“I doubt if rape would win her as a friend to our cause,” came the dry response.
“You do not have to win her. Only unbalance her so that there is room for doubt. She could prove a useful ally, not to mention a useful pair of eyes and ears to have inside the Dragon’s lair.”
“You place too much store in my abilities between the bed sheets.”
“Not so much so as I have not seen you send a filly from your thighs as bright-eyed and addled as a drunken maybug. What is more: A woman who fights the hardest also falls the farthest. To my mind, our quivering little peahen appears more than ripe and ready for a steep tumble … and if not by you, then surely by her lusty bridegroom. I warrant he’ll have no reservations about taming her.”
Sparrow saw, by the Wolf’s grimace, that his bolt had struck home, and did not know whether to be pleased or worried. Their leader bore heavy burdens on his shoulders, that much was indisputable, but would a dalliance with Servanne de Briscourt remove some of the pressure, or add to it? As it was, it had taken the strength and sheer brute force of a dozen stout men to keep the Wolf from going berserk when he had first learned his brother was alive and well and living in secluded luxury at Bloodmoor Keep.
Hearing of the impending wedding might have been the final straw—indeed, everyone in camp had braced themselves for an eruption of monumental proportions, for it did not take a scholar’s wit to trace the blame for the Wolf’s indifference to women, other than whores, to an event in his mysterious past. But to their surprise, he had taken the news calmly and coolly. He had even devised this clever plan to unsettle the Dragon and possibly open a breach in the impenetrable defenses surrounding Bloodmoor Keep.
Who would have thought a chick-pea with yellow hair and frosty blue eyes could have turned the tables and penetrated the armour around the Wolf’s heart instead?
“Bed her,” Sparrow advised sagely. “By rape or by charm, it makes no matter, for ’tis a certainty the Dragon will expect it. Would he do otherwise in your place?”
“I am not my brother,” the Wolf growled, pricked by the need to defend himself a second time that night.
“No, but you have aspired to put his bowels in a pinch. What better way than to molest, ravage, or even marry his bride from under him if it should suit your mood or purpose?”
“What if choking her suits my mood and my purpose?”
“Then I would hold her ankles for you while you did so,” the little man said with a shrug. “Bedding her would bring more pleasure to you, however.”
“I am not come in search of pleasure.”
“Revenge, then.”
“I have it already, whether she leaves here bruised or not.”
“You mean … he will not believe her to be untouched, whether she is or not?”
“Would you?”
Sparrow pondered it a moment. “No. But would you condemn her to all the pain and none of the enjoyment?”
“She takes the greater enjoyment in her own chastity and purity. If anything, I should endeavour to give her a deal more over the next few days. As much as she can bear in maintaining those lofty heights of unblemished virtue. Yes,” he said slowly. “Yes, I should send her away from here believing she is a far better person for having frustrated me at my lusts and perversions.”
“And when the Dragon affixes hot irons to her toes to crimp the truth from her?”
“A few heartfelt screams should convince him of her righteousness,” he said evenly. “It will also convince her of my purity and my selfless sacrifice for her honour. Furthermore, he will not be alive long enough to crimp anyone’s toes. Nor would he attempt such a thing until the nuptials have been witnessed and blessed, and the deeds to the dower estates locked in his strongbox. She should be safe enough behind her protestations until then.”
Sparrow sighed. “It would be easier just to rape her. And far less of a strain on your own state of health.”
“My health is fine,” said the Wolf gruffly. “I would hasten to say yours might be in some jeopardy, but my own is fine, thank you very much. And now, if you have no more dilemmas to solve, or wisdoms to dole out, I suggest you fly on up to your nest and put your nose to sleep for the night to save it being wedged beneath someone’s boot.”
Sparrow scrambled prudently aside as the Wolf strode past him on his way back to the pilgrims’ hall. His feathers ruffled, he muttered to himself as he followed a discreet distance behind, wondering why there was so little appreciation in the world for people who saw other people’s problems so clearly, and could have resolved them so easily if allowed.
“Fine,” he grumbled to the darkness. “Your shoulders are overburdened? Fine. Let her go to the Dragon with her fear of you still wet on her lashes. Let him warm her thighs with sympathy and compassion and see how long it takes her to decide that he is the real Lucien Wardieu, and you are the impostor! Paugh! Great heaving lummox,” he finished querulously.
He emerged from the arbor of tangled weed and clinging vines and stopped dead in his tracks. Only his head and shoulders rose above the thickest layer of mist, making him look like just another of the stumps dotting the edge of the garden.
For a full minute … three … five … he remained utterly motionless, and was on the verge of cursing the fog for having raised the hackles on his neck, when he saw another flicker of movement out of the corner of his eye.
Someone else had been waiting, frozen against the shadows, questioning his instincts. It was not the Wolf, who, despite his size could slip about with enough stealth to cause bulk in a man’s drawers over the suddenness of his appearance. It was someone who did not want to be observed, however, but because his patience had run out a split second before Sparrow’s, was seen clearly as he melted from tree to tree and eventually ducked furtively through the gap in the outer stone wall.
“Hello?” Sparrow murmured under his breath. “Who are you and where might you be sneaking off to this time of the night?”
Nowhere necessary, he decided, since the privies and the stream were both on the other side of the grounds.
Sparrow debated sounding the alarm, but dismissed the idea as swiftly as it had formed. An alarm would send the men out into the woods, but he had seen nothing more than a blurred outline, thus the quarry could easily blend in with the searchers and return to Thornfeld, his secret intact.
What secret?
The sentries were not due to be changed for several hours yet. There were no villages close by, no whores with open thighs to lure a man and his coin into breaking trust with the camp—certainly not this way. Besides, the men had, for the most part, been together for several years; their needs and appetites were well known and always taken care of. Only Gil Golden and Robert the Welshman were recent recruits, but both had proven themselves above reproach.
Or had they?
Heedless of the Wolf’s warning to guard his nose, Sparrow checked to see his bow was slung securely over his shoulder, and his quiver was full of arrows. He wasted no more time on his conscience, but moved quickly toward the same dark opening through which his quarry had disappeared.
Whoever he was following was very good; there was no telltale crackling of twigs, or crunching of leaves to betray the path he had taken. Then again, he was not as good as Sparrow, who climbed hand over foot into the nearest tree and took his first marker from the disgruntled hoot of an unsettled owl.
It did not take him long to identify the prey he stalked, nor, after two hours of carefully trailing the Judas, was there any doubt the path they were taking led directly to the Dragon’s camp at Alford.
CHAPTER TEN
The Dragon was not a man. He was not human, decided Onfroi de la Haye as he fidgeted nervously on his stool, his eyelids squinting alternately between the belligerent countenance of his wife Nicolaa, and the distracted, self-absorbed features of the Baron de Gournay. Nicolaa had arrived in camp several hours after the others, her palfrey lathered and blowing hard to suggest she had striven valiantly to
keep apace with Wardieu and his mercenaries. But a palfrey was no match for a warhorse, and true to his warning, Wardieu had neither stopped nor given in to her outlandish demands to be provided with a stronger steed. Venting her temper in the wake of such a humiliating failure, had cost one of her personal servants a severe whipping, and her groomsman a broken arm.
Onfroi, knowing better than to interfere or to stay her hand, had kept well away from the shrieking Fury until sheer exhaustion had rendered his wife more amenable to human companionship. Even then, he kept a prudent distance from the small, wickedly knotted leather lash she used to emphasize her words and gestures.
A wooden trestle table had been erected in one of the larger tents. A late supper had consisted of cold mutton and hard cheese purchased from the dour monks at Alford. Conversation had been limited to a few perfunctory words exchanged between Onfroi and his wife; Wardieu had remained gloweringly silent throughout the long evening. Onfroi knew the look well enough, and did not like what it forebode. No, he did not like it at all.
“For pity’s sake, Onfroi, stop squirming like a blistered worm,” Nicolaa said, snapping the handle of the lash against the tabletop. She had regained most of the energy she had expended on the long, hard ride, and felt as tense in the unnatural silence as a bubble about to burst.
“Forgive me, my dearest. I was not aware I was … ah, squirming.”
“Squirming, twitching, sweating—Mon Dieu, but you reek of a cesspool. Can you not go out and … and see if those lazy wastrels have groomed my poor Arabella properly? If not, if they have ruined her, I swear I shall whip the lot of them until the flesh is shredded from their miserable hides. I shall hang them by their entrails and—” She stopped and glanced up as Wardieu stood. “My lord?” Her voice was instant sweetness. “You have hardly touched a morsel of food. Will you not have more ale? Some grapes, or an apple perhaps?”
In lieu of answering, the golden-haired knight ducked through the opening of the tent and strode out into the darkness. He walked the length of the camp and came to a halt on the knoll that overlooked the slope of the valley. The lowlands were muffled under a pale blanket of mist, but high above the blackened crust of trees were thousands of pinpricks of starlight, and behind him, hung against the velvet sky like a gleaming sickle, was the thin, silvery rim of the moon. There were no lights showing from the windows of Alford. It was past midnight, and the monks, being frugal as well as bone-weary after toiling long hours in their daily duties, wasted no candlewax past the hour of Compline.
“What the devil can be keeping De Vere?” he muttered aloud. “He has been in that accursed forest for hours.”
“You set him a difficult task, my lord,” said Nicolaa, coming quietly up to stand beside him. She touched the sleeve of his chain-mail shirt and ran her fingers possessively onto the quilted thickness of his surcoat, sighing as if she found herself having to explain the very obvious to a petulant child. “It was already dusk when you sent him into the forest; he could hardly be expected to search in the dark.”
“De Vere could track an ant through a meadow on a moonless night. A two-legged wolf should present no great problem.”
Nicolaa lifted a brow delicately. It was not unlike Wardieu to be cross and impatient in the face of inefficiency, nor to become tense and intractable with too many hours of physical inactivity. Some of their more memorable trysts, in fact, had taken place between bouts of a tourney, with him still splashed with the blood of one opponent, and waiting feverishly to split the bones of another. The challenge of rooting out this Black Wolf of Lincoln should have had a similar effect on his carnal urges, and was one of the more prurient reasons why Nicolaa had insisted on accompanying him to Alford.
Yet this was no ordinary tension she could sense thrumming through the finely honed body. Something was distracting De Gournay, tempering the voracious appetite of her prize stallion to the point where he had not glanced in her direction once all evening—an affront to her vanity she could not be expected to entertain in good humour.
“Lucien?” Her hand drifted downward, skipping over the wide leather belt strapped around his waist, and cupped suggestively around the slashed V where his chausses met beneath the hem of his surcoat. There was no response at all. Not even a flicker on the angular planes of his face to show he was aware of the invitation.
“Lucien! For the love of God—” She lowered her voice to a throaty rumble. “You are acting like a man possessed. One would think you would be grateful to this Black Wolf for providing you with a solution to your problem. The marriage contracts have been signed; you are as good as wed to the little bitch now. No court in the land would deny you your right to her estates simply because of the interference of a blood-lusting outlaw.”
Wardieu turned and stared wordlessly.
“It is perfect, do you not see? Let him have her. Let him keep her. Send him your blessings as well as a sharpened blade to do the carving!”
He continued to stare, his gaze so cold and hard Nicolaa felt a corresponding rush of anger surge through her veins.
“First you claim she means nothing to you,” she hissed between clenched teeth. “Now, suddenly, you are acting as if she means everything! I warn you, I will not be played the fool, Lucien. Not again. Not by you, or any man!”
“Was it you?” he asked in a disbelieving whisper. “Was this your poor idea of a jest, Nicolaa?”
“Was what my idea of a jest? Kidnapping the girl? Good my lord, were it my idea to take her and hold her to ransom, it would not have been her finger I had carved from her!”
“Then tell me … how did he get the ring?”
“What are you talking about?” she demanded archly. “What ring?”
“The ring he gave you as a pledge of his troth.”
Nicolaa caught sharply at her breath. “Onfroi? That miserable circlet of gold he gave me—?”
“The ring, Nicolaa,” Wardieu interrupted ominously. “The one worn by the rightful heir of the Wardieu estates.”
“Lucien,” she gasped. “Are you mad? What are you talking about?”
Wardieu held his rage in check with an effort, but even as he had voiced the accusation, he had known he was grasping at the wind. Such subtleties were not in keeping with Nicolaa’s methods. If she had kept something as damaging as the ring all these years, she would have produced it and used it long before now to bend him to her will.
“I am talking about this,” he said quietly and uncurled the fingers of his fist.
Wary of the threat of violence in his every look and gesture, Nicolaa slowly tore her gaze from his and focused on the ring that lay cradled in his broad palm. The gold sparkled dully and the ruby eye winked in the moonlight, but at first glance, she could see nothing unusual in the design. Dragons, serpents, lions, and other menacing grotesques were commonly worked into rings, crests, and armorial bearings. The craftsmanship in this particular ring was exceptionally good; the beast appeared to be on the verge of a strike, with the scaled jaws gaping and the forked tongue poised to spit flame.
Nicolaa’s heart missed a beat.
She snatched the ring out of Wardieu’s hand and held it up so that the light from the campfires would augment the glow from the moon and stars.
“God spare me,” she whispered.
“God spare us both if you had no hand in this,” he said tautly.
“Me?” She looked up, shocked. “You think I … !”
“If not you, Nicolaa, then who else?”
Her eyes grew rounder, wilder. “No! No, it could not be! There must be some mistake!”
“Look at the ring, Nicolaa. There is no mistake.”
“A duplicate! It must be a duplicate!”
“Look at the ring, Nicolaa. There is no mistake.”
She did not have to obey the command in the ice-blue eyes to know there would be a jagged point of gold marking where the tip of one of the dragon’s ears had been broken off.
“But”—she gripped his arm and her
voice became shrill with panic—“it cannot be. How can you believe he survived? Mon Dieu—all these years. He has been dead … forgotten! All these years!”
Wardieu’s fingers pinched her arm cruelly as he led her farther away from the curious eyes and ears of the camp. “Lower your voice, damn you. We have enough problems as it is without drawing a host of others down upon our heads.”
She halted, dragging back on his arm. “A jest,” she cried. “As you suggested, it must be someone’s foul, bloodless idea of a jest!”
“Who else knows enough of the truth to make such a jest?” Wardieu took the ring out of her hand and thrust it up beneath her nose. “Bayard was the only other one—apart from Lackland—who knew more than he should … and Bayard is dead! Killed by someone he recognized; someone who, according to De Chesnai, caused Northumbria to act as if he had seen a ghost!”
Nicolaa’s heart suffered another choking setback. “But you brought him down yourself! You said you saw him die!”
“I said there was no man on earth who could survive such wounds. I did not say I stood there and watched him die. He was my brother! I struck him down, I left him broken and bleeding on that hell of a desert. I could not stand over him and wait for him to die!”
“And for your compassion,” she spat, “he has now come back to take his revenge. God’s blood, he must be insane with hatred. But why has he waited so long? Why has he not come forward before now? And why this elaborate ruse as the Black Wolf of Lincoln?”
Wardieu’s fist closed around the ring again. “He wants me to know he is there, waiting. Watching. He wants me to jump at every shadow, sweat over every morsel of food, challenge every new face I see. The Black Wolf: how appropriate. I should have guessed it right away. The wolf hunting the dragon hunting the wolf.”
“What will you do?” she asked, hugging her arms through a sudden chill.
“Do, Nicolaa? Why, I will do what I must do, of course. Come morning, I will dispatch a party back to the keep to collect the ransom.”
The Robin Hood Trilogy Page 15