Florida Knight

by Blair Bancroft

  Every time he looked at Catriona MacDuff.

  Hell, no, that wasn’t warmth. Whether anger or lust, that was a burn. What he was feeling at the moment was a warm fuzzy from being part of something greater than himself. Oh, he’d had the intense camaraderie of the cop life, but he’d spent years in a black and tan, on his own, handling every kind of emergency and depravity. He’d investigated accidents so senseless and bloody he’d learned to turn himself off, back away, stay remote, just so he could do his job. He’d uncovered truckloads of marijuana, stashes of cocaine, crack, every color of designer pill, an astonishing amount of cash. He’d become an investigator, pulling together the whys of roadway carnage, the wheres and hows of smuggled substances, the oddball highway incidents that defied description. And, always, he’d been alone. Dealing with his job, dealing with himself. With emotions he didn’t want to have, couldn’t afford. Being a lieutenant was very new, he wasn’t even sure he liked it. Instead of being responsible for just himself, he now had to take on the burdens of fellow officers. He’d wanted the advancement, the salary boost, the prestige. But he missed being out there on the road every day, dealing one-on-one with what fate threw in his lap.

  He’d missed something in the here and now.

  Shaking away the shades of a world totally foreign to the one he was in, Raven stared as Cat left his side, strode down the center aisle, bowed, and knelt before their majesties. Startled, he realized Catriona MacDuff was being declared winner of the Lyst. The King handed her a small hand-painted wooden shield, the event’s most prized award. Cat’s rise to her feet was a shadow of her customary springing grace, Raven noted with a scowl. Upper body bowed low, she backed away from the thrones, then made a mockery of his dark thoughts by loping easily up the shallow steps just as the King’s Herald boomed, “Will the gentle called Raven approach the throne?”

  Raven couldn’t move. The guy had to be kidding. No way! He wasn’t going to be part of this. But Owen ap Daffyd was grinning, poking him in the ribs, pointing toward the stage. Cat, eyes sparkling, had paused in the aisle at the end of their bench; the Cheshire Cat would have envied her smile. Raven groaned as eager hands reached out, hauling him to his feet. “I don’t know what the hell to do,” he hissed at the young archer.

  “Ten feet out, bow,” snapped Owen ap Daffyd.. “Then kneel at the king’s feet.”

  Knees moved to the side as Raven slid past. A heavy hand clapped him on the back. Max. Cat tugged at his shoulders, straightening his shirt. And then he was at the foot of the center aisle, bowing from the waist. Unaccountably, the heart that had been ruthlessly trained to remain aloof to everything was thudding in his chest. His knee hit the ground, his head bent low before King Corwyn. But it was Queen Eilis who was doing the talking, praising his actions in the recent emergency. Raven found he couldn’t even summon a modest protest. The situation was simply too bizarre.

  Queen Eilis accepted a rolled parchment from the Herald’s assistant. The Herald bellowed out the formal words of the award; then, smiling graciously, the queen offered the parchment to Raven.

  He grasped it, and since the queen’s hand seemed to linger, he bent forward, flicking a kiss just above her fingers. A murmur of approval swept the royal retinue as well as the audience. Thank God he’d done it right! Raven rose, backed away, bowed once again to their majesties. Like a child released to summer vacation, he ran up the center path toward his place beside his lady.

  There was a general rustling as the audience prepared to get to its feet for the exit of the royal entourage. Evidently, Court was over. But as Raven slipped into his seat beside Cat, the Herald’s voice stopped all movement in its tracks.

  “Oyez, oyez, oyez! It is herewith decreed that Sir Brocc of Castlewood shall be banished from the Lords and Ladies of Chivalry for a period of three months. So ordered this day by Corwyn, King, and Eilis, Queen.”

  Cat ducked her head, avoiding the eyes swiveling in her direction. She could not, however, miss the general murmur of approval.

  “He got off light,” said Owen ap Daffyd. “Deliberately hurting someone like that is almost as bad as what happened to Garth.”

  “No.” Raven looked the young archer straight in the eye. “What happened on the Archery Field was attempted murder.” He grasped the embarrassed Cat by the arm. “Okay, Lady Knight,” Raven whispered in her ear. “You’ve been avenged. Let’s go.”

  “Wait!” Cat commanded

  The audience rose, heads bowed as the royal party swept uphill and out of the clearing. As Raven and Cat made their way up the path in the king’s wake, he once again whispered in her ear. “Too bad the king got there first. I’d planned on going a round or two with the guy myself.”

  Cat stopped, swung around, almost causing a plump woman in elaborate Tudor-style brocade to go tumbling down the aisle. Raven grabbed the unfortunate middle-aged lady, anchoring her to the path. With considerably more caution, the two of them continued up to the top of the slope. Cat strode to the edge of the clearing, swung round in a flurry of marine blue linen. “Don’t you dare take on Brocc,” she hissed.. “Believe me, being banned from the Lyst Field hurts him far more than anything you could do.”

  “Wanna bet?”

  Cat’s green eyes blazed, then fell, fixing on the dense underbrush in the woods behind them. “I don’t want anyone else to be hurt,” she said, “not even Brocc. Or you.”

  “Okay,” Raven said after a moment, “let’s agree it’s been a really lousy day.” For some reason he’d never be able to understand, he leaned forward, brushed a kiss across her cheek. “Come on, woman, I don’t know about you, but I’m starving. Let’s go eat.”

  She didn’t snarl, she didn’t slap him. Raven reached for the hand that wasn’t holding her Award. Lady Catriona MacDuff and her captive slave headed back to camp, hand in hand.

  Raven helped Max prop up a wall in the Feast Hall while Cat and Alys laid out the elaborate setting for their table Max’s lips curled in an indulgent smile. Raven was incredulous. He nudged Max with his elbow. “What’s with all this stuff?” he whispered.

  “It’s Feast, man. This is how they do it.”

  “Silver plates and candles?” Raven scoffed.

  “Pewter,” Max corrected. “And a tablecloth and fancy wine glasses. The candles are real pretty when they turn out the lights.”

  “But the site’s dry,” Raven protested.

  “Well . . .” Max leaned close to Raven’s ear. “A lot of the guys have wine skins—you know, those leather things. And some just drink water or iced tea. Tastes better in fancy glasses, I guess.”

  Raven’s dark eyes swept the hall. He shook his head over the huge wooden thrones that had been transported from the amphitheater to the head table in the Feast Hall. The devotion of the royal retinue was astonishing. All part of the game, he supposed. Like those who toiled to make life easy for sports celebrities, rock stars, movie stars. Still . . .

  Cat was filling their goblets with something that looked like water but wasn’t. She took a book of matches out of the picnic hamper, lit two chunky candles, each on some kind of metal stand. The rough wooden hall was taking on an other worldly glow. Candlelight flickered over brilliant colors, stark blacks and whites. Silks, satins, brocades, elaborate appliqués of every kind of heraldic device. Someone turned out the lights, and time travel no longer seemed impossible. The ugly camp building disappeared. The Lords and Ladies of Chivalry were in a great hall in Medieval times, preparing to indulge in a feast to celebrate some military victory, a noble birthday, a good harvest. For a moment Raven’s cynicism was swept away on a wave of admiration. They might be nuts, these people, but they meant well. Their standards were high. And who could blame anyone for wanting to escape the feverish pace and ill manners of the outside world?

  Two hours later Raven had a different opinion of LALOC. The members joined solely so they could eat. He’d devoured green salad, a soup of beef, barley and onions, followed by chicken baked over a bed of apples
and onions. Replete, he had another glass of whatever interesting concoction Cat had in the wineskin and settled back to enjoy the troubadour who was entertaining between courses. He’d never tasted better food nor been so full, but when the servers brought out a dish described by the Feast Herald as “Pasta in olive oil with grated cheese and spice,” he sighed and accepted a helping. Another song from the troubadour, and a dish of roasted pork baked over steamed vegetables glazed with honey and cinnamon made its appearance. Raven choked, shook his head. “You’ve got to be kidding!” he whispered to Cat as the young server held out his hand for Raven’s plate.

  “You’re a big boy, you can take it,” Cat hissed back, lips twitching.

  When Raven set his plate back down on the woven tablecloth, he simply stared at it. “How do you stay so thin?” he asked Cat.

  “We only do this once or twice a month.”

  “And they cook it all from scratch?”

  “Yes, but you have to sign up for Feast. At smaller events fifty is max, sometimes seventy-five. This, being a big event, is still only a hundred fifty out of maybe a thousand or so who were here this weekend. You probably noticed a lot of people went home after Court.”

  Raven nodded. “Do we get dessert too?” he quipped.

  “Just wait.” Cat flashed him a grin before turning her attention to the roast pork.

  Dessert was sweet bread with chocolate chips and beautifully shaped candies in pastel shades of marzipan. “Made in a class this afternoon,” Alys told them. “I helped.” She pointed to a confection in lavender. “That’s mine. And that one over there.”

  “It’s almost a sacrilege to eat them,” Cat said as she took one of the candies Alys had pointed out.

  “This is a first,” Raven said, reaching for the other. “I’ve never even seen marzipan before, let alone tasted it.”

  Alys smiled, pleased by the admiration Raven didn’t bother to hide. Cat’s friend might look like an ogre, but she liked him better each time she spoke with him. Who better than Alys, companion of Max, to understand that appearances were not everything?

  Later, as the four of them stood in line to wash their dishes, a messenger in king’s livery approached Raven and Cat. “My lord, my lady, you are summoned to a meeting with his majesty, King Corwyn, in the royal cabin directly following Feast.”

  Raven frowned. Cat bowed her head, signaling their dutiful consent to the royal command. Raven bent his head to Cat. “Not good,” he hissed.

  Cat stood on tiptoe to reply. When her lips brushed his ear, Raven almost missed what she was saying. “Tell them you’re ex-military. Or how about the National Guard?” Raven’s frown turned into a scowl. “It’s hard to hide a take-charge type, even under a surcoat,” Cat said, tugging his head down to meet hers. “You just have to play it by ear.”

  Ear. It wasn’t his ears that were bothering him. It was another part of his anatomy that was giving him fits. Raven was infinitely glad for the baggy pants, long shirt, and flowing surcoat. Living within touching distance of Catriona MacDuff was far harder than picking his way through the minefield of LALOC royalty.

  Still grumbling, he dipped his plate in hot soapy water, glaring at the bubbles as if they were a sea of snakes.

  Chapter 12

  The lineup in the royal cabin was formidable. Seated in a semicircle were King Corwyn, Queen Eilis, Prince Marius, Princess Kiriana, the Kingdom Seneschal Etienne de la Haye and Earl Marshal Drakon Fitzwalter. The flunkies, who had met Raven and Cat at the door, disappeared. One of them, Raven noted, was the jerk who’d slammed the door in his face last night. Obsequious little bastard. He’d liked to have picked him up by scruff of his neck and slammed him against the wall. As Cat sank into a low curtsey, Raven ground his teeth, managed a stiff-necked bow. He was out of time, out of place. Once a day for this nonsense was about all he could stand.

  The highest nobility in the Florida kingdom of LALOC were still dressed in their Feast clothes, their garb elaborate, colorful, and imposing. In spite of the cabin’s plain wooden walls and scuffed vinyl flooring, it wasn’t hard to imagine he and Cat were about to be interrogated by a royal court. Raven recalled a story Cat had told him about a little boy, the son of a LALOC warrior, whose teacher asked him what his father did. “He’s a king,” the boy replied. And he wasn’t lying. These people took their alternate lives very seriously.

  King Corwyn waved his hand toward two empty chairs facing the crescent of LALOC’s finest. Raven and Cat sat. The Kingdom of Florida’s Lady Knight folded her hands neatly in her lap. Raven tried not to look belligerent. This was not, definitely not, where he wanted to be at the moment.

  “So who are you?” the king demanded without preliminaries.

  “Sir?” Raven shot back, the picture of confused innocence.

  “You pop up out of nowhere, glued to our Catriona MacDuff, who won’t let a man within ten feet of her unless she has a sword in her hand. You stalk through the camp like you own the place, take charge in emergencies like it’s something you do every day. You can’t expect us to think you’re somebody’s tame pussy cat. So who—and what—are you?”

  Raven stalled. “I thought what you call our mundane lives were private.”

  “What’s happening is too serious for us to be sticklers about privacy. We’ve got a problem, and we need to know if you’re part of the solution.”

  Raven smoothed a wrinkle from the wingtip of the shining black satin bird on his surcoat. Well . . . Cat had warned him he was a hard man to hide. He could brazen it out, make everyone angry or disappointed. But that wouldn’t help his investigation one damn bit. And telling some of the truth didn’t necessarily mean all of the truth.

  Cat was sitting motionless beside him—he could only imagine what she was thinking. Caught on our very first LALOC weekend. Raven lifted his head, flicked his gaze over each of LALOC’s inner circle. “Some of you may know Mark Turco, the knight who was injured at the Fair in Manatee Bay?” There was a murmur, nodding heads from several of the LALOC hierarchy. “Well, Mark is my brother. I heard talk there’d been some other so-called ‘accidents’ at LALOC, so I asked Cat to bring me to an Event.” Raven shrugged. “Nothing official, you understand. I’m just looking around on my own, trying to figure out what’s going on.”

  “And you’d rather we didn’t ask you what ‘nothing official’ means.” Queen Eilis, the thirty-something mother of two, raised one haughty brow, then spoiled the effect by smiling broadly. She had him, and they both knew it.

  Lt. Michael Turco fixed his eyes on the queen’s gold crown. “Yes, ma’am . . . my lady . . . uh–your majesty.”

  There was a general shuffling, a clearing of throats. Question asked and answered. Time to get down to business.

  By the time the meeting broke up Princess Kiriana, who would be queen in six months time, had volunteered to put together a team to examine the registration slips for every event at which a serious problem had occurred. And each of the LALOC officers present had agreed to put together a personal list of members who had displayed aberrant behavior.

  “Come on, man, you’ve got to be kidding!” Earl Marshal Drakon had declared when Raven first raised the subject. “Just about every damn member of LALOC would qualify.”

  Over the general laughter, Cat said, “You know what he means, Drakon. There’s quite a difference between being odd and being dangerous.”

  “Yeah, well, I wouldn’t have called Brocc dangerous until today. Now . . . I’m not so sure.”

  “Not Brocc!” Oddly enough, Cat was horrified. “He’s got a bad temper. Iffy manners, but he wouldn’t . . . he’d never . . .”

  “Put him on the list,” Raven intoned. “Somewhere near the top.”

  She, a lowly knight, had kept her mouth shut throughout the entire meeting, but this was too much. “You can’t put someone on a list just because you don’t like them.”

  “Why not?” Raven growled. “A man who would beat on a woman is capable of doing anything.”

>   “He didn’t beat on me! He just got carried away. Like it was a real battle.”

  “He lost his head. He goes on the list.”

  “Women demanded equality. We have to take the knocks that come with it!”

  “Are you crazy? If you’d seen what I’ve—”

  “Hold!” Earl Marshal Drakon’s voice roared through the room. “Brocc was out of line. He’s been banished. And his name will be at the top of my list.”

  “So be it,” King Corwyn pronounced.

  “Still glowering, Raven dropped the subject. “So what about the vendors?” he asked. “Is there anyone who knows them well enough to make a list?”

  “Lady Cara is in charge of vendors,” Prince Marius said. “She’s in my shire. I’ll find out what she can tell me.”

  After another twenty minutes of desultory speculation and general frustration over the job of trying to find a needle in a hay stack, King Corwyn thanked all those present, and the meeting broke up. As Raven walked toward the door, he felt a hand on his shoulder. “My lord,” Corwyn said, “you walk tall, make a big target. We can’t be the only ones who’ve noticed. LALOC members tend to be pretty bright. Watch your back.”

  For a moment the two men stared at each other. Corwyn was right, and they both knew it. “Thanks. Goodnight,” Raven said. A firm handshake, and he and Cat were out the door.

  “Damn!” Raven breathed as they walked the sandy road back to their camp site.

  “You were never cut out for undercover work,” Cat consoled. “You just don’t blend in with the crowd. Particularly this one.”

  “The place is full of tall macho jocks!”

  “Yes, but you’re just . . . different. They’re jocks,” Cat explained, “you’re a cop.”

  “And nobody really believed I could make it with LALOC’s resident celibate knight.”

  Cat’s soft leather slippers almost stuck to the sand beneath her feet. Her whole body glitched, her brain went numb. Somehow she kept moving. The arm closest to Raven was holding up her train, her elbow out as if to ward him off. After all, a Lady Knight had no need for a comforting arm around her shoulders. For . . . caring. Or friendship. So what if the entire hierarchy of LALOC knew Raven was a fake, nothing but a false lover, that he never laid a hand on her . . .