Wings of the Storm (26 page)

The row of trees led away from the stream. Although it was probably logical that the stream flowed out of the Lady Spring, she hoped she had chosen the right way anyway. She didn't remember traveling along the stream's meandering route the first time. She shrugged and plunged deeper into the forest.

It was cool under the trees. The air was still. Great boughs stretching toward the sky blocked out much of the light. She could hear birds high overhead, and her own breathing, and the bending and straightening of the undergrowth as she brushed through it. These faint noises seemed to be absorbed into the great, patient quiet of the forest.

She continued on determinedly for quite some time but was eventually forced to admit she had no idea where she was. There were oak trees all around her still, but no more ashes or thorns. She sank down on a moss-encrusted log and considered the situation. Looking around, she caught sight of a raven perched on a branch. It was eyeing her with its glossy black head tilted curiously to one side.

"Of course, you realize," she told it, "that I'm totally lost." It commented with a raucous croak and flew away.

She rolled her shoulders tiredly. She was hot, and she was bruised and scraped from her encounters with the thick undergrowth. She supposed she had better try to find her way back to where she had last seen an ash or a thorn tree.

It took her at least an hour of finding and losing and finding again before she came to a spot she recog-nized. And she groaned in frustration. All her woodsmanship had gotten her was back to the very begin-ning of the path.

She stood at the edge of the clearing before the ruin of the old tower and swore at the uncaring stones for a good minute before she heard the sound of approaching hoofs. Several sets of hoofs. Coming from at least two directions.

She remembered the hunters. She'd been told they'd gone another way. What if the guards had been wrong? She remembered John's human hounds, filthy, barbaric, and lustful. The
rentiers'
leaders were no better than the men they commanded. Forget chivalry. Pillage and destruction were the order of the day.

She could hear the horsemen getting nearer. The chink of mail and creak of leather reached her ears, carried on the clear breeze. Without further pause for thought, she headed, skirts flying around her pump-ing legs, for the shelter of the tower. She barely made it through the sagging doorway before the first rider entered the clearing.

25

Peering cautiously around the entrance,she had no trouble recognizing Hugh of Lilydrake. He rode with the reins held tightly in his gloved hand, and the expression on his narrow features was one of dark anger mixed with cautious cunning. It made Jane wonder what the troublemaking lord of Lilydrake was up to.

She knew she didn't want to be caught finding out. As two other riders came into the clearing from the deep forest, she moved silently to the stairs and tiptoed up them as fast as she dared.

The three men were grouped together under the arrow slits by the time she reached the narrow open-ings on the second floor. She looked down on the trio, noting how well dressed the two strangers were and how fine the horseflesh was. She saw the arro-gance and self-assurance in the men's body language. She got the impression these were powerful nobles indeed. She didn't remember seeing them in John's train, but she'd seen so few of the court that she knew her memory didn't matter. What were they up to? she wondered. There was a furtiveness to this gathering, sort of like a midnight deal to make a drug buy in a movie. What was up?

Maybe she should mind her own business, she countered. Maybe she didn't have a choice but to overhear them, was her immediate realization. It didn't look as though they'd agreed to meet here so they could then go somewhere else.

"You came," one of the strangers said. He wore a flat-crowned black hat. A dark blue surcoat covered

a barrel chest. His nose was long and his lips thin.

The other man was dressed head to boots in chain mail, a white tabard embroidered in his coat of arms thrown over the armor. The device was a complicated concoction of gold circles, a boar's head, and flames. A thick sword belt girdled his waist. He leaned for-ward across the high saddle front, looking intently at Hugh. "We managed to talk the king into this man-hunting you suggested. He's here, in your hand. The time will never be better. Will you do it?"

Hugh sat stiffly in his saddle. "I told you I'd get the outlaws to cause enough trouble so you could get him here. I never claimed I'd do the deed myself."

"You're a coward," said the man in the hat. He hawked, spat, then went on. "The idea sounded good enough when you suggested it to Lord Arthur. King Philip thought the plan fitting, having John die during the hunt like his ancestor William before him. These are known to be witchwoods, where no king's life is sacred. Besides, we have the outlaws and John's own bastard kin to blame. All that's left is to strike him down." He looked at Hugh with intently burning eyes. "Will you do it?"

"Arthur will reward you with land and power as he's pledged, when he is rightfully ruling the Angevin lands," the other man promised smoothly. His voice held all the insinuation of the snake in Eden.

Jane listened to the treasonous conversation half in shock. The other half of her mind was summoning up facts, easily filling in the gaps of place, time, circum-stances, and personalities involved that must have brought these three men together to instigate the assassination of a king.

Arthur would be Arthur of Brittany, or a pre-tender, rather. The real Arthur was dead by now, probably by his cousin John's own hand. There had been several pretenders. The king of France, Philip Augustus, didn't discourage any of them. All the intrigue was to his advantage. He was busy chopping up England's French empire.

It seemed this particular false Arthur had allies among the king's closest cronies. Well, John was good at getting people to hate him.

She remembered Michael and the dog, the flayed-alive outlaws, Sibelle hiding in her bower, the girls terrified of the
routiers
kept on the king's own leash, his hands on her. She nodded grimly. Not a very lov-able man.

Besides, the barons wanted power, she thought, putting personal experience aside. In a few years they would force him into signing the Magna Carta to curb his excesses. They would do it for their own self-ish reasons, but it would turn out to be a first step on the road to rights and freedom for everyone. In the end John would do something good for England, though he would hate every second of it.

Unless, of course, John died first, before Magna Carta.

"All right," Hugh said. His voice had the shrillness of nails on a chalkboard. Jane shuddered at the sound.

"I'll do it," he agreed. "After you make sure his guards are out of the way."

"We'll lead them into the forest," the mailed war-rior promised. "No fear of that."

"Do it tomorrow," the other noble urged. "We've wasted enough time. Kill the king tomorrow."

Hugh's gulp was audible all the way up to the top of the tower. His face was totally colorless, his

mus-cles so bunched with tension that he was quivering. "All right," he rasped out. He turned his horse and spurred it away, throwing his last word on the matter over his shoulder as he went. "Tomorrow!"

The nobles looked from him to each other. "It will succeed," the man in the hat said. "It had better. I hope the king doesn't notice our absence. He gets sus-picious if a man's not constantly at his side."

The other nodded. "John will be dead by this time tomorrow. What matter if he gives us hard looks tonight? We'll find a wench or two to bed and claim the sport was too good to give up quickly." There was a snort of rude laughter from his companion. The warrior went on. "We needed to talk to Lilydrake.

We needed to push him. His nerve's not as high as I hoped."

"It will have to do. Too late to worry now." They kicked their horses forward. The last words she heard before they reached the edge of the clearing were. "We'll spend the waiting time taking our pleasure."

Jane slid slowly down the wall to sit with her head propped in her hands. The scene she'd just witnessed was burned in her memory. Of all the complications besetting her life since she'd tumbled through time to this very spot, this was the worst. She was cold with dread and furious at fate for throwing this very unwanted knowledge her way.

This couldn't be happening! What was she going to do? What
could
she do?

She waited for a long time after the riders were gone, and it was getting close to sunset before she cautiously made her way down the tower stairs. Her mind raced, but her steps back to Passfair were slow. She didn't want to think, and she succeeded much of the time. She,didn't want to make decisions.

She kept thinking about
Richard II.
Not the king, the play. The line about sitting on the ground and telling sad tales about the death of kings kept popping into her brain.

And Richard's descended from John, she thought. And if John dies, Richard—who wasn't a good king, either, but had a great play written about him—won't be born and Shakespeare will probably end up as an accountant or schoolteacher or something and will never write about him, and then no one will ever think of England as a jewel set in a silver sea. And it'll all be my fault.

The stars were coming out and the guards were getting ready to close the castle gates when she dragged reluctantly into the bailey. Receiving respect-ful nods of greeting from two of Daffyd's men posted at the inner gate, she nodded back and trudged on. Standing just inside the inner wall, she looked around, her eyes taking in all the usual sights. Stables and kitchen to the right and left of the courtyard, the other outbuildings ringing the square stone castle over a several-acre area of the hillside.

The light was almost gone. The sky was a rich, deep dark royal blue, jewel-dotted at the zenith, cut through with deep purple-and-orange ribbons of fad-ing light at the horizon. All the usual smells and sounds assaulted her ears. Everything was going on as it had happened yesterday and the day before and should happen tomorrow.

Only she knew that tomorrow a king would die. Somehow the lord and lady—the bastard kin and her husband—would be implicated in the murder. This holding would probably fall to Hugh of Lilydrake as part of his reward for the assassination. The peasants would have a new master. Perhaps it wouldn't matter to them; one oppressor was much like another. She knew it would matter to some. To Bertram and Mar-guerite and Alais and Switha and Cerdic and Raoul. It would matter to Michael and the pets and to Jonathan. It certainly mattered to her.

It might matter to Daffyd.

She struck her forehead with her palm. Of course! Why hadn't she thought of Daffyd before?

She could try to talk to the king, but even if she could approach him, she doubted he would believe her.

And she doubted she could even get to him. Maybe if he came back to the hall tonight. It might be possible then. But John might be more interested in bedding her than listening to her. She shuddered with revulsion at the thought.

But Daffyd, her mind raced on, worked for him. "High in the king's favor," was how Daffyd had put it. If she could get Daffyd to believe her, he could take word to the king. John would be safe. England would be safe. More important, Passfair would be safe. Daffyd might not want to marry her, but he'd always been there to help her before.

What did she mean, if he believed her? Of course he believed her. He had to believe her. She loved him.

She knew her reasoning wasn't exactly objective. But even if she tried to keep her emotions out of it, Daffyd ap Bleddyn still seemed the logical person to seek out with her information. She began crossing the courtyard with a new sense of purpose.

As she reached the stone steps, she heard Jonathan call her name. She looked up as he hurried down from the door to meet her. "What?" she asked, heart pounding with dread as the Templar grabbed her arm and pulled her aside.

"Don't go in just now," he advised, looking back at the castle entrance. "I'm glad I saw you as I came out."

She followed his glance nervously. "What's wrong? What's happened? Has the king been—"

"He's been asking about you. King John's been asking for you," he elaborated as she looked at him in confusion. Before she could ask any questions, a group of men came out the door and waited on the steps. The king followed after them.

"God's blood!" Jonathan swore in a furious whis-per. "He wants you, lass." He pushed her toward the stables, away from the bloom of torches held by the king's party. "Try hiding in the loft. I'll see if I can divert him with talk of God."

"Jonathan!" she pleaded. "Don't get yourself in trouble over me."

She made out a flash of white teeth as he smiled. "All right, I'll talk to the king about gold. He's been seeking a loan from the Templars, and I was sent to negotiate it," he confided.

Jane stopped in her tracks. "What? You're a diplomat?"

The smile flashed again. "Saving souls is only what I do in my spare time, sweet Jehane." He kissed her firmly on the mouth, then pushed her toward the sta-bles. She could hear the king's party crossing the courtyard. She was remembering what Daffyd had said about priests' sons. The light was growing closer.

"I'm glad you decided on Daffyd," he added, then turned to approach the king.

She almost called him back to tell him about the assassination plot. Then she thought about how close

John was. He'd been asking for her. John of the cov-etous eyes and grasping hands. She ran for the stable.

As she started up the ladder to the hayloft, she heard a horseman riding up behind her, heard the voice of a questioning groom, a grunted answer. She scrambled up the last few rungs and buried herself under a pile of straw just as the man led his horse in himself. She heard the chink of mail and peeped just a little over the edge of the loft. There was a torch set in a bracket next to one of the stalls, and she got a glimpse of the top of a conical helmet before easing