The Last Knight

by Candice Proctor

  “It's getting crowded in here,” said Damion. “There must be a way out to the yard.”

  “I thought I saw a door at the end there,” said Attica, tossing away her stool as she ran down the curtained corridor.

  She had seen a door, only it was now blocked by a white-robed wraith of a woman with a pointed chin and improbable red hair, who said calmly, “The yard is already full of soldiers. You can't get out that way. Follow me.”

  Damion's gaze met Attica's for one significant moment. At some point during that long, danger-filled night, they had moved beyond the need to communicate with words. Their minds had leapt together, just as their bodies had moved in concert across the rooftops and alleyways of Laval.

  And so he knew her thoughts, even though she did not speak them. He knew that she realized, as he did, that their options were rapidly being reduced to nothing. This strange woman with her diaphanous gown and overbright hair and beckoning candle had no reason to help them, and they had no reason to trust her. Yet they followed her.

  They followed her down a mean passage grimy with the debris of untold centuries’ carelessness with overflowing coal scuttles. The woman's translucent gown seemed to glow ethereally in the darkness, the faint, golden light of the candle she carried throwing their shadows, long and grotesque, across the soaring walls.

  At the end of the passage, she stopped abruptly to raise the flickering candle and say simply, “Behind the chest.”

  Damion leapt to put his shoulder to a large coffer that stood against the ancient ashlar wall. Made of oak and strapped with iron, the chest moved more easily than he had expected, sliding noiselessly over a surprisingly clean stone floor to reveal a low gap in the masonry.

  The sound of hurried footsteps, growing closer, left no time for hesitation. Attica scooted through the dark hole on her hands and knees, her head bent. Damion pelted in after her, pulling the chest in place behind him as best he could.

  He saw a drift of white gauze. Then the coffer thumped back solidly against the wall, eclipsing the last faint glimmer of light thrown by the woman's single candle and plunging them into total darkness.

  CHAPTER

  TWELVE

  The rain drummed hard and fast on what sounded like a shingled roof, low over their heads.

  Damion crouched on his haunches, his gaze assessing the dim outlines of a surrounding jumble of barrels and crates before settling on the faint, distant line of gray light that outlined what looked like a door. He decided they were probably in a cellar or storage shed of some sort. The floor was of packed earth, the air around them damp and unused, the walls thick enough that he could hear nothing except the pounding of the rain and their own strained breathing.

  Attica's low voice came to him out of the darkness. “What do we do now?”

  He reached out to her, his fingers closing over the delicate bones of her wrist. Her flesh felt cold and wet and trembling beneath his grasp, and he drew her to him, shifting his weight as she settled into the V of his spread thighs. “We can't stay here,” he said. “When they don't find us in the baths, they'll start searching the surrounding area.”

  He felt a shudder pass through her, and put both his arms around her thin frame to draw her closer to his chest and envelop her with his warmth. She let out a long sigh, her hands clutching the wet cloth of his torn tunic as she leaned into him, her face buried in his shoulder, her voice muffled as she said, “I suppose this means we take to the rooftops again?”

  She said it lightly enough, but he heard the tight thread of fear in her voice, and he knew what she was thinking, knew she was remembering the brutal lashing of cold wind and driving rain, the treachery of steep, slippery slates, the dizzy, heart-stopping, body-smashing distances to pavements below.

  He laid his cheek against the wet tangle of her hair, breathed in the scent of rain and woodsmoke and this woman, knew again a bitter sense of regret at the danger she now faced because of him. “Attica,” he said softly, his heart aching in his chest, “I swear before God, if there's a way to get you out of this safely, I will. I never should have—”

  He felt her shift within the circle of his arms, her head falling back as she pressed the tips of her fingers against his mouth, silencing him. “I did this because I wanted to. Don't make me say why.”

  The touch of her fingertips to his lips shocked them both into sudden, quivering awareness. In the darkness her profile was only a faint shadow, delicate and fine-boned and strong. He felt something catch deep inside him, something so sweet and rare as to be almost unbearable.

  “You do realize,” he said, his lips moving against her fingers, “that there could be a dozen men-at-arms waiting for us on the other side of that door? That we could walk out of here and die?”

  “I realize it.”

  He felt the deep trembling going on inside her, felt her chest lift against his as she sucked in a quick breath. “Damion?”

  The question in her voice hung in the stillness between them. He didn't need to ask what she wanted, and in that moment, all the reasons that made it wrong didn't matter.

  He drew her to him. She opened her mouth to him, her slim young body pressing wholly against his, her hands bracketing his head, drawing him closer, closer, as if she would make them as one. He thrust his tongue into her mouth, and she met him in an endless, gasping, aching kiss, a kiss driven by fear and need of a raw passion that went beyond carnality to a total immersion of body, mind, and spirit such as he had never known.

  “Attica,” he murmured, his mouth still moving against hers. He kissed her trembling eyelids, her hair, her throat. Then he took her hands in his and pulled her to a stand with him. “We must go.”

  He saw the sweet curve of her smile in the faint gray light. “I still don't regret it,” she said, her eyes wide and shining. “No matter what happens, I'll never regret knowing you.”

  He looked down at her shadowed features and felt his chest tighten. He could have told her he'd lost his heart to her that first day, when he'd looked across a crowded common room and recognized her for what she really was. He could have told her she'd always been his heart, his fire, even before he'd met her, perhaps even before he'd been born. But some things were better not said, could never be said between them. He kissed her fingers where they entwined with his and said simply, “Nor will I.”

  And then, her hand in his, they turned together to face whatever awaited them on the other side of that door.

  ∗    ∗    ∗

  Attica watched de Jarnac's hand tighten on his dagger as he pushed open the stout plank door.

  She found herself staring out at an overgrown garden filled with the roar of the rain teeming down in great slashing silver sheets. A garden filled with rain and wind and nothing more.

  Weak with relief, she followed him, creeping up a short flight of broken stone steps and into the storm-racked darkness. The rain pelted them with oceans of water that cascaded down their faces in blinding streams as they splashed their way to the back of an old, half-tumbled-down dwelling barely visible through the gloom.

  “How do we get up?” whispered Attica, staring up at the low roof. “There's no steps, not even a ladder.”

  “No. But there is an old grapevine.” He tested his weight on the weathered trellis and grunted when it snapped in his hands. “The wood is rotten, so make sure you use the vine itself.”

  “But I haven't climbed a tree since I was—” She broke off as his hard hands closed on her waist, hoisting her up into the wet foliage. She found the thick central trunk of the vine and clung to it.

  Sharp twigs snagged her clothes and scratched her skin as she scrambled up, moving stealthily from one foothold to the next, de Jarnac behind her. Craning back her head, she could see the line of roof tiles thrusting out above her. She reached for them, her fingers closing over the edge.

  And then the tile she grasped crumbled within her grip, just as her left foot shot off the slippery trunk of the vine.

/>   She let out a small gasp, her fingers clutching frantically for the vine again as she felt herself begin to fall. “Christ,” said de Jarnac, his big body lunging upward in a rush that slammed her to the wall, holding her there, surrounded by his strength and warmth.

  “Oh, God,” she whispered shakily.

  “Wait here.”

  She pressed her face into the wet leaves and branches, her fingers gripping the vine as he clambered past her. “Give me your hand,” she heard him say, and somehow she found the courage to let go of the vine and let him pull her up.

  She rolled onto the wet, mossy tiles, her breath coming in quick pants as she lay pressed facedown on the sloping roof, the rain beating down on her back. He touched his hand to her cheek in a butterfly caress, then moved on. She forced herself up onto her hands and knees and crawled after him.

  He stopped just below the point of the roof. She inched up beside him to peer down through the smoke of hissing torches at the men-at-arms filling the streets below. The men stood with their backs hunched against the rain, their attention still focused on the bathhouse. No one even bothered to glance up.

  Damion touched her elbow, and she turned her head to look at him. The rain ran down his cheeks, dripped off his nose, plastered his dark hair to his head. His once fine clothes, already torn from her uncle's rough handling, now hung in rags, smeared with moss and mud. It suddenly occurred to her that she must look the same, and the thought brought a smile of unholy amusement to her lips.

  He saw it and, as if recognizing the source of her amusement, flashed her his rogue's grin. Then the smile faded and he mouthed, “Let's go.”

  They slithered down the sloping tiles to the next roof, then the next, then the next. They moved stealthily, the cold, wind-driven rain enveloping them in a protective darkness even as it turned slate and tile into slippery death traps.

  Attica moved through a hazy agony of grazed palms and bruised shins, of aching muscles and gasping lungs as they leapt from house to house, working their way around the base of the castle hill toward the river. Three times they had to flatten themselves against a sloping roofline as a troop of soldiers passed by below. When they came to a narrow street, they didn't dare climb down but used overhanging balconies and jutting dormer windows to cross the yawning gap.

  At the edge of the city, the houses grew small and mean and so scattered that they were finally forced to come to earth. There were gardens here, and an orchard, and the low, solid bulk of the church of Saint Suplice, overlooking the River Gate. When her feet touched the soft, spongy earth, Attica sagged forward, trembling with exhaustion, her hands braced on her knees, her head bowed as she sucked in air.

  “Wait here,” de Jarnac said, gently pressing her back into a protected corner where a decrepid wattle-and-daub house and some half-ruined outbuilding came together. “I'll see if I can find someplace dry and out of the wind where we can spend what's left of the night.”

  Her head came up with a sudden fear that if she let him out of her sight, something might happen to him and she'd never see him again. She caught his arm when he would have turned away, her hand tightening on his sleeve. “I'll come with you.”

  He swung back to face her. A blue streak of lightning cracked through the dark sky, followed quickly by the boom of thunder. The wind whipped at his torn tunic, exposing the edge of his white shirt and the dark, bare flesh beneath. Rain dripped from his hair.

  “I'm not leaving you.” His features were drawn with a strange kind of intensity that left him looking wild, almost brutal. “I'm not leaving you, Attica,” he said again, and vanished into the rain-washed night.

  She leaned her shoulders against the rough wall, her arms crossed as she hugged herself, trying to keep warm. Away from the crowded houses at the center of the city, the wind seemed stronger, howling through the eaves of the hovel and thrashing the surrounding trees until the shadowy canopies of their leaves whipped frantically back and forth in the storm.

  She had to grit her teeth and fight down a shiver. The windblown night had always unsettled her; it was so wild, so uncontrolled, so unpredictable and irrationally, dangerously exciting. It seemed to call to something within her, something she always fought to hold down. Yet here she was, abandoned to it. Lost to it.

  She hugged herself tighter, her gaze drifting past the trees to where the hulking tower of the church thrust up boldly against the roiling sky. Beyond that, the city walls loomed, an ominous, silent reminder of the fact that they weren't safe yet. They might have managed to escape the castle and evade her uncle's men-at-arms tonight, but they were still in Laval, still trapped behind the city's high walls and locked gates. When the gates swung open tomorrow with the dawn, every portal would be watched, every person passing through carefully scrutinized. There was no way out.

  She squeezed her eyes closed and let her head fall back against the rough hovel wall, hating herself for the sick fear and despair that surged through her. She wished de Jarnac would come back.

  The sound of careful footsteps, dangerously close, brought her to instant, quivering attention. She jerked her eyes open to discover the misshapen outline of a man's body moving stealthily through the night toward her. But then she relaxed, for there could be no mistaking de Jarnac's catlike grace. The strangeness of his silhouette came from the objects he carried: a lute, a bundle of clothing, and something else. Something long and thin and vaguely familiar.

  She pushed away from the wall to meet him. “What is it? What have you found?”

  The soft huff of his laugh came to her out of the darkness. “A way through the city gates.”

  She stared at him. “A lute?”

  He handed it to her, along with a bundle of gaily colored clothes. “You can play, can't you?”

  “Yes, but … I don't understand. What else is that you're carrying?”

  She saw his smile flash white in the storm-darkened night. “It's a pair of stilts.”

  Attica stood beside the squat western tower of the church of Saint Suplice, the pilfered pile of cloaks and colorful tunics clutched to her chest as she stared down into the dark, yawning void before her. “You want me to hide in there? With the dead?”

  De Jarnac's voice floated up to her, along with the echo of his footsteps receding down the stairs before her. “It's a crypt, Attica. Which might be similar to but is not exactly the same as a grave. Besides, which are you more afraid of ? The malevolent spirits of the unquiet dead or your uncle's very alive men-at-arms?”

  She threw an anxious glance across the dripping churchyard to the empty streets beyond. The rain had slowed to a thin drizzle, but the wind that buffeted her was still cold, and it carried to her the faint but unmistakable sound of tramping boots and curt, raised voices. She tightened her grip around the stolen clothing and ducked through the low archway.

  “Don't forget to shut the door,” said that disembodied voice from below.

  She gave the heavy, iron-banded plank door a hard push that drew a shrill shriek from its hinges. “Mother of God,” she whispered as the door slammed into place, plunging her into an echoing darkness so total, she felt for one hideous moment that it might smother her.

  “Want to ring the bell in the tower while you're at it?” said de Jarnac dryly. “They might not have heard you.”

  “Hmph.” She groped along the cold stone wall until her hand closed over the scratchy rope of the banister, then worked her way carefully down the stone steps.

  It was not completely dark down here, she realized as her feet reached the base of the staircase. She traced a faint graying of the gloom to a series of arched light wells, set high on the rough stone walls. The crypt seemed to run the length of the central nave, although it looked old, older even than the church above it. The double rows of fat columns supporting the low vaulted ceiling were plainly carved of sandstone and fretted with age. Yet the crypt appeared surprisingly little used, the regular square sandstone paving blocks that covered the floor being interrupted only
here and there by a long funerary slab or the few flat-topped stone tombs she could faintly see scattered at random among the columns.

  “Couldn't you find a nice, warm barn?” she asked, her voice echoing away into the darkness.

  De Jarnac's low chuckle came back to her. “I'm afraid that in this part of town, lordling, the houses are the barns. Besides, the soldiers will never look for us in here. Not tonight, at any rate.”

  “Why not?” she asked, leaning against the cold, hard edge of the nearest tomb.

  She heard the smile in his voice as he walked up to her. “Because they're too afraid of the malevolent spirits of the unquiet dead. Here—” He reached for the bundle of clothing she still clutched. “Give me those. You're getting them all wet.”

  She realized she'd virtually forgotten the clothes she held, and surrendered them unresisting. She was so cold and tired and sore. The tomb behind her beckoned like a bed, and she knew an overwhelming urge simply to lie down and close her eyes. Hitching her hips higher, she eased sideways until her upper body lay prone along the elevated slab. Her feet were still dangling over the edge, but she didn't care. It seemed more of an effort to swing them up than it was worth.

  “Oh no you don't,” said that irritatingly energetic voice beside her. “You've got to get out of those wet clothes first.”

  She groaned. “I can't.”

  Strong hands seized her feet and swung them up onto the slab. “In case you hadn't noticed,” he said, working off first one boot, then the other, “it's dark in here, Attica. I won't be able to see a damned thing, if that's what you're worried about.”

  It wasn't. She was simply too cold and tired and stiff to move, let alone struggle with knotted ties and heavy wet cloth. “I will take them off,” she promised vaguely. “I'll just sleep awhile, first.”

  She heard him swear under his breath, then felt his hands at her belt, opening it. When he went to work at the tangled ties at her throat, she did not resist, only murmured an incoherent protest when he forced her to lift her shoulders so that he could draw first surcoat, then tunic and shirt over her head. She was dimly aware of his swift, sure touch untying the points of her hose and easing the wet cloth of her braies down over her naked hips. She thought vaguely that she should feel some embarrassment, but she didn't. Only profound gratitude and a sweet, unfamiliar sense of being cared for and cherished as he wrapped one of the purloined cloaks around her.