The Marsh King's Daughter (11 page)

Nicholas snatched the crown away. 'I owe you nothing,' he snapped, knowing the opposite was true and feeling all the more enraged because of it. 'I gave you no encouragement. Go your own way, not mine.'

She shook her head. 'Believe me, I would, but it is impossible for a woman, even a nun, to journey without escort in these times.'

'You should have thought of that before.'

'I did.' She gestured impatiently at the crown. 'I wondered while you lay sick if you knew something about the treasures lost in the quicksand, but it was no more than a fancy born of something you said in your fever. I never thought in my heart that it was true. All I knew for certain was that I had to escape from St Catherine's, and you were my means.'

Nicholas raised a sceptical eyebrow.

'You owe me your life,' she repeated stubbornly. 'The least you can do is escort me to the nearest town where I can abandon these nun's weeds and find work.'

He snorted. 'That's a foolish notion.'

'No more foolish than the idea that I could ever become a nun.' Her brown eyes could have been stones. 'Surely it is not too much to ask.'

Nicholas glared at her. 'They will search for you. They will put out word that one of their novices has absconded at the same time as a departing guest. I cannot afford to be caught with a runaway nun.'

She eyed him with scorn. 'You can afford whatever you want,' she said coldly.

Nicholas considered bribing her with a bag of silver, but, even as the thought occurred, knew that it would not work. What she wanted, as she said, was a masculine escort to lend her protection and a degree of respectability. Whilst he could provide both, all she would be to him was a hindrance. He disliked the way she was looking at him - as if she could read his mind and thought him a worm that had just crawled from under a rock. 'Perhaps I do not want to pay your price.'

'Do you set so little worth on your honour?'

'My honour?' He gave a humourless laugh. 'If you knew anything about my family's honour, you would seal your lips rather than ask such a damning question.'

A look of bewilderment tinged with fear flickered across her face, but her chin stayed high. 'I do not give a fig for your family's honour, only for yours that you keep it.'

'Only for yourself,' he said.

'Then we are evenly matched.'

Nicholas felt the situation slipping rapidly from his grasp. Whatever he threw at her, she had an answer, and in truth she was right. Despite his intense anger and irritation, he had neither the physical strength nor the mental capacity to murder her. King John's treasure did not confer on him King John's nature.

'We are not,' he contradicted, giving her a vexed look. 'You have the measure of me and you know it. To the nearest town and no further.'

She nodded briskly like a merchant concluding a business arrangement. 'As long as it be not Lincoln. I am known there and it is the first place they would look. If I am discovered, my family will hand me straight back to the Church.' She clasped her hands together in a gesture of agitation rather than nun-like control.

Nicholas could well understand why her folk desired to keep her at arm's length, but there was something about her stance, a vulnerable core behind the stubborn facade that ignited a spark of sympathy. Almost despite himself, he found that he still liked her.

'You can escort me to Nottingham,' she said. 'I have been there with my grandfather several times and I know its streets tolerably well.'

He gave her a grudging nod. 'Fair enough.'

She rewarded him with a wary smile and, as if his agreement had given her sanction, once more reached to the crown. 'I have never seen anything so beautiful,' she said with a look of haunted longing in her eyes.

Nicholas resisted the urge to snatch it away. 'I think it must have belonged to John's grandmother, the Empress Mathilda. I once saw John's queen wearing her royal crown and it was a dainty circlet, nothing like this.'

'What will you do with it?'

'I have not thought.' Nicholas turned it in his hands and the soft October light gleamed silkily on the gold.

Her gaze sharpened. 'You will not melt it down?'

'That depends on circumstance.' He was unwilling to be drawn. 'Not for the moment at least.'

'May I look?' She gestured at the two boxes behind him.

Nicholas shrugged. 'I do not know why you bother to ask,' he said ungraciously, but stood aside.

She stepped forward and crouched. Her fingers, elegant and slim, stroked the exquisitely carved ivory box. With misgiving he saw her eyes linger on the money pouches and develop a feral gleam.

Then, with a sigh and a shake of her head, she rose. 'Is this what you meant at St Catherine's when you spoke of Pandora's box?'

'What?' He gazed at her blankly.

'In your fever you kept muttering about Pandora's box. We didn't know what you meant, although I wondered if you were speaking of the King's treasure.'

For the first time in their conversation, Nicholas's lips parted in a grin, albeit mirthless. 'Oh yes,' he said. 'What you see before you definitely belongs to Pandora.'

She frowned.

'Pandora was a woman in old legend who was warned expressly not to open a beautiful box; but, of course, she did. Unfortunately the box contained all the world's woes, and these were unleashed on mankind never to be recaptured.' He returned the crown to its stained silk wrapping. 'Only hope remained.'

She gave a little shiver. 'You could leave it here.' He slanted her a glance from beneath his brows. 'Would you?'

She considered the boxes, but only for a brief moment. When she looked at him, the hue of her eyes mirrored the colour of the gold. 'No,' she said. 'Whatever the trouble, I would still have the hope.'

Nicholas and Miriel spent the first night of their journey in a shepherd's hut belonging to the monks of Spalding Abbey. It was in a poor state of repair but, despite the leaking, mouldy thatch, there were hearth stones in the centre of the tiny room. A small supply of old kindling outside allowed them a meagre fire. They had bread, fruit and cheese between them, and wine to drink.

'So,' Nicholas said as he passed her the costrel and she set it to her lips, 'if I give you three pouches of silver for the hire of that mule and see you safe to a town of your choosing, we call it quits and each go our own way.'

The tart red liquid hit the back of Miriel's throat. 'Quits,' she said, lowering the costrel and wiping her mouth. She did not think that three pouches of silver was particularly generous, but she was tired and for the nonce it did not matter. There was time enough to do battle. Nicholas looked tired too. Deep shadows stained his eye sockets and his face was drawn. He should have been resting in the warmth of the guest house at St Catherine's. Had it not been for her rash nature and the nuns' intolerance, they would both still be there, he in his bed and she on her knees. Miriel smiled with irony at the thought. Now, because of the nuns, they were alone in a shepherd's hut, sharing wine and fire and temptation. She could imagine the horror on the good sisters' faces if they could witness this scene, and the smugness of Sister Euphemia at being proved right about Miriel's character.

'Where will you go with your vast wealth?' Of its own volition, her glance embraced the chest in the corner of the

tiny hut, its enamels burnished by firelight. 'Back to the rebels?'

He shook his head. 'John is dead and his heir a child of nine. I have no grievance against the lad; my quarrel was with his hellspawn father. Nor do I harbour a grudge against the men who are to be young Henry's regents. William Marshal and Ranulf of Chester are both honourable men.' He leaned forward to poke the fire with a stick of kindling and stared into the surge of flame.

Miriel studied him across the blaze. The pallor of his skin was disguised by the hot colours of the fire, but the shadows threw his bones into sharp relief and emphasised how thin he was in the aftermath of serious illness. Even in repose there was a wariness about him, as if he had not slept safe in his bed for a long, long time. She was stirred by a pang of compassion, and, mingled with it, a deep curiosity.

'Your grievance,' she said softly. 'You told me a little about it at St Catherine's, but not the full tale. Why did King John persecute your family?'

He lifted the kindling stick and watched the flame lick at the end and then extinguish to a black char. She thought that he was not going to reply, but at last he drew a breath and let it out on a deep sigh.

'Knowledge of murder,' he said. 'God knows John has done enough of it in his time - generally of folk too weak to protest and mostly by proxy.' His eyes narrowed. 'But at least once he committed the deed by his own hand, and to his own flesh and blood.'

The fire crackled, and in his pause for breath the tension in the air crawled down Miriel's spine.

'My father was a minor knight from a coastal village between Caen and Rouen,' he said. 'We were vassals of Robert de Vieuxpoint, bailiff of Rouen, and we owned a fine, large nef in which we shipped wine and delicacies. For a month and ten days of each year it was our feudal duty to guard the Duke of Normandy's interests in the Narrow
Sea. In truth, I almost grew up on the deck of that vessel.' As he gazed at the blackened end of the stick, the poignant smile on his lips slowly died and his eyes grew blank. 'It was a good life until the day we brought the Peronnelle up the Seine to the Tower of Rouen with a cargo of smoked English oysters for the royal table. I was eleven years old and 1 can still remember that journey, the splash of the water against the stones, the weed fanning out like mermaid hair, and a fair wind at our backs.' He swallowed and shook his head. 'God help us, we had no idea.'

This time the silence was longer than a breath and Miriel's fingers clenched in the coarse wool of her habit. 'What happened?' she asked, unable to bear the unspoken words lurking in the firelit shadows.

Nicholas set the point of the stick back into the flames and watched the tip become a translucent crimson. 'We were rolling the barrels along to the store room when John himself came staggering down the passage towards us. We could see that he was well marinated, but it was not Gascon wine that soaked his clothes, but blood, more than I have ever seen in my life. His hands, his face, his hair.' Nicholas shuddered and flicked the kindling into the fire. 'I could smell it too; it was like the stench of a Martinmas pig-sticking.'

Miriel watched with him as the twig burned, and pressed her hands to her mouth.

'When he saw us, he yelled that if we did not keep out of his way he would kill us too. He would have pulled his knife, but the sheath at his belt was empty.' Nicholas swallowed against the croak in his voice. 'My father hid me behind his back while John cursed at us like a drunk in the gutter. He struck my father across the face and a ring cut his cheek to the bone. My father could do nothing. To have retaliated would have meant his immediate death for the crime of lese-majeste. I do not know what we would have done, had not Robert de Vieuxpoint and William de Briouze appeared and taken John in hand between them. They warned us to say nothing of what we had seen and bore the King away. He was still cursing. Even now I can hear him and it freezes me to the marrow.'

Nicholas rubbed the knuckles of his clenched fist against the open palm of his other hand. 'We made all haste to finish our task and be gone. I can still see my father's face, blood streaming down his cheek into his beard, and the look in his eyes. I was too young to realise it then, but he knew that we were dead.'

'Why?' Miriel asked through her fingers, her own marrow thoroughly chilled.

He looked at her, his gaze quenched and dark. 'As we were casting off, de Briouze and de Vieuxpoint emerged from the cellars and threw something in the water. By the lantern on our prow, we thought it was a body, but we could not be certain. A few days later we heard a rumour that Prince Arthur had been found in the River Seine, weighted with a stone and stabbed in the throat. He was John's nephew, but he was also a rival for John's throne and it was common knowledge that there was no love lost between them.'

'So John murdered him?'

Nicholas shrugged. 'The finger was pointed, but nothing was ever proven. Anyone who could have shed light on the truth was either bought or destroyed, including de Briouze and de Vieuxpoint. Our lands were taken from us and bestowed elsewhere. We were branded traitors and forced to flee.' His voice grew harsh and bitter. 'We lived from harbour to harbour and hand to mouth. My mother and sister died of the coughing sickness during a bad winter in Boulogne. When I was barely sixteen years old my father was "lost" at sea and I have been a rebel with a price on my head ever since.' He drew a deep, emotional breath and pinched the corners of his eyes between forefinger and thumb. 'I have never told anyone this story before, and God alone knows why I'm telling you.' With a sudden oath, he put his face in his hands, his body riven by tremors.