Sword of Justice (White Knight Series)

by Jude Chapman

  “Some advice?” interrupted Drake’s host. “And I offer this as one persecuted soul to another, in all good charity. Otherwise, you understand, I would not have stirred the, shall we say, already muddied waters. You might be killed for such casual inquiry. I half suspect that is why you … and your brother … have been put upon of late.”

  “For something we cannot begin to understand?”

  “Yet managed to get caught up in, oui, along with your compatriots.” Yacob refilled his tumbler. “Let me shed a pale light on your dark quandaries. I make the assumption, forgive me, that your brother acquired two debts. One to me and the other to Mat.”

  “The owner of Hogshead Tavern?”

  “The same invisible character. Mat is not a moneylender per se. He lends neither silver nor gold. Instead he extends credit in exchange for a promised return, either in coin or property. He’s not particular. A slight twist of usury to get around your Church’s prohibition. Unlike my trade, Mat’s rate of return is exorbitantly high and the term of repayment short.”

  “How high is high?”

  He named a number. Drake whistled. Yacob said, “No one who goes into debt with Mat ever gets out, or if he does, is beggared.”

  “Who backs him? That is, when the need is great and immediate? Surely he cannot get by on parchment and promises.”

  The moneylender answered in a roundabout way. “Stephen accumulated excessive gambling debts. He did not know any better. Nor did his friends. In the blink of an eye, they found themselves with purses wanting for coin and no means of replenishment.”

  Drake set down his empty tumbler and did not refill it. “Is that why they were attacked?”

  “It would seem an incautious act, and rather severe given the circumstances, as well as counterproductive. All I know is that they came to me one by one, as did your brother, except for one of their number.”

  Drake arrived at the logical conclusion. “Graham de Lacy.”

  Yacob assented with a gesture.

  “Could be they found another source of income.”

  Curious, the Jew cocked his head.

  “The tribute money they were collecting from the barons,” Drake explained.

  “Ah, yes, the scutage,” he said, “to pay for the crusade against the infidel. To fight a war, King Richard needs knights like you and your brother, but he also needs money. And who better to go to with hand extended than the barony, where men like your father must sacrifice sons as well as fortunes.”

  Drake took a steadying breath to quell the sickly feeling in his gut. Yacob ben Yosel was getting too close to home for comfort.

  “I’ve heard the grumblings. The barons are none too happy. But I’ve also heard the coffers of Winchester are dry, and there is no other choice than to go to the well yet again and dip. Kings think only of war. The rest of us think only of food. And what better way for your friends to line their pockets doing the duty of their king.”

  “And Mat? How does he fit in?”

  “That I do not have direct knowledge of, but I suspect your friends approached me only when Mat’s generosity reached a proscribed limit. That is usually the way it goes.” The moneylender took a drink of his wine before speaking further. “Earlier I let you believe a falsehood regarding your father. He did not settle your brother’s debt. Someone else did.”

  “Graham did,” Drake said, instinctively knowing. “Stephen is beholden to Graham.”

  Chapter 11

  DRAKE FOUND HIMSELF BACK AT the London Way Alehouse, packed of a Saturday evening. Not up to mixing or trading stories or getting intoxicated, he chose to sit by himself, lick his many wounds, imbibe a moderate intake of ale, and watch. He watched for a while, long enough to sip through two tankards of ale at the slowest pace he remembered ever sipping through two tankards of ale.

  An average-looking man entered and cast an inquisitive eye over the hall. Drake would not have noticed him were it not for the unnatural quiet that took hold. Open talk instantly hushed into whispers, and easiness became infected with disquiet. The stranger stopped to talk to Aveline. When she slanted her eyes in Drake’s direction, the stranger moved off to a corner table. As though it were a breeding ground for pestilence, the immediate vicinity was instantly quarantined. The occupant didn’t notice, or if he did, didn’t care.

  Randall of Clarendon half-consumed a tankard of ale by the time Drake gathered enough courage to join him. Older than Drake by at least a decade, he looked as if he owned twice those years in excess maturity. Stretching long legs before him, he ran a hand through colorless hair that matched equally colorless eyes. He looked nothing like his brother Maynard, but Drake recognized him by the way other men stayed clear of him. None but a sheriff or an acting sheriff would receive worse treatment, surpassing even that of the twin brother of a murderer and mutilator.

  Though Drake never formally met this man, since Clarendon was fencing words with Nelda in her kitchen while Drake was suffocating in her undercroft, the sheriff welcomed him without rancor or suspicion. He examined his face with interest before saying, “Looks like you opened one too many doors the hard way.”

  It was easy to like the man, provided he wasn’t the sheriff or the brother of the man Drake was accused of murdering. Drake asked, “You’re drinking alone?”

  “Wherever I go.” He nodded toward the patrons. “Men of leisure avoid the pleasure of my company. And since I’m not as pretty to the lasses as I once was … not to say the reverse, mind you … you can see what I’ve become: a pariah in my own town.”

  Drake took a seat and signaled Aveline. Now was the time for some serious drinking. “Why not resign your position?”

  “I resign every other day, and see where it’s gotten me. The king won’t hear of it.”

  When Aveline brought over a fresh tankard, Drake sent her a smile of thanks. She was unwilling to return the smile but more than willing to dispatch a lethal glance in the sheriff’s direction. Rand’s gray eyes admired Aveline as she sidled away, and then turned their penetrating gaze back to Drake. “I hear tell you had a nasty altercation with one of my sergeants. Is he responsible for all that?” He circled a finger at Drake’s face.

  “The yellowing marks are his. He wasn’t on duty at the time.”

  “Considerate of you to make the distinction, but I knew that already. When it’s official, Drogo prefers to inflict punishment of the invisible kind.”

  “That came a night later.”

  “He takes a particular liking to you, ’twould seem.”

  “Since childhood days.”

  “And the rest?” he asked, admiring Aveline’s embroidery.

  “Three goons who said they belonged to Yacob ben Yosel.”

  Content that the worst of the damage did not come under his auspices, he nodded. “Mat’s your man.”

  “So I gather.”

  Rand took a long draught of his drink. “Your brother is a one-man killing force. Ordinarily I wouldn’t trouble myself over who kills who or hacks off which body parts, so many other duties to oversee.”

  Acutely aware of which body parts the sheriff meant, Drake shifted in his chair.

  He took in Drake’s reaction and went on. “Ah, if only you knew the extent. The entire weight of the shire’s administration falls on the sheriff’s office. And seeing that we haven’t had an official sheriff for several months and won’t for several more to come—the king selling off all the sheriffdoms in the kingdom one by one to the highest bidders—I am the unfortunate recipient of that considerable weight.”

  He rubbed his temples one-handed, thumb massaging the right and fourth finger messaging the left as he rattled off a memorized list: “Collecting the royal dues, enforcing the king’s peace, dispensing justice, acting as the local retainer for carrying out royal orders, accounting for revenues, collecting taxes, repairing and garrisoning the castle, arranging transportation for the king and queen, procuring cloth, horses, jewelry, food, wine, you name it. In short, being a lackey for e
veryone else’s needs.” He let the wall at his back support his weight. Curiously, he looked more haggard than when first he entered. “Made all the worse by a meager monthly income, and there you have it.”

  He capped off his miseries with a gulp of ale and looked about the place with eagle eyes, the product of practice and habit. “Never got along with Maynard, him being an afterthought on my mother’s part, though not necessarily my father’s. Especially after getting himself embroiled in pastimes that portended unhealthy outcomes. But blood is blood, no getting around it. My mother, though not my father, would never forgive me if I turned my back on bringing his killer to justice.”

  Drake lifted the tankard unsteadily to his lips but did not drink. “Unusual for a sheriff to apologize for defending the family honor, grudging as it is.”

  “Not that it stops me from hunting down the truth, you understand. Ah, I see you do. In that case, I have a question to put, and this is it. Why had Maynard made an enemy of your brother?”

  Drake gave the only answer he knew. “Rumor had it Maynard was cuckolding him.”

  “You don’t believe it?”

  “Not from the first.”

  “Then someone contrived the rivalry, which confirms my suspicions. But who? Geneviève de Berneval herself?” He was testing Drake again, his eyes pinning him to the same wall his bench was propped against. “I’ve known her father for many a year. Henri de Berneval.”

  “One of Queen Eleanor’s gaolers,” Drake said.

  “Until of late, though he didn’t much care for the duty. The queen, on the other hand, couldn’t abide his presence an hour longer than need be.” He released a dispirited sigh. “Such is the life of men in modern times when being an ally to one king means being a traitor to the next. Now that he’s been dismissed and disgraced, his future looks bleak.”

  “Jenna would never betray Drake,” Drake said.

  “How would you know?”

  “Further, Drake is not a murderer.”

  The sheriff shrugged. “Who’s to say?”

  “Me, who knows him better than anyone. He’s not the kind of man to mutilate another man, whatever the offense.”

  “What of Rufus and Seward? Any particular reason Drake would want to see them dead?”

  “They would have hanged him had he not escaped their clutches.”

  “Truly? Your brother told you this himself?”

  “Drake took a beating, the worst I’ve ever seen in a man and live to tell of it.”

  “A beating bad enough for him to exact revenge?”

  “Bad enough for him to do whatever it took to escape their clutches. But when last he saw them, they were alive even if not hale.”

  “And you know this how?” Without saying it aloud, the acting sheriff suspected that the man sharing a drink with him might be the infamous Drake fitzAlan himself.

  “He told me himself.”

  “And you believed him?”

  “He’s my brother.”

  “I see.” The sheriff crutched his chin against his fist. He rarely blinked. He didn’t censure. He merely posed questions and let others speak to the point of hanging themselves. He was the cleverest of men. “Do you think someone put them up to it?”

  “Rufus and Seward are clowns in want of mischief. They aren’t ambitious lads but they’re always taking up with the lowliest troublemakers. Follies and misdeeds usually follow. They live from day to day on the stinginess of their fathers and wait, a little too impatiently I think, for the day they become fatherless. Aside from that, we go back some. The four of us, along with Graham, lost our virginity together in the spirit of comradeship.”

  “Would I know the lady?”

  “I forget her name, if ever I knew it.”

  Not surprisingly, the sheriff grinned as if he knew the truth of it: men never forget their first experience even though they’d like to. Her name, Drake remembered, was Margery.

  “Seward,” he went on, “was always one brain short and one cock in oversupply, though once in a great while he said or did something of merit. When we were still in wet pants, Rufus got the better of Drake in a wrestling match and never let him forget it. From then on, Drake fell out with him and the others, and they with him.”

  “And you? Did you also have a falling out with them?”

  If the sheriff of Hampshire were an ordinary man, Drake wouldn’t have been particularly wary. But seeing that the sheriff of Hampshire was cunning, Drake decided that honesty along with a straight face was the best approach. “We got along. I was the odd man out, the second son, disinherited from title and fortune. We had a lot in common.”

  “Rather hard on yourself.”

  “I see the way of it.” Indeed, Drake had never before seen the view from his brother’s side of the crib, but by posing as the younger fitzAlan, insight came to him like a wall of water beating down on him from on high. The more he posed as Stephen, the more qualms he had about birth order and birthright. He had always taken for granted his position as the elder and Stephen’s position as the younger. The light of day brought on pangs of guilt and an uneasy conscience.

  “And Graham de Lacy?” Rand pressed.

  “Graham is gutless. He instigates others to do the dirty work for him.”

  “Bringing us back to …” Here the sheriff paused, intending his meaning to hit the mark. “… your brother.”

  “I helped Drake get away. When we rode off, Rufus and Seward were hurting but would have gone on to hang other men. Tell me. Are you and Drogo playing a game of good sheriff, bad sheriff?”

  Clarendon rubbed a thumb along his lower lip. “Drogo,” he said. “He oft gets carried away. But you gave him naught. Therefore you’re not about to tell me where your brother is hiding, either.”

  “France is all I know.”

  “A long ways away,” Clarendon said. “Aye. I can see we’re of similar minds. To protect our brothers, whatever the cost, even if undeserved.”

  “In Drake’s case,” Drake said, “deserved.”

  “But not Maynard’s?” Rand chuckled into his tankard. “I like you, fitzAlan, whichever one you are. Truly. It’ll be a sad day for Drake and for me when at last I catch up with him. As to the mutilations … they betoken personal rancor … wouldn’t you agree?” By switching the thread of the conversation so quickly, he was trying to trap Drake into making a mistake, and more likely, an admission of guilt.

  Drake wasn’t falling for the trap. “Or were made to look so.”

  “Be that as it may ….” He lapped up the last of his drink and stretched onto long legs. “I’m sure we’ll run into one another anon.” He left coins on the table, enough to cover the drink of both.

  Drake squinted up at him. He was feeling the effects of drink along with a profound fatigue that made his many aches and pains cry out for a soft bed, the quicker the better. “Tell me, Sheriff, do you always employ drunken knights to bleed tribute money from their fathers?”

  Clarendon’s eyes narrowed. “Come again?”

  “Drogo and my boon companions. They’d been riding around the shire, extorting protection money under the guise of collecting scutage for the Crusade.”

  “Tell me now.”

  “It’s common knowledge, I’ve heard tell.”

  “I haven’t.”

  “So you claim.”

  Randall of Clarendon showed displeasure with Drake’s insinuation. His eyes slanted away before angling back. He shook his head, peeved. And shook his head again, a grin curling on his lips. “On that note, I’ll bid you good eve, my fine fellow, and leave you with a bit of advice. Watch your back.”

  “From you?”

  “As prisons go, the dungeons of Winchester Castle offer more than most. The walls have housed Queen Eleanor for many a year, and I’m sure we can find something to your … or your brother’s … liking. The beds are hard and the food sparse, but the locks are sturdy. And you’ll be able to visit each other once a year, provided you don’t wind up sharing the s
ame cell.”

  After the sheriff left, Drake emptied his tankard without once taking his lips away.

  Aveline swayed past, the wafts of lavender nearly leading him by the nose straight into her skirts. Giving him more encouragement than he dared hope, she motioned above stairs.

  * * *

  To his everlasting mortification, he climbed the stairs alone.

  William was waiting for him in Stephen’s chamber, pacing like an expectant father. Except in this instance, the child was taller than the father and playing a chancy game. Without preamble, William bellowed, “What have you found out?”

  Drake used the meager advantage of his height to assert a meager amount of superiority. “No halloo, how are you, what happened to your face?”

  “Very well. Halloo, how are you, what happened to your face, and what have you found out?” The reason Drake had never believed in the wrath of God was because William’s was more than enough.

  Subsiding onto the bed as if his father’s fist had pushed him there, Drake tried to convince William that he, Stephen, had been working diligently at clearing the name of his brother, Drake, who was supposed to be in Chinon Castle at this very moment, hopefully a welcome guest in the royal apartments as opposed to a confined prisoner in the Tour de Moulin. In the telling of his doings over the course of the day, he became confused as to which brother he was charged to defend. He also found himself employing the sheriff’s manner of easing pain from his temples and wondering why he habitually protected his younger brother against his father, even now when he was supposed to be said younger brother.

  When the recounting was done, William resumed pacing. Drake saw a way to make him stop. “Why didn’t you tell us about the tribute money?”

  It worked. William sat on a stool. “Go on,” he said, subdued in a way Drake did not see often, if ever.

  “Aren’t you exempt from the scutage? Because Drake and I took the cross?”

  “God’s eyes, but you’re naïve! It matters not that my sons have pledged their lives for Christendom and king. I must also pledge my wealth. First it was the Saladin Tithe. Now that’s been spent, on God knows what for it wasn’t on the king’s damnable crusade, they come with their hands out once more.”