Defiant (11 page)

Armies small and large were already marching, streaming like steely tributaries toward the City. The heirs of great estates were riding to fitzWalter’s standard, while their fathers held the castles and kept peace with the king. The country was ripping apart like cloth along the bias. Everyone was maneuvering for position. No one knew how far this would go or where it would end.

FitzWalter looked down at the parchment in his calloused hand. On its rough surface were line after line of dark ink scrawling, detailing the charter of liberties the rebels were demanding of the king.

This time, King John would sign.

He would have no choice. The crown jewel in his array of city-stones, London, had just fallen to a rap on her gates.

All the charter wanted was John’s signature and royal seal. Then it would go out to all four corners of the realm, heralded
at village squares and town fairs and the castles of his greatest magnates: the barons’ charter,
Magna Carta,
signed and stamped by the royal We.

FitzWalter scowled at it as the messenger ran down the stairs.

“They have the priest,” he shouted as he reached the dais table. Everyone stared as he dropped to his knees, sucking in breaths, hand on his chest.

Robert fitzWalter let a slow grin lift his bearded cheeks. He turned to the earl of Essex, his cocommander. “Mouldin has brought me my priest.”

A hum of excited voices broke around him, approval, anticipation. The messenger’s gasped words were distinct from the murmuring.

“Nay, my lord. He has not brought the priest. He sends a message instead.”

FitzWalter’s grin froze. He got to his feet, as if readying himself in advance for the blow to come. “What message?”

“A . . . ransom offer.”

The room fell silent. The sounds of horses and shouting men outside floated through the window of the castle walls, but inside, everyone was staring at fitzWalter.

“How much?” he said in a low, humming voice. “How much does he want?”

The messenger swallowed. “That is dependent, my lord.”

FitzWalter curled his fingers around the edge of the table rather than the man’s neck. Squeezing tight, he leaned forward, his words slow and deliberate.
“Upon what?”

The messenger looked truly sick. “On how much the others bid.”

FitzWalter gave a harsh bark of laughter and kicked his chair back. It squealed like an animal, then toppled off the dais with a crash. “That clever, dead man.”

He stalked behind the trestle table. Men moved away, in case that got tossed next. “I will not pay. I will see him pricked with a hundred arrows in his fat arse before I surrender to him one more penny. I commissioned him. I paid him—”

He swung to the messenger. “Against whom am I bidding?”

“The king.”

Fury welled up in him, thick viscous gobs of it, up his spine into his throat. “But of course. Deal you in snakes, you shall get the venom.”

He turned to the far wall and stared out the window. He must go carefully here. This entire move, this taking of the City, had been predicated upon the successful retrieval of Peter of London, and was to be the last in a line of toppling royal dominoes.

FitzWalter had set the thing in motion by suggesting they invite the priest to England to assist in the parley. Once he arrived, Mouldin was to bring him in. Then, the prize: the missing heirs of England.

Everoot, d’Endshire.

Everoot was by far the greater estate, the greater risk, but both were mighty chinks in John’s baronial armor. It was too many great Houses to be
in absentia
. And in these times of strife and civil unrest, the rumors were taking shape again. No one spoke of them above a whisper, but whisper they did, as if a scent had been carried on the breeze to the nostrils of the great and mighty: find the missing heirs.

Rumors swirled as to what had happened to those great lords all those years ago, but most agreed the king’s temper had seen them done in.

Now the heirs were running loose in the world somewhere. Dead as well?

Mayhap. Mayhap not.

Father Peter would know.

FitzWalter knew he was closer than he’d ever been before. There could be no missteps now. First seize the priest.

Then the crown.

He plunged his hands into the nearby cistern and flung a handful of cold water over his face. Droplets stuck to his beard when he straightened.

“So be it. But I will not send an emissary. I will go to Gracious Hill and extract the poison myself. Then I will march Peter of London out on the field at Runnymede and kick the legs out from under John’s throne. Essex has the City in my absence. Tell no one I am gone.”

He started for the door. The members of his personal guard leaped to their feet. The messenger held up a hand.

“My lord, I was told to inform you: Jamie has been spotted. Hunting the priest.”

FitzWalter stopped short. He half turned. “Jamie Lost?”

“Aye, my lord.”

He stared for a moment, then threw his head back and gave a loud, coarse laugh. “Of course. Ever has Jamie been my own personal plague. Send for Chance,” he ordered as he turned again for the door. “Should Jamie show up, Chance can . . . inquire if he has reconsidered his loyalties.
Again.
”

He strode out of the room.

The race was on. Whoever brought the heirs into his fold first would release the waterfall. The news would rush like a river through England and sweep up the undecided nobles. It would ripple through their pledged knights and the fat merchants who ran their rich fair towns like a dam undone.

Without the crucial support of these middling barons and their knights and merchants, the rebellion would fail.

But then, so would a kingship.

E
va felt as if she were riding through the middle of one of Father Peter’s sketches. The trees all wore billowing green caps and stood proudly in their dark brown tunics as they marched up and down the hills of England.

Less showy but more sweet, tiny pricking flowers hurried to the edge of the track. The hedgerows hosted a profusion of flowering vines and exuberant birds, flitting their wings and chirping. Whenever the land opened up, herds of red poppies raced down the hills like ponies, all exuberance and flicking tails.

England was a most comely land. Eva had forgotten.

But then, she’d wanted to forget. She’d scrubbed at her memories with such vigor that after ten years, well, one could hardly expect little yellow flowers to survive such a cleansing.

Except they had.

She’d sketched them in a painting once. Gog had noticed. Somehow, even he recalled the little yellow flowers from when he was five, before they had fled.

It was not a comfortable knowledge, that England and its sweet flowers had stayed in both their minds.

Many other memories were pouring back now as well, including this road and its poor condition. She remembered it
well; a few more miles ought to bring them near to where she and Roger had lived for a few desperate months, all those years ago.

A few scattered hamlets could be seen here and there, far-off smoke rising from their clusters, but the remote, rutted road itself was desolate and empty. For the ruts alone, no one would suspect a group of soldiers fleeing with a priestly hostage to travel this way.

But they had. When the hard and rocky ground gave the smallest clue of this fact, Jamie had followed behind. He was a consummate woodsman.

Unfortunately, Gog was less good.

His ten years of skulking in woods and the edges of towns in no way measured against the hunting skills of these two seasoned knights. There were only the two of them, but Eva felt surrounded by castle walls. An approach could come from the unprotected sides, Eva supposed gloomily, but if Gog were so foolish as to try—and he was not whatsoever foolish—he wouldn’t make it so far as a yard. He’d be struck down before he made it out of the eaves.

She tried to listen for signs of him, following in the wood, but if he was doing it properly, she wouldn’t notice him at all.

Jamie might, though.

“Might I have my hands unleashed?” she inquired when they next slowed the horses.

Jamie, who’d been taking the aft, came forward beside her. His gleaming chestnut horse snorted at hers, but Jamie nudged him closer yet.

“My arms ache.” She shifted them to demonstrate. “My shoulders.”

His gaze slid away to the wood beyond. He tipped his chin up and opened his mouth slightly, his body rock-still as he scanned the trees and the shadows beneath. She realized what
he was doing: tasting the air. Seeing, hearing, smelling, using every sense to assess his proximate world, alive to any hint of a trap, an attack, a possible route of escape. He was like a wild creature.

He was magnificent.

This made Eva angry. She did not so much like magnificence. It was too often found in things such as castles and cathedrals, things of hard stone one could dash oneself against trying to get out of. Or into.

That such magnificence could come in the form of a stony person too, well, it simply beggared her for words.

His pewter-blue gaze slid back to her. “No.” He turned away.

She opened her mouth to protest, then snapped it shut as he reined away, clucking to encourage her horse to follow. Her horse was lashed to his, so it hardly mattered, all this clucking and encouraging. They would all go his way in the end.

She eyed the broad expanse of his self-approving back. Yes, indeed, this was a back that approved of itself. Every easy sway of his shoulders showed it to be. Such powerful men crafted the hard truths of the hard, cold world, and she was heartfully tired of it.

“You must be very proud of yourself,” she announced.

He showed no response for a moment, then shifted and looked over his shoulder, eyebrow cocked in query.

“Riding about on your very large horse, with your hard armor and your oh-so-intimidating sword.”

He watched her a moment, then tipped his face up, as if catching an agreeable scent. Was he smiling? He looked back down. Yes, he was smiling, a very little bit.

“Tell me, Eva, have I intimidated you with my . . . sword?”

Shocking, the orb of heat that scorched her insides at his low-pitched innuendo, up from her belly to her cheeks and back
down again. And flung out behind it, like the tail of a comet, came the searing memory: she’d dreamt of him last night. Repeatedly.

Hot, restless dreams, of slow-moving hands, of a hard-packed thigh pushing between hers, of his hands on her shoulders pulling her down to him . . .

Hot, hotter, hottest; his eyes on her just now, that little knowing smile.

She sniffed. “You are a very bad man.”

Something hard flashed in his eye. “That I am, Eva.” He reined in, bringing his glinting armor and hot body right up beside her, the length of his thigh bumping hers.

Then he whispered, “Who is Gog?”

Her body went cold. Just slightly, as it does the moment the air decides,
Yes, now I shall snow. No more of this driving rain; let us try the snow.
And the temperature drops, and the delicate branch tips get fat with ice, and everyone hurries into their homes. Those without huddle with the ice-fat branches and scowl at their icefat toes.

She looked at him coldly. It was not difficult to do; coldness emanated from both disdain and fear. How fortunate for her. “You are not only a bad man but a confusing one as well. What is this you ask? A ‘frog’?”

Again, nothing, for the longest time. Blue eyes intent on you were not a restful thing, she decided.

“Gog,” he said, softer now.

“I do not know of what you speak.”

“I speak of what you said back at the Goat. ‘You’ve no notion of how I complain. Ask Gog,’” he quoted her, and watched her, and the snow started falling in her heart.

“To my shame, Jamie, I did not. I said, ‘Dear God.’ But I shall stop committing such venial sins, as they obviously dispose you to visions.”

He smiled. It was slow, small, and aimed right at her. He might as well have poked her with a stick.

“Ah.”

His deep rumble vibrated inside her, and she wished very much, just now, to both crack him on the head and close her eyes, so she might feel nothing but the rumble as it moved through her body.

Some men were like roots to water for certain things. They might not seek them or even want them, but even so, they came down on them like rain. Some men sought battle; others had it thrust upon them. Some fell heedless into coin; others wanted a penny their whole lives. Some men drank to excess, some could not turn from the dice.

Eva—Eva found danger. She was like a tributary, running downhill to the great river of Trouble. And this time, she’d spilled directly into Jamie’s river valley.

T
hey stopped at a small crossroads where many tracks converged. Jamie and Ry convened another conference.

“The road diverges here,” Jamie was saying. He shoved his fingers through his hair in an impatient, sweaty way. “Along the eastern way, in about a mile or so, is a town. West hies toward Bristol.”

“They might have gone there,” Ry was saying in his soft-spoken, smart voice. It was a sad thing she had met Ry in this way, with the ropes and the kidnapping, for she was certain they could have been friends.

“Aye,” agreed the dark-eyed one with whom she could
never
be friends. “’Tis a major port, with ships.”

“Easy to bring in a ship without being seen, sail out again.”

“With a priest aboard.”

“Precisely. Yet you say the signs point north,” Ry murmured. He sat as straight in his saddle as Jamie, his calm brown eyes looking less dangerous than Jamie’s, but she’d seen him at the docks and witnessed the calm competence when he had kicked open the back door of the inn. Surely he was as lethal as Jamie, should the need for lethality arise.