The Last Knight

by Candice Proctor

  A dark warhorse reared before her, its great hooves slashing the gray sky. Attica took a step back, her breath hitching in her chest as she looked up into Damion's glinting eyes. The cold steel and jutting nosepiece of his helm seemed to accentuate the sharp bones of his face, making him look fierce, frightening. He held his shield before him, the jagged flash of lightning standing out bold and bloodred against the black background.

  She hadn't seen him since the night of the banquet, had avoided seeing him, avoided letting him see her. She was afraid he'd look into her woman's eyes and know. Know that hours spent prostrate on the chapel floor in prayer had brought her neither peace nor relief. Know that she still felt torn apart by conflicting loyalties and agonizing choices. Know that she might decide, in the end, that the impossible choice was the one she must make. But, oh God …

  He was her heart and soul, her passion and joy, her life. She looked at him, and all the torn, tormented bits inside her twisted, hurt. Hurt like a slow, living death.

  He brought the big stallion under control, one forearm resting on the saddle's high pommel as he leaned into it, his face hard and unsmiling. “You've been avoiding me, Attica. Why?”

  The wind blew, flapping the hem of her cloak out, making the stallion snort and throw its head. “I've needed to think.”

  He tightened his hold on the reins. “And have you? Thought, I mean.”

  She glanced beyond him, to where Sergei waited, a sad, anxious look shadowing his young face. She tried to smile at him, only she couldn't. She stared into his dark, exotic eyes, and it was as if the shouting men and trampling horses around them faded queerly into a soundless world where movement slowed and noise dimmed to faint distant echoes that roused some nameless, unreasonable terror from deep within her.

  “I suppose I have my answer,” Damion said, his voice brutally clear and cold, although not so cold she couldn't hear the raw thread of pain within it.

  She jerked her gaze back to stare up at him, her chest rising and falling with her suddenly agitated breathing. “Damion—” She took a step forward, reaching for him, but he turned his stallion away.

  She folded her arms across her chest, the mist cool and damp against her face as she watched him ride away from her. She wanted to call him back, but she knew there was nothing she could say to him. And she wondered, in despair, if her decision had already been made and she was only trying to find the courage to admit it.

  “Attica?”

  She turned, looking up as Stephen reined in beside her. “Wish me well,” he said, curbing the impatient capering of his big, dun-colored stallion. His cheeks were flushed, his eyes bright with the kind of wild excitement she remembered from their childhood whenever he'd been about to embark on some mad, dangerous adventure.

  “Of course I wish you well,” she said, and this time when she tried to summon up a smile, it came.

  She followed the men through the gateway to the grassy hillside to watch them ride away. But the mist swallowed them almost at once, and they were lost to her sight.

  She returned to the yard to find Alice still there, beside the hall, her head bowed, her shoulders slumped in exhaustion.

  With so many of the men gone, the castle servants were busy throwing open shutters and sweeping out old rushes to be replaced with new. Their shouts and laughter mingled with the rumble of hand carts and the banging of the wheelwright's hammer and the screech of strutting peacocks to fill the bailey with a tumult of sound and activity. But the French princess sat alone on a bench against the hall's side wall, one hand held up to cover her eyes.

  “Alice?” Attica touched her arm. “Are you all right?”

  The other woman looked up, startled, showing a face strained by sleeplessness and worry. “Oh, I'm fine,” she said, visibly struggling to regain her normal composure. “Simply tired. Henry was so dreadfully sick last night, he's only now fallen into a fitful sleep.” She gave a shaky half laugh that ended in a kind of sob. “Imagine Henry spending the day in bed. A man who never even sat down in his life but to eat or ride a horse.”

  Attica sank onto the bench beside the other woman. “But … how can this be? Henry has gone to the Shrine of the Virgin.”

  Alice shook her head. “No, that wasn't the king, only his old falconer, wrapped up in Henry's robes.”

  “I don't understand,” said Attica, a nameless sense of unease hovering over her.

  “Someone near to Henry has been betraying his movements to Richard. There was to be an ambush, at a stream east of the castle.”

  “And now?”

  The other woman's face set into hard lines. “Now, it is Richard and his supporters who shall find themselves ambushed, for de Jarnac does not ride south, as all think.”

  Attica stared off across the bailey, where a squire was leading a limping horse toward the farrier. She was remembering the night of the banquet and the intent look on de Jarnac's face as he watched the jongleurs. If he had learned something of the conspirators’ plans that night, he had said nothing of it to her. But then, they had hardly seen each other. And even then, she thought, they had had other things on their minds.…

  The French princess went back into the hall soon after that, while Attica wandered about the bailey, too troubled to return to the crowded ladies’ chamber. In the end she found herself outside Stephen's tower room, not quite knowing how she came to be there.

  Lifting her hand to the latch, she pushed the door open. The room hadn't been Stephen's for long, yet he had stamped it as his, the cool, damp air holding the faint, ecclesiastical fragrances of incense and beeswax mixing strangely with the scents of horses and dogs and leather and polished steel. She went to stand in the middle of the chamber, her eyes squeezing closed against a sudden rush of tears.

  “Oh, Stephen,” she whispered, her heart heavy with the burden of what she knew she must do. “I'm sorry.” She sucked in a deep breath, then let it out slowly, feeling the pain of her decision settle deep into her soul where, she knew, it would always lie. “I'm sorry,” she whispered again, “but you ask too much of me. More than you have a right to do.”

  She couldn't have said exactly when she had made her choice. Perhaps she had always known what she would do in the end. It had only taken her this long to admit it.

  She opened her eyes, her breath easing out of her in a long sigh. She saw his lute, still lying on the table, and she went to it, her fingers trailing across the strings, the sweet notes falling sad and lonely into the stillness of the moment.

  You are my hope

  My life

  My love.

  Suddenly, her hand froze, her attention arrested by the sight of the wax tablet Stephen had been working on when she'd disturbed him the other morning. A wax tablet covered with a pattern of musical notes of the kind developed by a Benedictine nun of Catalonia and used as a code by those conspiring against Henry with Philip of France.

  Somehow, she made herself walk with proper decorum and what seemed like agonizing slowness toward the stables. Her legs were trembling, her breath coming shallow and rapid, the noise and movement of the yard whirling in a giddy blur around her. A woman peeling rushes to be soaked in fat for rushlights looked up and called to her. Attica quickened her step.

  She felt such a deep, white anger toward Stephen for what he was doing that she was shaking with it. But he was her brother, her blood, the companion of her childhood and the hope of her house. Even though what he did was wrong and dishonorable, she could not let him die.

  She could not let Damion kill him.

  She flung herself through the stable doors into a cool dimness scented with horses and hay and fresh manure. “Mary, Mother of God,” she whispered in prayer as she led de Jarnac's black Arab out of its stall and saddled it with swift efficiency, “please.” Please let me catch up with them in time. Please don't let them kill each other. Please, please, please.

  Gathering the reins, she was just hauling herself into the saddle when one of the castle grooms came th
rough a door in the back. “Alons, what are you doing?”

  She dug her heels into the Arab's sides to send the horse flying through the open doors and cantering across the packed earth of the yard. Chickens and pigs scattered, squawking and squealing and causing a charcoal burner to upset his cart. Someone shouted, but she pressed on, the stallion's hooves slipping and clattering over the cobbles through the barbican.

  They burst out into the light again. The mist had burned off by now, the sun rising golden and hot in a clear blue sky. The west wind caught at her hair and billowed the skirt of her dress out behind her as she sent the horse plunging down the steep slope, through the narrow, winding streets of the town. She chafed, furious, frightened, as she stood at the river's edge, the Arab's reins gripped in her sweating fist as she waited for the ferryman to come back from the far shore and carry her across the Vienne.

  All the while she waited, all the while the ferryman worked to haul her across the water, she was thinking. How much distance would a litter supposedly carrying a sick king cover in an hour? A league? Two? How far from the castle would Richard lay his ambush? An hour? More? The ferry hadn't even reached the opposite shore when she leapt off it, splashing through the shallow water and driving the stallion on, on.

  She had chosen the Arab because of his speed and his endurance and his heart, and he gave her all she asked for and more. Dust billowed up behind them as they raced through fields of ripening wheat and rye, past ancient vineyards and groves of walnut trees. The stallion's neck grew dark and shiny with sweat. The hot air buffeted her face and ears, the world narrowing down to the rush of the wind and the creak of the saddle leather and the relentless pounding of the Arab's hooves churning up the road.

  An hour or so later, she had slowed the stallion to a walk to rest him on a long uphill stretch when the gusting wind carried to her the unmistakable, blood-chilling sounds of battle—the scream of horses, the throaty shouts of men, the clash of steel. Attica flung up her head, her heels digging into the Arab's sides just as a trumpet rang out, sounding three piercing notes.

  She surged over the crest of the hill, then reined in hard, her heart slamming into her throat as she looked down on a wild melee of helmed and mailed knights, their horses plunging and squealing, their swords flashing in the sun as the blades rose and fell, hacking, hacking. Dust and the smell of blood hung thick in the air. Beneath her, the Arab capered impatiently as she sought helplessly to pick out the familiar forms of her brother and the man she loved from amongst that surging mass of horseflesh and mail and death.

  Richard's men had lain their ambush in the thick copse of trees that shadowed the stream at the foot of the hill. But they had been expecting only a small royal escort and were far outnumbered. Already they were breaking away in groups of twos and threes, scattering across the fields, fading back into the darkness of the woods.

  As Attica watched, one knight, mounted on a familiar dun, his shield gone, spurred up the hill toward her. Behind him galloped a dark-helmed knight riding a black destrier and clutching a shield blazing with a distinctive red bolt of lightning. She had a strange sense of time spinning out of control, of having been here, seen this, all before. And then she realized that she had, that this was the way she had first seen Damion de Jarnac, his shield gripped before him, his sword raised as he swept down on the routiers. Only this time he rode not to rescue her but to kill the brother she had risked everything to save.

  She cried out his name, but it was lost in the tumult of battle and the squeal of the warhorse as de Jarnac reined in his stallion hard enough to set it back on its hocks, as if he'd suddenly realized the identity of the man he pursued and decided to let him escape. Attica's breath eased out of her in relief, only to catch again in dismay as she saw Stephen abruptly draw in rein and wheel. His lance was gone as well as his shield, but he raised his sword, defiantly yelling his war cry as he set his spurs to his horse and sent it charging at the black knight. Damion hesitated, then spurred his own charger forward. The earth thundered, the stallions’ pounding hooves sending up chips of sod as the men hurtled toward each other.

  “No!” Attica screamed, frozen with horror.

  The two warhorses came together with a brutal crash. The dun squealed, going down on its side, its hooves flailing, the knight on its back hitting the ground with a ringing crash that sent his helm flying off.

  The black destrier wheeled, half rearing up as the dark knight threw himself from the saddle. Stephen lay still, one leg twisted unnaturally beneath him, broken. He lifted his head, his hand groping for the sword he had lost. But the black knight was already upon him, his sword raised high, ready to deliver the coup de grâce—just as Attica sent the Arab flying down the slope, a hopeless cry of denial and impending loss tearing from her lips.

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY-TWO

  Damion held his blade poised, ready to thrust. Beneath the steel of his helm, his face dripped sweat, his breath came hot and fast in his throat. But his hands were steady as he brought the tip of his sword to the fallen man's throat.

  The wind gusted round him, bringing him the drumming of hoofbeats and the sound of Attica's voice, pleading, “Don't. Oh, God. Damion, no.”

  His head came up, his eyes narrowing at the sight of the Arab's flaring nostrils and flashing hooves. She flew down the hill toward them. He could see her golden brown hair gleaming warm in the sun, the skirt of her dark blue dress billowing out around her as she leaned low over the black stallion's sweat-stained neck.

  Deliberately, Damion brought his gaze back to the man on the ground before him. His grip on the sword tightened for the kill. Only he couldn't do it. He couldn't kill Attica's brother.

  “Do it,” said Stephen, his voice harsh, his breath ragged enough to quiver the chain mail at his breast. “For God's sake, kill me.”

  Damion shook his head, his blade swinging away. “I cannot.”

  A queer smile curled the fallen man's lips. “What would you do?” He jerked his head to where the king's men were regrouping, rounding up their prisoners. With a broken leg, d'Alérion could never escape now. “Let them take me back to Henry, to face a traitor's death? Do you think Attica will thank you for your mercy? Will she thank you when she's forced to watch them cut off my balls and pull out my guts? Will she thank you while I'm swinging at the end of a hangman's noose? Will she be pleased, do you think, when I'm drawn and quartered like a butchered hog?” The fierce smile faded, overcome by a wild-eyed, trembling look of pleading. “For the love of God, kill me now.”

  Damion brought the point of his blade to hover just above the place where the pulse beat in Stephen's bare neck. Stephen's eyes squeezed shut, his throat working as he swallowed. “Tell her …” A hint of a boyish smile flashed, disappeared. “Tell Attica she would have made a better knight than I have.”

  “Damion—Oh, God, Damion, don't!” Attica screamed. Dirt and small bits of stone sprayed through the air as she reined in the Arab and threw herself from the stallion's back. Without looking up, Damion drove the blade home. Stephen convulsed once, then lay still.

  “Stephen.” Attica's voice turned into a thin wail that blew away in the hot, dusty wind. She fell to her knees beside her brother, her face twisting with anguish as a dry, gut-wrenching sob tore up from deep inside her. “Stephen,” she whispered. “Oh, God. Stephen, no.”

  She reached out, her hands trembling. She touched her fingertips to his face, cradled his cheeks in her palms. “Stephen, don't be dead. Please don't be dead.” With a moan, she gathered him up against her breast, her slim young body bent and shivering as she rocked back and forth on her heels, her brother held close. Blood drenched his mail, streamed down his neck and over her hands and arms to soak into the fine cloth of her skirt, turning it dark and wet. “No,” she said again, shaking her head from side to side. “No.”

  Damion stared at her. The sky above suddenly seemed too blue, the sun shining on the bright green grass of the hillside too vivid to bear. He want
ed to say something, anything, to ease her pain. But there was nothing he could say that would comfort her, and his throat felt too impossibly tight to let him push out any words, even if he'd had them to say.

  Her head fell back, showing him a pale, haunted face and bruised, horrified eyes. He could count the beats of her heart in the blue veins visible beneath the fragile skin at her temples as she stared up at him. The wind blew between them, hot and dry and scented with death. “You knew,” she said, sucking in a deep breath that shuddered in her chest. “You knew it was Stephen.”

  “No.” He sheathed his sword. “Not until today.”

  “Yet you suspected him. You suspected him from the very beginning.”

  “When I first met you on the road, yes. But after that, not until I spoke to your uncle in Laval.”

  A shudder shook her slim frame. “You lied to me. Before we reached the castle, when you asked me not to tell Stephen what we knew of the code. You lied.” Her gaze slid away from him, back to Stephen. With careful tenderness, she laid her brother's body on the grass as if he were a sleeping child. She sat very still, her bloodstained hands flattened against her thighs, her head bowed.

  “You lied to me,” she said again, her voice a torn thread. “I could have warned him. But I didn't.”

  Damion felt the sun shining down hot on his mail. But inside he was cold. So very cold. “I couldn't let you.”

  “You couldn't let me?” She looked up at him, her lips twisting in scorn, her head jerking as if in denial. “You couldn't let me? God above. How could you kill him?” She surged to her feet, wide-eyed, a sob bursting from between her clenched teeth as she threw herself at him. “You killed him.” She pounded her fists against his chest, the sharp links of his chain mail bruising and cutting her tender flesh, smearing them both with blood, her blood, and Stephen's. “You killed him.” Her voice broke, became a sob. “You killed him. Oh, God. Why did you have to kill him?”