Crown of the Realm (A White Knight Adventure Book 2)

by Jude Chapman

  Drake stepped out of the dizzying throng and watched from the side. Taking a brief rest, Alamanda came abreast of him. She glanced first at Drake, then subtly toward the vicomtesse.

  Soon after that, he slipped out.

  * * *

  A rush of brisk spring air swept inside the little chapel. On a rustling of skirts, the lady went into the sanctuary, her cloak billowing like a sail behind her and her face shrouded by a flowing hood.

  Mass had been held earlier that morning, but the supplicants had long since departed and their prayers instantly forgotten. The altar was set aglow by two beeswax candles. A musty ages-old scent permeated the walls. Every feature but the stark granite plinth was plunged into darkness. Dropping to her knees before the altar, she bent her head and prayed. The hood slipped back from her hair and revealed the nape of her neck, gloriously white in the flickering candlelight.

  “Do you think you are committing a sin before God?” the voice of a man asked.

  She twisted around. Her brows joined at a sharp angle. She was not surprised to find him here. “Is this not God’s house?” Distraught with misgiving yet flushed with excitement, she rose to her feet.

  Pushing himself away from the near wall, he crossed the breach in five easy strides. “Unfortunately for man, He does not need a special house to see all and know all.” He cupped the side of her face within his palm. Leaning into his touch, she let her eyes drift close, eyelashes fluttering. He said her name.

  Her dark eyes opened. They were wet with tears. “Tonight you may call me Iseut.”

  “The fair Irish maiden?”

  “—Who betrayed her husband with a forbidden lover. A tragic name that begets a tragic end.”

  Her cloak was dewed with rainwater. He undid the ties for her and let it drape into gentle folds at their feet. “Then I am Tristan, your valiant knight.” And smiling brashly, bent to kiss her.

  ~ Part IV ~

  How Love May Come to an End

  We see that love comes to an end after it has been openly revealed and made known to men.

  Thursday, the 7th of June, in the Year of Grace 1190

  Chapter 24

  AT THE BREAK of dawn, a dozen men waited for Drake in the pouring rain. Torches licking their provoked eyes, they drew around him and closed off escape. He boldly shoved one or two of them back and probed the night for his paramour. She had gotten safely away.

  Knuckled fists were bared. Curses and slurs saturated the already soggy air. Mumbling complaints clashed and receded. Surveying his besiegers through the lace of windswept drizzle, Drake recognized face after face—broken noses, scarred eyes, fierce jaws—each set of features belonging to a knight handily vanquished during the tournament by the formidable team of Hugh de Lusignan and Grendel de Poitiers. Lusignan, by virtue of his powerful family, could be excused from such effrontery. Nothing exempted Grendel of Poitiers, a man of no account.

  “Do with me as you will,” Drake heard himself say.

  Rank with aqua vitae, they briskly overpowered him. Each of Drake’s arms throbbed in the grip of two, four, six fists. Two figures emerged from the night shadows. Eble de Ventadorn and beside him, Widomar de Limoges, the man who had won over the booty gleaned from these very knights. Wido beat a cudgel into an open fist. He held it out to Ventadorn, who took it covetously. Eble de Ventadorn may have worn the cloak of pampered nobility, but he was as base and vile as any of these lesser knights. He had reason to be. Drake had driven him to it.

  “She …,” Drake began, but was silenced with a crushing stroke to his midsection followed by additional blows to his ribs, all of which doubled him over in agony.

  The comte lifted Drake’s head up by the roots of his hair. “With any luck, next time you even think of cuckolding a gentil-homme you will remember this.” Motioning to the others, he stepped back.

  With a laying on of hands, Drake was spun around. Struggling against the brutal fists that held him spread-eagle against the chapel wall, he tried to escape his final punishment, but to no benefit.

  Someone cautioned, “Not his sword arm!”

  When inevitably Drake cried out, a gloved hand swept over his mouth and smothered the awful noise. His attackers withdrew. He tried to grasp the mortared ridges of stone to brake the fall, but when one arm refused to work, the other failed to do the work of both, and he collapsed into a heap of pain.

  From a distance, someone shouted. Thundering footfalls crushed the graveled pathway. A big man knelt beside him. His steadfast arm braced Drake about the waist. “What can I do?”

  “Gaucelm,” Drake gasped, “you can put me out of my misery.”

  “My dear lad, that is the one thing I cannot do, wish that I had the power.”

  A billowing of skirts brought Maria to his side. As the three huddled on the dampened ground, everything turned fuzzy, even Maria’s comely face. “Aladonc,” she said, a catch in her throat. “What does it wish? Death, quick and sure? Or a life filled with pain and uncertainty? Speak, boy, and you shall have it.”

  He was surprised to find he had breath left with which to speak. “A last night of rapture.”

  “You have had that already. This then is your reward. Sad is man’s plight. And woman’s, too.”

  Maria de Torena rose with the majesty of piqued womanhood, whipped a stinging hand across the face of her husband, and stalked off, at which point Drake surrendered to peaceful oblivion.

  * * *

  When he awoke, vespers was ushering in the close of another day. The bed in which he had been sleeping was a comfortable one, raised high off the floor. Rich maroon drapes cut the draft on three sides while a fourth curtain was tied back. A canopy fluttered above. One window fitted with parchment let in the last light of day while two twisted candles dispelled the creeping darkness.

  Occupying a castle turret high among the clouds, the bedchamber was sparsely furnished yet cluttered with assorted armor, weapons, and equipment, a chessboard and other games of amusement, and a raised plank fashioned with brightly painted meadows, mountains, and river valleys surrounding a battlefield upon which French knights, miniature Saracens, and wooden horses had been placed in strategic battle array.

  “Devon,” he croaked.

  Hunched in a cold and comfortless corner, where he had dutifully installed himself for the past days despite Drake’s entreaties to join him on the immense bed, the lad lifted his head from folded arms. “Aye.”

  “Let this be a lesson. Never make assignations with wedded ladies, no matter how delightful.”

  The lad climbed to his feet. “I will try to remember but fear I will forget in the moment of anticipation.”

  “As I did.” Cradling his arm, Drake sat up with difficulty, his good arm and both of Devon’s strong ones required for the effort. Splinted, padded, and tightly bandaged, his arm didn’t pain him as much as his ribs did. Snug bandaging tied around his chest made it difficult to move while each breath brought on spasms. Speaking was a challenge, but speak he did. “Where are my clothes? I’m tired of lying about.”

  “I’ll fetch them.” And the boy was off.

  In the hours following the assault, he recalled a surgeon probing and pulling his arm, poking and pushing his ribs, and declaring that if any bones were broken, they did not need realignment but did need immobilization. He remembered being stripped, bathed, and put to bed. He remembered groans of misery, restless nights, long days, and the sun rising and setting between bad dreams.

  His head whirled faster than his belly, which was spinning quite fast enough. He slid his legs over the edge of the bed and progressed no farther. Propping an achy head over a shaky arm, he waited for the chamber to still.

  “You shouldn’t be out of bed.” A lady came in through the open doorway and closed it gently behind her. She carried his clothing, washed, pressed, and mended. She had been tending him since his arrival, occasionally checking on his state of alertness, laying the back of her hand across his forehead, ladling spoons of curative po
tage down his throat, applying hot and cold compresses to his injuries, straightening the bedclothes, and soothing away his nightmares with songs of unrequited love.

  “Alamanda, dear Alamanda. Your concern is touching, but there is something I must do.”

  Standing above him, she crossed her arms. “Such as riding south as soon as you can sit a horse and assassinating your king?”

  Drake pulled a face. “Did I talk in my delirium?”

  “You did not have to. You, my white knight, are a clear pane of glass on a sunny morning following a cleansing night storm. Or more rightly, a pain in the ass.”

  He smiled wryly and shook his aching head. “Am I that transparent?”

  “Only to your friends. For several days now, we have known what you are about, Gaucelm, Guiraut, and I. Sensibly, we have not informed the talkative d’Ussels, though they have at their fingertips the same particulars as we and may well have put together the same conjecture.”

  “And the source of these particulars?”

  “Rumors and talk. Everywhere and constant. A lone assassin skulking in and out of castles. A mad archer prowling parapets. A traitorous knight with a good aim or a bad aim, depending on which version you hear. A demon of the night that appears and disappears at will, magically escaping towers, dungeons, and all manner of iron fetters. A horseman riding hither and thither in search of retribution. A king who baits him by riding the Aquitaine with a conspicuous cortège. Here. Let me help you.” After fluffing up the pillows at his back and setting another beneath his broken arm, she reached for a large square of linen draped at the foot of the bed.

  “Having found me out, you do not fear for your lives?”

  “No, since there is not a king among us.”

  He remained where he was, half in and half out of bed while Alamanda stood before him, busily fashioning a sling for his arm. “You will accomplish nothing by catching up with Richard, except to arrive in Hell posthaste.”

  “But when I arrive, and the Devil asks if I was true to my brother …?”

  “You can tell him you were, but sacrificed your king to no good.” Tantalizing curvatures of her figure loomed distractingly close. “By now, your brother is a prisoner forever. Or dead already. Or soon will be. No man dares release him to the outside world where he can tell of his ordeal. To do so would be to put a rope around the traitor’s neck. Death awaits you as well, for to leave either of you alive is to seal the tombs of those who used you.”

  “I care not a whit for my life. But if I leave Stephen to his fate, how do I live with myself?”

  “By pursuing your brother’s murderers to the end. Though I, for one, would mourn your loss.”

  Taking a deep breath, Drake nodded to her wisdom. “I don’t much like the choice left me.”

  “But should you live, you can know you betrayed neither your king nor your brother.”

  “Wise Alamanda. Even if I had two whole arms, what you see sitting here before you is but half a man. It is because of me that my brother has been sorely used. Because I am the eldest. Because I am Richard’s favorite. Because I refused my king’s offer of a noble bride. If something happens to Stephen, if he dies because of my failing, I will forever be only half a man, and no good to anyone, including myself.”

  “Putting aside rendezvous with vicomtesses, you are anything but half a man. As is your brother, I suspect.”

  “He would be the first to disagree with you.”

  “Then you must both learn the truth for yourselves.” She frowned at the folded cloth and the poor knot she had made. Undoing her efforts, she started again. “You’ll be relieved to know that the knights blameworthy for your beating have hied themselves off to the next tourney, fully restored of their horses and armor by order of the vicomte of Limoges. The son of the vicomte is understandably put out. The comte of Angoulême, Hugh de Lusignan, and all the rest of our prim nobility have left as well, leaving us to gad about and use rough language without fear of offending frail sensibilities. The vicomte and vicomtesse of Ventadorn leave at daybreak. Like you, the vicomtesse has been abed, suffering from a different malady, but unlike you, has miraculously recovered. And you,” she said, playfully slapping his face, “have already gotten into quite enough trouble with those green eyes of yours.”

  He rubbed his cheek. “I’m grateful.”

  “That I slapped you? Or that the Ventadorns are leaving us?”

  “That you and the others have stayed. I don’t deserve such.”

  “Probably not. But we have a new visitor to liven things up. Arrived at tierce, sweaty and dusty from the road.” She held up the refolded sling for inspection. “Something feral about him. Pretty blue eyes always on the move. Hair like straw. A disposition not overly friendly but assuredly over-inquisitive. He nearly choked when Aimery told him of an indisposed guest going by the name of Grendel of Poitiers.”

  Lifting eyes dry with fatigue, he gazed up at her.

  “Per Dieu! He has the same look about him, just so. Sour and doleful. It’s uncanny.”

  “Are you going to tell me his name?”

  “Can’t you guess?”

  “Louis of Blois,” he said, nodding.

  “Is he friend or foe?”

  Drake chuckled. “Cousin. Second cousin, more accurately.”

  “Truly?” Satisfied with her product, she slipped the sling about his neck and slid his arm tenderly into the support.

  “Whether that makes him friend or foe is hard to predict. He must have followed me. But why?”

  “Is it comfortable?”

  He adjusted the sling. “No, but it’ll do.”

  “He claims to be the son of the comte of Blois.”

  “He is the eldest son of the comte of Blois. He will inherit.”

  A thoughtful finger tapped her chin. “If I remember correctly, the comtesse of Blois is Queen Eleanor’s daughter by her first marriage to King Louis of France.” She sat beside him, and taking him into her arms, brought his head against her shoulder. “As Gui would say … Drake fitzAlan, there is much you haven’t told us.”

  “The vicomte of Ventadorn is also a cousin. To the third degree, if I’m figuring rightly, but not by blood. It’s complicated.”

  “Complicated or not, he didn’t know such, and you weren’t about to tell him.”

  “Surely it would have been more than a broken arm.” Chortling at the irony of it, he felt helpless as a child and just as innocent. Enjoying the luscious curves of her rounded body and the licentious touch of her soothing hands, he snuggled nearer and closed his eyes. “And then there is Raimon of Toulouse.”

  “Also a cousin?”

  “To the fourth degree by blood. Or is it the fifth?”

  “And so Drake fitzAlan of Winchester is …?”

  “The son of Philippia of Aquitaine, herself the daughter of Queen Eleanor’s baseborn brother.”

  She instinctively crossed herself. “Then Richard is your kin as well as your king.”

  “More king than kin.”

  “Ah, I see the way of it.” She rocked him gently in her arms. “Another rumor has made its way to Aixe.”

  “I can hardly wait to hear,” he mumbled, close to dropping off.

  “That it was the Old Man of the Mountain who sent Richard’s assassin.” The name rolled off her tongue, “Rashid ed-Din Sinan. They say a pact was made between him and Saladin. If he prevents Richard from sailing for the Levant, Saladin won’t rout the Old Man from his mountain citadel.”

  “I have heard,” Drake said, “that he fills his chosen assassins with something called hashish, and when they are intoxicated to the point of ecstasy, they come for their victim. A fanciful notion, though I have also heard their weapon of choice is a dagger and not an arrow.”

  “Arrow, dagger … they both kill.”

  He moved his head on her shoulder. “If the Old Man sent the assassin, he enticed him with something other than hashish. But what?”

  “The only things man covets more th
an ecstasy. Power, position, and gold.”

  Chapter 25

  UPON SEEING GRENDEL of Poitiers arrive in her great hall, pale and only slightly unsteady on his feet, the vicomtesse of Limoges rushed forward. “Sieur de Poitiers, I am pleased to see that the prediction of your imminent demise was premature.”

  She slid her eyes toward her son, as foul-tempered as ever and standing with his back fitted irritably against a distant wall. “Gui,” she said, addressing him, “do not sulk so. It’s unbecoming.”

  Obediently, he pushed himself away from the wall and stood loose-limbed, though the plains of his face puckered like rotten fruit.

  The discerning vision of Sarah of Cornwall took in the invalid’s condition. Tepidly, and against her better assessment, she said, “I trust you are feeling haler.”

  “He doesn’t look at all hale,” said Gui d’Ussel, clattering into the hall with his brothers. “He rather looks like a vineyard of varietal grapes, ranging from sickly purple to putrid green. When you ripen, Grendel of Poitiers, we shall ferment you into a fine wine.” He held up his hands. “How many fingers have I?”

  “Eight,” said Drake, “not counting your thumbs.”

  He turned to the intimate gathering. “You see. If he were hale, he would have said twelve.” His brothers laughed though no one else did.

  The vicomte left a chair of considerable comfort near the hearth and came astride his wife. “I hope, Sieur Grendel, that you will accept our sincerest apologies. My son should not have involved himself in another man’s troubles. He deserves a whipping.”

  Wido reached a hand to his backside.

  “A second whipping since the first failed to remove the sneer from your face. When Sieur Grendel is sufficiently recovered, he can do the honors. In place of lopping off your head, which you so richly deserve. That is, if he so agrees.”

  Grendel of Poitiers took his time considering. He reached a hand to his bad arm and rubbed it absently. Wido became properly horrified, his face mottling oddly. “He so agrees,” Drake said equably.