Valentine

by Heather Grothaus

  The room was full of men and serving girls, dressed—to Mary’s chagrin—exactly as she was. The girls floated around the tables, hosting males of seemingly every nationality and caste; some wore the fine dress of officers, some the rough costumes of the peasantry. There were those clearly hailing from foreign shores, with long, colorful robes and capes, and Mary even saw a pair of turbans bobbing above the heads of those gathered.

  All of the men were heavily armed, it seemed, with long swords, curved blades, and sheaths lashed to their legs. Mary saw quivers and crossbows, bundles of unknown contents strapped across backs, satchels looped securely over torsos.

  It was as if they were readying for a war.

  A serving girl swept from the kitchen, bearing a full tray identical to Mary’s, but paused next to her to lean close.

  “You’d better move lest you find yourself out of doors on your arse without pay,” the girl warned in a heavy accent, her spotty face betraying her youth. “There’ll be time a plenty to choose the one you’ll have for the night once they’re into their cups proper. No worries—I was new once as well.” And then the young servant fixed a sultry smile on her face and moved off into the crowd.

  The tray was growing heavier with each passing moment, and the only thing Mary could contemplate now was relieving herself of her burden and locating Hamish. It seemed the quickest way to do that was to make her way among the patrons, who appeared to reach up for a fresh tankard at will.

  “Looks as though I’m to play at being someone else after all,” she muttered wryly to herself. “Valentine will be so pleased.” Mary seized the handle of a tankard from her tray and drained it of its contents for courage, her stomach soon after gurgling loudly and sending up a large and certainly unladylike belch. Then she set off into the room, trying to avoid the largest puddles and grasping hands as best she could.

  She at last reached the far side of the room, her tray blessedly empty, and paused near the hearth to wipe at her brow, letting the round wooden platter hang near her knee. She now had a deeper respect for those in service. In the past quarter hour, Mary had been pawed at, pinched, caressed, and spoken to in such lurid foreign tongues that she was glad she had been unable to decipher the words, although their meaning had been quite clear. Mary vowed to herself that she would more thoroughly appreciate the efforts of those waiting on her in the future.

  She caught sight of Hamish, then, at a table near the center of the melee. He appeared to be engaged in a rather serious conversation with a man whose back was turned toward Mary. Her forehead wrinkled as she noted the man’s flowing red hair and studded leather tunic.

  Studs of that sort would twinkle in the firelight, Mary knew.

  She gave a shiver, as if she’d just seen a ghost, and then laughed nervously at herself. What a ninny she was! Mary decided she would simply wait until Hamish disengaged from the man, and then she would follow the Queen’s proprietor back to the kitchen.

  But when Hamish stood from the table and stepped away, he walked instead to the front of the room, where a tall wooden crate had been laid down in front of the conspicuously barred entrance.

  The gathering obviously did not want any surprise arrivals.

  Hamish stepped up on the crate and held his hands high, calling for the room’s attention.

  “Welcome, friends, to the Queen’s Inn,” Hamish announced loudly. “It is my honor to host such an ignominious group of gentleman—and I’m sore hoping it never happens again!”

  The crowd roared with laughter.

  Mary looked back to the man Hamish had left, who was now standing as he adjusted his belt and sword and swept his red hair back over his shoulder with a toss of his head. Mary caught a glimpse of a craggy nose, a pointed chin . . .

  The potion must have addled her brains; surely she could not be in the same room with the very man she was racing back to England to marry. She squeezed her eyes shut tightly.

  When she opened them, the redheaded man had yanked a serving girl to his side and bent her back over his arm. Mary saw his face clearly before he thrust it between the wench’s breasts.

  Mary’s breath lodged in her throat. It was him.

  “You already know you have been summoned here to join in a special and dangerous mission,” Hamish continued, “but let us now learn the details of the thing. It is with great pleasure that I introduce your most generous benefactor, the hero of both the English Crown and the king of Jerusalem, baron of the Cinque Ports, the lord of Beckhamshire—”

  “What?” Mary gasped as her brows pulled together.

  “Lord Glayer Felsteppe!”

  The men erupted with calls of “Huzzah!” as Mary Beckham’s betrothed stepped to the makeshift platform and raised his hands, as if displaying himself, basking in his audience’s approval.

  Oh my God, Mary thought, her anger turning quickly to anxiety. If he sees me, I’m finished. She put her head down and started to move away from the wall, attempting to keep her body angled toward the back of the room.

  A hand grasped her arm and jerked her back. Mary’s head snapped up, her eyes wide, but it was only the spotty young serving girl.

  “No,” the girl whispered, pulling Mary back against the wall. “Be still. We’ll not be punished for a rest now, but we might should we interrupt.”

  “My esteemed colleagues,” Glayer Felsteppe began in a crisp and proper accent that Mary knew all too well, and the group bellowed with laughter. Glayer’s thin lips split in a wide grin. The front of his tunic was wet, likely with drink, and Mary felt suddenly nauseated.

  “I am infinitely heartened by your willingness to join with me on such a perilous mission. For, as many of you already know, the men we seek are not only a danger to the rulers of the Christian world but a threat to the safety of citizens everywhere.”

  “We don’t care what they’ve done,” a man shouted from near the back. “Tell us who and how much, so we can get back to drinking!”

  Glayer Felsteppe chuckled and held his palms toward the crowd. “I shall get to that in but a moment, good man,” he promised. “I, too, have a thing or two I’d like to attend this night—a blonde and a brunette, to be precise.” His audience whistled and stomped their approval.

  “So much for undying devotion,” Mary muttered.

  The servant girl leaned toward her and whispered, “They’re all pigs, ain’t they?”

  “Indeed,” Mary said between her teeth.

  “You will each receive a small stipend this evening as you formally enlist to serve the royal heads of those sponsoring you—twenty pieces of English silver, if that should suit you well enough.”

  The men banged their tankards on the tables and cheered until Mary’s betrothed was forced to call for silence once more.

  “Let that coin fund you well as you search for the criminals we seek. Whoever succeeds in capturing them, alive or dead—I recommend, of course, the latter—your reward upon their captivity or interment shall be—” he paused dramatically, and Mary saw nearly the entire crowd of men lean forward in a wave—“one thousand silver pieces!”

  “Each?!” one man cried out rapturously.

  “Each,” Felsteppe assured with a sage nod.

  If the men had been enthusiastic before, now they were shocked into murmuring silence, their heads bowing together with their compatriots, already scheming.

  “They could be anywhere,” Felsteppe continued. “The last reliable word we have is that one was spotted in Prague, and so they may have split their little group apart to hide solitarily.”

  Mary’s spine stiffened. Prague?

  “One is a commoner, and so may be difficult to locate if he has taken up once again with the peasantry. He is notable, though, for his size and his coloring: Roman Berg. A Norseman who has worked as a stone cutter. White-headed. Beast of a man. Strong, but largely a coward. I would not recommend engaging him alone.” Glayer held out his hands and bobbled them as if they were scales while his mouth quirked. “Perhaps a gr
oup of four or five.”

  “No,” Mary whispered to herself.

  “Next: Constantine Gerard and Adrian Hailsworth—both titled nobility until quite recently.” The crowd snickered at Felsteppe’s sly grin. “As well as the two most likely to remain paired. Unnatural friendship, I have on good authority. Gerard has experience on the battlefield and would make a dangerous opponent if challenged. It would be best to come at him from behind if you are at all able. Hailsworth has little battle experience but is learned and cunning to the extreme. Do not underestimate him.”

  “Stop,” Mary whispered as her eyes sought Hamish’s face in the room. The blond man watched with as much interest as everyone else in the crowd. “Don’t say his name.”

  “The final mark—” Mary’s stomach flipped at the word, so recently entered into her vocabulary—“Valentine Alesander. A rogue Spanish noble known for his talent for disguise and as an exquisite polyglot. He can fade into the citizenry of any country, a fact that was his only saving grace in Damascus. His own family has been searching for him for the past ten years, trying in vain to recover a fortune stolen after Alesander murdered his own sister. Find him and you may be rewarded with whatever gold he is carrying.”

  Mary felt as though she might vomit as she watched Hamish’s face, his smile having faded away into an intense look of—pain? Anger? She couldn’t tell.

  The world’s greatest assassin.

  The city’s bleedin’ me dry for taxes—I need all the coin I can lay hand to.

  Felsteppe continued. “If you have any questions, or any clues on the whereabouts of these vicious criminals that you care to share with your friends—” the men laughed—“bring them to me as you make your mark and collect your stipend. There are likenesses of the wanted in the back of the room. I think that is all. Good luck and Godspeed to you, gentlemen.” He stepped down from the box and was immediately surrounded by mercenaries and the woman he had groped earlier.

  Mary looked around but could no longer locate Hamish in the crowd. It was as if he had vanished.

  She had to get back to Valentine, and they had to leave the Queen. Now. She stepped away from the wall, then stopped.

  They had no coin. Their possessions were all lost, as far as Mary knew. Her eyes went to the man she was supposed to wed upon her return to England. Glayer Felsteppe had one arm wrapped around the serving wench, and no fewer than ten men were vying for his attention.

  Mary recalled the night—a lifetime ago, it now seemed—when Glayer Felsteppe had shown her his purse in a hidden compartment of his tunic. And yet she hesitated. If Felsteppe caught her, if he saw her here in Hamburg, her future was no more.

  But he was already flaunting her father’s title, as if Beckham Hall had always belonged to him. And he was helping whoever had betrayed Chastellet and Valentine’s friends. He wanted them dead.

  He wanted Valentine dead.

  Mary squared her shoulders and lifted her tray, taking a circuitous route toward where Felsteppe stood. She snatched up empty tankards as she went and placed them on the platter to hide her face, balancing the tray up on her shoulder. She came to the table at Felsteppe’s back and squeezed between, pressing herself against him and then jostling the girl away from his side.

  The serving girl turned her head to glare at Mary over Felsteppe’s shoulder, and then snarled something quite nasty-sounding in another language before giving Mary a shove, sending the empty tankards tumbling onto the tray. Mary ducked away sheepishly as Felsteppe only glanced back at the commotion, and then skittered toward the kitchen, her eyes darting around the room for signs of Hamish.

  Nothing.

  She sped into the kitchen and slid the tray of tankards onto a bench atop a pile of discarded knives, withdrawing her fist quickly and shoving it down into the folds of her skirts. She ignored the fat cook’s shouts as she fled the room.

  Mary started up the narrow stairwell with her blood pounding in her ears, carrying a blade in one hand and Glayer Felsteppe’s weighty purse in the other.

  Chapter 18

  Valentine dozed fitfully, each breath searing his throat and lungs, the skin of his face feeling as if it had melted into the rough coverlet of the bed. His back, arms, neck—everything ached as though in a vise.

  Maria would be pleased to at last be right about something.

  Her image swirled in his partial consciousness, and brought with it the olfactory hallucination of spring flowers swaying in the breeze, the auditory fantasy of her whispering his name in passionate desire as he took her in a bright field of soft grass. Her innocent, creamy skin pressed against his, cool like wet silk. That she wanted him meant that he was purged of all his past misdeeds, cleansed of his sins, made whole and honorable. Valentine. Valentine. Val—

  “—entine!” The screeching was not at all like her voice in his dream. It was rather unpleasant, and he wished to remain in the springtime field with the naked Maria, the loving Maria, the quiet Maria . . .

  Her palm was indeed cool, but the fantasy effect was largely lost as she slapped his cheek soundly. He struggled to raise his head.

  She slapped him again.

  “That was no necessary, mi amor,” he slurred. “I am awake now.”

  “Get. Up.” she insisted as she seized his tunic and began yanking him upright. “Getupgetupgetup!” Not happy with him sitting, she struggled to pull him from the bed completely. “Do you have your boots—yes, good. Come on!”

  “Maria,” Valentine said, holding out his palm and easing his backside down on the mattress again. “What has you so alarmed? I think you were right—I have acquired some slight illness. I am no well enough to—”

  A polite rap sounded at the door, and then Hamish’s voice called through the wood. “Va—” He broke off for a moment. “Er . . . my friends? May I enter?”

  Valentine opened his mouth to call for his friend to come, but before he could make a sound Maria clamped one hand over his lips, the other behind his skull.

  “No!” she whispered harshly. “Valentine, do not say one word!” She ran lightly to the door and leaned against it with one shoulder, holding her fist up in front of her chest.

  He saw that she gripped what appeared to be a long curved kitchen knife.

  “Ah . . . Hamish?” she called.

  “Yes, milady?” Valentine’s friend answered. “May I come in?”

  “We are . . . ah, indisposed at the moment.”

  “Is . . . everything all right, milady?” Hamish asked, and Valentine heard the suspicion in his friend’s voice.

  Valentine was a bit suspicious himself at the moment.

  “Oh, yes,” Maria said eagerly, and then he saw her face turn bright red and she squeezed her eyes shut. “It’s only . . . we’re . . . we’re naked.”

  Valentine couldn’t help his hoot of laughter. He must truly be dreaming with fever.

  Beyond the door, Hamish answered with his own chuckle. “I’ll give you a moment, then.”

  “A moment?” Valentine called out in mock outrage. “Better an hour, Hamish!”

  “I’ll be back,” Hamish assured them through the thin wood. And then, as if as an afterthought, “Do not venture below without me, though, eh?”

  “Yes, yes, of course,” Maria agreed.

  “Now go away, you bastard!” Valentine ordered. He was feeling quite fine at the moment, although he had no idea what use Maria had for a knife. Perhaps she intended to force herself on him.

  He hoped he could summon the strength. He tried sitting up straighter to test himself, but his legs above his feet felt rather rubbery, and he let himself go loose again.

  No matter. Maria was an exemplary rider.

  Maria seemed to listen intently at the crack of the door for Hamish’s retreating footsteps before she rushed back toward him.

  Valentine craned his neck to look up at her. “You can no longer resist me and wish to take advantage of my weakened state, yes?”

  “What?” Her face twisted in horrified
confusion.

  “Very well,” he said and allowed himself to fall backward onto the mattress. It caused a pain in his head, but he hoped Maria would make all discomfort go away very soon. “I surrender.”

  “I can’t understand you when you speak Spanish,” she hissed as she pulled him upright again.

  His head swam. “I was speaking Spanish?” he asked and then looked at her closely. “Am I still speaking it?”

  She sighed. “No. Get up. We have to leave, right now. Before Hamish returns.”

  Valentine shook his head. “I can no, Maria. Whatever it is, it can wait until morning. Did you happen to remember my drink?”

  She dropped to her knees before him.

  “Oh, ho!” he said with a smile. “The drink can wait, I think.”

  But Maria did not return his smile. Instead she framed his face with her palms, and through the heat of his fever, Valentine saw the tears in her big eyes.

  “Valentine, please,” she pleaded. “I know you are very ill. I know. But if we don’t leave—right now—neither of us will see the morning. We’ll be dead. Do you understand me? Dead.”

  Her words sobered him slightly, but he could not seem to shake the entirety of his confusion. “Where are we to go? I have no strength. No coin. No horse. What can you expe—”

  “The first thing we must do is get out of the Queen alive,” she insisted. “And we must do that now. If you can help me by walking out of here with your own strength, I promise I will get you out of danger.”

  “But I am protecting you,” he argued, and reached up to place his hand over the back of one of her palms.

  She smiled at him gently, her face so full of the tenderness Valentine had craved for so many years, it almost brought a misting to his eyes.

  “Not this night,” she said. “Tonight, it is I who must protect you. Ready?”

  Valentine turned his lips into her palm and kissed it firmly. Then he pushed her away as he stood up, swayed for a moment, the room blurring madly, and then gained his balance.

  “Vamanos,” he said.