Defiant (8 page)

The room fell quiet. The silence scraped against her. She stood in the middle of it, shocked, thinking,
Years of my life have passed in constant motion. I do not know how to be still.

There was naught to do but to stand in the abrasive silence and contemplate this unsettling fact. Then a knock rattled the door.

S
HE
went still. Father Peter’s head shot up.

It came again, a faint rap. “I come for the priest,” a whisper said through the keyhole. “I am a friend.”

She turned to Father Peter. He shook his head slowly.

All the hairs on the back of her neck rose up, beelike and vibrating. She leaned toward the door, so close her lips brushed the cool wood. “You have the wrong room.”

The soft voice came again, even more quiet, more coaxing. “I bid thee let me enter. I am here to help.”

“Nay,” she whispered back, an odd collusion of secrecy between her and the stranger outside the door. “I do not know—”

The door shuddered against its frame. The old, thin wood cracked, then the frame splintered and the door swung open. Eva leaped away, digging for a blade amid her skirts, but the sight of a churchman in the doorway made her stop. He was looking past her to the bed.

“Peter of London,” the bishop said in a voice deep with satisfaction. He stepped into the room and wedged the door shut behind him. “It has been a long time.”

“Ten years.”

“It is most good to see you,” he said, adopting an oily, coaxing tone.

Father Peter reached for his boots. “Is it?”

“Father Peter is fevered,” Eva announced, backing up to stand in front of the bed with her arms stretched out, a stance that would not stop a small breeze. “Incapacitated.”

The bishop looked at her. “He appears hale enough. Nevertheless.” The bishop paused and smiled. Eva could only describe it as evil. Surely, he had not meant this. “We want only the papers he has with him. Documents, illustrations. He can stay in your good care.”

“
Qu’est-ce que c’est,
document?” She affected to stumble over the English pronunciation of the word.

He smiled again, condescendingly. Ah, he liked a stupid woman. Then this was no place for him. “They are nothing,” he assured her in a placating voice. “Triflings. Some small matters the good father saw and, unfortunately, sketched.”

She scribbled with an invisible stylus in the air, her face bright and confused. “
Écrire? Il y a une
. . .” She stared into the air, then smiled. “Fire. All the poor
curé
’s favorite papers, little leaves in the flames.”

The benevolence of the bishop’s smile washed away, like so much grit from an onion. Then he reached out and grabbed her by her arm.

“Leave the girl go, Aumary,” Father Peter said, rising from the bed, his eyes on the fat-faced bishop. “She is but a poor serving maid.”

The bishop released her arm.

Father Peter sat back down on the bed, boots in hand. “Go, girl,” he said without looking over, as one might speak to a serving girl.

She crept toward the door, masking her slow movements as fear, keeping to the edge of the room.

“England is not a healthful place for you, Peter,” the churchman said.

Father Peter slid a boot on. “So I have been told.”

“You should leave. I am telling you this as an old friend. Far too many people are interested in you. You have no friend in the king, for certes. He is displeased with this charter being bandied about. ’Twas a poor thing you and Langton did, giving the notion to the barons.”

“Whereas battle is a good notion,” Father Peter said drily.

“You were not brought to England for the charter or the negotiations, Peter. You must know that.”

“I know very well why I was called for. And very well what I came to do.”

“’Twill be so much easier this way, Peter. Just give me the papers, and I will say you were gone when I arrived. You can disappear again, as you have these past ten years. Sail for France. Give me the papers, and go. Go pray at Mont-Saint-Michel, teach in Paris; there is always an opening on the Petit Pont for a man of your caliber.”

Father Peter looked up mildly from lacing his boot. “I am here on a matter of personal conscience, Aumary. If I choose to
also meet with my old friend Archishop Langton while I am in England, be assured, my presence is in no way intended to serve the rebels. Nor,” he added, bending back to his boot, “for that matter, the king.”

The bishop’s veneer of solicitude began melting away. He wiped his hands down his long robe, as if drying sweaty palms. His face was flushed.

“Give me the papers, Peter.”

Ah, there was the low menace of a man who wanted something he should not have. Eva slowed down her creeping alongside the walls, making herself invisible.

“King John has had crossbow bolts aimed at your head for many years now,” the bishop said, his voice stiff and cold. “He knows you are in England. If he finds you, if he procures those sketches, ’twill be to the detriment of the realm.”

Father Peter leaned forward and rested his forearms on his tunic-draped thighs, his face tired and knowing, and in that moment Eva knew she was
right
to have come for him, however he scolded her for it, however much danger ensued. One paid one’s debts. Father Peter had saved her life. She would now save his.

“Is that what you are about, Aumary? The welfare of the realm?”

“Indeed,” he said curtly.

Father Peter considered him for a long moment. “How much?”

The bishop gave a start.

“How much did it cost, to buy you? More than a warhorse, or less? Do you serve the rebels, or someone other?” Father Peter held up his hand. “It matters naught. Your service is lacking. I would not hand you a flower from a garden. I will surely not give you what may be the most powerful bargaining chip in these negotiations. Who knows whom you might sell it to next?”

To his credit, the bishop’s shiny face flushed a bright red. “So be it, Peter of London,” he snapped. “Ever have you brought these things on yourself.”

He reached for the door, but by then, Eva had completed her slow circling of the room and come up behind. She reached out, her blade up, and placed it against the front of his throat.

The bishop froze.

“Now hush,” she murmured. “You have brought this on yourself.”

“Wssst,” he hissed, glaring at Father Peter. “Call the bitch off.”

“Release him,” Father Peter said in his quiet, never-hurried voice. “You are not killing anyone today.”

She hesitated for only a second, then lowered the blade. The bishop reached around, grabbed her, and flung her headfirst across the room. She hit the wall, then the floor, and decided to stay there when two armed soldiers barreled into the room. Better to have him
think
himself successful in knocking her out, rather than giving him the opportunity to actually
be
successful by rising to her feet again.

“The priest,” the bishop snapped.

The soldiers moved into the room. Eva lay on the floor, watching from beneath her hair, which had fallen in a thick curtain over her face. Good to hide what her eyes were doing.

They bundled Father Peter up. They must have drugged him or knocked him senseless, for he was slumped as they maneuvered out the door. One of them paused at the doorway. “And her?”

She stared at the pitted plank floor beneath her nose and stopped breathing.
I am dead. Do not bother,
she willed her lack of breath to say to these stupid, wily men.

There was a terrible moment of pause.

“Leave her,” the bishop muttered. “She is naught but a serving maid.”

They hustled out. First the clatter of their boots descending the back stairs, then their voices, already hushed, faded until they lowed like cows on a distant field. A door squealed open belowstairs, then slammed shut, and Eva was finally, terribly, alone.

She rose and bumped her way to the door, hand out. She listened. Nothing but the general din of people milling and murmuring. She started down the stairs, tiptoeing, palm on the wall for support, and peeked out.

To her left was the noisy common room. She slipped in and pinned her back against a wall, trying to look like a servant. The room was filling up with people, travelers en route to places they perhaps ought not to be going, secretive missions, just the sort of people who came and went through this unprepossessing little inn and its small cove with its very deep waters.

None of her attackers were in sight.

She turned for the door just as Roger came hurtling through it. He hurried over, staring at her face. She noted this because she was staring at
his
face, taking in a cut lip and a red, swelling cheekbone.

“What happened?” she demanded at the same moment he muttered, “Jésu, Eva, what happened?”

She touched her face briefly, feeling the rawness along her cheekbone. “Father Peter, Roger. They have taken the
curé.
”

He nodded. “I know. I saw them.”

She pointed to his face. “You did more than see them.”

He pointed at hers. “So did you. I tried to stop them.”

For the first time in this whole excursion, Eva felt fear. “That was foolish,” she scolded, although what she wished to do, just for a second, was shut her eyes. Roger was fifteen years old. He had an entire life to lead. If it was spent in hiding, well,
there were worse things, such as not living at all. One was given a life, not a choice about the circumstances in which it was lived. Eva did not like that Roger had so recklessly endangered the life she’d spent the last ten years safeguarding.

He took her wrist as she reached out, stopping the movement. “Did you recognize any of them, Eva?”

“Recognize? Of course not.”

“I did.”

“Whom could you possibly recognize, Gog?” She said it quickly, because the question caused a cold flurry in her chest, lest it be answered. “You do not know a soul in England.”

“I know one.”

A pang of fear nailed itself to her chest. “Oh, no. This is not possible.”

“Aye,” Roger said, his voice almost unrecognizable in its grim maturity. “I heard them say his name.”

“No,” Eva whispered.

“Aye. They are taking Father Peter to Guillaume Mouldin.”

“I
S
that they?” Guillaume Mouldin murmured to his sergeant from where they sat, high on a hilltop, squinting down onto the road below.

It was a familiar position to be in, watching his men bring in someone who did not want to come.

None were better at their profession than Mouldin had been at his: safeguarding the realm’s most precious resources, its heirs. It had been a highly satisfying, highly valued, highly lucrative employ.

Until the greatest of them escaped. That had signaled the end for Guillaume Mouldin.

Ten years of hunting had not turned up the missing heirs. Despite employing all the tactics that usually worked to break down informants, he had never found the dark-haired girl
and the boy she’d taken with her. Even the damned priest had proven elusive.

King John had not been pleased, and Mouldin had been disgraced. Outlawed. In a fit of fury, the king had confiscated his estates and his cash, and sent hunters after the Hunter, and when Mouldin fled, the king had turned his rage on Mouldin’s wife and child, starving them to death when he could not lay his hands on Mouldin.

Well, the tides had turned now, and the king would pay.

Or the rebels.

Whoever had the most coin, someone would pay and receive Peter of London. The priest and all his remarkable sketchings. The man who could bring a tottering kingdom to its knees.

Mouldin was only too happy to assist.

His stallion bobbed and pawed, restless and filled with good oats and high energy, just as Mouldin had planned for the long ride ahead. He looked at his sergeant. “Deliver the messages. Inform Lord Robert fitzWalter I found his recovery fee far too low and have taken matters into my own hands. If he wishes to make a better offer, he can join me in Gracious Hill. Let him know he will be bidding against the king.” He smiled faintly. “And mention that Jamie is in on this hunt as well. I haven’t the inclination or resources to stop him, but fitzWalter just might.”

Mouldin galloped down the hill.

E
VA
put a shaky hand on Gog’s shoulder. “Did you see which way they went?”

“Aye.” Excitement fueled Roger’s words. His eyes were bright, and he squeezed her hand.

“That is good.” She took his arm, turning him toward the doorway. “They rode south? East then—no? North, then?”

Gog nodded.

“This is most fortunate,” Eva said, not feeling fortunate
whatsoever. “I know those lands well. You saddle the horses, I will retrieve our packs, and away we shall go like vengeful little birds.”

They turned, Gog for the stables, Eva for the stairs. Cool air rushed in as the front door pushed open.

“I
still say she would be crazed to come here,” Ry murmured as he shut the door to the inn behind them.

Jamie glanced around the entryway. Exit out the back, stairs straight ahead, common room to the right. “Desperate,” he murmured, turning to the common room. “She’s desperate. And seeking swift, secret passage back to France. This inn, and its cove, are very good for both those things.”

He leaned in to scan the taproom more thoroughly.

“Jamie!” called someone from behind. Roland, the proprietor, barreled out of a back room, bellowing in happiness. “It has been years!”

Jamie turned back around.

E
VA
froze as the front door swung open and—would God never bless her again?—Jamie walked in.

Had there been a doubt in her mind as to the identity of the knight in the vestibule clinking with weapons—which of course there was not—the bad-tempered innkeep’s bellow would have blown it away it like so much chaff.