The Warrior's Game (21 page)

Nor was there any turning back. If Michel failed her, then her next home would be a king’s bed. Then again, better John than Sir Enguerran. And it was far better to be a royal whore than to live in barren, religious isolation while Roheise and her family profited from a lie.

Ami waited, wondering how deep Enguerran’s desperation went. Although the Church urged men to wed whores, believing a fallen woman’s respectability could be restored through marriage, and guaranteed the man who wed her went straight to heaven, most men weren’t willing to dirty their family names just to buy their way out of hell.

The repulsion curling Sir Enguerran’s lips proved him a man like most others. A moment later, disgust drained from his face. He swallowed, his chin lifting in reluctant decision.

“She’s right, my lady,” the knight said, shifting in his saddle to look at Roheise. “You must have a care with what you say here. I don’t want my new wife’s name besmirched any more than her participation in the king’s competition has already done. No one,” he shouted, so all the men behind him could hear, “will ever again discuss anything you heard here or the events of these last two days.”

Sir Enguerran was desperate indeed. Ami wondered what he’d done and how marriage to her could possibly shield him from rightful retribution.

Roheise freed a furious sound. “Fool! Can’t you see that she makes a dupe of you? Best you ask her why before you go dancing to her tune.”

In her anger and her native arrogance, Roheise forgot herself and went too far. “Or perhaps you don’t care that she plays you for a poppet. Is that the sort of man you are, a woman’s toy?”

“Enough!” Sir Enguerran bellowed, his shout breaking off into a chest-aching cough. When he could breathe again, he glared at the noblewoman, no longer willing to be called dolt even by a woman whose rank and connections he craved for his own.

“Hear me again, Lady Roheise,” he said, the rasp in his voice worse now. “I won’t have you falsely disparaging the woman I intend to take as a wife, especially when we here all saw the same thing. Distance or not, the man who left Lady de la Beres was dressed like one of the king’s soldiers, not a knight. Therefore, it wasn’t Sir Michel.”

Sir Enguerran’s tone was final. Whether or not he believed what he said, he’d cling to it as truth from this moment until eternity. “When I met you on the Oxford road yestermorn, you said you wished to aid me in finding Lady de la Beres. That you have done. Don’t make me regret that I invited you to also attend the exchange of our vows.”

Roheise wore an expression of steaming, hopeless frustration. Ami had seen that look on the face of every woman she knew at one time or another. Its cause was always a man who blindly rejected the truth solely because some female dared to point it out to him. Unlike most females, Roheise wasn't helpless to achieve her goals. The noblewoman shifted in her saddle to look back at her household guard.

“Go,” she commanded them with a wave of her arm. “Sir Richard, you saw the man who parted from Lady de la Beres and the direction in which he went. Find him. When you have him, return him to me as I continue onward to Thame with Sir Enguerran’s company.”

In response to his lady’s command, the knight pulled his horse out of the ranks and signaled to his lady’s men. More than a dozen soldiers separated from Sir Enguerran’s party. With Sir Richard in the lead their horses thundered past Ami and toward Reading at a near gallop.

Despair claimed Ami as she recognized how she'd once again misplayed. Instead of protecting Michel, she’d just sent more than a dozen men to hunt him down when he rode alone and unsuspecting toward Thame. Even if he did manage to meet his own men before Sir Richard found him, all was lost. Roheise’s guard outnumbered his troop.

“Have you lost your mind, my lady?” Sir Enguerran demanded, astonishment, pique, and the fear of being proved a dupe once and for all dancing across his expression. “Call them back this instant.”

Before Roheise had a chance to answer, Enguerran looked at Ami. Disgust and dislike now joined with the desperation that owned him. Michel was right. She’d survive the exchange of their vows. She might even survive as long as it took for her body to produce Enguerran’s heir. After that, Ami’s life would be worthless. Ami’s hand went to where the king’s missive was hidden in her opposite sleeve. There had to be a way to escape him.

“Why couldn’t you have stayed on the Oxford road as you should have?” he cried to her in complaint, then looked back along the ranks of his own men.

“Edwin, come take the lady up with you so we may be on our way,” he spat out.

At the sound of his name, a man drew his horse out of the pack, riding forward to halt next to his master. The soldier was slight and small, mounted upon a horse big enough to carry twice his weight. Edwin shifted in the saddle to grin almost lewdly at Ami, pulling his head deeper into his cloak’s hood so Sir Enguerran couldn’t see what he did. What with his fair hair and well-modeled features, he apparently took himself for a swain.

Ami didn’t look the soldier in the face as she put her foot in his stirrup and hoisted herself up behind him in the saddle. Once she was seated, she yanked her skirt hems down as far as she could. She wouldn’t bare any more leg than necessary to any of these men, even though all they could see were her calves modestly covered by thick woolen stockings.

“Forward,” Sir Enguerran called, only to have the word break into another cough. “We proceed at a walk.”

“A walk!” Roheise offered, an impatient edge to her voice.

Enguerran shot the woman a raging sidelong look. “I’m not jostling my arm to please your sense of urgency. Now that I’ve found my missing bride there’s no longer any need for haste, not when the king set no limiting date on his offer. At a walk we’ll reach Thame by nightfall and that’s good enough for me. If you don’t like it, you may do as Lady de la Beres did yesterday, and separate from us to ride wherever you will.”

With that, Sir Enguerran kicked his mount into motion. As Edwin urged his horse forward, the horse’s first step made Ami slip in the saddle until she was pressed against the soldier’s back. She pushed herself as far from him as she could, only to have him press back in the saddle, seeking contact between their bodies.

Ami braced a hand at the middle of his back, trying to keep him away from her. It didn’t work. Their thighs still touched.

“Now, that’s not very comfortable, my lady,” Edwin said, his tone unacceptably familiar and his voice low enough so his master wouldn’t overhear. “Why not put your arms about me and rest your head against my back?”

Ami didn’t deign to respond. With nothing else to occupy her except the fate she faced at the end of this ride, Ami set herself to devising ways to escape. It was a good thing that they were yet miles from the abbey. She was going to need every inch of the distance to come up with something.

Michel again slowed his horse from a canter to a walk so the gelding could catch its breath. While it walked he glanced behind him. From near the top of this latest hill the cottages in the village behind him looked like children’s toys. There were but a few dozen homes, every one of them shuttered against the weather, their front and back gardens sleeping for the season beneath a blanket of straw. Cattle and sheep stood like dark dots against the empty sweep of sere pastureland while the long expanse of fields that fed the homeowners and their stock flowed like rich black velvet over the gentle roll of the landscape.

But it was the road to the south of the village that Michel wanted to see, that and the men upon it. It wasn’t the first time in the last hour he’d noticed them. With the earth lifting steadily higher in this part of England, each hill’s crest offered him a glimpse of the distant troop.

Even though he had no reason to think they followed him, concern grew as the gap between them steadily closed. For all Michel knew they could have some serious purpose that didn’t include him, still a cautious man tended to live longer than an impetuous fool. He had to consider that they might be an opportunistic band of thieves, and he was presently a tempting target.

Not only was he traveling alone, without even a shield or a helmet, but his horse and sword screamed of wealth. Roger’s gelding owned a fine lineage, his parentage displayed in the powerful lines of his body while Michel’s blade was the best he could afford, which was substantial. As many as yon troop included, he would be easily overwhelmed, his body left to return to the earth from which God had made it.

Michel touched the purse at his belt. Stored in it was the fold of parchment John had given him in the presence of Sir Enguerran, before the king had offered his secret phrase. The wax that closed it bore the royal seal, the imprint clear enough to be identified for what it was. Any man who killed the king’s messenger did so on pain of his own life. Ah, but to make use of that seal Michel needed the chance to display it to his attackers, and attackers rarely paused to engage in civilized discussion.

He sent the gelding over the top of the hill in front of him. Beyond it, the land flattened into a long plain, stretching as far as his eye could see. He turned the horse off the road, mucky track that it was, toward a nearby stream. The gelding needed his rest as well as food and drink if they were going to remain ahead of the distant men.

As the horse ate an oatcake and drank, Michel's thoughts drifted into his future with Ami. Lord, but she was far too perceptive for his good. She had realized almost immediately his refusal to explain meant more than a man’s rightful demand that his woman trust implicitly without asking after the greater purpose of her master's plan.

This should have upset him. But to his surprise, her questions felt more like those Roger might have asked had Michel tried to palm so lame an excuse off on his captain. For the first time Michel considered the advantages of having a wife who was not just a servant and caretaker of his home, but one who might act as his second in all those things pertaining to their union and their future.

As if he could prevent that hard-headed woman from forcing her way into full partnership with him? Michel couldn't stop his smile at that. John was right. Marriage to Amicia de la Beres would be like riding an unbroken horse, but sometimes the colts hardest to break tamed into the finest horses.

Remembering John and his twisted promises brought with it another possible identity for those who followed him. He again stared back along the road behind him. John would have no trouble finding his mercenary, not when the king's own tracker had led Michel to Ami and knew which path they would likely take to Thame.

Another curse slipped from Michel's lips. What if the king had rescinded his offer of Ami and her restored properties? Damn, but where was Roger and his troop? Stepping around the horse, Michel peered to the north, looking as deeply into the rain-shadowed distance as he could. Not so much as a rabbit moved on the road ahead of him, certainly not a troop of soldiers seeking their missing master.

There could be only three reasons he hadn’t already met his own men. The first and most logical was that he had gone astray. Foreigner that he was, Michel could well have misheard directions at some point. The folk here spoke little French and those who had any of the tongue had accents so convoluted Michel strained to decipher their meanings.

The second was that Sir Enguerran might have incapacitated Roger and the rest of Michel’s men yesterday. While certainly a possibility it hardly seemed probable, not when a few days ago Sir Enguerran’s men hadn’t been well drilled enough in arms to do more than annoy his own battle-hardened men.

The last possibility was that John's game was far grander than Michel suspected. Had the king's men been instructed to betray him? In that case, they wouldn't have passed on his message to Roger despite their vow to do so.

Michel mounted, then backtracked to the crest of the hill for a last look at the approaching party. All sense said it wasn’t Sir Enguerran racing for Thame with the woman the knight thought he was going to marry. Not only wouldn't the man’s injured arm tolerate this group’s bruising pace, this troop was half the size of the one d'Oilly had led this morn.

Half the size. A vicious curse aimed at both John and Enguerran dropped from Michel’s lips. This was half Sir Enguerran’s troop pursuing him.

Regardless of their skills, by numbers alone would they defeat him. And, just as d'Oilly hadn't considered his horseflesh a few nights ago, he wasn't likely to do so now; he'd have commanded his men to ride their mounts into the ground if need be.

Then his pursuers were already too close. If this competition came down to a race, he was doomed. Roger's gelding had stamina but no speed.

Michel turned the gelding and sent him into his fastest canter. Foam began to fleck the gelding’s mouth. His breath huffed from him in rhythmic snorts.

With nothing but empty road ahead of him, Michel watched in growing concern as those behind him continued to close the gap with each mile. In the last quarter hour they'd gained enough that Michel could count fifteen men. Chain mail glinted from the leader, naming him a knight. Not d'Oilly for sure. Then who?

It didn't matter who it was. The knight took Michel's glance as a prod. With a shout of encouragement to his men, the armed man urged his horse into a gallop. If any doubts lingered about who they chased, that settled them.

Michel turned his gaze back to the road ahead, seeking something, anything, he could use to his advantage. Not more than a quarter mile ahead the track crested a rise, dipping briefly into a shallow valley before returning to sight.

Praying there was some sort of cover, trees or a stand of rocks to guard his back, Michel whispered his apologies to Roger and his horse, then sent the gelding toward that lip of earth at a full gallop.

At his change of pace the knight behind him howled out a battle cry.

Rage tore through Michel as he recognized it. He threw another look over his shoulder, seeking confirmation. At a gallop the knight’s cloak streamed behind him, exposing the de Say insignia on the breast of his surcoat.

Michel leaned low over the gelding’s neck, drove Roger’s horse down into the shallow dip, all the while begging God to take that arrogant lewd bitch. Ami had been every bit the noblewoman’s pawn. Not because Roheise wanted to spark any rebellion, although if she could use his death that way, she would. Nay, Roheise craved his blood because Michel had not only refused her when she boldly propositioned him, he’d done so with words that fully conveyed his hatred for the women of his mother’s class.

The dip was deeper than it had seemed from above, widening into a gentle dell. At its bottom lay a small hamlet, its defensive walls nothing more than the same woven willow fencing that had made up the shepherd’s pens. Ah, but coming around the curve of those delicate walls was a man dressed in mail that had been painted black, followed by nine more soldiers.

The potential of surviving this day with his soul and future intact flowed over Michel. With it came a bone-deep relief that John hadn't once again betrayed him. Perhaps he could tolerate serving this most capricious of monarchs.

Michel tore off one glove and put his fingers to his lips to loose three short, piercing whistles. Roger’s hand lifted in acknowledgment. Michel didn't wait to see them draw their swords, as his whistle had warned, or watch his own destrier explode into a gallop. Instead, he turned Roger's gelding and galloped back toward the hill's crest, stopping far enough below the valley’s lip so those chasing him wouldn’t see him until they were upon him.

With Roger’s horse trembling beneath him, his sides heaving, Michel shoved his hand back into his glove. He flexed his fingers once, to gauge how much more damage he would do to his already strained wrist with what he planned, then he drew his sword. Just as he hoped, the de Say knight came racing over the lip of earth ahead of his own men. Not expecting his prey to be waiting for him, the armed man’s shield yet hung from the side of his saddle.

The knight gave a startled shout as he caught sight of Michel, sawing on the reins as he tried to turn his horse and keep himself out of reach of Michel’s sword. It was too little, too late.

The sun had reached the western horizon and now prepared to settle into its nightly rest, stirring a chill wind with its descent. Thus did Ami smell Thame before she saw it. As with any town, there was the ever-present scent of woodsmoke along with the reek of offal, suggesting the shambles were at this end of town. That suspicion was confirmed in the next instant as she caught the frightened bellow of a dying bovine. Some butcher was making his last kill of the day.

Taking their cue from the sun's setting, the bells of Thame’s sole church began to ring. The abbey bells followed on its heels, their tone deeper and more distant. Both carillons announced to the faithful that the time for Vespers had come.

The town’s wooden walls rose up before them. It wasn't much of a defense, but then Thame wasn't much of a city. There were no more than six hundred inhabitants, all of them tied in some way to the bishop of Lincoln’s service, for he was the protector of the place.

Edwin's horse plodding tiredly along the path outside the walls, as exhausted as its riders. After this their second day spent in one saddle or another, Ami had long since ceased struggling to keep herself separate from Edwin just as he had given up trying to seduce her. They were both too exhausted to care about anything save dismounting.

The thought of finally stretching her aching legs Ami leaned to the side, trying to see Thame's abbey ahead on the track. The holy house lay outside the city walls and to the north. All she could see of it were its surrounding fields, dimming now, and its darkening orchards.

As she straightened in the saddle her gaze came to rest on Roheise and Sir Enguerran, who rode in front of her and Edwin; wanting his bride close, Sir Enguerran had commanded Edwin take the position usually given to a knight's master-at-arms, behind and to the right of his employer. That the knight rode ahead of the noblewoman wasn't because Roheise craved Enguerran's protection. More than once pride had tried to drive the noblewoman to her rightful position at the head of this bedraggled troop. But Sir Enguerran’s horse was no respecter of protocol or rank. Every time Roheise advanced her horse he nipped at her mare’s flanks, driving the noblewoman back into the lower position.

As for Enguerran, Ami doubted he no longer knew or cared where Roheise rode. He swayed in his saddle, his head hanging.

For the thousandth time since they'd passed that spot a few leagues back, Ami caught Roheise looking behind her, beyond the men who trailed behind them in no order and with no discipline. Despite her warm furs, the woman's face was pinched with anxiety. It was but half the terror Ami had known as they crossed that place. It had had the look of a battlefield to it, with great gouts of sod torn up by iron-shod hooves. Patches of flattened and darkened grass suggested men had laid there and bled. Ami’s only comfort, and it was cold comfort indeed, was that she’d seen no ravens or crows circling anywhere near the site. Those carrion eaters were the scourge of the battlefield, so daring that they didn't wait until the clash of weapons ceased to feast upon the fallen.

When Ami shivered this time it wasn't against a frigid day chilling into an even colder twilight. God help her, where was Michel? They had passed no one coming or going on the track since that place. Was he even yet alive to reclaim her as he'd promised?

She once more touched the parchment in her sleeve. It didn't help. Neither of the fates left to her were what she wanted. Ami drew a ragged breath. If Michel was dead, his passing would be as devastating to her as Richard de la Beres’s had been. Nay, it would be worse. She'd had years to love and cherish Richard before God had taken him. She’d only had a few brief hours with Michel.

At last the abbey's perimeter wall thrust up out of the damp earth ahead of them, marking its perimeter. What little light remained revealed the pale yellow and flinty black of the wall’s surface; the Cistercians had done so well with this house they could afford the stone defense the town could not.