“You son of a bitch,” Felsteppe snarled. “You just couldn’t stomach the idea of me being in charge of Chastellet, could you?”
“I couldn’t care less who Baldwin retains to fill my appointment after I am gone,” Constantine replied, turning his back on the loathsome man to walk to the large cask mounted on its side against the wall. He watched the liquid flow into his cup and he wished it was wine. “But while I am responsible for the welfare of this hold, I will report anything I feel the king needs be aware of. Especially if it is of a traitorous nature.”
“You’re only trying to further your rank.” Felsteppe continued behind him, as Constantine raised his cup to his lips and let the cool water flood his mouth. “Lazy, entitled bastard! You deserve not even the tiniest fraction of the power you claim at Chastellet.”
Constantine swallowed and then sighed, his eyes trained on the smooth stone above the cask. He called to mind the verdant landscape stretching out around Benningsgate, the wet greenness of the very air in her forests. He imagined sitting in his own hall of an even, drinking from his own casks and speaking of things such as crops and flocks and servants. Hearing the gossip about the town. He thought of the moment—delayed now, true, but only by weeks—he would approach Benningsgate and see the blond little boy running for him, leaping into Constantine’s arms . . .
He felt slightly calmer. “Any power I have here has come hand in hand with my duties, and both were given to me after I proved myself worthy.”
Felsteppe sputtered. “Did you earn your title? Benningsgate Castle? Did you work your way into your earldom? Your wife’s bed? I’ve heard the latter at least can be done with little effort.”
Constantine ran his tongue along his teeth and closed his eyes for a moment before turning to face the man, who seemed so distraught that Constantine wouldn’t have been surprised to see him collapse to the floor to pound his fists and boots against the tile.
“You can’t keep blaming others for your failures, Felsteppe. Eventually, you will have to claim responsibility for your life and the choices you make.”
“Choices?” Felsteppe said on a false laugh. “You mean like the choice Baldwin has made? You know it’s only a matter of time before Saladin orders the attack on Chastellet now that our king has turned him away yet again. The fortress isn’t even properly completed!”
“It’s almost done,” Adrian Hailsworth muttered from his corner, his head still down. “Only the glacis to complete. Strong enough now.”
“The foundation is exposed!” Felsteppe cried out to the architect. When Adrian failed to respond, Felsteppe faced Constantine once more. “You’re all fools! Baldwin has guaranteed your deaths.”
Constantine’s eyes narrowed. “It is our duty to defend this stronghold and the river crossing below. That’s what you swore to do when you accepted your charge.”
“I came here to make my fortune, same as all the others.”
“Perhaps you should have sought assignment in one of the ports then. Promise of riches is not why men come to Chastellet.”
Felsteppe stared at Constantine and then sniffed a half laugh, his thin lips quirking in some semblance of a grin. “Oh, of course. That’s not why you’re here, is it, Gerard?”
Constantine’s back stiffened, but he kept his expression neutral as he gestured to the pile of armaments still littering the floor. “Do as the king commands and retreat to your cell before the sun sets. Some may lie in wait for you.” He turned and started to cross the floor, heading toward the double doors and his own chamber in order to grieve the delay of his departure.
Perhaps many men’s futures—indeed, the future of the world—would have been quite different had Glayer Felsteppe held his tongue and allowed Constantine to leave without further comment.
But, alas.
“You’re here because your wife is a very rich whore with a constant itch, and everyone doubts the son she bore is yours!”
Constantine halted, still facing the door.
Baiting you again. That’s all.
He started forward once more, and this time he saw that Adrian had raised his head and was now watching Constantine with a wary expression.
“That’s right—I know. Everyone knows,” Felsteppe taunted. “Who can predict how many children you’ll have to your name upon your return? Perhaps even now, little Christian is on some other man’s lap, sitting in your chair at supper, calling him Papa.”
Constantine stopped again, his feet sticking so firmly that he swayed in his stance.
“You’ll never outstay that rumor, Gerard,” Felsteppe chuckled. “It will live with you—and the boy—for the rest of your lives. Christian will never really know if you’re his father or not. Rather sad, isn’t it? I feel sorry for the lad, truly. Whore for a mother, and a coward—”
Felsteppe continued to talk as Constantine turned and stalked back toward him, but he had no idea what the man said, as the blood was roaring in his ears so loudly that it drowned out all other sound. Felsteppe, however, must have realized that he had finally hit his mark for now he drew his sword and sank into a defensive posture with a satisfied smirk.
Constantine, too, swept his weapon from its sheath as he continued to rush forward. When he was nearly close enough to strike, Felsteppe changed tactics and charged. But Constantine was ready and in two swings, Felsteppe’s weapon went sliding and clanging across the floor. Constantine was upon him then, and rammed the butt of his hilt into Felsteppe’s nose once, twice, sending blood spraying from the man’s face like a fountain.
Felsteppe staggered back with a cry, his hands covering his dripping face while Constantine sheathed his weapon—if he didn’t, he was certain he would kill the man outright. But even though he was no longer readily armed, he wasn’t yet finished with Glayer Felsteppe.
And neither was Felsteppe finished. Once he saw the weapon was sent home, he charged at Constantine with his bloody fists clenched, a scream of rage coming from his sticky mouth. Constantine met his fury with his own, ducking Felsteppe’s swing and coming up with a fist under his chin and then two swift blows to the man’s abdomen. When the redhead doubled over, Constantine grabbed him by the back of his leather hauberk and slung him around in an arc.
Felsteppe flew through the air toward Adrian Hailsworth’s corner table and landed across the end of it, sliding through the piles of parchment as his hands scrabbled for purchase. Adrian pushed his chair back with a screech and stood.
Constantine stomped after Felsteppe, seizing him and flipping him over on his back, a shower of crumpled ivory pages raining down around them. Felsteppe swung with a weak yell, his fist clenched around a wad of parchment, and Constantine took the blow on his chin. He hardly felt it though as he drew back and hit Felsteppe in his already battered face, his knuckles making sick, splashing sounds by the third blow.
Before the sixth could land, Adrian hooked his arm around Constantine’s and pulled him backward with a mighty heave, allowing Glayer Felsteppe to slide to the floor in a crumpled, gasping heap.
“Killing him won’t make Baldwin change his mind,” Adrian said near his ear as he pushed between Constantine and the bleeding, wheezing man on the floor. “You’ve made your point.”
As much as Constantine appreciated the friend he had found in the brusque, scholarly Hailsworth, he was not quite satisfied that he had indeed made his point. He swept Adrian aside and after two strides sank to one knee over Felsteppe, seizing the front of his sodden tunic and pulling the limp rag of the man close to his face.
“Dare not speak my son’s name again. Verily, never be in my sight after this day, Glayer Felsteppe,” Constantine said as calmly as his still seething rage would allow. “Whether Baldwin allows your return from Tiberius or nay. Perhaps I could not prove them before today, but I have not forgotten—nor will I—your many, many misdeeds at Chastellet. The rapes of the merchants’ slaves, the thefts, the traitorous discords with which you sought to infect the men. You are scum, and you deserved
to be wiped from the land. The next time I see you, I will kill you.”
“You think everyone is afraid of you, Gerard,” Felsteppe rasped, bloody spittle flying from his split lips. “I’m not. You’re not holy; you’re not superior. You’re a pampered house cat whose been made to believe he’s above covering over his own shit.”
“I do believe this particular housecat has shown you his claws,” Hailsworth muttered as he returned to his chair, his eyes for naught but his precious scrolls as he straightened his exploded stacks.
“Fuck you, scribe,” Felsteppe snapped, and then he glared back into Constantine’s face. “You’ll pay for what you’ve done today. Today and every day since you’ve come here and tried to ruin me.” Felsteppe pushed at Constantine, and he stepped back and allowed the beaten man to stagger to his feet at last.
Felsteppe pointed a bony, stained, trembling finger toward Constantine, his other hand still curled around the ruined parchment he’d dragged from the table top. “I will see everything you love burn. Everything.”
“You couldn’t come within a score of miles of anything I love, Felsteppe. You’re lucky the king didn’t dismiss you outright. I believe he still might. Then where will you go? Back to Land’s End to herd sheep?” It was a low blow, but his fury seemed to let the words flow like the water from yonder cask.
Felsteppe’s face matched his bright hair, between the blood in and on his cheeks. “Everything you love,” he repeated. “No matter what I must do.”
“Get from my sight,” Constantine demanded and then turned away from the man before he was tempted to fall upon him again.
He heard the door open, and Adrian Hailsworth called out in a sardonic tone, “Oh, no, please—do keep those parchments. They weren’t quite right and rather covered in your blood, any matter.”
The door slammed shut.
“Maggot,” Adrian muttered.
The air in the room seemed to tingle with the altercation that hadn’t fully resolved Constantine of his anger. And when his gaze fell upon the pile of contraband Felsteppe had failed to collect and return as commanded by the king, Constantine sighed. Even though his muscles still burned and his breath left a metallic scent in his nostrils, he crossed the floor and began gathering the broken swords, the cracked shields, and the worn pads himself, his hands still wet with Glayer Felsteppe’s blood.
It was his duty, after all.
* * *
Glayer Felsteppe staggered through the narrow, dark interior corridors of Chastellet, his humiliation unrelieved by the fact that he passed no one. It mattered not—by now, Glayer knew every warrior monk, every base laborer, even the meanest slave had been apprised of the going’s-on in Baldwin’s antechamber. No one at Chastellet would ever let him forget what had happened. Perhaps it was best that he left.
He swiped at his dripping face with the wad of soft paper in his hand, then paused near a tall, wide tapestry to press a finger to one nostril and blow the contents of the other into the seam of floor and wall. His breath hitched in his chest as he coughed and spat—he thought perhaps at least one of his ribs was cracked. He stood there a moment, looking at the tapestry while he tried to regulate his searing breaths. The symbols of the Templars seemed to mock him as they hid among the trees and rivers woven into a rich, fantastical battle landscape: a dragon flying from a castle perched on a craggy peak; giants treading through a surf littered with wreckage; a figure with flowing red hair hovering above it all, seeming to stare down the corridor in the direction from which Glayer had just come.
Baldwin would never elevate Glayer to senior officer of anything now. Bastard leper, prancing about as if he were fit to command battalions when he was barely out of nappies.
Glayer reached up suddenly, flinching at the stabbing pain in his side as he grasped the heavy tapestry and wrenched it from the wall. He spat again upon it, then strode across it down the corridor, his pace quickening as his mind urged him on.
Bastard Gerard, behaving as though he owned the world, with his title and his estate and his heir. His pious standards and pharisaical morals.
Glayer had been sincere in his threat to destroy Constantine Gerard, but in truth, there was nothing for Glayer to go back to if he was turned away from the Holy Land. He’d come here to make a name for himself—to earn lands, riches, perhaps even a fief of his own. He would not become Baldwin’s servant in Tiberius, traded to some Frankish baron as if he were little more than a page. To be laughed at here, then forced back to his mother’s poor cottage on the westernmost point of England with nothing to show for his years away than a nose more crooked than when he left.
His vision blurred as he came into the blinding light of the bailey and the shimmers of heat floated up from the baked earth. Glayer threw up a forearm and ducked his head as he struck out into the center of the space, to shield his eyes from the sun and from the sight of whomever might be watching him, laughing at him. He walked quickly.
He hated Gerard. And Baldwin. And his mother. Hated this damned oven of a fortress; hated the men it sheltered. He glanced up and saw the light colored robes of Saracens still gathered near the wide gates, obviously readying to depart. In their midst was General Abdal himself, the soldiers around him protecting both the messenger and the coin Felsteppe knew he still carried. An ambitious man, Abdal, who knew how to wield the power he had been given in this land of enemies and thieves.
Unlike weak, sick, stupid Baldwin. Glayer wondered if anyone else but he knew how many thousands of dinars Saladin had offered in exchange for the razing of this godforsaken place. For Christ’s sake, the foundation wasn’t even . . .
Felsteppe stopped suddenly in the blinding hot bailey, his heart pounding, and looked down at the crumpled rendering of Chastellet’s most secret parts that he still held in his hand. His skin went icy, clammy as he raised his head, and the tall General Abdal turned toward him as if Felsteppe had called his name. The two men stared at each other for a long moment.
And Glayer Felsteppe realized that his time had at last come.
To the extent that the image or images on the cover of this book depict a person or persons, such person or persons are merely models, and are not intended to portray any character or characters featured in the book.
LYRICAL PRESS BOOKS are published by
Kensington Publishing Corp.
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Copyright © 2016 by Heather Grothaus
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the Publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.
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First Electronic Edition: July 2016
eISBN-13: 978-1-60183-400-3
eISBN-10: 1-60183-400-4
First Print Edition: July 2016
ISBN: 978-1-6018-3400-3
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