milk and cheese. Shrieking children chased hoops and balls and each other. Attica let the tired roan follow de Jarnac's bay through the press, the smells of the city rising up to envelop her— manure and woodsmoke, cellar-stale damp air, and the rich, tantalizing aromas of roasting meats and baking bread.

  He reined in at the entrance to a side lane running up the hill toward the castle and waited for her. “You've grown very quiet,” he said as she rode abreast of him.

  She tilted back her head, studying the outline of the castle above them. “I'm trying to decide what I should tell my uncle.”

  He nudged his bay forward, and they turned into the lane. Most of the houses here were three and four storied, built mostly of timber post and beam, their upper floors jutting out to cast the lane into shadow, their ground floors forming shops with horizontal wooden shutters thrown open to make a counter and the awnings above. “Why shouldn't you tell him what you came here to tell him?” de Jarnac asked, his attention seemingly caught by the shop they were passing.

  She drew up the roan as it stumbled over some malodorous rubbish in the street. “I came here to ask Renouf to send a warning to my brother. But the sense of urgency is gone now, isn't it, when you keep the breviary and ride to La Ferté-Bernard yourself.”

  He swung to look at her. “Attica … I know you must tell your uncle about Olivier de Harcourt because you can hardly justify your coming here in any other way. But I ask that you not let him know where I am going, or why, or about the breviary. Let him send his men to La Ferté-Bernard; it will do no harm.”

  “But why would you not want—” She broke off, her head jerking, her eyes widening with comprehension. “No.” She kept her voice steady with difficulty. “You are wrong. My uncle is Henry's man. He would never betray you.”

  His gaze never faltered. “Possibly. Perhaps even probably. But why take a risk?”

  She held herself stiffly. “Why should I trust you more than I trust my own uncle?”

  “Because I didn't kill you.”

  At that moment the dark lane emptied out abruptly into a sunwashed square with a fountain and a long, low stone trough. Small knots of townswomen with buckets and pitchers dangling empty from their fingers loitered near the pool while others moved away with stately grace, their full jars carefully balanced atop their heads. A chestnut horse tethered near the trough lifted its head and whinnied at Attica in recognition.

  She slid from her saddle to run her hand over the gelding's satiny withers. “Chantilly?” She staggered as the horse gave her a welcoming nudge with its velvety white nose. “What are you doing here?”

  “Waiting for you,” said de Jarnac, coming up behind her, her saddle over his arm.

  Laughing softly, she turned to catch a glimpse of a lithe, fair-haired boy with flashing dark eyes who stepped back and tucked something out of sight up his sleeve. Then the chestnut butted its head against her hip, momentarily reclaiming her attention. When she looked again, the squire along with the roan she'd been riding had both disappeared.

  “Why would you have ki
lled me?” she asked as de Jarnac tightened the girth on her saddle.

  “What?” Spanning her waist with his big hands, he threw her up onto the chestnut's back and handed her the reins.

  “You said I should trust you because you didn't kill me,” she said, watching him vault easily into his own saddle. “What did you mean?”

  His eyes crinkled with amusement as he laid his reins against the bay's sweat-darkened neck and turned into the winding, shadowed rue leading to the castle. “If I were part of the conspiracy against King Henry, or at least interested in aiding it for my own gain, then I would have killed you to keep you quiet. Since you're still alive and here to tell your tale to your uncle, you can take it as a given that I'm not involved.” The amusement left his face. “It's only your kinship with Renouf Blissot that causes you to trust him.”

  “Isn't that enough?” Attica asked softly.

  “When it comes to treason—and your brother's life— I'd say no.”

  She rode beside him in silence for a moment, thinking about it, before she said, “Yet, if you should prove to be right about my uncle—if he has indeed sided with Richard and Philip—then haven't you put yourself in danger by bringing me here?”

  He glanced at her. “Now you sound as if you do suspect him.”

  “No. But you do.”

  From the doorstep of a house on their right, a serving woman tossed a bucketful of slops to a couple of hogs rutting in the gutter. “I said I would see you safely delivered to Laval.” He let his bay dance fastidiously around the mess, then added, “Besides, in my experience, grand ladies are not normally in the habit of confiding their secrets to their escorts. Renouf Blissot is unlikely to give me a second thought, Attica. I'm just a humble knight-errant, strong of arm and short of brain.”

  She let out a trill of laughter. “Knight-errant you may be, and strong of arm. But humble and short of brain you are not.”

  “You don't need to tell your uncle that.”

  The pale walls of the castle rose up before them. Attica checked her horse. “I could tell him,” she said quietly. The chestnut shook its head, bothered by flies, and she patted its glossy neck. “He is my kinsman. Are you so certain I wouldn't that you are willing to hazard your life on it?”