by Jude Chapman
* * *
The office of the clerk had the look of abandonment. The counting table was stripped clean of documents and ledgers. Chairs had been taken away. The wall of torture was dismantled. Drake circled the chamber several times over, footfalls echoing against the walls, and searched for evidence like a mouse searches for the scantiest of crumbs, the sort that aren’t immediately apparent but become visible over time.
Letters scratched into the walls were the testaments of prisoners held inside them in a distant past. Sunlight filtering through arrow slits cast crosses onto a bare floor. Burned parchments lying in the cold hearth, not just a document or two but a stack, formed a pattern, their singed edges spilling like black satin ribbons across charred firewood.
One piece escaped the flames, seared but not destroyed. It caught his eye. Drake took it from the coals. Ashes fell from its surface. He blew away the remaining cinders. The missive was folded in a unique style, the corners creased inward, twice. He opened the scorched parchment. The ink had been burnt into unreadable vapors, but there faintly remained both a salutation and a subscription, the duplication of a single letter—an elegant ‘J’ written in the hand of a woman. Tucked inside lay a second wholly untouched missive, itself folded in the same manner, and unmistakably addressed to Gervase des Roches, Clerk of the Winchester Treasury. The letter outlined instructions as to an amount and a locale. It was dated July last.
The parchment blistered his fingers. The missive fluttered on breezy wings back to the soot.
A voice broke the spell. “Find what you were looking for?”
Drake spun around, his hand instinctively reaching for the pommel of his dragon sword. Rand was perched on the counting table.
“You let him escape,” said Drake. “Didn’t you?”
Rand ran lanky fingers through lank hair and sighed. “Des Roches was John’s man.”
“I know that.”
“Do you now?”
“But how do you?”
“Des Roches had once been John’s master of the trivium. Grammar, rhetoric, dialectic, and the English language, by God.” He sprang off the table and casually toured the chamber.
Drake leaned against a far wall, head bent casually toward the floor while eyes watched the sheriff’s every movement.
“Ever since Richard took away his miserly forty-thousand marks, I’ve been on the lookout. The pipe rolls were altered, erased, and scribed over, a troublesome undertaking given the constraints. What hung in the balance was more than those missing twelve-thousand pounds we gave witness to. A great deal more. Could have fooled everyone but for memories burning deep in honest men. That sniveling usher came forward on the quiet, and I kept him so.”
He reached into the hearth and lifted the parchment from the ashes. Blowing away the cinders, Rand unfolded it as Drake had done. After reading the contents, he nodded, and then swiped a thumb along his lower lip. “As I thought. Jenna was the liaison between Gervase and John, explaining rather well the rumor involving my little brother. You were right, you know. Perhaps they hoped you would kill Maynard of your own accord. Perhaps they paid Baldric to make sure it appeared that you did. Whatever, they wanted to stop me from inquiring further. Since they couldn’t touch me directly, they used Maynard rather poorly. That he was involved in a related coven involving gambling debts and whatlike had no bearing. His murder served to make me that much more determined. Our usher made sure Gervase was given no opportunity to alter the pipe rolls for those last twelve-thousand pounds. He reckoned we were closing in on him. And panicked. He had to get his hands on the journals, whatever the cost.”
“Which is why,” Drake said, “he recruited Baldric.”
A wordless nod was Rand’s assent. “Gervase was acting under John’s direction, no doubt in my mind, though I have no proof one way or the other. Even so, John has been left blowing rudderless in the North Sea winds.”
Drake tilted his head, enlightened. “You mean to say Gervase des Roches was robbing Richard and John?”
“It would be comical if it weren’t so tragic,” Rand allowed. “When the barons were holding out their hands for a savior, any savior to come along, John had not the coin of the realm in sufficient weight to strike more than a bargain or two. Lord de Lacy was one of them.”
Drake’s sharp laugh was a single note. “A coup d’état fizzled to nothing. Leaving countless innocents dead.” He shook his head in dismay. “But why did my neck become such a coveted commodity?”
“Stephen’s, too, don’t forget.”
“Because we are Richard’s men.” Stepping away from the wall, he said, “I suppose that explains a great many quandaries, except for one.”
“Such as why,” Rand finished the self-condemnation, “the clerk of the Royal Winchester Treasury—a man guilty of high treason, theft, and murder—was escorted out of Winchester Castle and thence out of England?”
“God save me,” intoned Drake, shaking his head. “Escorted.”
“Know this, Drake. However you see my part in all this evildoing, I am your friend. Everything was done solely to protect the king’s honor, the sheriff’s office, my good name, and the relationship of two brothers.”
Drake was confused. “Me and Stephen?”
Rand shook his head. “John and Richard.”
Drake thought about it. Two brothers. Two rivals. To men who could go at each other’s throats for the sake of riches and mayhap women, too. “It makes it all the more complicated, doesn’t it? I don’t like shades of gray. Black and white is more than enough in a game of chess.”
“Still,” Rand said, holding aloft the missive, “it begs the question. Who was the courier? Who was the man who carried the missives between John and Gervase, over hard terrain and long rides?”
“Baldric, surely.”
“Only God knows and the brother of the king. Two reasons good enough, I should think, to silence Jenna.”
Had I known a simple lie would lead to murder …
“Come. I was just about to muster two sergeants and a cart.” Looking back, he said, “Aye. Another body.”
The corpse was weighed down with a sack of rocks tied beneath folded arms, but fortune and currents freed the victim from his watery grave. Rand and Drake waded into the river and dragged the bloated carcass to shore. The man had been split from shoulder through torso, the single sword thrust powerful and efficient, and death instantaneous. A common sight in battle, but uncommon on the pristine shores of the River Itchen.
“Who found him?” Drake asked.
“The carpenter’s lads. They were playing hereabouts. Scared the living Hell out of them.”
The same sergeants who brought the cart for Jenna were making their way along the embankment. Drake did not have to look overhead to know the corpse was anchored less than a hundred yards downstream from the aerie. Kneeling over the body, he gazed upon the open-eyed terror of a man who proclaimed himself baseborn and weak, but proved himself a true champion in his last moments.
Graham de Lacy kept his promise. He had protected Jenna, insofar as he was able, with his life. The token of a bargain sealed between two childhood friends—the garnet ring inlaid with a golden cross—was missing from his hand.
Chapter 31
THE MANOR HOUSE WHERE THE Berneval family found shelter after moving out of Winchester Castle had once been resplendent. Now it was derelict, well used, and in need of repair. The croft held a few grazing sheep. Three lads played outside.
Drake left fresh flowers on Jenna’s grave before venturing inside. Closed shutters failed to alert the inhabitants of a knight’s furtive approach. The postern door, which led into the vaulted undercroft, had been left open and unguarded. He climbed upstairs into the buttery and traversed from there to the kitchen, meeting no one. Coming through an arched portal, he passed a blazing hearth. The family was supping in the great hall.
The scratch of steel twisted every head around.
A vigilant knight always keeps a sharp swor
d about, and Henri de Berneval was no less than a vigilant knight. He drew his from the scabbard lying on the trestle. Half the table shot up and scurried off. When Drake cocked his head, the other half followed. Rosaline de Berneval stayed stubbornly behind.
Drake laid his sword on the table and sat on the bench, boldly facing the hatred of a bereaved father and mother. Both backed away, fearful of the gleaming blade.
“Young pup!” intoned Henri. “Never draw a sword on a man unless you intend to use it,” he said. And added, “Drake.”
Drake had shed Stephen’s clothing and donned his own. The others were too constricting. These were made for fighting. “I intend to use it, no worry.”
Henri waved Rosaline protectively off to the side. “I heard you returned to Winchester. In fact, never left.”
Drake curiously examined the threadbare tapestries, the worm-rotted table, the moldy benches, the yellowing wall paint, and the meager possessions. “I hadn’t realized ….” Only now did he understand the penury Jenna had been reduced to, the circumstances she had tried to tear herself away from, and why she had traded Drake, and even Stephen, for a more promising suitor.
Rosaline said, “You don’t disappoint when you revel in our poverty.”
“You have the wrong man.” Rays of afternoon sunshine filtered through parchment windows and melded with the heat of the hearth fire. His strongest instincts were to surrender the ghost to her fate, and to leave this place and its degraded inhabitants, sentenced to a lifetime of purgatory.
“We wouldn’t expect anything less from the likes of you,” Henri said, “not when you serve King Richard with such unblemished loyalty.”
“King Richard, aye, your gaoler. Or is he?”
“There is no other.”
Drake fingered the pommel of his sword, the dragon blade blazing, the point aimed midway between the man and woman who might have been a second set of parents were it not for …. “Who was it, then? Who willingly stood guard at the queen’s prison door? Not King Richard.”
“His father, the king! And not I!”
“Father or not, king or not, you should have known the son would not look kindly on those who supported his mother’s imprisonment. As we speak, Ranulf de Glanville must give over fifteen-thousand pounds in silver or face imprisonment. Only God knows what has happened to Ralph fitzStephen, though some say he fittingly rots away in Winchester Gaol. I’d say you fared well compared to the queen’s other gaolers.”
“We had no choice. It was our duty.”
“You had a choice. You chose not to take it.” Drake studied the table, anything so as not to look into their guilty eyes.
“And you think this,”—Berneval’s eyes took in the four walls of his banishment—“is not a prison? What you see before you is a man without grace, without a post, without the means to put food on the table. This is what I have been reduced to. Taking handouts from my wife’s destitute sister.”
Drake didn’t want to pity the man. He wanted to skewer him. “And who sought alliance elsewhere? Who put their only daughter up for sale? Not King Richard!”
Henri rushed across the hall and scaled the trestle table, a flurry of dust and filthy rushes in his wake. Having deliberately provoked the attack, Drake backed away faster than the assault, his sword thrust defensively forward. Berneval jumped to the floor and advanced. “I won’t listen to more lies!”
He lunged forward with a cut toward Drake’s left flank. Drake parried. Swords clashed. Metal reverberated against mortared walls, and in the reflection of the hearth’s flames, the opposing blades of steel glowed cool green. The men separated, gauging and finessing.
“When you sell your soul to the Devil,” Drake said, “the cadaver goes with it in the bargain.”
“The cadaver was your doing!”
“And here I expected the riposte to be … We didn’t sell Jenna.”
Rosaline lowered a pale face—a face so much like her daughter’s—into quaking hands.
Henri drove forward, flicking his blade like an ill-trained, ill-mannered knave. “Fight, Drake! Why won’t you fight?”
Each stroke of Berneval’s blade, consistently diagonal and consistently left, was consistently defended with the same monotonous counter. Drake barely need change position to beat off the strokes. “Or, perhaps, when you sell your daughter to a royal bidder, it isn’t a sale, as such.”
Henri attacked in earnest, three athletic strides from a man well past his prime. Drake retreated measure for measure. Another clash of swords was followed by another defensive action, easily executed.
“Was the deal struck with letters? Courting, betrothal, pact, and subterfuge wrapped up in tidy packages, sent hither and yon by courier. Formal introductions first, between parents and suitor. Terms and negotiations discussed. A bargain struck. Then missives of courtly love to the intended. Promises of riches and wealth, and fealty and fidelity. Is that how he wooed her? Along with letters meant for other eyes, which she passed along innocently at first. Then not so innocently. How she must have railed at you. But you prevailed, pointing out to her the daily reminders of your existence.” His eyes swept the arena of their poverty. “And so she acquiesced. She had no choice. She revered you. She should not have been so free with her love!”
A prisoner to her many sins, Rosaline silenced the truth behind clasped hands while her eyes, gut-wrenching reminders of Jenna’s, remained wide open, unable to blink away their guilt. Mutely she watched her husband and her daughter’s betrothed warily circle each other, pretending that the engagement of words and swords mattered.
“What did John promise you? A captaincy?”
Jenna’s father backed Drake handily to the wall. Berneval’s blade descended. Drake threw his up. Two swords crossed, held, and formed a single crucifix. Drake flung his foe back and scuttled into the middle of the floor.
“And then he married another when he promised to marry her. How did you convince her, I wonder …” He looked first at Rosaline and then at Henri, and finally forced his eyesight away from both. “… to become his mistress?”
Berneval beat the dragon sword halfheartedly.
“And you sanctioned it. Nay, encouraged it.” His skin, once a parched desert, was drenched.
“Jenna didn’t take her own life. You killed her, Drake fitzAlan, when you discovered her betrayal.”
Steel engaged steel, two men fighting for personal dignity and the dignity of a fair maiden, who ultimately was destroyed by both.
“Not I. You! Because you knew Jenna was in torment. She told you so. Told you she wanted to be released from the bargain, to end it, to confess everything. Three knights dead. Nearly four but for half-witted hangmen. Perhaps more to come. You knew she gave Stephen a note to deliver to John. She told you, the dutiful daughter that she was.”
Henri’s sword descended, slowly, until the point clanged onto the floor.
“Stephen wasn’t the courier. I was. Men employed by John stole the missive from me … a missive he believed was meant for Richard.”
Matched astonishment attacked the faces of two bereft parents.
“Why else would John have had a note, meant for him from the first, purloined? In it, she asked him to meet her. At their secret place. The same place as our secret place. But John, thinking her as treacherous as he, as treacherous as her parents, believed the invitation was meant for Richard. Only a dolt would believe such stupidity!”
Rosaline gasped.
“But I ask myself,” he went on, running a callused thumb over the gilt dragon. “Why was he was convinced she intended to betray him? What made him think she would invite the king to share her starry bed and midnight secrets? The note revealed no misgivings, no confessions, no ultimatums. It said only, ‘I’ll wait for you at the aerie.’”
Henri choked on rising bile.
“It was you who told him. You who thought the worst of Jenna. You who betrayed your only begotten child. You who warned the one man who had too much to lose. You wh
o inspired him to send an assassin.”
Rosaline sobbed, salt tears for a woman with no heart. Berneval shook his head, more to himself than to his accuser. The sword dropped from his hand. The clatter of steel on broken tile was a high note at the end of his lament.
Drake tossed Graham’s purse onto the trestle. The metallic clank revealed a hoard of coins. “There! There is the price of Jenna’s death. My transgression is sealed up in a bag,” Drake said, “and thou sewest up mine iniquity.”
He sheathed his sword and examined two wretched souls. Blood had been drawn, for once not his own. Henri and Rosaline de Berneval, the man and woman who conceived a golden nymph, were bleeding all over the rush-strewn floor.
“In God’s name, who did you send to warn John?”
Berneval was sitting at the trestle, his head bent down and his heart split in two. Unable to look Drake in the eye, he said, “I told … I spoke to des Roches. It was he who … everything went through him.”
“Because the man dispatched to warn John … whoever he was … he returned to Winchester … he knew where to find Jenna … he went straight to the aerie … and he killed her.”
Henri was sobbing uncontrollably. Rosaline was trying to comfort him. “Baldric la Forêt,” said Rosaline. “La Forêt was the courier.”
Chapter 32
AVELINE CUPPED HER HAND ON Drake’s cheek and searched his eyes. The golden-flecked irises penetrated a knight spent to the depths of his being. “It’s over? Well and truly?”
“Aye,” he said, and meant it.
Her spine straightened, sharp as a sword. “Why is it, Drake fitzAlan, you’re always rushing to the precipice without once thinking of what may befall you below? Do you court death so eagerly?”
“Nay. But would you not weep over my funeral bier?”
“I would spit in your grave.”
He grinned broadly. “Not likely, Aveline Darcy.”
She harrumphed and spun around, briskly attending her kitchen, skillets and caldrons beating a tattoo.