The chamberlain was an older gentleman with a thick mash of white hair about his neck—a stocky-strong man, but his posture hinted that his able days were well behind him. Arable dared herself to look him square with a haughty disgust. “We have immediate business.”
John grumbled in assent. “You’ll kindly fetch the Lord de Senlis.”
“And for reasons that don’t concern you,” she added, “my man here will escort you to find his lordship.”
Peetey stepped forward and motioned for the chamberlain to lead the way. Confidence at all times. It was their only strategy.
The wary chamberlain experimented with a few different expressions, but submitted. “Stay with them,” he commanded one of his men, while bringing the other along with Peetey to unintentionally show him the layout of the de Senlis manor.
It was one of the last things that would go well.
* * *
A GOOD AMOUNT OF time passed before Lord Simon de Senlis joined them in the foyer. In that expanse, only three things happened—Arable and John exchanged a few furtive but assuring glances, Arable shifted her weight from foot to foot to relieve whatever bloating was apparently taking place in her costume boots, and a naked young woman ran the full breadth of the room.
It should have been an obvious sign that things were not going to go their way.
Before either Arable or John had a chance to comment on the naked woman, the lord of the manor was upon them. He was surrounded by a crowd of his entourage on the adjacent balcony, who whispered and pointed at John Little as if he were even more ridiculous-looking than probably had been described. Peetey was at the back of the group, looking exactly as perplexed to be there as would a giraffe.
The Lord Simon de Senlis was a well-trimmed young man with a smooth chin and a pinched nose, and he dismissed a few of his servants quite kindly. Arable would’ve felt poorly about robbing the man, but what they meant to steal today was no more than what was already owed for his part of King Richard’s ransom. They were less like thieves and more like tax collectors.
“One in four,” the foreheaded Guardsman in Rutland had demanded. “Everyone pays.”
Arable tried to ignore the comparison.
“I present Lord Simon, fourth of his name, master of the house de Senlis and rightful heir to the earldom of Huntingdonshire.”
The chamberlain’s bold announcement echoed through the entrance gallery. John Little and Arable descended the shorter stairs into the hall proper and gave their best dignified bows to the lord of the manor.
“Your lordship. We apologize for arriving unannounced.” John Little’s mouth twisted hard to keep his diction clean, or perhaps to avoid swallowing the pillowing lace of his collar. “We understand this is unusual, but we appreciate your complete cooperation.”
“You have my complete attention,” Lord Simon said cautiously, eyeing both of them in turn. “I’d suggest you make the most of that before I reallocate it.”
“As you say.” Arable gave her warmest smile. “We are in the course of a financial investigation, which I … my apologies…” She put her hand to her breast. “Perhaps your lordship would prefer we continue in private?”
“If I have such a preference,” Lord Simon answered, his lips barely moving, “I will make it known. I beg you to continue.”
“With pleasure.” She cocked her head. “The investigation to which I refer has led us to your estate. If we find you less than accommodating in its satisfaction, some might find suspicion in such behavior.”
The balcony’s railing took Lord Simon’s elbows. “I cannot accommodate you, Lady Colonna, until I know what you ask for.”
“We’ve come to investigate counterfeit coins,” Arable answered him with a cool stare. “Which we have traced to your manor.”
If that had any effect on the man, it was only to further calm him. “That’s quite an accusation.”
“It’s not an accusation at all,” she replied. “You might easily be its victim, not its architect. Although it is interesting how instinctively you associated yourself as the latter.”
“Frankly, I’d be more offended if you intended the former. Calling me a victim would imply I am ignorant of the coin that passes through my estate. At least if I were an architect, as you say, you’d be accusing me of some sort of criminal genius. That is, at least, something of a compliment. Unfortunately for you, I am neither.”
The lord rapped his knuckles on the balcony rail, eyeing his guests as though they were an unfavorable offering of hors d’oeuvres. He showed no interest in descending the stairs to join them.
“I suspect my insistence alone will not be enough to satisfy your … investigation.”
“I’m afraid not,” John humphed. “We’ll need to have a look at your treasury, and see if you have any of the counterfeit coins in question. And iffing you do, we may have more questions for you.”
Arable winced at his use of the word iffing, giving away his low education. They only needed to be believed long enough for Lord de Senlis to reveal the location of his treasury, where they would of course discover no counterfeit coins and make their apologies. Then Lord Robert and the others outside could sneak in and steal from it.
It was never exactly a good plan, but Lord Robert didn’t seem to mind.
“I could bring a chest out for you to inspect…” Lord Simon lulled, clearly anticipating Arable’s interruption.
“… which of course we couldn’t trust,” she finished. “Let’s not make this any more difficult than it is. We’ll need to see your storeroom, as it is, and immediately. The longer you delay, the longer your men could be—hypothetically—busy hiding any evidence. That would be precisely what a criminal genius would do. If you have nothing to hide, you have only to prove it, and immediately.”
The lord made a few quiet clicks with his tongue, irritated to be at the disadvantage. “With great respect, I must decline you. I am not in the habit of leading strangers into my secure room.”
They had made one plan for this. If it didn’t work, they’d be freefalling.
“Do you think we’re here to steal from you and run away?” Arable shared a smirk with John. “I should hope your guards are capable of handling me and my associate. I don’t know that Jonathan is even capable of running any more, are you?”
“The word alone makes my knees quiver,” John balked, overacting it a bit.
“And if you’re worried about my bodyguard,” Arable continued, gesturing up to Peetey, “then you are welcome to keep him here. You should buy his service from me, in fact. You must be desperately understaffed if the three of us present such a threat to your security. You could even pay him in counterfeit coins, I doubt he’d recognize the difference.”
Peetey bowed his head awkwardly, clearly unsure if he was supposed to contribute some witty little barb here or not. Arable was grateful he did not try.
“Entertain me,” Lord Simon rolled his head about, “with what would happen if I were to refuse you.”
Arable shrugged. “We would leave. And report back to the Earl Robert of Huntingdon that you refused to help us. I imagine our next visit would be accompanied by a great deal more men, and perhaps the earl himself.”
Simon shifted. “He’d love that, wouldn’t he?”
“So please,” Arable idled herself by picking at a seam in her sleeve, “consider this minor inconvenience a service to your earl.”
“My earl!” Simon cursed, curling his lips back. “Oh, his fingers are all over this. I expected some sort of retaliation, but this is more than a bit underhanded, don’t you think? My apologies Lady Arabella, Lord Jonathan—but I do believe you’re being used. Tell me, how much of this investigation have you personally overseen, and how much of it has been dictated to you by my good earl?”
Arable did not respond, and instead turned uneasily to share a frown with John. They exchanged some harsh nonsense whispers.
Perfectly performed.
“Let him find the flaw,”
Lord Robert had counseled them. “If he thinks he’s outsmarted you, he won’t look for the real play.”
“I knew something was wrong with this,” John eventually shouted, breaking away from Arable’s fake protests. “Lord Senlis, I apologize. I had my doubts about this before, and you’re beginning to confirm them. Something rang untrue about this whole thing, but Lord Robert insisted on it.”
“He knew I would refuse you,” Lord Simon laughed, buying into John’s act. “He just needed to concoct an excuse to come raid my estate himself, to take by force the money he’s been trying to extort from me this last month. Oh, it rings very untrue indeed, my friend. You were wise to trust your instincts.”
“How did he know you would refuse us?” Arable asked.
“Because it’s a preposterous claim. So let’s surprise him then, by giving you exactly what you’ve asked for.”
A few minutes later, Lord Simon was doing precisely what they wanted him to, and he thought it was his idea.
They moved down the vaulted hallways in a single file. At a corner, Arable met Peetey’s eyes for a hard moment. Once they had seen the secure room, he would find an opportunity to disappear, open a window to signal the others waiting outside, so they could slip in for a good bit of pilfering.
“I wish I could say I was surprised,” the young de Senlis was complaining, “but apparently our false earl will do anything to hold onto his power. At least he’s shown his hand in doing this. He proves himself to be the sloppy, power-hungry thief I know he is. And he’s not even good at it. I’ll have my men set up some rooms for you, with a hot meal and wine. I very much look forward to hearing about this investigation he’s set you up on. This perversion of justice.”
“It is indignity at its worst,” John Little bellowed. The more they fed the lord what he wanted to hear now, the more he would be blinded to what was actually happening.
Their path led to a simple wooden door at the base of a stone spiral staircase, unique only for its heavy bolted hinges and barrel locks that were notably sturdier than its neighbors. No bedroom or sitting room lay behind this door, not at all.
One stubborn bolt split hairs as it screeched open, but an entirely different sound interrupted their focus before the second bolt was touched. A burst of noise and riot cracked open from a door halfway down their corridor, followed by a couple of men who seemed to be fleeing for their lives. One of them stumbled like a drunkard as he tried to unpuzzle himself from a wooden stool lodged around his head.
Arable glanced backward, at the way they had come. The escape route.
The stool-headed fellow and his companion vanished down another branch of the estate, replaced instantly by two people who shouldn’t have even been inside the building yet.
“Holy damn,” Marion Fitzwalter cursed, staring dumbly back at them.
And damn it all to hell if Lord Robert, Earl of Huntingdon, didn’t pull a rapier from his belt and literally shout “Ha ha!” as he flew down the corridor at them.
TWENTY-TWO
MARION FITZWALTER
GRAFHAM, HUNTINGDONSHIRE
“THIS,” MARION PREFACED, “IS a tale of increasingly foolish acts.”
And the other half began the same way.
Once the very last bit of sunset’s violet died away, they broke off from the others. Marion waved to John, saddled on a horse beside Peetey and Arable. Those three would make their way to the front of the Senlis manor shortly, just as soon as Marion’s group made their long secret path to its rear. Marion’s stomach twisted fierce worrying about everything they couldn’t predict. But Lord Robert was quick to remind her that this was—for all intents and purposes—free of consequences.
“Hopefully we succeed,” he shrugged, readjusting the cape at his shoulder, “but if we don’t, what’s the worry? Who’s Senlis going to complain to? His earl? Why, that’s me! He could take it all the way to King Richard, but he’d have to break him out of an Austrian prison first.”
Marion wished she could be as flippant with her choices. So far as Lord Robert was concerned, there was no amount of trouble they could get into here that he could not avoid by grandly revealing his true identity and waltzing away. This worst-case scenario netted him the exact lack of coin from the Senlis estate he was currently receiving, so he risked nothing. Robert had an air of invulnerability to him that reminded Marion of easier times, when their escapades were frivolous. When they stole only from those who could afford it, and never when it was dangerous. In some ways it was reassuring to think their winter’s lament was over, and they could finally return to light adventuring.
But when last life had been like this, it had descended quickly into tragedy. And history, as historians are prone to repeat, is prone to repeat itself.
“Let’s at it, then.”
Lord Robert drew from his belt a floppy, thinly brimmed hat that came to a crisp point in the front. He claimed it made him look like a mysterious bandit rather than an earl, but in reality it only made him look ridiculous. His disguise was as useless as the sword he’d selected—a thin little sliver in the Italian style that was only good for poking holes in practice dummies. But Lord Robert fancied its lightness and how quickly he could move with it, and didn’t seem to care that it would shatter the first time some other sword came its way. He had dressed up how he imagined a provocative burglar might, and concocted the entire plan as if it were a game.
For him, it was.
But Marion wondered if he could protect the rest of them as well as he claimed. Or whether he would continue offering his protection if they failed to meet his expectations as notorious thieves.
“Nick, this side is yours,” Lord Robert called out, even though they all knew their positions. The three of them would each watch one side of the manor for a signal from the others within, ignoring the front. Robert flourished his cape as he turned and skipped into a run. “If either of you see the signal first, you’d best find me. I do not intend on missing out on this skullfuckery.”
That brought Marion to an abrupt halt. “Skullfuckery?” she repeated.
“Is that not…” Lord Robert looked for support from Nick. “I thought that sounded sort of dangerous.”
Marion wondered briefly if this was all a trick. “Are you inventing words to sound more like a thief?”
Robert smiled. “I have some other ones I’ll try out later then.”
“Please don’t.” She winced. “If you try any fuckery on someone’s skull, I’m leaving.”
“What if this turns into a fight?” Nick asked, trying to find a discreet place to hide. “I’ve never killed anyone.”
“Nor will you have to,” Marion responded with a confidence she would later regret. “If it comes to anything like that at all, you surrender yourself and we will come for you.”
“Or,” Lord Robert whispered, his eyes bright, “disappear in a puff of smoke!”
Nick stared, incredulous.
“Is that … can you … isn’t that a thing all thieves know how to do?”
Marion shook her head.
“Ah. Well then, yes, surrender is a good second choice.”
With that, they left Nick behind and waded through waist-high grass into straight rows of spruces, beyond which the moon’s reflection glimmered in the lake behind the manor.
It was queer to miss Will Scarlet. He had been the heart of any Robin Hooding they’d done since autumn, along with Arthur and David, but all three were long gone now. The very fact she was involving herself in an endeavor like this said everything about how unqualified they were to do it.
She equally hated that half this plan depended on Arable de Burel doing something right. Her talents in this world lay in doing the opposite.
But they had to go through with it. “If you disappoint him in any way,” the countess Magdalena had whispered before they left, “I’ll see to it that you pay, with something you hold dear.”
* * *
MARION AND LORD ROBERT ended up hiding near eac
h other at the far corner of the manor, where they could each spy upon their designated side. There lay a low stone wall, fallen to disrepair, which offered them a convenient shadow from the moon’s gaze. Footmen paced the balcony atop the building—three in total, by Marion’s count—that made irregular passes around the roof’s perimeter.
“Do you actually think this will work?” she asked quietly.
“I think it will annoy Simon de Senlis greatly,” Lord Robert answered. His tone was more honest now, less of the showman he took in front of the others. “Which, I can guarantee you, is only a fraction of what he has coming to him. He’s a Simon de Senlis, and he’s been told all his life that Simons de Senlis are the earls of Huntingdon. But you know how it is when you give a child something he hasn’t earned.”
“They take it for granted.”
“And grow angry when they lose it. Also I think they might all be inbred. The Senlis family, that is—not all children. That’s just a guess, given their slow declination of intelligence from his grandfather to his father to this sludge bucket. Could just be coincidence, but I like the idea they’re inbred. It explains a lot, you know?”
Marion hated that she smiled at that. “I’m sure I don’t.”
The signal came far earlier than expected. A window on the ground floor creaked open, a quarter-length of the manor away. The moon glinted across its glass and Marion whistled. “That was fast.”
“Hurry then.” Lord Robert glanced up to see if he was clear before loping out from behind their cover.
“Wait!” she tisked, but he was gone. With his demicape pulled dramatically over his head as if its magic would render him invisible, he made a dozen long strides and jumped the final few feet to flatten himself against the manor wall. Marion craned to see if Nick was visible so she could signal him, but didn’t want to draw any attention. Torn between going back for Nick or following Robert, she crouched back in the semisafety of the stone wall. The watchmen above lingered, and might easily glance down upon her.
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