Crown of the Realm (A White Knight Adventure Book 2) (11 page)

WHEN WEAK SUNRAYS
pierced the haze of early morning, Chauvigny, Béthune, and Fors came to a unanimous accord.

“Nothing short of a sound beating will do,” Béthune said, buckling the girth straps of his bay.
And added, “Meant in the spirit of reenacting your abduction and forced ride.”

“Sorry to disappoint, but I was merely surrounded and unpleasantly disarmed.” Drake mounted his palfrey.

Chauvigny innocently put in, “Binding him hand and foot would probably motivate him just as well.” And went on tightening the crupper.

“
Myself,” the usually placid Fors grumbled, “I’m with Béthune. A punch or two to his pretty face would teach the knave a lesson.” He slipped a foot into the stirrup and hoisted himself up.

“Others,” said Drake, patting the Arabian across the withers, “have been there before you, and see the result.”

“I can attest to that,” said Marshal Clarendon, riding up to join them. “He’s more hard-headed than ever.”

Fors shrugged. “A man needs more than one lesson for the point to
be made. And it would compensate for the thrashing we took at the inn. Especially in the case of Baldwin there.”

Drake wheeled the gray around. “
And should I have invited every last one of you inside, served up a round of drinks, and let you hang me at sunrise for something I didn’t do?”

“Drake, you misjudge us,
truly you do,” said Baldwin, hand to heart and eliciting like responses from the other two. “We would never have hanged you.”

“But we probably would have knocked you senseless and dragged you by your heels all the way back to Nonancourt,” said Chauvigny.

Fors mildly agreed, “There would have been a certain justice to that.”

“Myself, I rather fancy the idea of gagging him.”

Drake sent his squire-in-training a stony glare.

Aveline
fumbled with the reins of her horse. “From my experience, silence is golden.”

“Any day of the week,” Chauvigny agreed, riding up beside her
, and taking her hand, lifted it to his lips.

“There,” she said, vindicated. “André agrees.” And caught the subtle exchange between Drake and her gallant defender. “What …?”

“Only that,” André said, “you have my sincerest apologies,
ma demoiselle
.”

“I do? For what?”

“For maligning you before ever having met you. For you, my dear Aveline, are a woman of noble bearing. And more than a match for fitzAlan here.”

She smiled with vindication,
spurred her horse forward, and delivered a cloth into Drake’s upturned hand.

“If you would be so kind …
ma demoiselle
,” said Drake. Beaming with satisfaction, she tied the length of linen about his eyes, rendering him hopelessly blind. Even through the grit of the road and the sweat of the horses, she carried on her person the fragrance of lavender. He couldn’t help but take advantage of her nearness by using his fingers to describe her divine curves.

Once d
one with her task, she slapped him virtuously away. “I do believe we should tie his hands after all. Given the choice, I prefer a tractable man.” She snatched the reins from his hands. “Although this may be reward enough.” And led him along.

From that point forward Drake brought
each of his senses to bear. Sniffing the air and observing its resonance. Searching for the indefinable yet recognizable: a caustic sensation, a fullness of aroma, or a thready emptiness. Using the radiance of the sun to guide the way. Paying particular attention to the slanting rays that penetrated the treetops or didn’t penetrate. And observing the subtle shift of angle to the left or right or straight ahead. In particular, listening, above all listening. To the latent breezes and the twill of the birds. To the lap of a stream and the echo of a distant hill. And to the smothering hush of a forest deep or the openness of a bee-laden meadow.

More than once he demanded complete silence
, using only the percussive cadence of the hoof beats, the snorting of the horses, the jangling of the spurs, and the chafing and snapping of leather to confirm his impressions. Here and there, as if a picture had risen before him, he described the scenery. They agreed that yes, there is the creek, running southwest, scrub bracketing its eastern shallows and a boulder set midstream. To which he directed them to cross the waters and head southeast, but only for so many rods before continuing due south. And yes, they fed back to him, there is the field on the right, just as you describe, and the hilly terrain on the left. And yes, they both descend into a narrow trail, through which only one horse at a time has breadth enough to pass. Ahead, he further directed, the woods open up, affording a passage of two or three abreast, on flat ground, beside which sits a duck pond. And yes, they agreed once more, everything is as you say.

Rand and the rest
obeyed his every command, and by the hour they grew more subdued as he read the wind as if by wizardry. Confirmation was no longer needed, only the sweep of his hand as he described which fork in the road to take, which stream to cross, and which path led from the clearing or into the woods.

At dusk, when the blindfold came off and he squinted into the unaccustomed brightness, Drake had no idea of their exact position. Except to say he found for his traveling companions a picturesque stream and a meadow dotted with poppies. Nor did he want to know more than that.

Even though Stephen weighed heavily on his mind, Drake allowed there were small pleasures to be had along the way. To rest supine on the leaf-thickened woodland floor with an arm slung beneath his head was enough for now. Reposing his eyes, strangely tired from lack of use, he let them see what they cared to see, languidly and without care.

Comfortable in her element, Aveline sauntered back and forth. Occasionally turning the spit holding the skewered pheasant Fors managed to shoot earlier in the day. Or washing out her tunic. Or hovering above, freeing her hair of burrs, leaves
, and the accumulation of dust, her fine-toothed ivory comb running through fanning locks and her eyes swirling like sun dogs against the billowing darkness. Aveline Darcy, the daughter of an alewife, whom Drake never tired of admiring.

“Are you wearing braies
, too?” he asked lazily, close to falling asleep in the balm of the evening.

She swung around,
her eyelashes falsely demure. “In this relationship, someone had better.”

He laughed at that and stretched out tired legs. Feeling his eyes on her, she
became self-conscious. Her movements, her gestures, her shy expressions, her cunning looks were all for him. She made an enchanting picture, did Aveline Darcy. The oval face, the swing of her silken hair, the grace of her shapely legs rarely seen out of skirts. Drake tilted his head, surveying her just so, perched above him like a peregrine falcon, exotic and lovely to gaze upon.

In a supple motion
, she dropped beside him, only fractionally aware of the effect she had on him. The transit, as if on a breeze, revealed through the chainse the shapeliness of her figure. He reached out, but she stayed just out of reach, perhaps teasing him, perhaps testing his devotion. She twisted, bringing an arm up and curling it elegantly over her head. Leaning her cheekbone inside the bowed elbow, she let her eyes drift closed. On an impulse, she swung back around. On the same impulse, quick and fluid, he moved forward, his fingers tenderly exploring the roundness of her cheek while his lips found the silken skin beneath her ear.

She yanked herself out of his embrace, but Drake trapped her hand.
“I ask again: marry me.”

She held his eyes
but dragged free her hand. “You ask the wrong person.”

“Then who?
Should I ask Stephen for your hand in marriage?” Drake remained where he was, on his knees before her, a supplicant to her stubbornness.

“Stephen,” she said, dismissing the notion. “Stephen has no hold on me
, nor I on him.”

“William then?”

“Ask your king. Ask Richard.
If
you have the courage. But I know you don’t. For I know … and you know … what he will say.”

“He will …,” Drake began, but faltered.

“—Tell you to make me exactly what I am!” And the exalted peregrine falcon of Drake’s heart took flight.

* * *

The next day,
Drake covered considerably more ground. The deferential stillness of the previous day gave on to light-hearted joviality, except for one individual of the gentler sex, who became mordantly close-lipped and distant. In the afternoon, the clouds thickened and a light drizzle whisked overhead. But his memories and perceptions were so keen, nothing short of the earth opening up threatened to daunt their travels.

The third day went just as well,
and Aveline remained just as stubborn. Toward dusk of the fourth day, they reached their destination. Drake instructed, “We cross the river here. There ought to be shoals.”

Since the mud
flats were submerged beneath affluent spring rains, a boatman ferried them across. Afterward they headed west for less than a mile. Passing unmolested through a sluggish village, they climbed ever upward, over winding paths rutted by wheels and through forestland buffeted by winds. When the party reached open ground, Drake pointed.

“The gatehouse is there.” When no one spoke, he removed the cloth binding his eyes and peered up at a windy cliff.

White and stalwart, the château stood like a monument of time. Surrounded by whispering woods and unkempt grounds, the castle’s strongest defense lay in its remoteness. At its back, the Loire flowed west and east, moss interlacing among rippling shallows. Bracketed by two turrets at the château’s southeastern flank, the gatehouse rose precisely where Drake had indicated. A curtain wall containing two more turrets at the southwest and northeast corners surrounded the palatial keep. The vast inner bailey contained the necessary timber-framed structures of a thriving château. Smoke swirled thick and pervasive from more than one chimneystack.

They lingered at the forest edge, Drake and the others, their horses impatiently stamping hoofs into the well-worn
track. No one said much or moved to act. Until Béthune said lightheartedly, “Behold, we are in enemy territory. Or perhaps home, where the skylarks sing their intrepid songs, disguising their genius with unbeautiful plumage.” 

Heads turned curiously.

“It is Chaumont, one of the many glittering châteaux belonging to the estimable Thibaud the fifth, comte of Blois, the gay husband of Alys Capét, second-born to our beautiful Queen Eleanor by her first husband, King Louis of France, but not to be confused with Alais, born of King Louis’ second wife.”

Chauvigny bore his eyes into Drake’s, still blinking in the brilliant daylight, and said wryly, “A family reunion seems to be in the offing.”

“Only on one side of the family. The other side would sooner hack off my head.”

“A disheartening prospect, but one I look forward to,” said Fors.

Before they were given the chance to urge their horses forward, the mouth of the gatehouse opened, and the Blois guard thundered across the lowered drawbridge. Poorly hidden in the hedge, King Richard’s emissaries were quickly surrounded and disarmed, for the most part willingly, since Marshal Clarendon carried on him the necessary authority.

“Did I mention,” said Fors, “that Thibaud and Richard are distant cousins?”

“Right about now,” Chauvigny said, “I don’t think anyone gives a good God damn.”

The captain of the Blois guard, a few years younger than Drake, displayed a guileless hauteur. The pale blue eyes under the shock of straw-colored hair held a certain semblance to a lady Drake well knew, and their challenging glare never took themselves from him. Directing his steed in a wide circle, the arrogant captain studied this man he never formally met as if
he were a longtime enemy. He alone of the castle guard donned no armor but wore a suite of fancy clothes more suitable for feasting and entertaining than guard duty. Rand Clarendon presented Richard’s writ, which the Blois captain did not pretend to examine nor did he care to listen to anything the king’s marshal had to say.

Brandishing swords, the Blois guard, to a man more mature than their l
eader, led Drake and his party into the castle. Upon their boisterous arrival in a gatehouse stinking of sweat and hubris, Drake was summarily used as a human as well as moral shield. Stormed by half the guard’s number, he was dragged off his horse and efficiently subdued with rope and fists.

To no advantage, Aveline fought in the noble defense of her man. The shrewd captain, realizing soon enough that th
e plucky squire was a woman, personally took charge of her, securing his prize with an elbow cinched around her delicate throat. She mewled pitifully beneath the grip, which persuaded everyone to become entirely cooperative. He gazed full-circle, gratified with the peaceful outcome. “And now, you will allow yourselves to be bound. Unless you wish the lady to suffer an immediate and ignoble death. Prior to or after ravishment, as is your preference.”