Knight Triumphant

by Heather Graham

  “How do you know we can trust him?”

  “He was at Berwick, and barely escaped.”

  “You believe him?”

  “I saw some of his scars.”

  “So what are they doing here?”

  “Relieving the English of all the coins they can. And watching, of course. Always watching.”

  That night, Eric, Jamie, and the others rode through the gates with a full wagon. When they reached the forest, they had the bodies of a number of the guards.

  And the tall, thick-necked man who led the troupe of players.

  Igrainia thanked God that she had been born the daughter of an earl. And though her father was gone, her brother now held his title. She knew that Robert Neville was frustrated to near fury. He dared not insist on any matter since he was only Sir Neville and Aidan was Lord Abelard.

  Lord Danby also provided her with a strange margin of safety. He had arrived soon after she had herself, early in the morning the day after. She was summoned that afternoon to dine with him and the others in his great hall. He was filled with concern for her, and quick to assure her that she was now among her people, and safe.

  “I am distressed to hear, of course, that you consider yourself really married to that outlaw,” he told her, pacing the hall.

  “I am really married to him,” she said.

  “It’s a matter the king will deal with for you,” he said, his tone dismissive. “Robert Neville is a fierce warrior in the king’s godly fight here, and he is dismayed that you are so against the prospect of becoming his wife. Igrainia . . . the king has said that it will be so, and therefore, you must resign yourself.” He came to where she sat at the table, taking both her hands, and looking at her earnestly. “Spend time with him. You’ll begin to remember him as your husband’s kinsman and good friend.”

  “I’m afraid, Lord Danby, that spending time with him only makes me realize how he resented the fact that Afton was the lord of Langley.”

  Danby sighed with frustration. At that point, Robert Neville entered the hall with Sir Niles Mason.

  Mason, she thought, looked like a fox. His features were fine, he gave the appearance of an aesthetic man. He was anything but.

  He was in the prime of life, a proven knight, hailed for his victories against the bands of Scots who often seemed to arise everywhere. Niles was one of those men who quickly put a subjugated people in their place. Those of little importance, Afton had told her, usually died on the battlefield, but Niles enjoyed the entertainment of a good execution. He delighted in hunting down the men the king most despised, and with the law behind him, creating a show of butchery.

  “Ah, Lord Danby, trying gently to talk sense into our ungrateful beauty.”

  “The lady is deeply concerned with the legality of her situation, and, of course, her immortal soul,” Danby said.

  “Do you think so?” Robert Neville inquired, following Mason to the table to help himself to Lord Danby’s ale. “I think that she has become bewitched, indeed, that she may even be an enemy of the king.”

  “Bewitched?” Niles Mason inquired. “I think that the lady has fallen where many of the most gracious of our fair and noble women may—to the nightly talents of such an animal as the outlaw. Don’t forget, I know this man, Lord Danby. He is a like a wolf in the forest, hungry, matted, dirty, and probably desperate. Not so grand as he would have us believe. He brought down Langley through sickness, not prowess.”

  Robert looked at Niles sharply. “And he attacked and slew a party of well-trained knights to get back into the castle when he had escaped from it,” he reminded him. “He’s a dangerous man.”

  Niles Mason stood by Igrainia, smiling down at her. “Perhaps, when he came into the castle, filthy and diseased as he was, the lady had already decided that she was longing to be rid of her husband, and willing to take up with a wolf.”

  She started to rise, furious, then afraid. Aidan had come into the room. “Sir, you are speaking about my sister!” he stated.

  “Aidan, he speaks because fools are incapable of keeping their mouths shut, and you are above an argument with such a man.”

  “This will stop immediately!” Lord Danby thundered. “Sir Niles! Igrainia has suffered a great deal and you will not torment her with such discourtesy. And you do, indeed, owe her brother an apology. Where is your sense of chivalry? There is no need for any of this. The king will soon know that she is in our care; his churchmen are already debating the legal issue. In time it will be settled, and Robert, you and the lady will come to peace with the situation.”

  Igrainia was tempted to stare at Robert and tell him that she would rather die. She managed to refrain. With Danby here now she was eager to be a guest at the castle, rather than a prisoner.

  “There is one thing that will certainly solve it all,” Niles said. His dark eyes, as sharp as his face, turned on her. “He was my prisoner. Due to die. And because of the plague he brought upon good men and women, he escaped.”

  “He escaped! You fled with the first sign that the illness was real!” Igrainia accused him.

  “My life is valuable to the king. If I die, it will be at arms, defending the realm,” he told her. “But that outlaw was my prisoner, and I swear, he will be so again, and once his head and limbs and extremities are severed from his body, the legal state of your marriage will not matter in the least, Igrainia, because he will be dead. Excuse me, Lord Danby. Since it seems that I do distress the fair and innocent Igrainia, I will dine with my men this evening.”

  Robert Neville had come to the chair at Igrainia’s side.

  “Aren’t you going to follow your dear companion at arms—and butchery?” she inquired.

  “No, my dear betrothed. I am going to suffer through your hatred, with kindness of course, until such time as . . . as you are legally my wife, bound to honor and obey.”

  Igrainia looked across the room and saw that Aidan was watching Robert. “Sir Robert!” he said suddenly. “On another matter of importance, I was talking to the head of the guard. He says that he’s greatly distressed. Men have been disappearing. Can it be that they are deserting, going over to the enemy?”

  Robert scowled.

  “Lord Danby, were you aware that a number of men had disappeared?” Aidan asked politely.

  “What’s this?” Danby said sharply.

  “We are looking into the disappearance of a few of the men.”

  “Why have I not been informed?”

  “We were hoping to learn what had become of them,” Robert admitted.

  “Do so!” Lord Danby ordered.

  “Of course, my Lord Danby,” Robert said.

  Igrainia wondered if he stared with as much venom at Aidan as he did at her. She was grateful for her brother.

  She was also worried.

  Jamie pretended to be drunk. He weaved as he walked along the alley between the smithy and a grain storage bin.

  At the end of the narrow throughway, two guards watched the lower courtyard. They talked, mindless of the drunken peasant staggering his way alone.

  “Aye, I was a young man at Berwick. Now, there was a way to make war! Some say that it’s the shame of King Edward, and I say it’s a way to put a nation of upstarts in their place. We killed them all, men, women, children. There was such an outcry about the children. But I say, kill a Scot when he’s a mite, and he’ll not become a tick of an outlaw, drinking the blood of his betters!”

  “Ride with Neville and Mason,” the other boasted, “and you’ll see men who know how to best the outlaws. Slay them all. And do it with style. Neville likes to see a man dragged for miles at a horse’s arse, then dragged up by rope, dropped, dragged up again . . . and then, if he’s not yet dead, Neville sees that water is tossed on him until he wakes up enough to know that his entrails are about to be burned before him.”

  Looking down the alley, he saw that Angus was coming toward him from the other direction, weaving as well. Angus called out to him, calling him a name. He we
nt forward, calling Angus a bloody asshole.

  “What, ho! What’s the problem here?” the first guard demanded, coming toward them.

  “Well, it’s like this,” Jamie said, and beckoned the man closer to hear his whisper.

  He locked an arm around the man’s neck.

  And slit his throat.

  “What is going on there now?” the second demanded with exasperation, walking toward Jamie and the man now slumped on his shoulder.

  Before he could make a cry of alarm, Angus stepped forward. He didn’t carry a knife, but he had the mighty power of his arms.

  The man’s neck broke with a sharp snap.

  “Down the grain hatch,” Jamie said quickly. “They’ll start to smell in time, but . . . well, time is what we don’t have anyway.”

  Igrainia spent each day with the hours passing slowly and tensely. She tried to believe that the men who had once been her captors would ride to release her from this new imprisonment.

  Then she would mock herself. Even should Eric really care enough to expend the effort, he could not throw his small number of men against a walled town such as Cheffington. They would also soon be expected to ride to the defense of Robert Bruce, since her captors would soon be required to ride hard to obliterate the Scottish King.

  If she were to escape, she was going to have to do so on her own. And she was going to have to study her every option with care, since it was unlikely she would get a second chance. She had to watch and learn the habits of those in the castle itself, and in the walled town. She was going to have to leave at a time when no one would be expecting to see her for hours, as they did each night in the great hall. On her own, she was going to have to find a way to travel far from the castle before her absence was noted.

  Igrainia knew that she was proving herself to be something of a fair actor. She sought out time with Lord Danby, and talked to him about friends she had not seen since coming to Scotland. They discussed the king’s ailing health, and she sympathized with concern. He walked with her around the grounds of Cheffington, and she admired the work of his smiths, and enjoyed the antics of a troupe of entertainers who had taken up residence in the courtyard. They juggled, performed acrobatics, and played out silly little sketches about everyday life. There were a number of women in their group, but they sewed clothing, collected what coins they could gain from whatever crowd would take pause from daily labor. They did not take part in the performances, except for the young woman who sang sometimes while they were setting up. They could be very funny, since the parts of wives, daughters, lovers, and even princesses in distress were played by the men, some of them small and lean, a few big fellows with girth and shoulders. Igrainia enjoyed their good humored jesting about daily life, and some of the wonderful stunts they could do.

  She did not so much enjoy the puppet show they performed, in which outlaws were cornered, and a sword battle ensued. An English lord engaged in a sword battle with a Scottish lord, and the latter’s arms and legs were torn off. Then in a bawdy twist of play, he was castrated as well, and still, upon the stump of his bloody torso, he continued to challenge the Englishman.

  Lord Danby saw to it that she was provided with every comfort, down to rearranging the sleeping quarters of his guests—she was given a new room with a connecting door to Aidan’s. She learned that Danby was fond of her brother, and believed that he would grow to be not just an exceptional military man, but that in England, he could prove to be a fine statesman as well. His wife and his only son had died of a fever a few years back, and she realized that to Danby, Aidan had become the son he had lost.

  She was sincerely grateful for his devotion to her family, though he argued with her continually, insisting that she would eventually realize that she had been imprisoned, coerced, and so set upon by the outlaw that she didn’t know her own mind. She would return to England once Edward had led his own great army against the Scots, and subdued the outlaws. And once there, she would remember a better life.

  She was careful not to argue too strenuously with Lord Danby. She knew that messengers had gone out to inform the king that she was now in his care, and to ask the king’s pleasure regarding the current state of affairs. But it would be some time until word came back, since the king was so involved in his plan to lead his men himself and crush Robert Bruce once and for all. Danby was sorry—he had liked and admired Robert Bruce.

  She spent time with Aidan, trying to explain to him that it was not disloyalty against Edward that had risen in her soul, but rather a chance to judge the ethics of individual men that had made her appear to be a traitor.

  She had been in the castle for several days. She, Niles Mason, and Robert Neville had come to a silent truce, since Danby would have none of the arguments. What barbs were cast between them were subtle.

  At night, her door remained bolted from the outside. When she mentioned this, Lord Danby assured her it was for her safety. He didn’t try to explain why she was safe being locked in, and she realized that he was telling her as kindly as he could that he understood Robert Neville’s determination that she not leave the “protection” of Cheffington.

  If she were going to try to disappear, she was going to have to do so by daylight. And probably soon.

  Sarah, daughter of Thomas Quinn, head of the players, put the last touches of ash beneath Eric’s eyes, and pulled the cloak hood low over his forehead. Eric looked at Jamie. “Well?”

  “You’re the ugliest woman I’ve ever seen.”

  “I’ve done the best I could,” Sarah said. She was a pretty girl with warm brown hair and eyes, somewhat shy and serious, despite the fact that she traveled with actors, loud, boisterous, ever seeking the laughter of those they would entertain. She sang sometimes, luring their audience, and she was excellent in creating new faces upon the men in the troupe for their new roles.

  “Sarah!” Jamie said. “You’ve done excellently. There is, of course, only so much you can do.”

  “Do I pass? What will the guards think?” Eric asked.

  “That you’re the ugliest women they’ve ever seen.”

  “Very amusing.” He rose from the log on which he had been seated. “Let’s see how you fare. Sarah, if you will transform Jamie, please.”

  “Me? I was doing fine as a farmer!” Jamie protested.

  “Don’t make him too pretty, Sarah. Make sure he’s at least the second ugliest man the guards have ever seen.”

  When she was done, Eric surveyed his kinsman. “Why, Jamie, you’re almost pretty.”

  “I always said I was the more handsome,” Jamie replied with mock humility.

  Rowenna, who had watched Sarah’s work upon the men’s faces, clapped her hands with delight. “Jamie, you are a beauty!”

  Jamie groaned.

  “Aye, I’m sorry to say, Jamie Graham, you do make a fair lass!” Angus told him.

  “Well, he is a handsome man!” Rowenna said. “Ah, but Angus, not half so grand as you!” she told him.

  Angus shrugged. “’Tis more of me to be grand,” he teased. “Ah, but I’ll never have those gray eyes like Jamie. And with your hair, lad—you’d best be watching out for those English warriors!”

  Around them, many of the men roared with laughter.

  “Ah, now, I’ll be taking my sword to the lot of you!” Jamie warned. But he spoke with good humor, until he walked away and joined Eric, speaking to him gravely.

  “This is, by far, the most outrageous thing you’ve done yet.”

  “We are doing amazingly well,” Eric reminded him.

  “Aye, your strategy has worked well. Divide, and conquer—and destroy the number of the enemy by picking them off one by one . . . but do we dare move in so closely as we plan tonight?”

  “You were right, Jamie. Most of the people there will gladly turn away, even if they actually know what is happening. We have a great deal in play already.”

  “Aye, but is it enough?”

  “I have to know what is going on in the castl
e itself. I have to know what has been done to her . . . and just exactly where her true loyalty lies.”

  “You are risking life and limb—and other body parts.”

  “Each time we ride against Edward, we do so.”

  “Aye, but Eric, this is for a woman. Is any woman worth this?

  “I’ll not lose her to the English, Jamie. I’ll not lose to them again.”

  “What does Gregory have to say about this venture?”

  “Apparently, he has seen nothing.”

  “Um. He’s not seen much of late at all,” Jamie noted.

  “I still believe that there is something about the boy. And I am glad to have him with us.”

  “If disaster were awaiting, he would have some insight.”

  “Aye, well, perhaps. Whatever the risk, Jamie, I must go in. Now. I have a sense that time is closing in, when we must see how well our preparations have served us. Aye, the English, I’m certain, are receiving the rumors we have spread. And . . . again, I swear, Neville and Mason will not triumph this time, I swear it. Were we to make a pact with the devil himself, I would gladly do it.”

  “Careful, Father MacKinley will hear you.”

  “Ah, well. We’ll let him say a prayer for us. In lieu of a pact with the devil, I am willing to accept the ardent words of one of God’s holy men. Are you ready?”

  “Aye.” Jamie shook his head, staring at Eric. “Do you think he’ll manage to pray without laughing?”

  “Jamie, you’ll not be such a lovely maid if I put my fist across your face.”

  Jamie laughed again, then sobered.

  They joined the others.

  MacKinley prayed.

  That night, Igrainia was seated at the table in the great hall when Niles Mason came in, pulling his gloves from his fingers, and tossing them by his seat with a strange show of pleasure and elation. “Lord Danby, I believe we are earning our keep!” he announced. “There has been word that there are parties of outlaw Scots ranging the nearby woods. No great armies, just bands of men, living off the earth. Some say that Eric Graham is among them. We have spies out there, naturally. I am expecting word regarding greater detail as to their location. As soon as I have it . . .” he turned and smiled at Igrainia. “Well, as soon as I have it, we will see that Igrainia’s moral dilemma is solved with all due speed of the law.”