Defiant (17 page)

“Within a week, they are with me, or they are dead. Bring them to me at Everoot; I ride north.”

Cig exited the room as another large, heavy object hit the ground behind him. He did not look back.

K
ING
John waited until he left, then shifted his gaze to the darkest corner of the room, and the shadowy figure standing there.

“Follow him. Make sure ’tis done.”

“D
ID
you deliver the messages? And the sketches?”

Peter of London eyed the king’s outlawed captain, who stood on the other side of the fire questioning his recently returned underling, and shook his head.

Mouldin seemed to detect the faint movement, even amid the dark shadows of the trees shrouding their campsite. He turned slightly.

“Have you something to contribute, Father?” he inquired, his gravelly voice filled with all the false solicitousness that arrogance lent it. Upon a time, Mouldin had been considered handsome. Peter recalled those days, how Mouldin’s square, diffident face would lighten with a smile when the king gave him yet another hostage to hold.

“A sketch will hardly convince anyone of anything,” Peter said mildly. “Least of all that you have me. You might be trying to sell them a merchant’s grandfather for all they know.”

Mouldin nodded to his sergeant, and he joined the others who were sitting, some half slumbering, while others were on watch. “You are too modest, Father,” Mouldin said, coming closer. “Your sketchings are distinctive. No one has your talent. And although you’ve been gone ten years, ’tis well remembered.”

“Flattery will not serve you. I still intend to recommend your excommunication”

Mouldin crossed his arms, smiling faintly. “I do not flatter, Father. ’Tis the truth.”

Peter leaned back against a tree trunk; it had been a long time since he’d slept out of doors, on hard ground. It was chilly with no fire and the spring breezes pushing through the trees, and although the moonshine was bright where it shone down between the branches, it gave no warmth, just a silvery sheen of illumination.

“What a pleasure this will be, then,” he said. “Two such accomplished men, telling tales in a dark wood. Ah, but then, you have only the one skill.”

Mouldin laughed again. “We cannot all be as blessed in our array of talents as you, Father.”

“You could attempt it.”

Peter was amusing Mouldin no end, for the criminal smiled again. “Alas, I am good at only one thing.”

“Auctioning slaves.”

Mouldin’s look hardened, but he maintained his smile. “Or priests. You should be careful of what you say, Father, and to whom.”

Peter held out his hand. “We see where such care has led me. Into a cold wood with an outlawed slave trader.”

“’Twasn’t care that ruined you, Father. ’Twas giving it up.” Mouldin stepped away from the tree and sat opposite Peter on a log, his forearms over his knees. “Why in God’s name did you ever come back to England? They’ve been hunting you for years throughout France. Even I took a turn or two on commission. Never found you. Never would have, either. Unless you came back.”

“I was called for.”

Mouldin shook his head. “You were tricked. The rebels
suggested inviting you to England to assist in the negotiations. Then they hired me to abduct you.”

Peter regarded him levelly. “You shall have a very uncomfortable afterlife, Guillaume Mouldin.”

He gave a bark of laughter.

“You’re quite high-spirited,” Peter observed; then he coughed. “Have you considered mummery, or tumbling, perhaps? You could leave off auctioning human souls forevermore.”

“No one is paying for souls, Father. Keep yours.” Mouldin reached into his pack, drew out a wrap, and, surprisingly, handed it over.

“You will still burn in Hell,” Peter said, but he reached for it. It was a wolf pelt. Warm. Mouldin watched as he wrapped it around his shoulders and leaned back against the tree again.

“You are no fool, Father. You could not have believed their purposes were benevolent. Why did you come?”

“Langton is a friend. The charter will serve England better than many kings have done.”

“Why did you come?” Mouldin asked again, more slowly, more insistently. He had a nose like a rat’s.

Peter shook his head. “Everyone is very interested in my purposes. I think I shall keep my own counsel.”

He coughed again, and this time it lasted awhile. It was getting worse. He didn’t know how much longer he had, which was why he’d come. Archbishop Stephen Langton’s calling for him had been . . . a sign. It was time. He had one thing left to do, one undone thing nagging at his heart. If he could be of use in the negotiations, that would be good, no doubt, but his soul had personal reparations to make. He’d been remiss. Let things go. It was time.

Mouldin watched him with that insouciant arrogance that had always marked the Hunter. Really, the man was far too self-assured for an outlaw.

“I doubt, of course, that you shall be successful in your endeavors,” Peter said blithely.

“Endeavors?” Mouldin sounded amused.

Peter nodded complacently. It never hurt to rile people up. It often helped. He’d spent much of his younger days doing just that. Kings and counts and petty princes; he’d made a few foes. Perhaps he missed it. Perhaps that was also a small part of what had drawn him back. The desire to stir the pot one last time.

He smiled inwardly, then sighed. He had never been suited to the life of a churchman. Too contrary. Too obstinate.

Of course, Mouldin did not seem to mind. This was not a flattering thought, that Peter had earned the respect of a slave trader. It made one reflect poorly on one’s passage through life.

Mouldin was looking at him with a mixture of amusement and coldhearted appraisal. “How do you see my failure transpiring, Father?”

“Perhaps you will get pierced by an arrow through your chest. Perhaps someone you do not want will learn our whereabouts before it is convenient. Perhaps I will cough on you and my bad little seeds will enter you.”

Mouldin leaned away almost imperceptibly. Peter smiled wanly. What he had was not the sort of thing that good air or leechings could cause or cure. It was all inside of him, he felt it, eating away at him, deep in his chest. It was all his.

His words had strummed some chord, because Mouldin turned to his soldier. “Did you encounter any problems? Anyone stop you, follow you, question you on what you were about?”

The man jerked to attention, his teeth sawing on a strip of dried meat. He removed it to say, “Nay, sir. In London and Windsor, we passed the message to street urchins and they did the work. No one ever saw us.”

Mouldin nodded, but the soldier hadn’t finished. “The only one who took any notice a’tall was the boy in the stables at the inn.”

Peter felt his raw, shredded chest seize up, just for a second. Pain ripped down his arm in a swift, clenching bolt, then subsided.

Mouldin’s head snapped around. “A boy? In the stables?”

“Aye, well, close to a man. ’Twas nothing of import. He tried to stop us, we knocked him flat.”

“How old?”

The soldier glanced between Mouldin and Peter, detecting the note of sudden, lethal quiet in his commander’s voice. “Fifteen, mayhap sixteen.”

Peter kept his breathing steady, kept the faint, mocking smile on his face, as if this news meant nothing to him.

Mouldin turned around slowly. “What do you know of this, Father?”

“Of a stableboy in England?” Peter coughed before continuing. “Stableboys, Mouldin? Is this what we are reduced to? Your corruptions are finally decaying your mind. Rotting it away.”

Mouldin stared. “Good God, the legends have come true. ‘Whither goest the priest, so goeth the heirs.’” He snapped back around to the soldier. “I’m sending you back. You and the others who saw the boy. Where shall they go, Father? The inn? A port?”

“Hell?”

All traces of Mouldin’s amusement had fled. His face was hard. “That day will come soon enow.”

“Angels weep.”

“He is at the inn?”

“What inn?”

Mouldin turned to his men. “We want a fifteen-year-old
boy.” He aimed a crafty look at Peter. “And a girl? Woman, by now. Is she here as well?”

Peter crossed his arms over his chest. “What do you think?”

“I think I cannot risk losing what I already have. I will ride on with you. The others will go back.”

There was no point in pretense anymore. He looked at Mouldin and said coldly, “You will never find her.”

Mouldin smiled. “We need not find
her,
priest. We only need him. She will follow, will she not? She always has.”

“You may not wish for that.”

Mouldin paused. “What is that supposed to mean?”

Peter shrugged, the picture of unconcern. He was accomplished in the giving of nonchalant shrugs; he’d had an apt tutor. Eva dispensed them like tinctures, five or six for every tick-mark that burned away on a candle. He’d scolded her on it, and she had begun raising her eyebrows instead. Even now, in the dark and danger, he could smile, thinking of Eva. My, how he missed her. “Perhaps he is not alone.”

Mouldin’s gaze sharpened. “You mean the girl. The girl will be with him.”

“I do not mean ‘the girl.’”

They eyed each other in mutual, silent animosity; then Mouldin snapped his fingers. His men stepped forward.
All lined up, like ducks in a row,
decided Peter.

Mouldin rose to give orders. “South, then west toward the inn. Keep your eyes open. Find them, and bring them to me at Gracious Hill.”

They tromped off, leaving behind Mouldin and one other soldier. Peter shook his head. “I do grow weary of seeing good men die.” He brightened. “But then, your men are not good.”

Mouldin was pulling a thin woolen blanket up to his chin. “No, they are not.” He shifted to face the fire, lay down.

Peter coughed. He knew he was dying; it had been coming
for years now, the little cough, then the little blood, then the ever-present cough that Eva had made twenty tinctures and teas for. He was past teas. He was past terror. Now, the thought of dying was . . . visionary. A white knight on a horse, riding toward him. It was not frightening. What was frightening was the thought that Eva and Roger would be left behind, unprotected and worse, unprepared.

“You must feel the need to combust in flames of righteous indignation, Father, surrounded by all these lost souls.”

“I have been surrounded by more lost souls than this, Hunter. You do not impress.”

Mouldin closed his eyes. “When was that, priest?”

“John’s court.”

Mouldin gave a bark of laughter. “Then you must be hoping the rebels offer a better price.”

“I am hoping you get an arrow through your eye and fall off your horse into a river.”

Mouldin opened his eyes, then closed them again. “You may get your wish one day.”

Peter stared up the English stars, which were not so different from the French stars. “’Twasn’t a wish. ’Twas a prayer.”

Mouldin rolled over and pulled the blanket to his chest. “God doesn’t listen to the likes of us, Father. I learned that a long time ago. The evidence is all around you. Sleep now; we ride long in the coming days. When we reach Gracious Hill, I know a woman.”

“Of course you do.”

“A midwife. She will tend your cough.”

Peter stared at the dark sky, listening to the riders gallop off. How far back would Eva and Roger be? His heart felt so tight it was as if rope were looped around it, distending it under almost unbearable pressure. And when these skilled fighters came upon them? What chance had they then?

He could only hope his veiled threats had some teeth, some power to create, that Eva—whom God had played a terrible trick upon by giving her one numinous gift, the power to bring light to any darkness, then plunged her into that darkness—had indeed found a protector, one who was not only careful with extraordinary women and brave young men but merciless and—yes, he’d name it—
deadly
to their very same enemies.

E
va sat silently by the fire pit, covered in Jamie’s cloak. Jamie sat on the other side with his back against a downed log, his long legs stretched out in front. He’d flicked the edge of a lighter cape over his stomach and interlaced his fingers, resting them on his lap. He’d long ago closed his eyes, but Eva knew the slightest move and he’d be awake again.

He wore the sleeveless black surcoat, which covered his mail shirt. The flat, metal, gray links of mail on his muscular arms looked like some swamp creature’s skin. Rock-hard with muscle, even in repose he was a magnificent beast.

It was unfortunate, then, that she wanted to slip a hand between his thighs, like a little piece of parchment pressed between a door and a jamb, and feel his heat. But there it was, she thought bleakly.

How long could one want, not even knowing it? Eva had wanted for a long time, and now all her secret longings had taken shape in the form of a man who could, and very likely might, destroy her and everyone she loved.

But there it is
, she thought bleakly.
There he is.

Jamie. Her hidden, forbidden desire.

She angled her gaze up the smallest bit. What would he do if she walked over just now, knelt down beside him? Whip out
a knife and hold it to her neck? Reel her in like a fish? Demand the answers he was allowing her to withhold?

She was not so much a fool as to think she’d fooled him with her deflections. Eva had not fooled herself either. She was not an innocent. She knew how men wanted women, and she’d seen women want men. Right now, Eva was a woman who wanted a man, and there was nothing but the tempting notion of her hand between his thighs, the question of what she wanted to do once there.

It was a little Socratic thing, this question. Like the lessons Father Peter used to engage her in, starting with some bit of knowledge you were certain of, then pushing you out onto the ledge of realization that you knew nothing whatsoever about that most familiar thing.