Defiant

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Defiant Page 13

by Kennedy, Kris


  “Have you something to contribute, Father?” he inquired, his gravelly voice filled with all the false solicitousness that arrogance lent it. Upon a time, Mouldin had been considered handsome. Peter recalled those days, how Mouldin’s square, diffident face would lighten with a smile when the king gave him yet another hostage to hold.

  “A sketch will hardly convince anyone of anything,” Peter said mildly. “Least of all that you have me. You might be trying to sell them a merchant’s grandfather for all they know.”

  Mouldin nodded to his sergeant, and he joined the others who were sitting, some half slumbering, while others were on watch. “You are too modest, Father,” Mouldin said, coming closer. “Your sketchings are distinctive. No one has your talent. And although you’ve been gone ten years, ’tis well remembered.”

  “Flattery will not serve you. I still intend to recommend your excommunication”

  Mouldin crossed his arms, smiling faintly. “I do not flatter, Father. ’Tis the truth.”

  Peter leaned back against a tree trunk; it had been a long time since he’d slept out of doors, on hard ground. It was chilly with no fire and the spring breezes pushing through the trees, and although the moonshine was bright where it shone down between the branches, it gave no warmth, just a silvery sheen of illumination.

  “What a pleasure this will be, then,” he said. “Two such accomplished men, telling tales in a dark wood. Ah, but then, you have only the one skill.”

  Mouldin laughed again. “We cannot all be as blessed in our array of talents as you, Father.”

  “You could attempt it.”

  Peter was amusing Mouldin no end, for the criminal smiled again. “Alas, I am good at only one thing.”

  “Auctioning slaves.”

  Mouldin’s look hardened, but he maintained his smile. “Or priests. You should be careful of what you say, Father, and to whom.”

  Peter held out his hand. “We see where such care has led me. Into a cold wood with an outlawed slave trader.”

  “’Twasn’t care that ruined you, Father. ’Twas giving it up.” Mouldin stepped away from the tree and sat opposite Peter on a log, his forearms over his knees. “Why in God’s name did you ever come back to England? They’ve been hunting you for years throughout France. Even I took a turn or two on commission. Never found you. Never would have, either. Unless you came back.”

  “I was called for.”

  Mouldin shook his head. “You were tricked. The rebels suggested inviting you to England to assist in the negotiations. Then they hired me to abduct you.”

  Peter regarded him levelly. “You shall have a very uncomfortable afterlife, Guillaume Mouldin.”

  He gave a bark of laughter.

  “You’re quite high-spirited,” Peter observed; then he coughed. “Have you considered mummery, or tumbling, perhaps? You could leave off auctioning human souls forevermore.”

  “No one is paying for souls, Father. Keep yours.” Mouldin reached into his pack, drew out a wrap, and, surprisingly, handed it over.

  “You will still burn in Hell,” Peter said, but he reached for it. It was a wolf pelt. Warm. Mouldin watched as he wrapped it around his shoulders and leaned back against the tree again.

  “You are no fool, Father. You could not have believed their purposes were benevolent. Why did you come?”

  “Langton is a friend. The charter will serve England better than many kings have done.”

  “Why did you come?” Mouldin asked again, more slowly, more insistently. He had a nose like a rat’s.

  Peter shook his head. “Everyone is very interested in my purposes. I think I shall keep my own counsel.”

  He coughed again, and this time it lasted awhile. It was getting worse. He didn’t know how much longer he had, which was why he’d come. Archbishop Stephen Langton’s calling for him had been . . . a sign. It was time. He had one thing left to do, one undone thing nagging at his heart. If he could be of use in the negotiations, that would be good, no doubt, but his soul had personal reparations to make. He’d been remiss. Let things go. It was time.

  Mouldin watched him with that insouciant arrogance that had always marked the Hunter. Really, the man was far too self-assured for an outlaw.

  “I doubt, of course, that you shall be successful in your endeavors,” Peter said blithely.

  “Endeavors?” Mouldin sounded amused.

  Peter nodded complacently. It never hurt to rile people up. It often helped. He’d spent much of his younger days doing just that. Kings and counts and petty princes; he’d made a few foes. Perhaps he missed it. Perhaps that was also a small part of what had drawn him back. The desire to stir the pot one last time.

  He smiled inwardly, then sighed. He had never been suited to the life of a churchman. Too contrary. Too obstinate.

  Of course, Mouldin did not seem to mind. This was not a flattering thought, that Peter had earned the respect of a slave trader. It made one reflect poorly on one’s passage through life.

  Mouldin was looking at him with a mixture of amusement and coldhearted appraisal. “How do you see my failure transpiring, Father?”

  “Perhaps you will get pierced by an arrow through your chest. Perhaps someone you do not want will learn our whereabouts before it is convenient. Perhaps I will cough on you and my bad little seeds will enter you.”

  Mouldin leaned away almost imperceptibly. Peter smiled wanly. What he had was not the sort of thing that good air or leechings could cause or cure. It was all inside of him, he felt it, eating away at him, deep in his chest. It was all his.

  His words had strummed some chord, because Mouldin turned to his soldier. “Did you encounter any problems? Anyone stop you, follow you, question you on what you were about?”

  The man jerked to attention, his teeth sawing on a strip of dried meat. He removed it to say, “Nay, sir. In London and Windsor, we passed the message to street urchins and they did the work. No one ever saw us.”

  Mouldin nodded, but the soldier hadn’t finished. “The only one who took any notice a’tall was the boy in the stables at the inn.”

  Peter felt his raw, shredded chest seize up, just for a second. Pain ripped down his arm in a swift, clenching bolt, then subsided.

  Mouldin’s head snapped around. “A boy? In the stables?”

  “Aye, well, close to a man. ’Twas nothing of import. He tried to stop us, we knocked him flat.”

  “How old?”

  The soldier glanced between Mouldin and Peter, detecting the note of sudden, lethal quiet in his commander’s voice. “Fifteen, mayhap sixteen.”

  Peter kept his breathing steady, kept the faint, mocking smile on his face, as if this news meant nothing to him.

  Mouldin turned around slowly. “What do you know of this, Father?”

  “Of a stableboy in England?” Peter coughed before continuing. “Stableboys, Mouldin? Is this what we are reduced to? Your corruptions are finally decaying your mind. Rotting it away.”

  Mouldin stared. “Good God, the legends have come true. ‘Whither goest the priest, so goeth the heirs.’” He snapped back around to the soldier. “I’m sending you back. You and the others who saw the boy. Where shall they go, Father? The inn? A port?”

  “Hell?”

  All traces of Mouldin’s amusement had fled. His face was hard. “That day will come soon enow.”

  “Angels weep.”

  “He is at the inn?”

  “What inn?”

  Mouldin turned to his men. “We want a fifteen-year-old boy.” He aimed a crafty look at Peter. “And a girl? Woman, by now. Is she here as well?”

  Peter crossed his arms over his chest. “What do you think?”

  “I think I cannot risk losing what I already have. I will ride on with you. The others will go back.”

  There was no point in pretense anymore. He looked at Mouldin and said coldly, “You will never find her.”

  Mouldin smiled. “We need not find her, priest. We only need him. She will follow, wil
l she not? She always has.”

  “You may not wish for that.”

  Mouldin paused. “What is that supposed to mean?”

  Peter shrugged, the picture of unconcern. He was accomplished in the giving of nonchalant shrugs; he’d had an apt tutor. Eva dispensed them like tinctures, five or six for every tick-mark that burned away on a candle. He’d scolded her on it, and she had begun raising her eyebrows instead. Even now, in the dark and danger, he could smile, thinking of Eva. My, how he missed her. “Perhaps he is not alone.”

  Mouldin’s gaze sharpened. “You mean the girl. The girl will be with him.”

  “I do not mean ‘the girl.’”

  They eyed each other in mutual, silent animosity; then Mouldin snapped his fingers. His men stepped forward. All lined up, like ducks in a row, decided Peter.

  Mouldin rose to give orders. “South, then west toward the inn. Keep your eyes open. Find them, and bring them to me at Gracious Hill.”

  They tromped off, leaving behind Mouldin and one other soldier. Peter shook his head. “I do grow weary of seeing good men die.” He brightened. “But then, your men are not good.”

  Mouldin was pulling a thin woolen blanket up to his chin. “No, they are not.” He shifted to face the fire, lay down.

  Peter coughed. He knew he was dying; it had been coming for years now, the little cough, then the little blood, then the ever-present cough that Eva had made twenty tinctures and teas for. He was past teas. He was past terror. Now, the thought of dying was . . . visionary. A white knight on a horse, riding toward him. It was not frightening. What was frightening was the thought that Eva and Roger would be left behind, unprotected and worse, unprepared.

  “You must feel the need to combust in flames of righteous indignation, Father, surrounded by all these lost souls.”

  “I have been surrounded by more lost souls than this, Hunter. You do not impress.”

  Mouldin closed his eyes. “When was that, priest?”

  “John’s court.”

  Mouldin gave a bark of laughter. “Then you must be hoping the rebels offer a better price.”

  “I am hoping you get an arrow through your eye and fall off your horse into a river.”

  Mouldin opened his eyes, then closed them again. “You may get your wish one day.”

  Peter stared up the English stars, which were not so different from the French stars. “’Twasn’t a wish. ’Twas a prayer.”

  Mouldin rolled over and pulled the blanket to his chest. “God doesn’t listen to the likes of us, Father. I learned that a long time ago. The evidence is all around you. Sleep now; we ride long in the coming days. When we reach Gracious Hill, I know a woman.”

  “Of course you do.”

  “A midwife. She will tend your cough.”

  Peter stared at the dark sky, listening to the riders gallop off. How far back would Eva and Roger be? His heart felt so tight it was as if rope were looped around it, distending it under almost unbearable pressure. And when these skilled fighters came upon them? What chance had they then?

  He could only hope his veiled threats had some teeth, some power to create, that Eva—whom God had played a terrible trick upon by giving her one numinous gift, the power to bring light to any darkness, then plunged her into that darkness—had indeed found a protector, one who was not only careful with extraordinary women and brave young men but merciless and—yes, he’d name it—deadly to their very same enemies.

  Twenty-two

  Eva sat silently by the fire pit, covered in Jamie’s cloak. Jamie sat on the other side with his back against a downed log, his long legs stretched out in front. He’d flicked the edge of a lighter cape over his stomach and interlaced his fingers, resting them on his lap. He’d long ago closed his eyes, but Eva knew the slightest move and he’d be awake again.

  He wore the sleeveless black surcoat, which covered his mail shirt. The flat, metal, gray links of mail on his muscular arms looked like some swamp creature’s skin. Rock-hard with muscle, even in repose he was a magnificent beast.

  It was unfortunate, then, that she wanted to slip a hand between his thighs, like a little piece of parchment pressed between a door and a jamb, and feel his heat. But there it was, she thought bleakly.

  How long could one want, not even knowing it? Eva had wanted for a long time, and now all her secret longings had taken shape in the form of a man who could, and very likely might, destroy her and everyone she loved.

  But there it is, she thought bleakly. There he is.

  Jamie. Her hidden, forbidden desire.

  She angled her gaze up the smallest bit. What would he do if she walked over just now, knelt down beside him? Whip out a knife and hold it to her neck? Reel her in like a fish? Demand the answers he was allowing her to withhold?

  She was not so much a fool as to think she’d fooled him with her deflections. Eva had not fooled herself either. She was not an innocent. She knew how men wanted women, and she’d seen women want men. Right now, Eva was a woman who wanted a man, and there was nothing but the tempting notion of her hand between his thighs, the question of what she wanted to do once there.

  It was a little Socratic thing, this question. Like the lessons Father Peter used to engage her in, starting with some bit of knowledge you were certain of, then pushing you out onto the ledge of realization that you knew nothing whatsoever about that most familiar thing.

  Who is able to do the most harm to their enemies and good to their friends in time of sickness, Eva?

  A physician.

  And who is able to do best good and most harm at sea in a storm?

  A pilot.

  But in time of wellness, then, there is no need of the physician?

  But of course there is need.

  And on a calm sea, the pilot?

  Needful.

  Eva, needful.

  She wanted to kneel down in front of Jamie and unlace his leggings, those complicated things. Press her lips to his hard, flat belly, run her fingers up his chest. And mayhap he would rest his hands on her shoulders, lean down to kiss her? Cup her waist with his hands and pull her up to sit on his lap, part her lips with his and kiss her, as he had in the tavern? A rippling undulation moved through her.

  She felt quite wild now, thoroughly Socratic. His neck. She wanted his neck. She wanted to open her mouth and suck in his warm, salty skin. The days’ growth of hair beard would prickle her tongue, and she wanted that with a simple, sudden desperate longing.

  She would coax him to slide his hand down her hip as he’d done before, in that oh-so-gentle, oh-so-skillful way, and put his hot tongue inside her mouth with all his confidence. She could hear her own breath, passing through parted lips, loud in the quiet night air. She would open for him, kiss him back...

  She looked up farther and met his wide-open eyes.

  He was watching her. He knew.

  She drew back as if blown by a strong, steady wind. She turned away and rounded her mouth to release a hot, unsteady, silent breath.

  “Come to me.” His rumble shivered her from the inside out.

  It was a command in word, in tone, in everything but the unspoken energy that rode across the clearing like a tiger might prowl: Please.

  She reached for the ground blindly. Pressing her palm to the ground, she bent her knees stiffly and lowered herself down, facing away.

  “Come here, Eva.” His rough whisper rode up and over her body like the blowing wind.

  She lay on her side, facing the trees, stiff as a spike, hardly daring to breathe. Would he ask again?

  Oh, why did he not ask again? And again, and again, and again.

  She lay with her back to the fire and felt his blue gaze burning into her all night long, making her hotter than the flames.

  Twenty-three

  Eva had awakened in many states throughout her life: wet, cold, hungry, afraid. But never, in ten years of running, had she awoken as she did this morn: angry and aroused.

  She had dreamed of Jamie. Again.
All night long.

  The world was dim and utterly quiet, although a faint lightening hinted at a nearby dawn. She unrolled herself from the woolen warmth of Jamie’s cloak and sat up. The campsite was empty.

  Gog was gone.

  A cold pang snapped through her belly. She scrambled to her feet. A tall, dark shadow separated itself from a tree on the far side of the clearing. Ry, on watch. His arms were folded over his chest, his cape pulled and tucked within the bend, warding off the chill of the misty dawn. He looked like a dark tunnel of smoke, frozen in place amid the fog.

  She walked over and whispered, “Where is Roger?”

  He looked down at her. “Jamie took him.”

  More cold pangs, this time through her heart. “And where is Jamie?” she asked, carefully calm.

  Ry said quietly, “Scouting the road ahead. They will return.”

  She inhaled deeply, the cold pang unballing and warming, although why should these words, which could so easily be a lie, comfort her? She reached for her satchel. One small silver penny rolled out from its depths. She picked it up and considered it. It seemed like a hundred years ago that she’d sent Roger to bargain his way onto another boat for France at need. Had it only been yesterday?

  Ry was watching. “Thinking of running?” he asked quietly.

  She lifted the penny in the air. “It depends. How far will this English penny get me?”

  She could see the faint smile on his face as he stepped closer. “That coin is clipped, mistress. It would hardly buy you a cart ride to the fields.”

  She considered the penny, then him. “How do you know such things? And from so far away?”

  He looked over her shoulder into the wood, back on watch. “My father was a moneylender.”

  “Is it odd, for a Jew to be a knight like yourself?”

  “I am neither of these things, mistress. I am not a knight nor a Jew. My family was. I have declaimed everything but Jamie. And he is next.”

  She smiled as faintly as he had done. They were amusing each other in opaque ways, she and Ry. “So. You are the most common of things, like a wardrobe or a bedstead: a simple soldier.”

 

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