Sword of Justice (White Knight Series)

by Jude Chapman

  Aveline slammed shut the door, and lowering her voice, said, “There’s not a pennyworth of difference twixt you and Stephen. He has no respect for me either.”

  “At least he’s enjoyed you.” She smacked him a third time. He backed up to the trestle bench and sat, the wind knocked out of him.

  “Not all people are born with silver spoons and knives in their mouths like the fitzAlan brothers, but they do deserve the same respect.”

  “I would think,” he said, rubbing his throbbing cheek, “Stephen and you would marry since—”

  “Stephen needs a woman with a dower and a reputation that doesn’t include renting bedchambers by the half night.”

  “If you hold affection for each other—”

  “Good Lord, you’re a romantic. You believe in Queen Eleanor’s court of love.” She laughed bitterly. “Let me tell you something. There are no happy endings. Stephen fitzAlan and I do not hold an abiding affection for each other, and never have. But if we did, the time span of three breaths removed any prospects.” It was a punch as powerful as the other three. Drake was grateful he was already sitting. “Three breaths between brothers who are exactly alike in … well, in almost every respect … except one gets the pheasant and the other, the feathers.”

  “What …” He squeezed his eyes shut so he wouldn’t have to see the truth. “What are you saying?”

  “As if you didn’t know. Or perhaps you mean Stephen to be a hearth son, a man with no family to serve and love but his brother’s?”

  “No ….” And then more emphatically, “No!”

  “As for Pippa,” she said, “she’s not Stephen’s.”

  “Her eyes—”

  “Not Stephen’s,” she said, stamping her foot.

  Too tired to think farther than the breadcrumbs lying on the trestle, he dropped his head onto folded arms.

  Aveline’s skirts stirred. “The truth hurts, I know.” Sitting beside him, she tilted his chin up and gazed into his eyes. “An arrogant man needs to be taken down a peg or two every once in a while, if only to learn by his mistakes and become better for it.”

  “Can I? Become a better man?”

  “Aye.” She leaned forward and discovered all the intimate parts of his mouth. The right, then left sides of his upper lip; the left, then right sides of his lower lip; and the corners between. “Oh, aye.”

  He moved into her arms and kissed her in return, his hands closing around her face and neck, shoulders and arms, and drawing her nearer to him like a bouquet of wildflowers to his nose. She smelled of meadows and honey, a spring morn and leaves of green. He drank in the fragrance and then made what he deemed a respectable offer. “Your bedchamber or my brother’s?”

  Holding his face between her cool palms, she gazed steadfastly into his eyes. “You and Jenna are to wed next month. Or have you forgotten?”

  “I haven’t forgotten, but the way things are—”

  “You think so little of her, then?”

  He stammered for something clever to say. “No, but you’re the one kissing me.”

  “You’re the one enjoying it.”

  Aveline was seeping into his gut like sand on a beach climbs between your toes. Annoying and irritating, and something you carry around for days, weeks, and months, cursing with every step. “It’s different with men,” he said, defending all of manhood while making a jester of one man in particular.

  “Oh, is it? Jenna must remain faithful to you but not you to her, while you make damnable excuses?”

  Drake’s mouth opened to speak, but he had nothing virtuous to say. “Jenna needn’t find out.”

  She slammed her fist into his tender belly, sharp knuckles leading. “Know this, Sieur fitzAlan. I’m not some trembling maiden waiting for a gallant white knight to come bed her and next day ride off in search of better sport. I’ve tried it once, thank you kindly, and a damnable fool I was at that.”

  She quietly took her leave.

  When Drake was able to stand, he went back to bed.

  ~ Middle Game ~

  The stage of the game that occurs after most of the pieces have been moved into position and the earnest play begins.

  Sunday, the 27th of August, in the Year of Grace 1189

  Chapter 14

  HOGSHEAD TAVERN HAD NOT YET opened for nightly trade, but that didn’t stop the brothel from engaging in brisk daytime traffic. For those who went in, angst or bravado showed in their demeanor. For those who came out, vapid grins were affixed to their faces.

  An intruder lurked in the alleyway. For what he had in mind, walking boldly through the front door was not an option.

  A postern door led into the kitchen. Left ajar to let out the heat of hearth fires, the interior was busy as cooks and scullery maids worked at their daily tasks. Out front a dray pulled up. Four sturdy men began to unload the wagon and bring goods in through a side door leading down to the cellar. Finding their number increased by one swordless knight, they made short work of heaving their first coffin-sized crate below. When it came time to return for the next load, their ready helper had disappeared to parts unknown.

  A hallway led to a bedchamber decorated with bawdy tapestries of salacious Greek gods. In addition to the sword, dagger, and clothes left carelessly behind by a former patron, the intruder gathered up scarlet tassels.

  A methodical survey of the rest of the bedchambers revealed activity of the sordid kind, including an old man humping his princess of the day and a youth losing his virginity to a whale. In neither room did the occupants hear the hushed opening and closing of the unbarred door.

  At the end of the gallery and around a corner, a curtain led to a secret passageway, and the passageway, to a wheel staircase.

  Tilda was lodged at a writing desk, her back to the open portal. Her private chamber reflected a rich though subdued décor with walls painted in écru and madder. Furniture was abundant and master crafted. Worsted tapestries depicting the Creation, earthly Paradise, and the Deluge covered three walls, very different from the debauched decorations downstairs.

  She did not hear the knight enter by stealth and hosed feet. She did hear the knight unsheathe his brother’s sword. When she swung around, the honed tip of the blade met the exposed hollow at the base of her throat. Tilda stopped breathing. The door closed on a whisper. The sword persuaded her to rise slowly from the chair and travel to the bed. She obediently climbed onto several layers of downy mattresses and waited for the next wordless command. Drake tossed two tassels into her lap. Her lips curled into a wicked smile. After looping each tassel around each delicate wrist, she secured her left hand to the carved bedpost. Drake grunted a warning. She repeated the effort, making sure the knots were tight this time. He nodded to her again. When she swung her shapely legs up onto the bed, the skirts fell away, revealing bare flesh. She threw up her other hand and lackadaisically reached for the opposite bedpost. Her half-shut eyelids hid pure loathing. With sword still teasing that lovely curvature leading down to further raptures, Drake checked the double knots she had tied and put in one more. He walked around to the other side, stepping over enameled tiles depicting a map of the world. He tied down her other delicate wrist, making sure the knots were secure. She gasped at the extra biting tug he put into those knots but said not a word.

  “Tilda, Tilda, you’ll never convince anyone you’re a demoiselle in distress.”

  “You can’t condemn the lady for trying.”

  One easy flick of his sword arm and the bodice of her lovely gown split open, revealing rosy skin untouched by sun but not untouched by man. Drake sheathed the sword and laid the scabbard across her lap. Leaning over her, he rearranged the pillows at her back. “Comfy?” he asked.

  Her eyes became colorless. “I can think of better things to be doing with my time.”

  “I don’t doubt.” His eyes were distracted by the painted headboard, a Bacchanalia of men and women engaged in libidinous pastimes with unlikely partners of human, godlike, and animal origins. He fo
rced his eyes away from the prurient display. “Your calm in the face of requital is laudable.”

  Her expression lay flat on underlying bone, but her skin shone with perspiration. She wasn’t quite as unruffled as she wanted him to believe.

  “You,” he said, spreading out the flapping wings of her rent bodice, “didn’t tell me you were Mat.”

  “And you,” she said, drawing up her knee and laying it across his lap, “didn’t tell me you were Drake.”

  He laughed without humor. “Then you know how skilled I am with a sword.”

  She had the forethought to blanch with apprehension.

  “A murderer who emasculates another man before he kills him is quite a different sort of murderer from one who reverses the order of, shall we say, execution.” Drake had no way of knowing which way the real murderer had emasculated his brethren, but his version put a gruesome spin on her plight. “A murderer like that … well … who knows what he might do to a whore who left him for dead.”

  She opened her mouth but thought better of saying anything in her defense.

  “What was the point of the henbane potion and exportation to an underground chamber?”

  “Any dolt asking a lot of damn-fool questions about the alliance receives the same treatment.”

  “How many has that been?”

  “Too many to count.”

  “And how many of your victims never emerge from that hellhole?”

  “I never took a survey.”

  Drake roamed to a nearby table inlaid with gold leaf, grabbed a flask, and poured wine into a goblet. He resettled himself on her bed and held out the cup. She took a cautious sip. He forced her to take an incautious sip. Once satisfied, he finished the contents with a single gulp and directly poured another. “How did you remove me without anyone seeing?”

  “We put you in a crate. For your purposes, a coffin.”

  “By ‘we’, you mean the guardians to the gates of Hell?”

  Drake heard footsteps. Someone came in. He squelched Tilda’s shouts for help with a kiss. Her muffled exclamations transmuted into passionate moans. As he slid a hand beneath the splayed bodice and fondled a delectable part of her body, Drake winked at Tilda’s flummoxed chambermaid, who discreetly closed the door after herself. The kiss went on. Tilda’s moans descended in pitch, rasping satisfyingly against her throat. For no better reason than spite, she bit his lip. Drake jerked his head back and sucked blood but let his hand linger on her breast. She laughed raucously.

  “Do you leave keys for all your captives?”

  She left off laughing and looked perplexed.

  “The dudgeon,” he explained. Drake reluctantly removed his hand and sauntered around to the other side of the bed. “The dudgeon that took the life of a renowned sergeant. The dudgeon I later used to free myself.”

  She thought it over and said, “Drogo? He’s been killed?”

  “Not by me.”

  She knit her brow, baffled, yet understood the rest of the meaning with rare intelligence. “Why should I want to implicate you for murder?”

  “Everyone else does.”

  “Is that so?”

  “But since I know I didn’t kill him, your guardians to the gates of Hell must have.”

  “How do you come by that conclusion?”

  “Because Drogo’s dead body was dumped in the same hellhole as my drugged one.”

  “Not by my orders.”

  “Then whose?”

  “How should I know?”

  Someone else opened the door. He took up the same position as before: his mouth on her mouth and his hand … not on her hand. With his back to the door, Drake was unable to see the intruder, but Tilda’s wintry eyes flashed distress toward her likely rescuer. She tried to call out lucid phrases of warning, but her praiseworthy efforts escaped only as passionate groans. The voyeur became transfixed. She became determined, beating her feet on the mattresses and shrieking unintelligible invectives. Drake deftly repositioned himself across the length of her body and tugged her legs between his. Her eyes opened wide while her breath panted through flared nostrils. He placed his arm, the one not occupied with more enjoyable pleasures, around the small of her back. She arched spontaneously. Her shrieks once again descended into ardent rasps, persuading the visitor to take his or her leave. The door closed and latched. Footsteps beat madly down the stairs.

  Many more kisses later, Drake tore his mouth away. Tilda’s eyes begged him to finish what he started. His body made the same demand, but he chivalrously resisted temptation. Honor was to be observed when it came to ladies, even ladies of Tilda’s sort.

  “Untie me and I can show you an especially good time.”

  “No doubt you can show me a better time bound and gagged.”

  Drake sauntered to the foot of the bed. Grinning, he produced the matching set of tassels. He grabbed her feet and yanked her down from the pillows. Her arms stretched into an open triangle. He hastily tied each ankle to opposite bedposts. Only one of her kicks connected where it hurt. Resembling a double wishbone ready to snap for a foolish child’s wish, she called him a name that insulted his mother. Rummaging through her wardrobe, he produced braies and hose. The braies he stuffed into her mouth. The hose he plunged between her lips and knotted at the back of her head. She spit out a string of unladylike denunciations. To anyone listening outside the door, her muffled voice resembled wails of bliss.

  “Vengeance may be the Lord’s prerogative,” he said, “but when you take it into your own hands, it reaches achieves a certain sweetness.”

  She growled, then spit out three syllables—I hate you!—or something very like. The relationship was not meant to last.

  Drake retrieved Stephen’s sword and started to leave.

  On Tilda’s escritoire lay a book, not large. The goose quill, ink drying at the tip, overlapped facing pages. The leather-bound covers were finely tooled. The parchment was of the best craftsmanship. The stack of sheets suggested this was a manuscript to save for posterity. The neatly ruled columns and rows, the meticulous script, and the strings of Roman numerals could have easily secured the scribe permanent employment in a local monastery if only the nuns overlooked a besmirched past.

  Drake casually read the most recent notations and flipped back through the vellum leafs for more of the same. When he glanced in Tilda’s direction, her eyes clouded with dismay. Struggling to release herself from her bonds, she merely succeeded in drawing the knots tighter.

  “The pleasure,” he said, “has been all mine.”

  He tucked the journal under his tunic. As he left, two muffled syllables assailed his back. He smiled even more.

  * * *

  Drake locked the door, took the key, and slipped out unseen.

  In the undercroft, Sheriff Clarendon idly sat on one of the coffin-sized crates, visually measuring it for Drake’s height and breadth. “Settle your differences with Tilda?”

  “We’ve come to a basic understanding, aye.”

  “Is she up to naming two gentlemen of her acquaintance?”

  “As luck would have it, she’s tied down the rest of the evening.”

  “Then you’ll have to do.”

  Hunting was an abiding passion for Old King Henry, who built Royal Hawk Mews in the forestlands northwest of Winchester so he could indulge in pleasure and sport between wars, and more, to forget he was a king with an ambitious wife, powerful enemies, traitorous sons, and uncertain allies. Hawks and hounds once ran riot here, as did the king and his mignons. Since a more sumptuous palace had been built in nearby Clarendon, these once-exclusive hunting grounds were left to rot and weeds.

  Randall of Clarendon led Drake to a spot north of the crumbling timber-and-stone Hawkeye, what had once been the king’s hunting lodge.

  Drake smelled the bodies before setting eyes on them. Even covered in insects, the faces were recognizable as the one-time guardians to the gates of Hell. One lay at the base of a tree as if he had hugged the trunk in those last fri
ghtful moments preceding death and then slid down to the knobby, moss-covered roots to breathe his last. The other lay a few rods distant as though he had run for his life after seeing the cruel fate visited upon his partner. They both lay sprawled in similar positions, on their bellies with arms curled above their heads.

  “That’s them. Tilda’s goons.”

  The attacker had been powerful enough to drive a blade into their backs, under their ribs, and through their hearts. The skin of their faces and necks had turned a ghastly reddish-green. Spiders, mites, and millipedes feasted on the beetles and maggots that had gone before. By now the one-time guardians to the gates of Hell had taken up their former employment with their former Employer.

  Staying downwind of the corpses, Drake asked, “Any theories?”

  Holding a cloth over mouth and nose, the sheriff was kneeling near the guardian beneath the oak, studying the state of his body and the position of his demise. When he backed away, he said, “Well, either the fitzAlan brothers have six notches on their sword pommels, or the odds are poor of ever finding out who did in these two. Or why.”

  “Oh, I know why,” Drake said.

  “Do you now?”

  “They killed Drogo.”

  “Did they?” The sheriff hooked his eagle eyes on Drake. They were of the same height, taller than most men and equals, even though one could have locked the other in an underground dungeon and thrown away the key.

  Drake took a seat on a nearby boulder. “Like I told you before, Maynard, Seward, Rufus, and Graham were collecting a tax from the barony, a sort of tribute for protection, and Drogo was helping them.”

  “Were they now? Was he?” In the waning light of day, Rand’s eyes matched the setting sun: copper-bright and distended. “Well, no longer. As to whether these two killed Drogo, and at who’s behest, they will take witness to their graves.”

  “Protection from what, is the burning question?” Drake pursued. “Seems to me, the ones offering protection were the ones in dire need of it.”