Dark Jenny elm-3

by Alex Bledsoe

  “One morning the good people of Smithwick awoke to find the moon priestess compound on fire. No one survived; oddly, no one even screamed or tried to escape, as if they were dead before the fire even started. Women, pregnant mothers, newborn babies, small children all died. Including, it was hoped, the king’s sister and her son. But they somehow got away.”

  The tension made the air feel like thick gravy. At last a lone, small voice spoke. Queen Jennifer said, “Marc, is this true?”

  A tremor went through the big man. He never got the chance to answer because at that moment one of the knights outside called out, “It’s Spears! Elliot Spears is coming!”

  THIRTY-THREE

  “Elliot’s alive!” Jennifer exclaimed.

  “You said he was dead,” Drake said to Kay.

  “ You said he was dead,” Kay said to me.

  I was too surprised to reply.

  “Clearly none of you know the great Elliot Spears,” Medraft said ironically. “He can never die.”

  “Don’t take your eyes off her,” I told Bob. He nodded, Medraft’s sword still in his hand, and stood behind Megan Drake. He placed the blade flat on her shoulder, its edge against her neck. She glared javelins at me.

  I held back the tent flap so we could all see. Rattling down the hill the same way I’d come was a wooden hay cart pulled by a lone horse. The driver was indeed Elliot Spears, his tattered clothes revealing bandaged wounds even at this distance. In the cart were the bodies of at least half a dozen men, their limbs flopping as the rough wheels traversed the battered road. Unlike me, no one moved to block his path. A wave trailed and spread from him through the army, as the men realized who he was and stood to get a better view.

  Spears stopped the cart beside my wagon. He winced as he stepped to the ground and looked back at the mercenary army. If he’d yelled, “Boo!” half of them would’ve fainted.

  Spears saw me in the tent opening. “Mr. LaCrosse. I’m glad to see you safe. Things were more difficult than I expected. I got sidetracked.”

  “You don’t know the half of it,” I said.

  “Elliot!” Drake cried as he strode from the tent. The two men embraced. I had a sudden flash of the question that every small boy on Grand Bruan must ask at some point: in a fight between these two great warriors, who would win?

  “I can’t tell you how happy I am to have you here,” Drake continued.

  “Since the pyre remains unlit, I assume I’ve arrived in time to fight for the queen’s honor.” Spears nodded at the mercenaries. “But what is all this?”

  “Guess,” Drake said.

  “Medraft,” Spears spat.

  “Good to see you, too, General Spears,” Medraft said as he sauntered from the tent. “We thought you weren’t coming. The queen’s guilt or innocence is now in your capable hands.”

  The look Spears gave the younger man could’ve melted rock. “Yes, despite your best efforts, I am here. Next time send better assassins.”

  “ My best efforts?” Medraft shot back. “I’m only interested in justice. If the queen’s integrity is compromised, then it’s a threat to the whole kingdom. My army is here simply to maintain order.” He nodded at the corpses in the cart. “I have no idea who those men are. Or rather, were.”

  Spears ignored him and looked at me. “Did you do as I asked?”

  The look in his eye reminded me of those dogs that appear blase and indolent until their master orders them to attack. I had no idea what would happen when he learned of Jenny’s fate. It wasn’t inconceivable that he’d blame-and take it out on-me. I said, “Yes.”

  Spears turned to Drake. “Then when do we begin the battle and clear out this trash?”

  “We were just passing the time by discussing some events of the past,” Medraft said. “Family stories I’d never heard before. They were quite compelling.”

  “No one was speaking to you,” Spears snapped. “Enjoy the sensation of your head on your shoulders while you can.”

  Gillian emerged from the tent behind Drake. He said softly, “You’re a rather large target, Your Majesty, for an archer out to make a name for himself.”

  I think at that moment Drake would’ve preferred wading naked into the opposing army to going back into that tent, but he nodded and led the way. I dropped the flap when we were all back inside.

  Spears stopped dead. “Why is that coffin here?”

  Protocol saved me from having to answer. “Elliot,” Queen Jennifer said with relief; at the sound of her voice Spears immediately dropped to one knee and lowered his head.

  “Forgive my rudeness, Your Majesty,” he said. “I am your servant.”

  She offered her hand, and he kissed it, ignoring the cuffs around her wrists. “No forgiveness is necessary now that you’re here.”

  Spears rose with a groan, favoring his right knee. Then he saw the woman tied to the chair, with Kay diligently guarding her. “Megan Drake,” he said coldly. “I thought I sensed your vile hand in all this. If she is to be executed, Your Majesty, I beg the swinging of the blade.”

  “Go back to your own country, foreigner,” Megan snapped.

  “This is my country more than it will ever be yours,” he fired back.

  “I’m not sure any of us can claim the moral high ground here,” Medraft said. “Mr. LaCrosse has been sharing some pretty interesting family secrets.”

  Spears frowned at me. “Such as?”

  Oh boy. Nowhere to go but forward. “I was about to explain that there would’ve been no opportunity for this plot if there hadn’t been gossip about the queen and you, Elliot. I can say with total certainty that it was unfounded. The queen was not unfaithful. The proof”-my mouth had gone dry-“is in that coffin.”

  Everyone looked at the box. Elliot froze, then with a cry of anguish pushed me aside and wrenched off the coffin’s lid. He held it and stared at the apparent body of his Dark Jenny, the love for which he’d risked both his life and his honor.

  “Elliot-,” I began.

  “Silence!” he yelled.

  I didn’t know what to do or say. I didn’t know what would happen.

  Queen Jennifer stepped forward, looked inside the coffin, and gasped.

  Drake’s eyes opened wide.

  Megan strained to see.

  Gillian and Bob Kay exchanged a confused look.

  Spears made a strangled sound and stepped away from the coffin. Again there was that terrible instant where he seemed to grow larger and broader, as if his muscles could expand at will. Suddenly Marcus Drake did not seem like the biggest man in the tent.

  The moment felt like the one between a flash of lightning and the crash of thunder.

  I raised my hands for calm and said, “Nobody jump to conclusions. It’s not what it looks like.”

  Spears roared. It’s the only way to describe the sound he made. It mingled fury, agony, and outrage. He swung the coffin lid as if it weighed nothing. Even in the tent’s impossibly confined space, he missed everyone but his target, Ted Medraft. “ You did this!”

  The wood cracked lengthwise from the impact against the side of Medraft’s head. The would-be usurper spun in place and dropped without a sound.

  “Teddy!” Megan cried, and strained with all her strength against the bonds holding her. Kay firmly held the chair. “That’s my son, you foreign bastard!”

  Spears looked down at the two halves of the broken lid, one in each hand.

  Gillian stepped forward and put a hand on Spears’s arm. Calmly he said, “Elliot, please-”

  At the instant of contact Spears spun around with one half of the lid in his right hand like a blade. The broken, jagged edge slashed across Gillian’s exposed throat, and for a moment I saw a ghastly cross-section of blood vessels, muscles, and windpipe.

  Gillian’s eyes opened wide and his hands rose to his neck. His fingers found the edge of the gash just as the blood started to surge forth. He fell back into the tent wall, clutched at the canvas, and slid to the ground. He died almost
at once.

  Queen Jennifer shrieked.

  The sound snapped Spears back to reality. He looked down at the two halves of the coffin lid and threw them to the rug as if he didn’t remember where they came from.

  “I’m not dead yet, Mom,” Medraft said woozily. Blood coursed down the side of his face, but he managed to get to his feet. He smiled and said drily, “The heir to the throne of Grand Bruan still lives.”

  That got Spears’s attention. To Drake he said, “What does he mean by that?”

  Medraft looked down at Gillian and shook his head. “Poor Tommy,” he said flatly. Then he gingerly touched the gash under his hair. “Apparently not only is King Marc my uncle-”

  “Stop!” Queen Jennifer said. Her voice had an assertiveness I hadn’t heard before, and it got everyone’s attention. She looked at us with an authority that easily overwhelmed her plain dress and shackles. “Just… stop, all right? All we’ve heard are wild accusations, with no proof. Including this woman in the coffin, whoever she is.” I caught her momentary look of pleading desperation toward Spears. Please go along. Please don’t give away the truth. “It’s clearly just more of Megan’s attempts to drive wedges between us, just like the absurd charge against me.”

  Spears looked at his hands as if they’d been acting on their own, then shook his head. “No, Your Majesty. It’s time to be truthful.”

  “Oh, God, not more truth,” Kay muttered.

  Spears turned to Drake. The king had not moved during the quick fight, and now he stared dully at Gillian’s corpse. I could well imagine he felt overwhelmed. It took a moment for him to realize Spears wanted his attention.

  “Your Majesty, I must speak. The queen is innocent of the charges against her, as I’m sure you realize. She and I have never been intimate. But I have been party to treason and betrayal. I ask no mercy for myself, just that you look mercifully on my fellow conspirators.”

  The words took a long time to register on Drake. “I’m sorry, Elliot, you said… what?”

  It was my last chance to salvage something here. I said loudly, “Elliot, before you say anything else, please give me a moment.”

  Avoiding any sudden movements, I went around Spears and bent over the coffin. He grabbed my arm in a grip like a blacksmith’s tongs and jerked me back. “Do not touch her,” he commanded.

  The pain revived my own temper. Who the hell were any of these fucked-up, low-down maniacs to tell me anything? I twisted free and snarled, “Or what? You’ll cut my throat, too?”

  His gaze slid to Gillian, and he swallowed hard. “My apologies. I am… wrought.”

  “Yeah,” I said. I unstoppered Kern’s second bottle and waved it under Jenny’s nose. I didn’t catch any odor from it, but almost at once her eyes popped open and she looked around disoriented.

  I heard a sharp intake of breath behind me. I turned, but it wasn’t Spears. Marcus had turned white as a sheet, and his eyes were bigger than I’d ever seen them.

  “Elliot?” Dark Jenny asked hoarsely.

  Spears pushed me aside so hard that if Drake hadn’t caught me, I might’ve gone right through the tent wall. He swept her from the box and crushed her to him. “Jenny!” he cried with relief. “Oh, my God, I was so frightened, you don’t know!”

  He kissed her furiously. Drake stared in confusion, Bob Kay looked puzzled, and even Megan Drake seemed taken aback. Medraft ignored the whole thing, more interested in his bleeding scalp.

  They broke the kiss. Jenny touched Spears’s face with her fingertips and said, “Oh, my love, I wish this were the happy ending you deserve, but I don’t have long. I was poisoned. I’ll die soon. Cameron and Mr. LaCrosse fixed it so I could see you one last time.”

  “What?” Spears said numbly.

  “I am dying,” she said carefully. “Nothing can stop it. I want your face to be the last thing I see.”

  Spears now looked as blasted as Drake. Both men had taken their share of blows today. “How… how long?”

  “I don’t know.” She closed her eyes and winced at a fresh wave of pain. “Not long, I suspect.”

  “Then we’re leaving,” he said, and turned toward the exit. “You will not die in this loathsome company.”

  “Wait!” she said, and looked around until she found Drake. “Your Majesty… dear Marc… I hope you understand. Elliot never betrayed you. I did, and my sister, but not him. He was your best and bravest, true to the end.”

  Drake said nothing. What could he say?

  “You switched,” Megan said almost in delight. “That fat bastard Kern helped you. You switched.”

  Spears turned to Megan. “I have broken my oath and slain a fellow knight, one who served his king with loyalty and valor. I am no longer worthy of my title. But if I find that you still breathe when she does not…” He didn’t finish the sentence, but carried Jenny out of the tent. A moment later we heard the hay cart clatter off. And as far as anyone knows, neither of them were ever seen or heard from again.

  The tent was silent.

  Finally Bob Kay spoke for us all. “Well, what the hell do we do now?”

  “Obviously the king can’t continue to rule Grand Bruan,” Medraft said calmly, daubing at the blood on his face with a corner of his cape. “I don’t know exactly what just happened with the queen and her apparent twin, but clearly the king doesn’t, either. And once word of my parentage gets out-and it will-no one will look at him the same way again.”

  We all watched Drake. He remained silent. He hadn’t physically shrunk, but his presence no longer dominated. He was like an image on glass, so insubstantial you could see through him if the light was right.

  Medraft grinned as he continued, “Publicly I’m still his nephew, and the closest he’s got to a legitimate heir. People will accept that. Not to mention I’ve got him outmanned five to one. Don’t I… Dad? ”

  “You are a heartless monster,” Queen Jennifer said.

  “Oh, you tease,” Medraft said mockingly. To Drake he said, “And I’ll take her off your hands as well as the crown. It’ll make the transition go more smoothly. No one else needs to know about that other woman in the box.”

  Drake just stared at him dully, mouth slightly open, no longer in the same place as the rest of us.

  Jennifer stood protectively in front of Drake and hissed, “You will never touch me. And you will never be king of Grand Bruan.”

  “But he’s my son,” Drake said numbly, those four words giving long-sought legitimacy to everything Medraft, and his mother, wanted.

  I don’t know if my next act came from anger, exhaustion, moral outrage, or simply because I was fed up with everything to do with this stupid island. But I nudged Jennifer aside, stepped in front of Drake, looked him in the eye, and slapped him as hard as I could with my miraculously healed hand.

  “Listen to yourself!” I yelled. “Act like a goddamn king, will you? So what if you made mistakes and did horrible things? There’s an island full of people out there counting on you! You don’t get to crap out!”

  He stared at me.

  I couldn’t stop if I wanted to. I yanked Belacrux from its scabbard at his waist and waved it at him, barely registering its weight. “When you pulled this out of that goddamned tree, you knew you couldn’t put it back! You signed up for the ride, now suit up and get to work!” I grabbed his wrist and pressed the sword’s hilt into his palm. His fingers closed around it with no conviction.

  Man, was I rolling now. “So what if you’re outnumbered? You’re fucking King Marcus Drake, and those are the goddamn Knights of the Double Tarn! You lead them up that hill, I guarantee three-fourths of those jackasses will turn and run at their first sight of you.”

  Drake stared at me, blinked as if waking from a dream, and said slowly, “You know… you’re right.”

  He turned on his heel and with one thrust of his huge sword ran Medraft through.

  Megan’s scream will haunt my nightmares forever. Every man was once someone’s little baby and had a mot
her who probably loved him.

  For a moment father and son looked into each other’s eyes. I wondered what common things they saw. Then Medraft slid off Belacrux’s heavy blade to the floor of the tent.

  “Teddy!” Megan wailed.

  “Shut up,” Drake snapped calmly. “Bob, put her in irons and have three men guard her. And gag her, too: her words are as dangerous as any man’s sword.”

  “My pleasure,” Kay said, and wrapped a strip of the tablecloth around her head, covering her mouth. She sobbed through it.

  Drake knelt beside Gillian. A red arterial spray marked the tent wall where he’d fallen, and blood soaked the rug beneath him. “Sorry, Tommy,” he murmured. “You were a good knight.”

  Then Drake turned to Jennifer. He produced a key and unlocked the manacles at her wrists. They fell to the ground between them. He said, “When this is over, I expect an explanation as to why you changed places with the girl I fell in love with all those years ago.” When Jennifer opened her mouth to speak, he said, “I’m not threatening you. You’ve been the best queen a king could ask for. Whatever else you’ve done, we can discuss in private, husband to wife. When this is finished.” He grabbed her forcefully around the waist, pulled her close, and passionately kissed her.

  Still holding her, he tossed back the tent flap and called to the nearest sentry knight, “General Medraft has killed General Gillian, and I’ve executed him for it. Get a funeral detail together. And summon the rest of my staff.”

  Then louder, in a voice that could make burning men proud to run into a fire, he cried, “And pass the word to prepare for battle!”

  A cheer went up from the knights and spread through the ranks. In moments it became a chant: “Drake! Drake! Drake!”

  The king dropped the flap, released his queen, and turned to me. “Thank you, Mr. LaCrosse. You’ve shown me my duty to my people and saved Grand Bruan. Is there anything I can grant you to show my gratitude?”

  “Twenty-five gold pieces a day,” I said with a little smile. “Plus expenses.”