Conqueror (8 page)

“’Tis time, Pagan,” Beaumont said, but Griffyn was watching Hipping. “Convince me to have my men and castles waiting.”

Griffyn nodded but his gaze lingered a minute, watching Hipping go. Hipping was like a trained bear. On most occasions, he’d follow your bidding, but never, ever turn your back.

No, he’d never have brought Guinevere here.

“Hippingthorpe’s hunting lodge is near here?” she asked incredulously.

“’Bout half an hour’s hard walk down the river path,” gruffed the man Pagan had called Clid. He was obviously the patriarch, and Gwyn dealt with him.

Behind his bearded head, an equally bearded man threw another log on the fire, then sat on the bench. Everyone was sitting, listening to the conversation. As if they could do much else—the room was as wide as a birthing-stall, and half was in fact a stall. A cow’s slow chewing provided rhythmic background, and chickens scratched through the hay.

“Aye,” Clid said. Or grunted. “A couple miles north o’ here.” He slurped up a bit more brown broth, then eyed her doubtfully. “But why wouldn’t Pagan have taken ye there straight off, iffen that’s where he wanted ye?”

But Gwyn wasn’t listening. Hope had sparked inside her, and she was mindless of any more mundane considerations, such as how she’d get there or whether it was wise. “What fortune! But, no,” she said, and slumped again. “’Tis no use to me empty. I need lords. Or at least hardy men with horses.” She looked at Clid. “Men loyal to the king.”

He smiled, his rotted front tooth prominent. “Not many of them here in the Midlands, o’ course.”

“No,” she agreed, and stared glumly into the firepit.

“But Hipple’s lodge ain’t what ye’d call ‘empty.’”

She lifted her eyebrows.

“Hipping hisself rode in afore dawn, along with his accursed knights.” Clid ripped another chunk of bread free with his teeth and worked it between his jaws. “Burning and raping and takin’, and yer king doin’ nothing to stop ’em.”

Gwyn’s heart leapt. “Hipping is there?”

“Oh, aye, he’s there. And he’s not alone.”

She beamed. “Who else?”

“Leicester.”

Her eyebrows crumpled together in confusion. “Robert Beaumont?”

“Aye.”

“The Earl of Leicester is at Hippingthorpe’s hunting lodge?”

“Aye.”

Earl Robert Beaumont, most powerful peer of the realm, was riding to the remote hunting lodge of a minor baron? Hadn’t he been in attendance at the king’s feast—was it truly only a few hours ago? No, she realised. He’d been strangely absent.

“Robert Beaumont, Lord of Pacy-sur-Eure and Breteuil?” she added for clarification.

Clid scowled. “He might be Guardian of the Lord’s pearly gates by now, I s’pose, the way his royal lordship throws around titles. What I know is that he’s at Hipping’s lodge. Arrived a few hours ago.”

She frowned. Why on earth had she not seen him or any of his retinue on the king’s highway?

“There’s back ways to everywhere,” said Clid, shrewdly reading her thoughts.

She considered this. It would be a dark and dangerous ride, what with the boars and wolves, and Hipping known as a wolf himself, but he was currently loyal to the king, and right now, nothing mattered more.

She looked into the chieftain’s eyes. “I must get there.”

He exchanged a few eyebrow-wagging glances with the men, then shook his head. “That’s a danger for us, missy. Best that the great ones don’t know we’re here. They’ve forgotten us, and I’d have it stay that way.”

“They’ll never see you,” she promised. “We can share a horse, and you can leave me miles from the lodge.”

“That’s where ye are now, missy. Miles and miles.”

“But sir—”

“Every time the great ones remember we’re here, it costs us. There’s not much ye can offer us to make it worth that.”

Gwyn grabbed one of the felt bags around her waist, fumbled with its knot, and dumped the pouch open on the table. Gold and silver coins tumbled across the scarred wood, clinking loudly in the suddenly hushed room. They gleamed brightly in the dim hut. She looked up into Clid’s amazed eyes. “Please. I have to get there. Tonight. ’Tis my home at stake.”

He ran his fingers through his grey-and-white beard. “Where’s home?”

“In the north. Besieged.”

He looked at her distrustfully. Behind him, the fire spat and crackled, then blazed brightly as a fresh log caught. “Pagan didna say anything about that.”

“Be that as it may, you can see that I need to be on my way.”

“Ah, well, and maybe not. Yer father will tend to it.”

Her throat constricted. “I haven’t a father. I’ve myself and a dozen knights, and ever so many villagers and their children and if I can’t stop Lord d’Endshire—”

Clid grunted. “Marcus fitzMiles?”

“—then it will fall, my men will die, and I will be wed to—” She stopped short and stared wide-eyed into the firepit, blinking hard.

They sat in silence for a long time. Gwyn became aware Clid was fingering the pile of coins on the table. Sifting it through his fingers, letting it clink back down. She looked over. He was watching her, a brooding expression on his face.

“Beseigin’ and burnin’ and weddin’,” he muttered. “What kind o’ place would Marcus fitzMiles think was worth all that effort?”

“Any place he could get his hands on,” she quipped, but swallowed the taste of something unpleasant. Fear.

Clid didn’t change his look, except perhaps to become more guarded. “Why don’t ye tell me yer name, missy?”

She lifted her chin. “My name is mine own, sir, and I would keep it so. Truth: we will all be safer that way.”

She could see a slow smile emerging from beneath his beard and it wasn’t a pleasant thing. “But since I donna know ye, lassie, I can hardly be trustin’ ye, now can I?”

A low rumble of nasty laughter rumbled through the room. The men exchanged glances. Something cold flowed down her spine as Clid turned back to her. “That’s a powerful lot o’ gold for a lone missy to be carrying about—”

“Have it all.” She cupped the pile and pushed it towards him.

“—and it makes me think ye might be worth more than whatever that pile there adds up to, so I’ll ask ye one more time: what’s yer name, and where’s this castle of yers that fitzMiles wants so bad?”

Gwyn’s mind sped through half a dozen responses, from pleading to fainting to snatching the knife from his belt and slitting his throat, but before he finished his sentence, she decided. Lie.

“I have to use the outhouse.”

Admittedly, a weak defence, but it amused him, and that was sufficient. He erupted into laughter. Bits of food sprayed over the table. Pleasant. All he had to do was think her a fool and she had her chance. A slim one, but a chance.

“Go, go.” He waved his hand in the air. “Elfrida, go with her. Show her the way to the ‘outhouse.’” The manly troupe exploded into more uproarious laughter.

Gwyn smiled as if she had no notion of what lay in store. The square-shouldered matriarch Elfrida shuffled forward, glared at Gwyn, and snapped the door open. They walked a few yards behind the huts, the woman trudging beside her. Gwyn’s mind raced. Elfrida The Matriarch might lumber along like an ox, but she wasn’t letting Gwyn get more than a hands-breadth away, and that would never do. The forest lay about thirty steps further on, a creek bed gurgling at its edge. Four huts sat to their right, dark and silent except for the sounds of farm animals shuffling inside. Gwyn caught a glimpse of the plough horse.

They stopped and the woman pointed generally in the direction of ‘over there.’

“Anywhere near them saplings. Ye’ll smell it. I’ll be standing here,” Elfrida grumbled.

“Yes, I think I smell it already.” Gwyn smiled. “But, ma’am, I hate to ask…” She dropped her voice. “I’m in need of…I’m afraid I’ve just come on my…monthly flux.”

The woman’s face shifted slightly. Her eyebrows went up, then down. “Oh, all right.” She turned and shouted “Elfwing!” for what seemed like an eternity, but no one came.

Gwyn smiled encouragingly. “I can’t really go back inside like…this.”

She pulled aside the cloak and displayed her skirts for viewing. In the darkness it was hard to detect colour, but not shade, and there was clearly a huge, dark stain right in the middle of her skirts. Cloaked as Gwyn had been, the woman didn’t realise the entire dress was in much the same state, nor that the stain was not Gwyn’s own blood, nor that much of it was not blood at all, but mud and muck flung up in her various pursuits of the night.

Elfrida backed up. “I’ll have ye a rag. I’ll be right back.” She pointed again, this time the other direction. “We girls go over there, near the forest edge, this time o’ the month.” She started off. “Don’t try anything,” she warned, looking back over her shoulder.

Gwyn smiled in a friendly way and waved her hand in the air, indicating the general vastness and emptiness of her surroundings. “What could I try, and where would I try it?”

Elfrida grunted and walked off.

Gwyn started running.

She reached Hipping Hall and was escorted inside at knife point. A lowered blade, once they knew who she was, but it was not sheathed entirely, which Gwyn found distinctly odd. She was a noblewoman in obvious distress, torn from stem to stern and shod less well than a rouncy. What on earth could be imperiled by
her
bedraggled presence?

“Lady Guinevere,” Hippingthorpe himself greeted her, holding her hand and pressing his lips to the back.

Gwyn smiled warmly, ignoring a shudder inside at his touch. He might be slightly revolting, and he might have a spotted past in the loyalty department, but he was her writ to the king, and she would have done almost anything to secure his goodwill.

“Whom do I thank for this unexpected visit, my lady? Where is your father?” He looked around as if he expected Ionnes de l’Ami to appear from behind an oaken post.

“He’s…not here.”

“Ahh.” Hipping turned back to her, his glittering eyes hard. “Of course not. In nigh on twenty years, your father has ne’er passed within a mile nor passed a single hour with me. And yet, here you are, his only daughter. I can barely countenance that he sent you on some sordid mission on his refined behalf.” He laughed uproariously. “Always too good for the likes of the lower barons, eh? And
everyone
marks lower than the Lord d’Everoot.”

Gwyn fought to keep the smile tipped upward on her face. “Nay, my lord. My father respected all the king’s men. But, since you mention it, I am on one, small, middling mission.”

His eyebrows went up just as his gaze happened down. His bushy brows shot straight to his overgrown hairline. “Lady, what has happened?” He pulled back her cape and had full view of her stained, torn, tattered gown. “God’s teeth, what is this?”

“This is Marcus fitzMiles.”

Hipping looked at her, his hand still holding one side of the cape aloft. “God’s bones! Endshire? He attacked you?” She nodded, feeling light-headed with relief. Hipping was a barely tamed nobleman, but noble he was, and he would help her. “What demon possessed him to attack you? Your father will have his head.”

“Yes, well. My father is dead.”

Hipping dropped the cape. “Ionnes de l’Ami is dead?”

“Aye. Pap—the Lord Earl passed away a fortnight past, God rest his soul. I just gave news to the king and his council last eve. As you can see,” she smiled bitterly, “fitzMiles didn’t grieve long.”

“No, but well,” Hipping replied absently, his gaze growing distant. He stared into space a moment, then snapped his fingers, calling for a servant and a bath.

Gwyn’s knees almost buckled with relief. Hipping himself bustled her up the stairs to one of the rooms on the second floor. It was clean, with a small bedframe, a straw-filled mattress, and a narrow window.

“Thank-you,” she exhaled. “’Tis perfect.”

He turned to her. “Now tell me, what is this mission of yours? How can I help?”

“I must get word to the king. Marcus led me to believe King Stephen had approved of a match between him and the House of Everoot, but I believe my king would ne’er countenance such a union.”

“No,” Hipping agreed. “No, he would not countenance a union of the de l’Ami heiress with any lesser baron, would he?”

Gwyn felt a flicker of concern. She smiled cheerily. “Word of your assistance will rate highly with the king, my lord. I will ensure it.”

“Will you, now? How kind.” He took her hand and sat her on the bed, then backed up a few steps. “Tell me, Lady Guinevere, how are you holding up under all the strain?”

“Oh, well, my lord,” she laughed awkwardly, fumbling over his abrupt solicitude. “Such things are always hard, but we…well, I am doing well.”

“Aye, but your father must have left some important and burdensome things to you, as his heir.” He eyes dropped to the single bag left hanging around her girdle.

Gwyn followed his gaze. “Just some letters of Papa’s,” she said brightly.

His eyes ratcheted back up like a drawbridge. “Really?”

“Aye.” Her hand went to the bag, her fingers curving around it, instinctively protecting it from view. “Lord Everoot’s private missives to my mother the countess while he was away.”

Hipping digested this. “Away on Crusade.”

She hesitated. “Aye.”

“Are you certain there are only
letters
inside?”

“Meaning?”

“No…objects.”

“Objects?”

“Of unknown origin. Of…Holy Lands origin.”

“Of course not,” she snapped.

He held up his hands. “As you say, lady. I ask only because there are rumours of treasure connected to Everoot, but Endshire found nothing.”

Her blood flowed chill. “Endshire? Found nothing?
Where
?” She pushed up off the mattress and said gravely, “I think Lord Endshire’s loyalty is in question, Lord Hipping.”

“Really?” he drawled, powerful amusement twisting the word into a taunt. He leaned back against the wall and crossed his arms over his chest. “How about you let me see these letters of your Papa’s?”

She smiled bitterly, realising the time for pleas to the heart had passed, if indeed it had ever been to hand. This was about power.

Drawing her cloak around her shoulders, she lifted her chin into the haughtiest pose she knew how. “Lord Hipping. I am cold and wet and torn like baggage. If you wish to negotiate with me, I would be warm and dry throughout it.”