Crown of the Realm (A White Knight Adventure Book 2) (7 page)

ON THE CALAIS ROAD
, the early-morning fog turned crisp white, blanketing ash and linden to near invisibility.

As if awakening from a dream, Drake became aware of
beating hoofs, pounding rhythmically on the forest floor. They weren’t in a great hurry, yet they seemed to be trailing him. When Drake sped up, they sped up. When he tarried, they tarried. One horse neighed. Moments later, a second answered. Then his own steed wagged his head and whinnied. The warning came too late.

They were upon him—two knights—their faces concealed by great helms, the lines of their advance intersecting, their robust mounts straining at the bit. Armored in hauberk, mailed greaves
, and good leather boots, they unsheathed swords and leveled the blades, snow-white against the fog-stirred backdrop. On the same trill of steel, Drake brandished his own weapon. They were unimpressed.

“Drake fitzAlan?” one of them said, his voice muffled by the helmet.

He didn’t respond to his name. Instead he smiled. The odds were in his favor.

“Is that a yes?”

Digging his heels into the palfrey, Drake answered with a war cry. Streaking past both horsemen, he galloped off, nothing to stop him. Except for the third knight who joined the ambuscade.

The
bay reared. His hindquarters compressed. His forelegs pawed the upturned sky. Drake scooped up the reins, and as man and beast came prancing back to earth, dug in his spurs and gave the palfrey its head. The bay sprang forward at its rider’s bidding … on a different track, a narrower trail, a riskier escape route.

And the
n, the fourth knight showed himself. And the fifth. And finally the sixth.

* * *

On the third sunrise, when the tawny owl began its familiar to-whit, to-whoo, the knights slowed their pace.

Drake was exceedingly frustrated. Rough hemp securely bound him. A cloth blinded him. A gag silenced him. A great helm disguised him from casual passer
sby. The knights had searched for and found all the hiding places and confiscated every knife, even the one in his boot. On the exhausting journey to follow, Drake did not have the remotest chance of escape. No reason was offered for his capture. Miles of backtracking, circling, splitting apart, and reuniting loped past. The knights were well-disciplined. They rarely stopped for sleep or repast, and then only briefly.

On the last leg of the journey, a
river crossing took the party splashing over shoals. A steep climb brought them to a gatehouse. When Drake was made to dismount, his legs gave way. Powerful hands, one under each armpit, remedied his incapacity. He was ushered into a courtyard and thence through a portal that delivered him into a chilly château and thence to a great hall. The echo of confident footsteps advanced. The removal of the helm brought relief from the suffocating confinement. The blindfold, still in place, yielded only the distant dance of torchlight. A man studied him. Smelling of ambergris, his hand danced close to his face.

The gag was dragged away. He had to work up a spit. “Who are you? What do you want?”

A thump between the shoulder blades was his curt reply.

The knights escorted Drake above stairs to the solar. Upon entering the vast chamber, he sensed the heat of the hearthfire to his right, smelled candle
wax to his left, sniffed the musty odors of musty drapery and cushions, and heard the shrill whistle of a caged bird. He sensed even more. Dismay. Fear. A fleeting thought. An unsettling presence. All of it emanating from a single source. There, to his right.

The knights waited. They had an unyielding
grip of his arms, already numbed by effective coercion. The nobleman paced, impatient. At a silent gesture, Drake was manhandled to a chair and drummed down. Before him, someone’s feet shifted on the bare floor as if resisting forceful persuasion. He heard the man breathe with effort and grunt from frustration. Drake was expected to react … to speak. The nobleman’s pacing stopped. The flat of a steely palm caught Drake violently across the cheekbone. He righted his face and spit up to where the nobleman was standing. A sleeve facilely wiped the sputum away. Then his fist did its methodical work. When Drake raised his head, gasping for air, he stared blankly at his invisible enemy.

“Say it. Say his name. You know he is there, waiting to hear
you speak.”

He shifted blinded eyes to the other man, struggling silently and violently beyond the veil. With a single shake of his head, Drake refused.

“If you don’t say it, I will cut off a finger. His.”

He vainly tried to shrug off the locking fists. A sword rang lethally from its scabbard. The wait dragged on. There was nothing else for it. He licked his lips and tentatively said, “Stephen?”

“Drake!” Stephen yelled out.

Greek fire consumed twin souls. Drake shot out of the chair and tried to reach his brother. Using his weight, his elbows, his legs, he exploded with an unpredictability meant to create upheaval. Create upheaval he did, connecting more than once. Across the unreachable barrier, Stephen foisted an equally mettlesome fight. Pottery crashed. A chair and then a table toppled. A body thudded to the floor
. A defeated grunt followed. Captive inside his cage, the bird squawked and flapped its wings.

The fight was lost from the very beginning. Stephen, like Drake, was routed by overwhelming numbers.

“Take him away!” the cultured voice said.

“Stephen!” Drake yelled. “Aveline!”

Amid muffled grunts and shuffling footsteps, Stephen was spirited away.

Drake struggled to escape his bonds. Fought to break free of the iron fists that held him fast to his chair. Strained to see through the entrapping blindfold, more confining than the ropes ensnaring his arms. On the rise and fall of his breath, a pathetic mewling cleft the air. On and on it went, nothing to stop it, not even the well-met slap of a hand across
his mouth. Drake grasped, sickeningly, that the depraved noise was coming from him. He bent his head into his hands, bound before him, and stifled the sound.

Restless feet meandered. Drake sensed the jerk of a head. The coercive hands withdrew. Spur-jangled footsteps
pounded out of the salle. One knight remained, shifting restlessly from foot to foot. Drake waited, attentive. His adversary strolled a short distance away, the ambergris spiraling from his clothes like noxious fumes. Liquid was poured into two goblets. The returning footsteps brought the rim of one of the vessels to his lips. Reaching up his hands, Drake upended the cup and drank.

As if disinterested in the wine and the circumstances, the gentleman settled himself in a chair and sipped idly from his own cup.
“
Alors
,” he finally said, “you see the predicament in which you have been placed.” He spoke in the
langue d’oïl
, the mother tongue of France.

For the past weeks, Drake had grown
accustomed to speaking in the Norman-French dialect. Or in the
lenga d’oc,
the tongue of the Aquitaine, of troubadours, and of his king. Drake answered in that same tongue now. “You want something. Something I don’t wish to give.”

The nobleman
translated swiftly and answered in his native language. “
Bon, vous comprenez
.” The goblet slid to a perch on the table separating them. “You are to assassinate your king.”

Drake held his breath.

“You understand?”

“I understand my brother’s life hangs in the balance.”

He sat back. “
Bon
, let it be so. You wish more wine?”

“I wish a feast.”

“Regrettably, I cannot accommodate.” The nobleman rose and paced. Drake followed him with unseeing eyes.

“Further, you are to make it seem as if you are a lone madman. Which you are,
n’est-ce pas
? You have had angry words with Richard, we are aware. You are enraged over his presumptions, are you not? It is so. Vengeance is to be yours and yours alone.”

He refilled Drake’s cup to the brim. Drake flung it away. The drinking vessel
clanged across the floor. Wine dribbled audibly.

“
C’est dommage
. A waste of good wine.”

“Let it be so.”

The nobleman wasn’t dull-witted. Drake received a backhanded slap across his mouth. His lower lip welled and bled. Steadying his temper, the man meticulously returned the un-drunken portion of his own wine into the flagon. “If, after the deed is done, Richard’s supporters believe otherwise, that is, if they suspect you were not acting alone and that others were involved, the same fate awaits your brother as if you had not accomplished the feat. The same holds true if you try in any way to communicate beforehand with your king, or with his mignons, or his family. We have informants at the highest levels. We will know if you have tried to sidestep your assignment in any form. You understand?”

“We’ve met before … haven’t we?”

He didn’t answer.

“And what of the woman traveling with my brother.”

“A woman?” he asked his men.

There was no reply.

“Know this. Until and unless we are assured that everything has happened as we wish, you will not see your brother alive in this world, or by inference, the next.”

*
* *

Dragging the gag
from his mouth, Drake coughed. By the time he ripped the blindfold away, the beat of hoofs was far distant. He was sitting on his haunches, the ground beneath him damp. Unaccustomed to sight, he squinted into a woodland burnished by morning sun. Baldwin’s bay stood restlessly nearby, nickering impatiently and digging a foreleg into the turf. Drake was able to pick out familiar landmarks and reckoned where the knights left him: roughly five miles south of Nonancourt Castle beside a path that hugged the River Eure.

They left his sword and dagger behind. He made short work of the bonds. After rubbing feeling back into his hands, he attended to
necessary chores without thought and numbly accomplished, exhaustion the overriding factor. He unsaddled the bay and led him to grass. Watched him eat his full while his own belly stayed empty. Gave the steed his fill of water as Drake likewise afforded himself the same, the two leaning side by side over the river embankment and dipping their heads in unison. The Eure rippled on its course downstream, unaware of the knight scrubbing his face of stinking sweat, blood encrusting his wrists, and rust left by the helm. He threw his hair back and looked out at the lonely landscape.

He had no time to waste.

Just outside Dreux’s north gate, Drake came upon the trails of the Arabians, one bearing the hefty weight of a knight, the other transporting the slimmer build of a lady. A mile distant, the hoof prints of trailing horses—three in number—converged from different directions like the spokes of a wheel and obliterated the tracks. A quarter-mile later, the Arabians split up, the lighter one veering east. In the clearing beyond, the haphazard imprints of energetic hoofs marked the spot where Stephen must have been overpowered. The fight wasn’t much of a fight, but blood had been drawn.

Drake found where the hoof prints entered the River Eure and disappeared into the shallows. He waded up and down both embankments and eventually picked up
the hoofs of a single palfrey emerging a mile downstream on the eastern shore. The horse had galloped over several miles. Inevitably the stride shortened and progressed into an easy trot and easier lope. He found his dappled gray grazing on dry land but without rider. Grabbing up the loose reins, he crossed and re-crossed the position, calling out for Aveline until his voice became hoarse. No one ever answered.

He returned to the scene of Stephen’s
abduction and followed the course the captors had taken. For a short distance, the tracks of one Arabian and three palfreys showed a clear route south. Drops of blood marked part of the way. One by one, the horses split off, and one by one each led to a cold trail.

He backtracked and picked up
the trail of his own abduction, several miles north of where Stephen had been taken, and tried to follow the signs. But the knights had obscured their route well by trolling in and out of streams, riding up rocky hills, down granite cliffs, and circling repeatedly.

At nones low clouds blew in from the north and blanketed the sky with unending gray, readily covering the stealthy movements of a lone knight skulking and scurrying about a castle’s perimeter. Though neither elaborate nor majestic, Nonancourt stood the test of time and served its purpose well. Four towers described the square keep. Crenellated battlements crowned it. The barbican housed gatehouse and stables. The walls, twelve feet thick, were constructed of flint, rubble
, and stone mixed with lime, sand, and water. Parts of the outer surfaces—corners, window arches, and portals—were fashioned of hewn stone. Wooden stairs on two sides led up to the barbican. Laid down the middle, a graveled embankment allowed passage for horses and carts.

On first glance the castle appeared deserted, but to the discerning eye the barbican was more than active. Two riders, or sometimes three or four,
rode out every hour, circuited the grounds in opposite directions, and met again at the main gate for a last reconnaissance of the river and the southern approaches. Sentinels toured the ramparts. Archers manned turrets and arrow slits. The castle watch was on the lookout for trouble. Odds were that a certain white knight was that trouble.

Moving a king’s court from castle to castle was an elaborate affair. Drake learned soon enough that the old days—when the duke of Aquitaine was struck with the sudden notion to mount a skirmish, put down a rebellious
comte, or simply tour the far-reaching borders of his beloved Aquitaine—were gone forever. Then the baggage was light, needs minimal, and travel fast. No longer. Not in the days of a king, where queens, princesses and ladies-in-waiting, princes and bishops, cooks and maids, provisions and beds had to be transported from place to place at a frustratingly leisure pace. If the king and his royal retinue had indeed left earlier than planned, a single knight riding a single horse could easily catch up.

To bear out his suspicions, Drake stayed to the forest curtain
, scouting the castle grounds, noting the scant evidence, and watching the comings and goings. Smoke escaping from the hearthfire
louvres
was sparse and infrequent. The Calais road, which would have returned much of Richard’s court to England, and the western road along the River Avre, which would have delivered the remaining Norman court to Chinon Castle, both revealed recent and decidedly heavy traffic. Other than the castle guard, no one else ventured out of doors.

On one of the reconnaissance rounds, a lookout detected something skulking behind a brake. His steed impatient beneath him, the man sniffed the air while his eyes scanned the horizon. By the time he reached the position, he saw a roe scooting into the distance
, and failed to notice, hiding in that brake, an overworked bay palfrey, another dappled gray, and a knight holding the muzzles of both horses to keep them still.

The sentry returned to the castle. Drake
road the horses several miles distant and found a clearing surrounded by a creek on one side, a hilltop on another, and woods at his back.

Night fell. Drake spread a horse blanket over a mattress of leaves and tethered the Arabian
s to a stalwart oak clawing a placid sable sky. The fire, begun by striking flint against dagger, ignited the tinder with a single spark. He fortified the wee flame with his breath, and fed leaves and wood chips into the nascent combustion. Faggot upon faggot, the inferno built and solidified until the pyre singed away the gloom of night. His eyes became transfixed by the dance of firelight, while his hands, burning with heat, fed the blaze as if it were a living thing.

Gripping a lengthy limb, he danced around the fire
just as men in the days of old must have leapt around similar flames, worshipping the invisible gods. Mystical spirits played with man. And man, in his ignorance, tried to conjure the power of those gods, believing as men believed today, that ritual, obeisance, and empty promises would dispel the fear, fill them with power, and make them just as invincible. It was a tantalizing thought. And a fool’s game. Man was weak, especially when there were other men who could subjugate them at will.

Above, the dome of heaven and the twinkling stars watched th
is lone man, this knight who thought himself invincible mere days before but was now bereft of kin, heart, and soul, wail at the moon and rail against the fates that had brought him to this fork in the road, where no direction was the right direction. He flailed at the fire with his wooden sword and tried to attack those who would dare make his brother a pawn in an unwinnable game. He regretted the day when he believed being a knight gave him stature, meaning, and a place in the world. Out here in the wilderness—cut off from those he held most dear—he was merely a man gripping a sword that could not inflict mortal wounds against his enemies but only against his friends and his king.

Diminished in size and stature, and rendered
into a helpless child, he cried out against his fate. After the anguish had been spent, he turned into a beast, wounded and feral, and yowled with the wolves until they sang together.

Their
complaints died on a whimper. The flames burned the night away. Drake expended his grief in the same way and awoke with the cool sun tickling his brow. A chaffinch greeted the dawn with song. An osprey dived for the catch of the morning. A woodpecker burrowed safe haven into a nearby birch.

The campfire smoldered, and Drake again fed it with deliberation. He broke his fast with a leveret, sacrificed with bow
and arrow. And tormented himself with the notion that he was probably destined for Hell by breaking the Lenten fast. Until he remembered that he was destined for Hell anyway—for his heathen ways and his unbelief—and so what did it matter, a little meat for his belly when his soul was starving.

He slept again in the quiet of the day. Toward evening
, biting spring showers descended. He huddled beneath a horse blanket and stared blankly out at the woods, teeming with living things. And contemplated death. The death of his brother, which would mean the death of himself. Or the death of his king, which likewise would mean the death of himself. And the death of the woman he loved beyond all other women, for by now, Aveline must be dead or wished she were.

The sky cleared. Night overturned day. And he prayed. A heathen praying is a pitiful critter, for it means he has run out of hope and turned to walk the only path left him. Knowing himself to be a fraud, he grasped the silver crucifix Aveline had given him as a talisman against danger and mouthed words he learnt as a child, words unspoken for nearly a decade, and prayed for deliverance.

Finally he settled down beneath a blanket of leaves and wool and slept the sleep of the damned. His future was laid out. He saw no other way. Come failure or success, his life as he knew it was over. If he had to sacrifice one, let it be his king. For if he let his brother die, he might as well take the dagger to his chest, here and now.