In the Shadow of Midnight

by Marsha Canham

  No surprise, since their walls imprisoned the only person who could threaten the king’s possession of the crown.

  There had to be other ways in and out of the castle, of course. Eduard just hadn’t found them. He judged it possible to raise a ladder to a section of the wall and clamber over it between patrols of the guards on sentry, but a sixty-foot ladder took time to build and would be difficult to conceal when there was not a tree or bush within a mile radius of the barren dome on which the castle stood.

  A rope and hook could afford a man an alternative means of gaining the top of the wall, but again, there was sixty feet of height at the lowest point and he had not met an arm yet with enough accuracy to toss a grapple over a stone lip on the first throw. More than one attempt, ringing off the stone, would be sure to attract attention and again, there was nowhere to hide.

  He had once heard of a man loading himself on a catapult and, in desperation, hurling himself up and over the walls of an impregnable castle. It was when Eduard also remembered the man had had his brains crushed to berry juice when he impacted on a stone cistern that he left the perch he had been occupying for the hours he had sat staring at the solid dark mass on the horizon.

  The road to the village ran straight through the market square and climbed toward the main gates. The village church faced the outer war towers as if it had been deliberately placed there to ward off evil. The solitary inn was at the eastern corner of the square and even though it was still relatively early—only an hour or two past Vespers—the streets were deserted, and most windows were shuttered against the dread mysteries of the night. There was no sound to be heard anywhere save for the dull crunch of his own bootheels over the hard-packed earth.

  Eduard slowed and tilted his head slightly to one side. His hand went to the hilt of his sword and his eyes searched the shadows on either side of him. He heard it again, a breath like a mountain might make the instant before all air is expelled from its catacombs.

  “Put your hand away from your sword and stand fast.”

  Eduard was a split second too slow in reacting and before he could pull his blade more than an inch from its sheath, he felt a cold sliver of steel slide up beneath his chin. An arm the size of a haunch of venison circled his chest and pulled him back against something solid and armoured. His head was forced back at a critical angle, by a knife that nicked the skin, sending a warm trickle of blood down to his collar.

  “Away from the sword,” the voice hissed in his ear, “or our conversation ends here.”

  “Brevant?”

  The knife sliced deeper. “Godstrewth! You do not know me and I do not know you, yet one of us stands bellowing a name for all the world of sin-eaters to hear!”

  Since the “bellow” had comprised of little more than a pained gasp of breath, Eduard held his tongue between his teeth and waited for the knife to be taken away.

  It lingered for effect then was removed on a grunted curse. Eduard relaxed the arch in his neck and ran a hand across the stinging cut as he turned to face his attacker.

  The man was a mountain. Taller than Eduard by half a head and twice as broad from neck to waist to calf. The armour Eduard had felt had been the man’s chest. He wore the leather buckler of a captain and the cloak of a man who did not want to be readily identified … although how there could be two of similar size and bulk was a question Eduard did not want answered.

  “You are come from the Old Lion?” Brevant asked huskily.

  “You will think I am come from hell if you lift a knife to me again.”

  Brevant grinned, baring two crooked teeth, like fangs, to the gloomy light. “Look about you, whelp. We are in hell already. Do I get an answer to my question?”

  “Do I get an answer to mine?”

  The mountain shifted in a general glint of buckles, studs, and metal clasps that adorned his surcoat. “I am Brevant, and because you could learn that much from any villager with eyes come morning, I give away no secrets.”

  “I am told you do not give away much of anything.”

  “The price of knowledge is not cheap,” he agreed on a deep rumble of mirth. “And since I am not the one expected to pay, I do not want to know your name, or who you are, or where you are from. If you are come from the Old Lion, that is dangerous enough to know.”

  “The Old Lion recommended me to you,” Eduard acknowledged. “But how did you know I was here?”

  “I know when a dog strays into this village; I know where it pisses, what it eats, how many fleas it has on its body. I know because it is my business to know and because it is healthier not to be taken by surprise.”

  Eduard felt the blood oozing down his neck and saw no argument. “Do you also know why I am here?”

  “I know full bloody well why you are here,” Brevant growled. “And after I tell you what you are up against, mayhap you will tuck your tail between your legs like all the others and scurry off back to where you have come from.”

  “There have been others?”

  “There have been others since the Devil took the throne of England and began to use this place as a means of removing faces he never wanted to see again. They have all come—the fathers, the brothers, the valiant friends, even the wives, and they have all paced the hills and walked the shores. They have hunched for hours on the Eagle’s Chair, just as you have undoubtedly done, and they have stared at the walls as if their eyes could put them through the mortar. They stay a sennight, sometimes two, then leave again, no better off than when they came, no closer to seeing who they came to see than they were when they arrived all full of fire and righteous brimstone. You would do best to take my advice—and this I give free of cost— and leave now before you find yourself with hymns being sung over your head and dirt being thrown over your feet.”

  “Are you saying you cannot help me get into the castle?”

  Brevant looked astonished, and more than a little horrified. “Help you get in? Was that what the Lion thought I would do? Help you get in? A louse needs help to get in; a man would need aid from God. My skin is no safer than any others because there happens to be more of it. My actions are governed by Old Swill, and he answers only to the king. If he takes a notion in his head to question me on this or that, I am as good as dead—and not pleasantly so. No, no, my good man. My intention was not to spread my gizzards on the rack for this. If that was what you thought, keep your money and your ideas to yourself; I’ll have no more to do with you.”

  Eduard reached out and caught his sleeve as Brevant started to walk away. “Can you at least carry a message for me?”

  “A message?” The shadowed visage peered around, this way and that. “If I hear words and am expected to repeat them, I could be asked at the point of a red hot pincer to repeat them again, and would be forced to do so. If I carry these words on a piece of paper, I could be searched and the paper found and the words read, and the pincers heated again. Do you see my problem, friend?”

  “Do you see this, friend?” Eduard asked, holding up a small leather pouch. He shook it once to let the sound of coins silence the heaving catacombs, then loosed the string and spilled the contents in his palm to let the black eyes catch sight of the gold.

  With his other hand he tugged at the cord around his neck and snapped it free, then fished the ring up over the thickness of his clothes.

  “I will put these coins into your hand tonight and an equal sum tomorrow night when you bring me proof this ring was delivered into the right hands.”

  “A ring?” Brevant frowned. “By all the saints—”

  “It is a small and insignificant thing. You could hide it in your cheek if you had to and simply spit it on the floor where a keen eye might find it. If it is found, an equally simple exchange would occur the next time you passed that spot. For your trouble, I will make you a very rich man.”

  Brevant looked at the ring, then at the coins. “What manner of proof will I be expected to carry out?”

  “Be assured, the danger is no gre
ater to you than this.”

  The captain snarled deep in his throat. Quicker than Eduard expected a man of his size to move, the ring, the coins, and the mountainous bulk disappeared along the deep crevice of shadow formed between two cottages.

  He cast a sharp eye around him, wary of any sounds or movements that might indicate they had been observed or the captain followed. There was nothing. His heart was beating hard in his chest and there was still a smarting line of abraded flesh where the ring had dragged summarily through hair and skin in his haste to remove it. But it was done. Contact had been initiated. It only remained to tickle the giant’s greed long enough to come up with a plan to rescue Eleanor.

  Chapter 16

  “The donjons, if I recall correctly, are located in the north end of the bailey,” said Henry de Clare. “The fact that Brevant specifically mentioned a tower cell means the princess is likely being confined above ground, and for that much, at least, we can be thankful. The main donjons are beneath the Constable’s Tower, in a labyrinth of tunnels and cells carved into the solid rock. Getting someone out of there would be like … like coaxing Sedrick backways through a mouse hole.”

  Henry looked at each solemn face gathered around the table, pausing over the two he had least expected to see there when the journey had begun. When FitzRandwulf had told him about Ariel’s wild accusations to do with jewel thefts, he had agreed Eduard had been left with no choice but to tell her the truth. He was not as convinced she should have accompanied them to Corfe, but what other choice did they have? They would not have been able to rest any easier with her out of their sight once she knew what they were about. Short of staking her down hand and foot, he doubted they could have kept her away.

  He had agreed, no less reluctantly, on the need to include Dafydd ap Iorwerth and Robin in their confidence. The former had listened and accepted their intentions with little more than a curse and a hard glare at his own broken arm; the latter had been almost too excited to keep a dry eye.

  “I knew it!” Robin had cried, looking at his brother with pride bristling from every pore. “I knew you would come after her! I knew you could not, in the name of chivalry and honour, abandon our princess to her fate.”

  Eduard had smiled dryly and avoided making contact with Ariel’s eyes. Sparrow had snorted something about reading too much poetry and becoming addled by too many faery stories, which had set the pair of them, squire and seneschal, arguing over the principles of knighthood.

  “These towers,” Eduard asked, fresh from his encounter with Jean de Brevant, “they have only one way in and one way out, I suppose?”

  Henry shrugged. “Unless you are a bird and can fly up to the windows, aye. Only the one entry way.”

  “When I was a child,” Robin said wryly, “I used to believe Sparrow could fly.”

  “With vines between my toes and the wind at my back, I can indeed fly almost anywhere,” Sparrow agreed belligerently. “But these walls are bare and smooth, and the only wind is the devil’s breath. Not even I, Young Staunch, could live up to such expectations.”

  “There are passageways connecting each tower,” Henry added, leaning over the table and sketching an invisible diagram with his finger. “Access tunnels for the guards and porters.”

  “Porters?”

  “Food carriers, dung collectors, the whores who move back and forth from one barracks to the next. Each tower has its own forebuilding and guardroom—” He sketched both roughly. “The postings change—while I was there, at any rate —thrice per deum, with most of those who come off duty going only so far as the nearest gaming table or barrel of ale. If there is any weakness at all, it is during this changing of guards, when one is perhaps arguing with another over a toss of the dice, or a man has had a particularly good whore beneath him and grudges the need to hurry away.” He cocked an eyebrow in Ariel’s direction and smiled tightly. “My pardons for my bluntness, sister dear, but you did insist we not curb our tongues on your account.”

  “I must suppose it is only the voice of experience speaking,” she allowed, returning his smirk with equal aplomb.

  Sedrick sighed. “Aye, well, experience or no, all of this will be for naught if Brevant brings a troop of guards with him the next time ye meet. How do ye know ye can trust him? How do ye know he is not, even as we speak, spilling his guts to the governor and setting a pretty trap for us all? He sounded none too happy to be dealing with ye.”

  “How he sounded and how he looked at the gold were two different matters,” Eduard remarked. “A man honest in his greed will usually be honest in his dealings until the purse runs dry. Moreover, the marshal seemed confident we could keep him on our side, and that should be reason enough.”

  “Brevant,” Ariel murmured, glancing at Henry. “Why does the name sound familiar?”

  “Because we have been using it freely this past hour?” her brother suggested wanly.

  Ariel frowned. Something was there, nagging at the edge of her memory, but Sedrick was speaking again and it slipped out of reach.

  “On our side or not, eager for our gold or not, if he has balked over such a trifling thing as carrying a trinket inside his cheek, how do ye plan to convince him to carry us?”

  “Mayhap he will not have to carry us at all,” Sparrow said. “Merely stand aside as we pass. We still have the marshal’s letters, do we not, or were they lost in Rennes with the nags?”

  “We still have them,” Eduard admitted grimly.

  “Well then? Why were they written if not to be read?”

  “What letters?” Dafydd asked, bewildered.

  “My uncle anticipated we might encounter some difficulties along the way,” Henry explained. “He wrote letters to state we travelled under his seal of protection. They also state we are en route to Radnor Castle, there to unite my suitably demured sister with her intended groom, Reginald de Braose.”

  “Braose?”

  Sparrow dismissed the Welshman’s exclamation with a flick of his wrist. “Keep your tongue in your mouth, Cyril. The letters were meant to be shown only in an emergency, and only if the king’s men took to putting their noses too close to our business. Radnor lies in the path of our true destination and would lead any suspicious minds into believing we were following the king’s writ. Besides, is your brother not supposed to be meeting us at a rendezvous well to the good of the road that would carry us to Radnor?”

  Dafydd nodded. “He was instructed by the earl marshal to be waiting for us at Gloucester.”

  “Do you have doubts he will be unable to follow his instructions?” Sparrow demanded.

  “He will be there,” Dafydd said grimly.

  “With his men?”

  “With his men, aye.”

  “Well then?”

  “Well then,” Ariel interrupted impatiently, not wanting to dwell on the merits of Rhys ap Iorwerth’s reliability or eagerness. “These letters—do you think they would get us through the gates of Corfe?”

  Sparrow, who had for the most part managed to avoid, in all their days of travel, asking or answering a direct question of Ariel de Glare, scratched furiously at his mop of short black curls and screwed his face into a frown. He had his own reasons for disapproving of the marshal’s niece being included in their discussions, but since it appeared as if she might have to play a crucial role, he would have to wait for a more prudent time to vent them.

  “Aye,” he grumbled, chewing back his reluctance. “They might. This hovel is not exactly of princely standards and the castellan might be convinced of the benefits of inviting one of the king’s wards to bide a night or two under his protection.”

  “You do not have to agree to it,” Eduard cut in, his voice as sharp as a knife. “In fact, you would be showing the greater amount of common sense to refuse. The risks are immeasurable and there is no means to vouchsafe we will be let out again, even supposing we are let in.”

  Ariel was well aware of the reason for the resentful mood around the table. She was here against
their better judgement, proving to be pivotal to their plans, and there did not seem to be a damned thing any of them could do about it.

  Her cool, steady gaze touched on each face in turn before settling on FitzRandwulf’s. “Did any of you consult your common sense before setting forth on this venture? To my mind, there is no greater risk one can take in life than the one that proves you to be a coward.”

  Henry chuckled wryly. “Spoken like a true De Clare.”

  “Did you think I would refuse?”

  “On the contrary, Puss. I somehow expected you to be the first one through the gates. I, for one, will be right on your heels. After all”—he cast a wink in Robin’s direction—“we have a damosel in distress to rescue, do we not?”

  Robin grinned and Sedrick scowled. “When do ye expect to hear from this rogue, Brevant, again?”

  It was a moment before Eduard could drag his eyes away from Ariel, and when he did, he shook his head. “No mention was made of a time or place, but I imagine he will find me the same way he found me tonight.”

  “If so, you will have no gullet left by week’s end,” Sparrow snorted, eyeing the bloodied cut.

  “A chance I will have to take.”

  “Less so if there is another pair of eyes watching your back at all times.”

  “Aye, and yer purse,” Sedrick added, not convinced a bribe ensured loyalty.

  “I have no objections to having a friendly shadow behind me,” Eduard agreed. “So long as the shadow remains well out of sight.”

  “When have you ever seen me when I have not wanted to be seen?” Sparrow demanded. “To judge by the description you gave, I could crouch in the shadow of the knave’s knees and he would not be able to see me from such heights.”

  Ariel’s hand thumped the table with such vigor it sent the wood sprite jumping in his skin.