Sword of Justice (White Knight Series)

by Jude Chapman

  “Always.”

  She poured more wine and held the glass to his lips. “Between you, me, and the Devil,” she said, “Mat doesn’t exist.”

  “Tell that to the bruises on my body.”

  She looked askance and tried to hide the calculating smile that rose on her painted lips. Her profile appeared softer and more feminine than when she looked directly at him. Her skin was refined, absorbing shadows and candlelight that flattered the gentle scoop of her nose, the thoughtful repose of her brow, and the heightened color of her cheeks. Swept up from the nape of her neck, the tresses of her hair were caught in a comb that glittered like starlight and nicely set off the matching necklace encircling her throat. Though yet desirable, she was leaving the blush of youth behind, and in a few short years, would face a matronly existence. Drake wondered, however briefly, what the future held for women like her. Did they wind up on the trash heap? Or did mature gentlemen make them their mistresses, to use at will when their wives withheld pleasures of the bed?

  After some thought, she finally said, “I should apologize for my men’s eagerness,” she finally said. “They oftentimes take their work too much to heart.” She fed Drake another mussel. “Mat is the name given to a merchant’s alliance.” Her fingers snaked their way back to the domain of his male member.

  “And the members of this alliance?” he managed to croak.

  “Put their capital to work in a string of taverns. Taverns not unlike this one.”

  “For monetary gain?”

  “Surely not for charity.”

  Drake exploded with laughter. “What kind of perverted man would invest in gambling establishments and bawdyhouses like Hogshead Tavern?”

  “You’d be surprised.”

  Neither was in a hurry to end the meal. She perched herself on his lap and popped mussel after mussel past his lips. She ate sparingly and only then to make it a kissing game whereby she fed him of her takings and he partook of her offerings.

  They started a second flagon of wine and a second loaf.

  “Surely,” Drake said, feeling no more pain, “someone oversees this alliance. Its profits, losses, distributions, and monies owing.”

  “Oh, aye,” she said, running her fingers through his hair.

  “Mat,” he said. “Your invisible alliance.”

  “You’re catching on.” After taking a few tentative moments, she said, “But there may be a way of satisfying your indebtedness by rendering a special service. Or mayhap two.”

  Drake also took a few tentative moments before saying, “If I’m reading you rightly … a seasoned threat to one man … or two … who owe Mat a sum considerably more than I do.”

  “Backed up by a well-honed blade?” Her eyes twinkled with mischief. “But let’s not talk of filthy lucre. Let’s converse on art, music, poetry, and the nature of love.”

  “Oh aye, do let us converse on the nature of love.”

  “But not overly much. Action,” she said, “is preferable to words.” She left his lap, floated across the room, and reaching into a chest, produced four silken tassels. They dangled them from her fingertips as an invitation to recreation of the naughtiest kind. She nudged her head in the direction of the four-poster bed.

  “Oh, lady.” He girded himself by emptying his glass. Belching loudly, he stood up, slightly tipsy on his legs. Come morning, he supposed he would berate himself. But the pleasure he anticipated this night overshadowed any misgivings. Sometimes, he decided, a man couldn’t help but lose the tunic off his back and the braies off his nether parts in a single night.

  * * *

  Lying atop a filthy mattress, with his wrists and ankles trussed tightly to the four corners of a bedframe, Drake was akin to a double wishbone ready to snap for a foolish child’s wish.

  At first he supposed it was a bad dream brought on by too much drink. But when he lifted a throbbing head and saw where he had been deposited—inside an underground hellhole that let in scant daylight from the floorboards above—he knew it was a nightmare. The addition of a coffin-sized crate conferred a dubious distinction to the windowless chamber. Wherever he was must be on the slum side of Winchester, someplace near the south wall and, by his nose, not far from the river. His clothes and possessions were noticeably absent. Duped in the worst way known to man, he let a woman get him blinding drunk so she could rob him blind.

  The cathedral bells rang prime. By his reckoning, he’d lost six hours.

  He tugged at the ropes. The knots tightened. He yelped for help, but a rag stuffed in his mouth and a gag wrapped tightly around the rag muffled his cries. His only answer was the far-off bark of a dog.

  On the bed lay a dudgeon, dried blood encrusted on the blade. He shifted his body over and pinned the shank beneath his sweating backside. By moving his torso up and down against the shaft, he worked it slowly upward. The blade, honed sharp, nicked a bit of skin every now and then, small sacrifices against a greater good. After an exhausting effort, the dudgeon arrived at his armpit.

  The bells rang tierce.

  His head pounded. Sweat soaked the mattress. Acid burned the back of his mouth. He lay motionless for a spell, breathing steadily, until the nausea subsided and the ache in his head diminished to a dull throb. He stretched his fingers, impotently reaching for liberty and itchy hemp chafing raw the insides of his wrists. Further shifting of weight and nudging of muscle brought the dudgeon within reach of his fingertips.

  Sexte rang.

  Gnawing hunger replaced nausea. Flies buzzed somewhere in the room. The heat was oppressive. Saturated hair curled into his eyes. Quivering fingertips—weakened from wine, the soporific Tilda must have slipped into his goblet, appalling thirst, and the exhaustion that threatened to overtake him—touched the wooden grip. Freeing the bindings of the one wrist took forever. The rest were soon dispatched. He sat up, lifting a knee and encasing his face within a shaky hand.

  Nones rang.

  The door was barred on the outside. After several shoulder-wrenching shoves, Drake sank against the chill wall, collapsing into a heap of weariness. Having reached the limits of endurance, he studied his hand—turned palm up in his lap—and thought it the most magnificent object in God’s creation. Yet he was incapable of flexing a single finger.

  He willed his head to lift and gazed blearily at a booted foot sticking out from behind the wooden crate. The foot was connected to a body. The body was neatly tucked between the wall and the crate. The corpse lay face up in a pool of blood. The locks of the dead man’s sandy hair were soaked darkest red. One of his eyes was stuck gruesomely open. Green flies were everywhere. Maggots had come for their share. The dead man’s throat was slit from ear to ear. Blood encrusted the gash and the sides of his neck. His fingers—frozen into position—clawed grotesquely for reprieve. He was as stiff as the door that Drake had tried to ram open.

  Blinking in disbelief, Drake stared at the peaceful calm of a man gone to his Maker. The image was too horrifying to be real. He contemplated his hand. The dudgeon lay in the folds of his palm. On the blade, the dried blood of the corpse had intermixed with his blood. One by one his fingers closed over the haft.

  Footsteps descended the stairs. A commanding voice shouted brusque orders. A battering ram demolished the door. Sheriff Clarendon and two of his sergeants stepped through the splintered opening.

  Drake craned his head upward. He was too exhausted to say a word, and since there was no escaping his predicament, words would have been useless.

  In his hand he clutched the dudgeon used to kill the man lying at his feet, Winchester’s top sergeant—Drogo Atwell—town bully and childhood playmate.

  Chapter 13

  DRAKE STIRRED PAINFULLY AS HIS befuddled mind raced to catch up with time and place. Wherever he was, it was damnably cold.

  He moaned, pried open eyes gritted with uneasy sleep, and sat up on reflex. Manacles weighed down his hands and feet. They clanked. He collapsed back to the hard shelf at his back and waited for the dungeon to
stop spinning. Two cresset lamps fluttered and whirled, then slowly unwound and came into focus. The air rustled. A cloth of mean material covered him. A moment before, he had been naked. He turned his head, too abruptly for comfort.

  Sitting on a stool, Randall of Clarendon stared down at Drake, hands folded between splayed knees. He waited for the most recently installed prisoner of Winchester Castle to come to full awareness before saying, “What am I going to do with you, Stephen … or Drake … as the case may be.”

  “Lock me in an underground hellhole and throw away the key?” He pressed a hand against his forehead. The chains rattled. “Come to think, that’s been tried.”

  A maniacal grin formed on Rand’s lips. “Even better, a double hanging and not a single fitzAlan brother to trouble Winchester again.”

  “I’ll opt for the hellhole.”

  The sheriff kneeled beside Drake and unlatched the manacles. He held Drake’s hands in his and turned them over, studying the blood-encrusted, rope-burned wrists. Rand took from his tunic the frayed ropes, stained with Drake’s blood. Further noting similar bloody formations on his ankles, Sheriff Clarendon gently fingered the nicks along his side. Saying not a word, he went back to the stool and tossed Drake a change of clothes. “You didn’t kill Drogo.”

  “I was hoping I did.”

  “Don’t you know?”

  Shaking his head, Drake slipped Stephen’s chainse over his head. “Why do you think I didn’t?”

  “You would have been covered in Drogo’s blood, not just your own. And”—he chewed a fingernail—“unlike the other three, Drogo held onto his manhood.”

  “Oh.”

  “Since I believe you’re Drake and not Stephen, that fact holds significance. But as to what, I’m at a loss.”

  He paused for Drake’s reaction, which came as a single intake of air.

  “Of course, I have no way of proving who you are one way or the other.”

  Drake released his breath and felt his face wash over with three separate rushes of relief. He pulled on Stephen’s hose.

  “You’re not absolved yet.”

  “Your reasoning was going so well.”

  Randall ran a hand through his limp hair. “Witnesses at Hogshead claim you had a confrontation with Drogo.”

  “Untrue. He had a confrontation with me.”

  “Who won?”

  “He did.”

  “Then what?”

  “I was bounced into the soothing arms of a lady.”

  “What’s the last thing you do remember?” Rand’s stare was unnerving.

  “A flagon of wine, a bowl of mussels, a canopy bed, and four scarlet tassels.”

  “Was it Mat?”

  “A lass named Tilda.” Even as he said it, he knew.

  “Mat,” Rand confirmed. “Short for Matilda.”

  “Mat is supposed to be a man,” Drake said. “He doesn’t exist. He’s a figurehead.”

  “True enough. She is the front for the Merchants Alliance Trust, which is cunningly called Mat, in honor of the madam.”

  Drake whistled. “And what a front.”

  Rand grinned the way a man does when in the company of like-minded men who think of nothing but women. “After the four tassels, what do you remember?”

  “Waking up in the hellhole where you found me, thence being transferred to another more odious hellhole, but this one containing no corpse save my own. For which I have yet to thank you.”

  “You’re welcome. And the dudgeon?”

  “Wasn’t mine.” Drake tugged on Stephen’s boots.

  “How convenient.”

  “Just as I thought. At the time.”

  “Which is where you acquired all those nicks, cuts, and scrapes?” The penetrating stare returned. As sheriff, Randall of Clarendon was an expert interrogator. His eyes alone must have coerced countless confessions, both true and false. “And not in a fight to the death with Drogo?”

  When Drake laughed wryly, a twinge in his side made itself known. “If I’d been in a fight to the death with Drogo, it wouldn’t have been in a barred undercroft.”

  “There’s a certain logic to that.”

  Drake grimaced as he pulled on Stephen’s tunic. “How did you find me, anyway?”

  “A little bird. An anonymous little bird.”

  “As you said before, how convenient.”

  Rand let out a sigh. “One of the reasons I’m letting you go.”

  “And the others?”

  “Too numerous to list, but one in particular.”

  “I’m dying to know.” Drake dropped a weary head onto a wearier fist. “Sorry. Bad choice of words.”

  “So you can lead me to the proof of your guilt, sparing me the trouble.”

  Rising unsteadily to his feet, Drake said, “You must be a patient man.”

  “One of my character flaws.”

  * * *

  Aveline was waiting for him outside the castle gatehouse. She put a supportive arm around his waist, and they walked back to the alehouse together.

  She fed him one of the potages she always had at the ready. As hungry as he was, his stomach protested after the first few mouthfuls. He sat forlornly at the trestle table, his untethered hair falling into his eyes, his body giving out, and his mind having retired long before.

  Aveline dragged a tub to the middle of the floor and started filling it with boiling hot water. Drake balked. Handily barring escape by bolting both doors, front and rear, she sat him down with a firm hand and undressed him with a gentler one. By now he was used to being around her, no matter how naked he or how handsome she. In truth, the nearness of her body was more than he could stand, but he knew her to be off-limits, especially when he considered her brothers, who stood guard just outside the doors of her kitchen.

  She dunked him into the soothing waters and treated his abused body like one of her kitchen utensils, scrubbing it down using the heavy-duty soap a scullery maid reserves for floors. Grunting and protesting garnered no mercy. She turned her attention to his hair, applying a fragrant French soap that reminded him of her. The massaging action of her fingers nearly lulled him asleep. His head bobbed to wakefulness just before submersion. One steady hand held his face above the waterline; the other rinsed away soap bubbles with gentle splashing motions. His head floated lazily in the womb Aveline had devised. He nearly fell asleep once again, until she put the edge of a razor against his throat. His skin was baby smooth afterwards, not a nick to be had.

  She toweled him off and led him above stairs. Much as it was still daylight, it was as good as the end of the day for him. She tucked him in and gave him a chaste goodnight kiss. They hadn’t spoken a word to each other from the moment she took him home.

  Browbeating and berating came morning. Drake again sat morosely at Aveline’s spotless trestle, ruminating on his sad lot when she held out her hand. “Pay up,” she said, her pert nose thrust haughtily forward.

  Not understanding her meaning, he cocked his head.

  “The wager I won. You lost the tunic off your back and your braies off your nether parts, both in a single night.” She slid thumb against fingers, waiting expectantly for the coin of the realm. “Not to say I told you so, but let this be a lesson.”

  His pockets empty, Drake flipped up equally empty palms.

  Her eyes crimped at the corners. “You owe me double, then, when you have the means.” She set before him girdle bread, three poached eggs, a slab of cheese, a mug of ale, a bowl of potage, a slather of bacon fat, and greens from her garden. “Eat,” she ordered, and returned to her work, energetically scrubbing caldrons and skillets.

  Drake regarded the food with little appetite, his stomach sore from thrashings and a malady that went past hunger. He bit into the bread. “You’re like quicksilver,” he said to her back.

  She turned to look at him. “Am I?” Clearly, she was flustered by his comment.

  “It wasn’t meant as praise.”

  “I’ll take it as such anyway, thank
you kindly.” She went back to her cleaning.

  “You led me to believe Mat was an invention. How was I to know he was a she and as real as you and me?”

  “No excuse.”

  “Are you the voice of my conscience? I needn’t listen to everything you say. God’s blood, woman, even if you were the archbishop of Canterbury, I needn’t listen to everything you say.”

  She pounded toward the table, cleared away his meal, and tossed it into the slop bucket.

  “Fine,” he said, bolting to his feet. “I’ll find company that will feed me. And not just food.”

  “Men are damnable fools, thinking no more of a lady than does the sword fit the scabbard.”

  Peeved, he stopped short of walking through the open postern door. “I’d like to think I’m more mindful than most.”

  She grunted. “Hear me, Drake fitzAlan, and hear me well. I don’t need to be rescued, not from the likes of you or any other ill-mannered lord of the manor.”

  “Oh, aye, a woman who rents out bedchambers by the half night doesn’t invite gallantry at her threshold.”

  She came upon him like an ill wind from the north and slapped him across his already bruised face. It stung like hell. “This is a respectable establishment, as if you didn’t know already. I rent out bedchambers by the day.”

  “And if they’ve been vacated after a half night or less?”

  “Is that not what a woman is reduced to, given her place as either chattel or plaything, even when she has a mind of her own and needs to satisfy?”

  “And what of your bedchamber?”

  “Mine is for me alone.”

  “Unless it’s for my brother a half night a throw.”

  She delivered another smack across his cheekbone, not with an open palm this time but with a closed fist. Aveline had sharp knuckles and sharper wits.

  “That hurt.” He rubbed his throbbing face while his upper teeth repositioned themselves.

  Her pursed mouth and livid eyes said all, but she had more to say and said it. “Know this, Drake fitzAlan. I’m a woman who knows her own mind and minds her own business. And I don’t like it when either are insulted by a coarse sot the likes of you.”