Lord of the Forest

by Keysian, Elizabeth

  Lancelot turned his head slowly and speared Walter de Glanville with a glare. If he’d had a real spear to hand, that would have been infinitely preferable—but to draw blood in front of Clemence would be an abominable thing to do. He must keep a cool head.

  “You assume too much, Brother. You have yet to prove me guilty of any wrongdoing.”

  “Forgetting you’ve done murder doesn’t render you innocent,” Walter spat back at him.

  “Enough, gentlemen. Your dispute will be settled by due process, not by bickering or insults.” Sir Richard waved a hand, indicating the direction they must take, and fell into step beside Lancelot and Clemence.

  Lancelot could feel Walter’s inimical eyes on him, and experienced an unpleasant sensation between his shoulder blades as if a dagger were being slowly but surely pushed home. If only he were not now in the hands of the law! They could have settled this dispute like men—in hand-to-hand combat. He had no objection to risking his body to keep Clemence, but it would be Walter who spilled the most blood.

  He wouldn’t give the scurvy knave the satisfaction of turning around. Gripping Clemence’s hand, he strode forward, his mind working. If only he could remember the circumstances under which he’d been attacked all those years ago. That would settle things once and for all.

  “Lancelot—you still haven’t told me what happened.” There was an edge to Clemence’s voice that he knew only too well.

  “Put simply, the justice needed to determine if there is a case to answer, and if so, which court session I should attend. Walter brought no witnesses to substantiate the claim that I strangled Paris. He’d wagered on having a woman to support him—our Mistress Wentworth, no less. But he was given no chance to locate her since my interrogation was brought forward. In the meantime, the issue over the lack of a body became of great significance.”

  Alack! How grim it was to think of his brother as no more than earthly remains—just bones, dust, and clay. All life came to this in the end, but Paris, he was sure, had been taken before his time, and that was unforgivable. Now that it came down to it, Lancelot was as keen to find out the truth as Walter pretended to be.

  “So, the absence of a body or a witness caused a conundrum. As, eventually, did the fact I kept scratching the back of my head, as I’m apt to do when anxious, apparently.”

  Sir Richard leaned forward and looked at Clemence. “Mistress. Master. I know not what to call you—it is an infuriating habit, is it not?”

  Lancelot resisted the urge to roll his eyes. He undoubtedly had a legion of annoying habits but, currently, he felt inclined to keep them all. Especially as this one, in particular, might help prove his innocence.

  He continued with his story, buoyed up by the feel of Clemence’s hand in his. “Asked what was wrong, I explained to Sir Richard about the injury you found when you washed my hair.”

  He hadn’t mentioned the scars on his back. Clemence’s reputation was already on the brink, as she was on public display, dressed as a man. No one need know the circumstances under which she’d discovered the scars but himself.

  “Sir Richard suggested we delay judgment until I was examined by a physician. If my brother, Paris, and I had fought, I might have slain him in self-defense, which would alter my sentence. Assuming his body were to be found and identified beyond doubt.”

  “I’m sure it will be,” muttered Walter, darkly.

  Lancelot increased his pace. He had no wish to be overheard by Walter. “Constable, would you do me the kindness of restraining my accuser as we walk? I’m having a private conversation.”

  Ideally, Walter should be in chains, languishing, as he had, in a cell, until the doctor’s pronouncement had been made. But that was not, it appeared, how the law worked. How uncomplicated life in the forest had seemed compared to this!

  “This is the physician’s house.” Sir Richard stopped in front of a high, jettied building with its own cobbled area in front and a potted bay tree on either side of the main door.

  “You’d better wait outside.” Clemence still looked shaken, and he didn’t want her submitted to any further shocks. Especially if things didn’t turn out as he hoped.

  “Nay! Send me not away.” She had that stubborn set to her chin with which he was now familiar.

  As the door opened to reveal a middle-aged serving woman, Sir Richard suggested, “I’m certain a private chamber can be found where Mistress Clemence and her groom can change back. You have already aroused interest in Walden, sir, but if word gets out about her little trick, it will cause a sensation.”

  Lancelot stood back, letting Clemence enter the house ahead of him. “Aye—why did you exchange clothes with Perkin?”

  “I was afraid they would try you, and there’d be no one to speak up for you because Sir Kester and Master Hardy weren’t there. I didn’t think they’d let a woman in, so I decided to dress up as a man. And I was about to send Perkin off in all haste to fetch the gentlemen to your aid.”

  It sounded like a good ploy, proper or no. The temptation to swing her up into his arms and show her his appreciation surged within him, but he remembered his audience and their sober purpose, and promised himself to do it later. Reluctantly, he let go of her hand and allowed her to be taken off into the depths of the house.

  Doctor Attewell was a scholarly-looking man, with a velvet hat atop his skull cap, and wearing a dark batwing gown over the top of his doublet. Lancelot waited patiently while Sir Richard made the explanations. Walter, to his satisfaction, was made to wait in the passageway with the constable while he was escorted into a large-windowed room—presumably the physician’s surgery.

  It contained more paraphernalia than he could ever have imagined one person might possess. Huge tin-glazed drug jars lined the lower shelves, which extended around three-quarters of the room. Above these were numerous jars and pots, such as he’d seen in Clemence’s stillroom at Clairbourne, and in one corner was an outlandish apparatus fashioned entirely of glass jars and bag-shaped vessels, erected above a charcoal-filled chafing dish. The man was not only a physician but an apothecary as well.

  He was still gazing, fascinated, at all the trappings of the doctor’s art, when he was asked to remove his doublet and shirt and be seated on a stool before the window.

  He obliged and was initially subjected to a probing inspection of his head, accompanied by a series of sharply indrawn breaths and tuts. This was followed by a detailed examination of his back through the medium of a large glass lens. The doctor traced a finger across his shoulders.

  “You see these, Sir Richard? These are, I believe, wounds made by a knife, a series of shallow stabs as one might see on a soldier whose armor has been partially pierced. See, they have not gone deep enough, any of them, to be a killing blow.”

  Sir Richard stepped closer. “Were you ever in a battle?”

  “Nay. At least, not that I recall.”

  “I’m surprised you recall anything,” the doctor retorted. “Considering that wound on your pate.”

  “It might account for my loss of memory, might it not?” Lancelot glanced sideways and saw Sir Richard cup his chin in one hand as he pondered the physician’s words. Good. Anything that cast doubt on his guilt was welcome. He didn’t want to believe he could have killed Paris.

  “So, how might I have come by such a wound?” he asked.

  “As it is so neatly placed on the back of your skull, I would say it was done by a well-aimed blunt object, such as a club, or a tree branch.”

  “Not a weapon as such?” Sir Richard sounded puzzled.

  “If it were a polearm or an ax, it would have left a cleft, not a dent. And a stone, or uneven object, would have smashed the bone into more fragments around the wound.”

  Lancelot’s mind was racing, and the tension tightened in his chest. “What might such a blow do to a man, sir, other than blot out parts of his memory?”

  “It could kill him. I can only imagine you’re blessed with a thick skull, as befits your statur
e, or you would not be speaking to us now. In your case, I imagine you were rendered unconscious for a considerable time.”

  Beads of sweat pricked Lancelot’s brow. “So, if I were in combat with my brother, Paris, and he hit me from behind, I could not have fought on and killed him.”

  “Nay. Impossible.”

  Sir Richard drummed his fingers on the oaken windowsill. “If there was a fight, you did not get your wounds from self-defense, as they would be on the front. It seems to me your brother must have attacked you, rendered you insensible, stabbed you numerous times in the back, and left you for dead. Then he fled the scene. You’re lucky to have survived.”

  He was, indeed, lucky. But how could that scrawny, scholarly boy from the portrait have done such a thing, and for what reason? Paris was the heir to Emborough, not he. As the younger brother, Lancelot would have posed no threat.

  He remembered the blood in his vision. Could it have been his own?

  “What if there was a third party involved in this affray?” He reached for his shirt and twined it between his fingers. “What if my brother was murdered, and I stumbled on the scene, whereupon his attacker then assaulted me, lest I reveal his crime? This third person, who would not have expected me to survive the cowardly blows he dealt me, must have panicked when I resurfaced a few weeks ago. Afraid I would remember what I’d seen, he consequently tried to poison me. I can only think of one person who would benefit from my demise.”

  Sir Richard’s head swiveled toward the door, beyond which Walter was waiting. “That is a grievous charge.”

  Lancelot pulled at his shirt until the seams creaked. “As is the charge that I murdered my own brother for gain.”

  “You’ve been poisoned, too?” Doctor Attewell was shaking his head incredulously. “You are made of stern stuff, sir. I should like to question you further.”

  Sir Richard made an impatient noise. “There’s no time to make a study of him, Doctor. This case perplexes me. I should decree that it go before the Midsummer assizes, so it may be judged by a higher authority. But now I know not who should be the accused—Lancelot de Glanville or Walter.”

  Lancelot stared at his hands, the knuckles white where they clutched the linen of his shirt. It seemed Walter de Glanville had stolen everything from him. If he lost this battle, the man would take Clemence, too. He’d rather be pierced by a thousand arrows than see that happen.

  “From what little I recall of the workings of English law, only evidence or reliable witness testimony can resolve so serious a matter. If you could reserve judgment, Sir Richard, until I’ve had time to acquire evidence that might lay the guilt at Walter’s doorstep, I’d be most grateful.”

  “You may not be able to prove he’s a murderer.”

  “No.” Lancelot dragged his now-crumpled shirt over his head, then shouldered into his doublet. “But I accuse him of being a thief. Is that cause enough for the constable to search his house? And enough for you to detain him? He may send out for witnesses, if he has any, as I know the law wishes to appear fair.”

  Derisive snorts from both the doctor and Sir Richard surprised him. Not bothering to lace up his doublet, he faced the justice of the peace. “You dismiss my suggestion?”

  “Nay—’tis only your expectation that the law is fair, sir. We do our best, but ’tis no easy thing to achieve. I shall permit the search, and I would also wish to know more of this poisoning claim.”

  Lancelot thought about the Black Bull and its proximity to Emborough. He didn’t want to set his neighbors against him before he’d even been granted possession. “I shan’t cast unwise aspersions. The incident occurred at an inn.”

  “Most magnanimous of you. So, we’ll deal with the theft claim in the first instance. Then, if Walter is found guilty, we can think about tracking down his accomplices in the attempted poisoning case.”

  “There is also an abduction that could be laid to Walter’s account.” Tracing the men who’d taken Clemence would be hard, but to save himself, he needed to amass as much evidence as possible against his stepbrother.

  He wondered who had colluded with Walter at the Black Bull—assuming he hadn’t poisoned the pasty himself. Lancelot rather hoped he had, when he recollected that the punishment for poisoners was to be repeatedly dipped in a vat of boiling lead.

  He rubbed the back of his head. So many difficulties, so many complexities. He needed someone who had lived in this world longer than him to unravel them. Sir Kester Bayliss had helped before and seemed a levelheaded fellow, so he could be applied to. And if Emborough was legally Lancelot’s, he could afford to employ Master Hardy to mete out the punishment Walter deserved. Brother be damned, family name be damned—so long as Walter was punished for the death of Paris, and his unforgivable treatment of Clemence, it would be worth it.

  Clemence! She must be chewing her nails off in frustration, wanting to know what was going on. He stood abruptly.

  “I thank you, good sirs, for your valuable assistance and insight. I must now organize my campaign against yonder gentleman.” He tilted his head toward the door. “If his house is to be searched, I suggest he takes my place in the cell while ’tis done so he can neither remove evidence that would incriminate him nor seed the place with clues detrimental to me. I hope we’ll meet again under more pleasant circumstances.”

  Giving them his bow, he silently congratulated himself on his rapid improvement in manners and wondered whether it was something he’d learned from Clemence. Or was he simply remembering the behavior of a gentleman?

  Walter lurked in the passageway, detained by the constable’s hand on his arm. He lifted his head as Lancelot appeared.

  “A fine way to treat me, your own brother. But as you needed to be rid of one, I can’t imagine you’d welcome the other. As soon as you’re gone, I shall have your precious Emborough. And your woman, too. Your only inheritance will be a crowd-pleasing public execution.”

  Having expected much this sort of reaction, Lancelot merely raised an eyebrow. “The courts shall decide what is to become of Emborough. Keep your threats to yourself—they mean nothing to me.” He gazed at the handsome face with its bitter mouth and cruel eyes. If the law failed to find out Walter’s sins, he would find them. And if Walter had killed Paris, there would be a reckoning.

  “Lancelot! You look so solemn. Did it not go well?”

  Suddenly, Clemence was there, her presence like the sun after rain, and his focus shifted.

  “Let us leave these gentlemen to their business.” He hurried her outside, glad to turn his back on the smirking, devious face of his stepbrother.

  “In some ways, I’m sorry I advised you to don your own clothes. Seeing you in man’s garb was… intriguing.”

  She slapped at him. “This is no time for flirtation, sir. What happened in there?”

  Briefly, he told her, then looked up and down the street. “Where’s Perkin?”

  “As soon as he was dressed, I sent him back to tell my parents I’d been delayed, and why, and to appraise Sir Kester of what’s happened. Are you a free man?”

  “Aye. The manacles will shortly be on Walter’s wrists, but I know not for how long. He must await Her Majesty’s justice, and we must do what we can to expose the truth.”

  He gazed down at her, noting the fresh roses in her cheeks, and the charmingly tousled look of her hair. “I suppose this means we have only one horse between us now.”

  She pulled a face. “It does. I hadn’t thought of that.”

  “I’m sure the beast can manage two. Come.”

  “Where are we going?”

  Somewhere they could be alone. He’d had plenty of time to think while lingering in that cell, and the inability to act had eaten at him like a canker. There were things he needed to say to Clemence. And things he yearned to do.

  “To restore you to Clairbourne Manor, of course. Mayhap en route, we might return to my holly glade and collect my shoes. In case they are of use as evidence, or to help restore further mem
ories.”

  She gaped up at him. “Does this mean you’re actually going to let me see where your den is hidden?”

  He’d like to show her a great deal more than that. But he needed to get her promise first. Taking her hand, he hurried her back to the stable yard, removed the sidesaddle, and hoisted her onto her mare’s back. Jumping up behind her, he pulled her against him and whispered in her ear, “Mistress Clemence Fitzpayne, will you marry me?”

  Chapter Twenty

  Clemence was given no time to answer. No sooner was she settled across Sorrel’s neck than Lancelot urged the horse to a canter, bouncing her up and down, so she had to cling on to the mare’s mane to steady herself. As soon as they were out of the town, he dug his heels in, urging the horse to a gallop. She twisted, throwing her arms around Lancelot’s sturdy waist and hanging on for dear life as they sped along the highway.

  “You’re. Mad,” she managed, digging her fingers into his hard muscles. “You’ll. Kill. Us. Both.”

  “Nay. I am just feasting on freedom at the moment. Can you not feel it?”

  She felt the laughter build up in his stomach, let it spill over her, ensnaring her in his pleasure. Aye, it did feel like freedom—just the pair of them riding bareback, unconstrained by company, ignoring propriety, and caring nothing for risk. But he’d asked her a question. Did he not require an answer?

  “You said something about marriage,” she gasped out, ducking to avoid a protruding tree branch.

  “I did. But if I remember aright, a young lady likes to be given time to ponder her answer. I know I need not approach your father, as he virtually thrust you into my arms when he discovered I was heir to Emborough.”

  He could trust her not to be influenced by such concerns—she would have taken him were he as poor as a church mouse. But would it signal the end of her hopes to become a courtier? To be a maid-of-honor to Queen Elizabeth?