by Jude Chapman
Sunrise was breaking. He had been deposited in a bright and airy bedchamber, not his own, not his taste, frilly and feminine with lace and fine linens. A canopied bed stacked with layers of goose-down mattresses soothed his countless bruises and bumps. His blood-encrusted garb lay in a heap on the floor. A capacious tub sat conveniently next the latrine. He had been stripped, bathed, and wrapped like a corpse in its shroud. Beneath the winding sheet, he was mother naked. He didn’t remember any of it.
Sour of puss and mean of disposition, Nelda returned. Dispensing with modesty, his in particular, she replaced towels with a clean blouse belonging to one of her grown sons. When she finished, she laid his head gently against the feather pillows and covered him to the chin. He waited until the wooziness subsided before opening his eyes.
As soon as he did, she lashed out at him. “How a man can get drunk when he’s about to be hanged or worse is beyond my ken.”
“Wha’ better time?” His fractured words dribbled from split lips and swollen jaw. “B’sides, the drinking came afore, no’ after.”
“No excuse.”
He slid his tongue around, finding weals and blood clots, but his teeth were still intact. Nelda’s words slowly penetrated a hazy brain. “Wha’s worse ’n hanging?”
“Now that you ask …”
“Forge’ I did.”
“… many things, but let’s not belabor the point.”
“Agreed.”
Her husband having died five years past, Nelda was left with a lucrative goldsmith shop, three strapping sons, one beautiful daughter, and a tart mouth. Even though she fussed and grumbled like a crone, she wasn’t yet out of her thirties, and looked younger and fitter than many in their twenties. She fed Drake a potion of feverfew, chamomile, and lemon balm.
It tasted awful. He tried holding the goblet himself, but his hands were bloated and pain-filled. “Will I be a cripple?”
“Better a man has no hands than devilish ones to play with,” she said. And then, “Not if I have anything to say about it, you won’t.”
Enyd returned with a crock of broth balanced in her upraised hands. After lowering her sweet body next to his, she tucked a cloth beneath his chin, ladled out the broth, and held the spoon to his lips. He sipped. Her sparkling eyes and playful smile belied the innocence of her adorable face.
“Stephen’s gone for your father,” Nelda said, watching the byplay between the two. “They ought to be here in time to break fast.”
Drake’s hungry eyes begged for real food.
“Not you. You’re on liquids ’til I say other.”
The lass had been an afterthought in Nelda’s childbearing years, arriving several years after her sons. Though Enyd was at a perfect age to enjoy dalliances in flower-laden meadows, Nelda made it clear that her daughter was forbidden fruit when it came to the fitzAlan brothers. Drake had formed several theories about that, none of them good.
Footsteps on the back stairway announced the arrival of two men wearing spurs and swords. William fitzAlan entered first, his formidable presence filling the chamber. Red in the face, likely from the dressing down he’d already received from the lord of Itchendel, Stephen followed at a sheepish distance.
William greeted Nelda with a kiss and an aggrieved expression. He hurried to the bed and wordlessly examined his son, his touch gentle as he located every bruise, bump, contusion, abrasion, laceration, and cracked rib. Tears formed in William’s eyes. Tears formed in Drake’s eyes. Tears even formed in Nelda’s eyes. No tears formed in Stephen’s eyes, but Drake didn’t expect otherwise. Though identical twins in face and features, they were altogether different men. Drake showed everything he felt. Stephen held everything in. And as close as they’d been all of their lives, Drake didn’t always know what his brother was thinking.
Enyd hovered nearby, her curious eyes looking on. Anyone seeing the lass standing next to the lord of Itchendel would have seen what Drake now saw as an epiphany. Whereas Enyd looked nothing like her fair-haired mother or her redheaded father, she closely favored Old King Henri’s trusted seneschal. Bronze coloring from hair to skin, along with the same long nose Stephen and Drake inherited from William, marked her a fitzAlan through and through. Drake wondered why he had never noticed the resemblance before, but it was as plain as day to any observer with eyes and wit. His eyes flew to his father and thence to his nursemaid.
Nelda remarked the probing look in Drake’s bloodshot eyes and barked at her daughter. “Go below, Enyd.”
The girl took umbrage at her mother’s sharp tongue. “But—”
“The poultices ought to be ready. Now go!”
After the girl had left, William fitzAlan used a word no man uses unless completely drunk and in the company of equally drunk men unrelated to him. Stephen was the first recipient of Lord fitzAlan’s wrath. “You say you found your brother at Twyford Castle. How? What led you there?”
Stephen stepped forward, timid a first but then pulling himself erect. “Since Graham, Rufus, and Seward are … or were … Maynard’s drinking companions—”
“As were you!”
Stephen ignored the reproach. “When I didn’t find Drake at the de Lacy manor, the next best guess was the fitzHughs, and lastly the Twyfords.”
William fitzAlan’s temper was known far and wide, but no one experienced the repercussions more than Drake and Stephen. “Why didn’t you storm the castle? Why didn’t you muster help? Why did you wait like a thief in the night in case they happened to bring your brother out?”
“Should I have knocked on the drawbridge and demanded they raise the portcullis?”
“Yea! A resounding yea! Particularly since Twyford Castle is no more than a fortified pigsty, and a badly fortified one at that.” Next up for William’s verbal lashing was Drake. “Did you do it? Did you hack off Maynard of Clarendon’s genitals and fling them to the pye-dogs?”
“If you knew your son,” Nelda said, “you wouldn’t ask a foolish question the likes of that.”
“And how in God’s name did you allow yourself to get taken in the first place?”
“Four against one, he might have been able to handle,” Stephen said, coming to his brother’s defense. “Five against one is beyond even Drake fitzAlan’s ability.”
“What do I care about numbers when my sons’ lives are in the balance? Especially when they can do something about it. Which neither apparently did!” His sunburnt complexion deepened. As angry as he was, he was holding most of his wrath inside. If he weren’t held together with flesh and bone, he would have exploded on the spot. He wanted to kill every man who did this to his son, even if it meant the gallows for himself. “If you didn’t kill Maynard, who in God’s name did?”
“Tha’,” said Drake, “is wha’ I mean t’find out.”
“By Christ’s pain, you won’t! Have you forgotten Maynard of Clarendon has well-placed kin?”
Drake would have gotten a queasy stomach if he didn’t already have one. Maynard’s older brother was Randall of Clarendon, the acting sheriff. Winchester had been temporarily left without a real sheriff inasmuch as Richard of Ilchester—who had served as both bishop of Winchester and sheriff of Hampshire—died earlier that summer. But since Randall performed the duties of the sheriff’s office, everyone addressed him as Sheriff Clarendon.
William stood. “When you’re able, you’re sailing for the continent, there to await your fate, whether foul or fair.”
“You want your son branded an outlaw?” Nelda asked.
“A breathing outlaw is better than a dead one.”
Enyd returned bearing sloshing basins. After Nelda dipped his hands into one of them, Drake let the pillows swallow him. Wearily he asked, “Di’ you receive a ransom deman’?”
“If I had, I would have gladly paid.”
“Then Graham meant t’hang me from the first.” Drake should have felt something—remorse, dread, rage—but he was beyond feeling much of anything.
“All the more reason to get you out of England. So
onest won’t be soon enough.”
Nelda covered Drake’s eyes with a moist compress of another of her concoctions. “Out. Everybody out. And let this boy rest.”
Enyd helped him swallow a third potion, which eased him into sleep as soon as the cup left his lips. Disobeying Nelda’s orders, William and Stephen stayed with him until his groans fell off.
He didn’t hear them leave.
* * *
A high-pitched shriek sounded from one of the upper chambers.
“That would be Enyd,” Nelda said. “Your men had better keep their distance. Taken with fever, she has, and tucked into my own bed until she be recovered or sent to her Maker.”
A few minutes earlier, and without warning, Nelda’s strapping sons had lugged Drake out of his sick bed, carted him on a bumpy ride down the back staircase, and lowered him into a cramped undercroft. The hatch closed above. A storage chest moved over the hatch. And Drake, not yet fully awake, found himself entombed in a dark underground chamber, his head propped uncomfortably against a damp wall.
Moments later, leather boots tramped across the floorboards above and hastily climbed the wheel staircase. A clamorous search in the upper chambers followed, while in the kitchen directly overhead, Nelda spoke to a man whose words were swallowed by the disorder coming from the rest of the building.
Nelda answered, “Aye, with the Lord’s grace, she’ll pull through.”
The intruder spoke again.
“Dead, by God!” With that, Nelda collapsed onto a bench, the legs thudding with her weight. “Rufus fitzHugh!” She invoked the Lord’s name before saying, “But how?”
A bench scraped as the man took a seat at Nelda’s trestle table. “In the same perverted fashion as Maynard. I take it you heard. I needn’t dwell on the details.”
The unseen walls of Drake’s pitch-black prison closed in.
“Who in Winchester has not heard? Oh, aye, spare me the details, do.” She poured liquid and set a noggin on the table.
“That and his throat slashed from ear to ear,” said the visitor.
“My, my.”
“As for Seward Twyford, a cracked skull has brought on a fit. He hangs on by a thread at Twyford Castle. His kinfolk daren’t venture from his bedside for fear he will breathe his last at any moment.”
Sweat was soaking through the Drake’s chainse.
“And if he lives?”
“He will never be a man again.”
“By the God that sits above.” A quiet interval followed. “They were only just found?”
“Aye, just a few hours afore. Hidden beneath bramble and bush near Fisher’s Pond. Search parties have been out since early yesterday.” He drank from the noggin and set down the vessel. “So you see, Drake fitzAlan has a lot to answer for.”
Something crawled near his hand and slithered away, but Drake daren’t move so much as a finger.
“I should say so,” said Nelda, her voice unsteady.
“As Drake is William fitzAlan’s eldest son, the sheriff might have left the matter to him. Or if he chose to flee the country, outlawed him from the company of righteous men. But seeing his first victim was my brother, I cannot in good conscience … well … I’m sure you can appreciate my position.”
Fog crept into Drake’s dark oubliette.
“Of course,” said Nelda. “My sincerest condolences to you, Sheriff. Maynard did not deserve such a cruel fate. When is he to be laid to rest?”
“As soon as our mother arrives from Alresford where she’s been staying with kin. I heard she took the news bad.”
“As any mother ought.”
The acting sheriff of Hampshire took another drink before asking, “You wouldn’t happen to know where Drake fitzAlan is?”
“Dear me, no.” Her ire came up. “And I know what you’re thinking, Rand Clarendon, so don’t give me any of your lip. There’s no love lost twixt Drake fitzAlan and me. He’d sooner cut his own off at the wrist than take a helping hand from his father’s mistress.”
“Hmm,” was all he said, and after a while added, “Then I’ll take up no more of your time, Mistress Goldsmith.” He called out to his men. The house cleared out in a jangle of shuffling feet and complaining voices.
Nelda harrumphed and said, “Insolent pup.”
Realizing he had been marked as mutilator, murderer, and condemned outlaw, Drake became smothered by an enveloping fog, one so suffocating and overpowering that he sank into a dark pit of senselessness. Like the edge of a sword, a shower of cold water brought him back to wakefulness. He was lying on the scrubbed floorboards of Nelda’s pristine kitchen. When his eyes fluttered open, he beheld her and her brood looming above him like four vengeful gods and one sympathetic angel.
Nelda said to Enyd, “He’s afeard the sheriff will dispense justice in God’s way.”
“A cock for a cock,” said one of the brothers.
“That,” said Enyd, “plus he’s mortally afraid of dark underground chambers.”
Her mother grunted agreement, but after ruminating on her daughter’s words, swung suspicious eyes onto the worried face of sweet Enyd. The girl turned crimson with guilt. Her mother slapped her hard across her already pink cheek. The lass flew out of the kitchen, sobbing the distance, while Nelda visited her wrathful visage upon the bruised face of her patient, a patient glad for the marks and scars that hid most of the signs of culpability. For who wouldn’t want to explore the delights of a girl who worshipped him like an older brother, an older brother who, up until this moment, understood a truth only two others knew.
Since Nelda Goldsmith was more formidable than five drunken knights wielding swords and spitting venom, Drake saw that if ever he dallied with Enyd again, the woman would do to him what someone did to Maynard and eviscerate him with the blade of a sword with nary a backward glance.
Chapter 4
“DID YOU SEE RICHARD?” DRAKE asked.
“Only a glimpse. I waved.” Stephen had climbed in through Nelda’s second-storey window to join Drake on his last night in Winchester.
Sprawled across the frilly bed, they were playing sot-chess. Instead of betting for silver, they wagered for ale and won every time. A pawn was worth one swallow. Bishops, three. Knights, a third of a tankard. Castles, a half. And the queen, a full tankard. Checkmate was worth nothing but crapulence.
Drake mocked his brother. “You waved?”
“Aye, I waved.” Stephen flourished his hand, the garnet ring gleaming in the candlelight. “Like this.”
“And did he wave back?”
Hair falling over his eyes, Stephen bent his head to the chessboard. “He nodded. Regally.”
“Which …”
Stephen kicked his brother in the shin.
Drake finished the insult. “… is what you should have done. Nodded regally.”
“He never would have seen me in the crowd.”
“And what of John? Did you wave at him also?”
“I did, but you know John. His thoughts were elsewhere.”
“Oh aye. In all the excitement, I forgot. The king’s brother is to wed the glorious Isabelle of Gloucester. ’Tis a match made in heaven. She gets John to warm her bed and he gets a peerless wife in possession of monies, land, and title.”
Sniggering, Stephen said, “And if rumors serve, as ugly as they come.”
“Does the king know Drake fitzAlan has been outlawed from civilized society?”
“William spoke to him.”
“And?”
“Richard granted permission for you to stay at Chinon, but that is all. Justice, he says, must prevail. The law of the land must stand on its own merits. He cannot intervene.”
“And so I’m to be held prisoner inside a gold-gilt cage. In which case, I’ll have to make do with wine, women, and song.” Drake drank and dreamed. “Ah, to plunge my sword into the verdant valley between the grass-laden meadows of a virginal spring.”
The bells of Winchester Cathedral rang compline. “You’re the devil in
disguise, Drake, truly.”
“Truly, I am your brother, though at times it’s hard to fathom how we could have come from the same womb.”
“Fathom it, you must, every time you look into my face and see yourself reflected there.”
“It’s a grating reality.” Drake touched white king’s bishop. Stephen tracked his brother’s hand with piercing eyes. “Worse, everyone claims you look more like me than I do.”
“Explaining why William mistakes us every other day.”
Drake withdrew his hand and lifted his tankard. “I’m coming to think it’s the mole. Mine is on the left side of my mouth whilst yours is on the right, and since William is cack-handed, it confuses him to no end.”
Chin in palm, Stephen peered at his brother. “Do you think I could be you? And you, me?”
“That we were switched in the nursery?”
“Making me the elder and you the younger?”
Drake pondered the implications. “If so, I would have to start calling you Drake.”
“And I,” said Stephen, “would have to call you Stephen.”
“Likely William would go on confusing us.”
“Probably so.”
The walls carried the echo of their laughter. Stephen resumed his round-shouldered study of the chessboard. Drake stretched onto his side, clamping callused fingers into tangled hair. “Oh, to straddle our legs on either side of a greased saddle and ride the sun-kissed palfrey from moonrise to sunrise.” Drake reached over and used his last-standing white knight to take black’s castle.
Tipping his black king over, Stephen groaned defeat. He flipped onto his back. Drake followed suit with tankard balanced on belly. Together they stared up at the ceiling. This had been their third game. Drake had won two. They were both sloshed to the gills.
“Do you think this is the bed where Nelda and William … well … where they …?”
“None other.” Drake shivered at the thought.
“As for me,” Stephen said, “I admire the rounded hillocks, the color of a glorious sunset in late summer, along with the gentle ravine that separates the two.”
“You’re a bosom man.”