Conqueror (12 page)

Several moments later, a tap came on the door and she opened it to find the feminine face who had smiled at her from the shadows downstairs smiling at her once again. She spoke in a voice so quiet Gwyn had to duck her head closer to hear.

“He said you’re to tell me your message.”

Gwyn smiled gratefully. “I thank your son for carrying it.”

The woman blinked. “My son?”

“Oh, I am sorry.” Gwyn’s cheeks flushed hot. “I was told the innkeeper’s son would carry my message, and I thought you were his…well, I am sorry.”

“No, no,” the woman replied hastily. “No need, my lady. ’Tis my son, indeed. My son who will carry your message.”

“Well, then, I am in luck,” Gwyn said slowly. “Please, come in.”

They sat at the table. It was an odd feeling, to be tucked in this remote inn, no one knowing where she was. The windows were shuttered and it was dark outside, so she could tell nothing about the world outside her room either. The only thing she knew for certes was that the storm was getting worse and the innkeeper’s wife didn’t know she had a son.

She directed the missive to Cantebrigge, to her friend Mary and her husband John, lord of a small but strategically important manor, where Gwyn had planned to stop on her return trip, before all the madness began. It was unlikely, but possible, that King Stephen had indeed sold her to fitzMiles, and with Everoot at stake, she was not taking chances. She would not send a message directly to the king, revealing where she was. She needed a conduit. John of Cantebrigge was favoured by King Stephen, and would know what to do.

She spoke slowly, carefully crafting her words to tell of her need yet reveal nothing of import should the message, or messenger, fall into unwanted hands.

“Dearest John: Lord d’Endshire plans to wed me against my will,” she said slowly, “and set upon me when I was without assistance.” She looked at the candle flickering on the table. Its flame was small but bright. “By God’s Grace, I was saved by a miracle, but am with the knowledge that our lord king has allowed this debauched thing, although I cannot fathom it. Would that you send him my plea for mercy and an audience. My greater need, at present, is to be succored at Saint Alban’s, whence I have escaped. Take the back paths, and speak to no one, John. Everoot may depend upon it.”

The maid repeated it word for word, then withdrew. Gwyn glanced at the bath. All she could do now was wait, hope her friends in Cantebrigge would believe the message was truly from her. And that was a large hope.

In these lawless times, no one depended on anything but death and King Stephen’s taxes. A message such as hers, with its urgency and need for secrecy, with no seal from the true sender, could be interpreted as either plea or ruse. John of Cantebrigge might well think it a trick.

She had momentarily debated handing over the only thing in her possession with the identifying de l’Ami device on it, but swiftly decided against it.

Everoot had, as did few other places in the realm, such as Chester and Durham, privileges to minting rights. A great deal of coin was melted and stamped at the Nest upon a time, but in the lawless days of rape and plunder that marked Stephen’s reign, there was little work to be done, and even less profit to be made. The privilege had become a burden.

Even so, while no longer minting coin for the realm, the Everoot minting tools had created the most precise, indelible, unforgettable stamp in the land—a budding rose. Its lines were etched like a sunrise, clear and precise. When others chose boars and hawks and bears, her father had taken an emblem that was dear to his wife’s heart—the twice-blooming rose of Everoot.

It was distinctive. It was rare. It would be recognised anywhere, and it adorned the steel-plated, curving lid of Papa’s box.

She shifted and her foot touched the felt bag. She bent over and touched it, almost as if it were a talisman, then sat straight again.

What purpose would it serve, to have sent the thing along? They would believe the message or not, but she was certain her friend John of Cantebrigge would not wait upon a charm or seal before coming to her aid.

And she could not give it up, not even for a moment.

She picked up the bulky bag and pulled out the chest. It was a beautiful thing. It had a strange attraction about it—made one
desire
to touch it—but beyond its simple, almost unearthly beauty, it was precious because, in the last moment of his life, Papa had thought this the most important thing to bequeath to her, the small chest that held love letters between him and Gwyn’s mother while he was away on Crusade. Strange.

But then
, she decided for the hundredth time,
he had loved Mamma so much
.

And Gwyn had seen to her death as much as if she’d plunged a blade through her heart.

Her heart twisted. She’d spent the last decade of her life trying to make it up to him, to no avail. Of course, killing one’s brother and mother did have unintended consequences. Such as one’s father hating one.

She ran her hand over the chest and tipped up the lid. Her parents’ letters lay inside. She touched them reverently, as always, then pushed her hand down, feeling along the bottom. She felt a little further.

Oh, Lord. Coldness washed through her limbs.

It was gone.

Her heart skidded a little. In addition to the chest, Papa had given her two little keys, one gold, one steel. His frenzied insistence on safeguarding these items had been mystifying, since neither key opened a single lock throughout the entire castle. Gwyn knew: she’d tried them in every lock in the castle since then. But promise she had, on her knees, at his deathbed.

Now the steel one was missing.

She picked up the scrolls with trembling fingers and looked inside. No key. She sat back, her blood chugging, mind racing. Yes, that must have been it. When she’d dropped the chest back in London, the key had fallen out.

But whyfore feel so awful? They were remnants of the past, of no value. But they’d mattered to Papa, and so it felt like another minute, irreparable hurt.

Her hand went instinctively to her skirts, touching the hard length of metal concealed inside a pouch sewn to the inside of her skirts. At least the little golden key was safe.

What could it matter that she had lost the steel one?

She pushed sharply to her feet. The chair tipped backwards. She plunged the chest back into its pouch, then knelt beside the tub. Warm steam rose up to engulf her cold, damp fingertips. She began disrobing.

She glanced at the bag again. Papa had been a lettered man—uncommon in a warrior—and Gwyn’s mother had learned from him. Stranger still, Gwyn thought with an unsettling pricking just on the fringe of her awareness, that Papa would so vehemently deny the skill to her. But so it was, and the letters remained unread. Surely she could have asked William of the Five Strands, her aging, cantankerous, beloved seneschal, to cipher them, but Gwyn felt strongly that they were private, for her eyes alone.

She had looked through the missives, of course, ran her gaze over the ink and her fingertips over the scraps of soft vellum and crinkled, aging parchment, but she couldn’t read a word of the spidery ink-lines. One day, she would learn to read.

And then, maybe, she could fathom the mystery of what lay
underneath
the letters, in the locked compartment with the steel lid that not even fire could unseal.

Griffyn stalked down the stairs to the main hall of the building, which was not an inn and had never been an inn. What it had been was a fortress for Saxon sentries some ninety years ago, on the eve of William the Bastard’s invasion. It had not passed its usefulness either. Men still stood amid its walls and plotted the overthrow of empires. Men like Griffyn and his band of knights bred in the killing fields of Normandy.

When Griffyn had given Noir over to the soldier who had hurried out upon their arrival, he had also sent word for the men to convene in the feasting hall within the half hour.

Twelve men and a woman sat around two huge, rough-hewn wooden tables and lounged against the wicker walls, their calloused hands wrapped around tepid mugs of ale. A brazier burned hot coals in the centre and on each of the two tables sat three or four candles, affixed in a puddle of wax to keep them upright. Twelve men gathered in relative darkness, steeped in danger and peril for their lord.

Griffyn told them what had happened in swift, clipped words. First the meeting and agreement with Beaumont, the most important item by far, but he soon discovered it paled in contrast. Much more interesting was the tale of near-abduction, sword fight, and subsequent rescue. Twice.

He received a series of skeptical looks, more than a few guffaws, and too many curses to count when he relayed an account of the battle with d’Endshire’s men.

“So, they’re dead?” queried one Norman knight, Damelran.

Griffyn brought his gaze from the fire in a slow arc. “Not all of them. De Louth escaped.”

“There’s a piece of comfort,” the knight quipped as he lifted his mug for another swallow.

Griffyn leveled him a flinty look. “Glad to be of service.” He observed the smirks around the room, half-shrouded in shadows, and half-lit by flame, and scowled. “What would any of the rest of you have done? She was alone and in danger.”

The chorus of hooting and laughter that followed his declaration drowned him into silence for a good two minutes. He looked around glumly. All were men he trusted with his life. None were men he trusted with this kind of information. They would only turn it into something it was not, and have a lot of annoying fun with it. It was already happening.

Men clapped each other on the back and lifted their mugs in unamusing and inaccurate toasts. Alexander, his second-in-command, watched him silently, the only one not joining in the revelry. Griffyn met his gaze and shrugged. Alex shook his head and took a swig of ale. The rest of the room stayed in different spirits.

Hervé Fairess, an Angevin knight with a wicked sense of humour, was fighting so hard to contain his laughter his eyes were crinkled up and his red cheeks puffed out. The ‘innkeeper’ and his ‘wife,’ in fact a Norman knight and a young widow sympathetic to any army who would crush the king who’d killed her husband, had no such compunctions. They sat in the shadows and laughed until they cried, hanging on one another as if they were drowning. Griffyn sent a fierce scowl around the room. No one paid it any mind.

He cleared his throat. The room stuttered into silence in five seconds.

“As I said, she was in danger.”

“Not so much danger as we’re to be in when d’Endshire comes looking for a ghostly knight who appeared out of nowhere and whisked his betrothed away,” observed Hervé Fairess.

“I agree.” Alex’s voice came low and calm from the back of the room.

Griffyn shook his head. “We leave this inn at dawn, England in two days’ time. We’ll be in Normandy the next morn, and will not be here to be bothered by Endshire. And,” he added on an impatient gust of air, “she
wasn’t
his betrothed.”

This started another small quake in the room. Alex spoke over the ensuing laughter. “She may not have been, Pagan, but what does it matter? She’s in our camp now. What if she discovers who we are, or what we’re about?”

“She won’t. She’ll wake up tomorrow to find an empty inn, and be on her way.” He looked around the room and shook his head, despairing of them. “All we have to do is get through one night with a woman in our midst. Cannot we manage a simple thing like that?” he asked plaintively.

When they started laughing again, he shook his head in disgust and went to the back of the fire-lit room, where Alex sat at a table.

He dropped onto the bench opposite. “Do you have anything more to say?” he asked curtly.

“Oh, aye.”

“Thought so,” he muttered.

He splashed the contents of a pitcher of ale into a wooden mug Alex pushed his way, then leaned back, resting his spine against the wall. He unbuckled his hauberk at the shoulder and the heavy mail flap fell forward onto his chest. He put a boot up on the bench, slung one forearm over his knee, and stared into the fire.

The sound of cold, wet raindrops pattered on the windows and walls. The fire burned hot, and the room smelled faintly of drying leather and old straw and smoke. Firelight flickered and the low murmurs of his men grew quieter as they dropped off to sleep.

Griffyn took a long swallow of the tepid ale, then wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and looked at Alex, an eyebrow cocked in silent query.

Alex answered in kind, lifting his brows, then his gaze, to the ceiling.

Griffyn shrugged. “I don’t know how to be any clearer. I will see her off in the morn, and we’ll be finished with her.”

Alex wiped his finger over a wet ring of liquid left by the pitcher of ale. “Finished, is it?”

“This is not the first time I have met a woman, Alex. Nor,” he added crossly, “the first time I have enacted my knightly vows. Some I know might do well to adopt a similar stance.”

Alex rubbed his fingertips together, drying the wetness. “Is that what this is? Your knightly vows?” Griffyn lifted his eyebrows again. Alex lifted his higher. “Is that what you were doing up there, Pagan? Being knightly?”

“This is ridiculous,” he announced.

“Vows?”

He exhaled noisily and ran his fingers through his hair.

“Why is she here?” Alex said. “You have more important things to do. Anything that distracts, intrudes.” The firelight bounced shadows on the far wall. “Why is she here?” he asked again, his voice low. “I mean, truly, Griffyn. What is going on?”

Griffyn shifted his gaze over. “What is it,” he asked so flatly it wasn’t a question anymore. “What are you worried about, Alex? You know me.”

They were quiet, the only sound the crackling fire. “I know you, Griffyn. I do not know her.”

He spun the mug between his fingers and held his silence.

Alex waited a moment, then went on. “You have a destiny, Griffyn. You are of the bloodline, the Guardian. The Heir.” He looked at Griffyn’s implacable face and shook his head. “’Tis neither my place to convince nor instruct you.”