Masques of Gold (56 page)

“Not likely, and if he chose such a keeper, the seal may have been sold and melted, but you are trying. Go on.”

“There is another thing you may not know,” and Lissa began to tell him about the documents she had found on her father's body concerning the rental of the manor of Red Cliff by one Amias FitzStephen.

She hesitated when she first said her father's name and shivered, and he interrupted her tale to say, “I did not want him dead either,” but she did not find that remark as convincing as when he said the same thing about Peter. Still, she went on, spinning the tale as long as she could. She had just mentioned the vintner of Bristol when the door slammed open so hard that it crashed against the wall. Lissa leapt to her feet with a cry.

“What are you doing in London?” FitzWalter roared. “Lissa!”

The second bellow was the most welcome sound Lissa had ever heard in her life. She whirled and ran, was caught and thrust behind a steel-armored body and clung, weeping helplessly, to Justin's back.

“Are you hurt?” he asked.

“No,” she sobbed, “no!” The naked sword in Justin's hand was a glare of light in her head, and she knew the outcome of any other answer would be FitzWalter's death.

She almost fell as Justin moved a step forward and was terribly tempted to let him go, knowing that rage had overmastered him for once and he intended to kill. But Lissa had lived too long with hate to let it blind her, and she tightened her grip on her husband and hung back. If Justin killed FitzWalter it would not be a small thing, soon forgotten, like killing Hubert. The death of so great a nobleman could not be kept secret, and though the king might pardon him gladly, Justin would be a target for all FitzWalter's kin and probably for all his friends. To say that would not stop her husband, however; only pride could control the rage that was driving Justin forward.

“Do not kill an unarmed man, Justin,” she cried. “You are not so mean of spirit. Do not make yourself as vile as that creature is.”

Justin had taken two more steps, seemingly unaware of the pull she was exerting on him, but at those words he stopped and stood swaying.

“In God's name,” FitzWalter pleaded, lifting empty hands. “I did your wife no hurt. She is not even bruised. I did not misuse her, did not strike her. When she said she hungered and thirsted, I fed her and gave her drink. Will you kill me for asking her a question?”

“It is true, Justin,” Lissa said.

Peering around Justin's back, she saw FitzWalter's pallid face suddenly gleam with sweat as he strained back in his chair. His reaction surprised her because much of the tension had gone out of Justin's body and his sword point was tipping downward. The slight relaxation gave her the courage to sidle out a bit farther, and a glance at Justin's face explained FitzWalter's panic. A smile like that could freeze hell.

“I have a hundred men on your walls and in your castle, FitzWalter,” Justin said softly. “And every single man knows that you have abducted my wife. You may be sure that every single man will see her when I bring her out, so there can be no doubt she was your prisoner. There is no way you can find to silence a hundred men. And every one will stand witness to what you have done if she or I should vanish or suffer injury.”

“Do not be ridiculous,” FitzWalter said. “I have always been your friend.”

“So I thought,” Justin said and smiled again, making FitzWalter swallow hard and Lissa shiver. “And I hope we will continue to be friends. Indeed, I wish to be your friend, and will be—so long as I am not troubled with arrows from blind windows or knives in the night or sudden troops of drunken brawlers who choose me to prey on. It is only that I have been a little shocked by the seizure of my wife and feel the need to make certain she will not again be troubled by your desire to have any question answered.”

“I am not a dog to return to my own vomit,” FitzWalter said. “I thought I could learn what I wanted quietly, that she would be at home before you returned to London. I am not such a fool as to play the same trick twice.”

“No, but I do not want you to try any new ones, like outright murder—”

“I did not kill Peter de Flael,” FitzWalter cried.

Justin blinked, but his ideas were too fixed to alter quickly, and he said, “No, but you did order the death of William Bowles. There is prepared, witnessed, and placed in safe charge—
not
my cousins' charge—a sealed proof of your man Hubert's attempts on my life and the reason for it: your orders for him to murder William Bowles. That will connect well with Lissa's abduction. That will be brought forward if Lissa or I come to harm. Moreover, I have already sent away the man you ordered to take my wife captive. A sworn testimony will be taken from him, and he will be kept safe to speak before a judge—alive and safe, and where you cannot reach him for a long time.”

“A long time?” FitzWalter repeated, his mouth relaxing from the snarl in which it had been set. “Then you do not intend to make an accusation against me?”

“Certainly not,” Justin said gently. “Would I be so ungracious as to accuse a friend of crimes that would make him a laughingstock among his peers—a great nobleman who stooped to murder an apothecary and abduct his daughter? I am only a small man, but I shudder at the thought of the whispers and laughter behind lifted hands.”

Lissa made a small gasping sound, half sob, half hysterical giggle, almost smothered in the hands she had pressed against her lips. FitzWalter's eyes flicked to her, and there was a terrible bleakness in them when he looked back at Justin. She caught a shaken breath, marveling at Justin's foresight, feeling a loosening of the knot of terror that had been inside her even after he had come. FitzWalter was beaten, at least for a time. From what Justin had told her, he had too much experience of half-hidden sneers and jests at his expense. Until he could find a way to cancel Justin's threat, he would not move against them.

“No, my lord,” Justin went on, catching Lissa in his left arm and drawing her close. “I do not intend, so long as there is no threat against my wife or myself, to carry a grudge, and hope you will not. My men and I will leave Baynard's Castle, to which no damage has been done, as quietly as we came in, merely locking you into this chamber. In the morning your steward, who will accompany my men when they leave, will be released and will, in turn, release you. If you cry attack, I will show cause. If you do not, this will soon be forgotten.”

“How did you know I had her?” FitzWalter cried.

“Hubert,” Justin answered flatly, and without explaining further or realizing that he completely misled FitzWalter, he backed up the few steps he had taken into the room, drawing Lissa with him, and shut the door. Halsig and Dunstan were waiting with a wedge to jam the latch and a plank of wood to fasten across the door.

“I will take her home now,” Justin said to Halsig. “Keep to the plan for getting the men out without trouble, and have a watch set on my house and Lissa's. Let the steward go only after the other man is well out of the city.”

Justin had been holding Lissa all the time he spoke and now bent his head and asked her, “Shall I carry you, dearling? There is a long flight of steps.”

Lissa remembered stumbling down them on her way in and how it had frightened her to go under the earth. “No, I can walk,” she said, “but where are we?”

“In the bottom of the old donjon of Baynard's Castle. The castle itself was pulled down by the king, but I guess FitzWalter cleared this as a convenient place to ask questions and keep prisoners.” He pulled her tighter against him, recalling what he thought he would find when the steward had been persuaded—a little forcibly—to tell him where FitzWalter was. His surprise and relief at discovering that pleasant furnished chamber separated off from a stinking, rat-infested prison with a rack and other instruments of torture as centerpiece had been only a degree less than that of seeing Lissa calmly sitting on a bench and talking about the vintner of Bristol.

“Are you truly unhurt?” he asked, his voice rough, holding her even harder.

“Oh yes, beloved, but”—Lissa giggled weakly—“you are going to break my ribs if you squeeze me anymore.” But she shivered as he dropped his arm remorsefully, and cried softly, “No, do not let me go altogether.”

“Are you sure you can climb up?” Justin asked, pausing at the foot of the steps.

“That—yes. What FitzWalter said about doing me no hurt was true,” Lissa assured him. “But Justin, even what you have readied against him will not hold him from us long.”

“You are too much affrighted,” he soothed, turning her to face him and kissing her. “Because he did not hurt you, his crime is not so great that he should fear me—”

“Yes, yes, it is,” Lissa insisted. “You must listen to me, Justin. I am not bewildered with fear—or, yes, I am, but with good cause, not simple weakness. Did you not hear him deny having killed Peter de Flael? Did you not wonder why? No one ever suspected him of that.”

Justin blinked at her. He had heard FitzWalter with his ears, but not with his mind. “You mean he really was questioning you,” he said, then continued hurriedly, “No, do not tell me now. Take off that robe so I can show you to my men. Then we will go home. You can tell me on the way:”

When they came up, Justin called for torches and cried aloud that here was his wife, safe, unharmed, not shamed or soiled, only taken as hostage—for what he did not explain. But when he said hostage, Lissa drew a sudden deep breath as the last piece of the puzzle of why Peter had married her fell into place. FitzWalter's questions had showed her a probable answer to why Peter had made the box. Now she realized that though she had not been hostage to FitzWalter, she had been to Peter. She almost laughed, but tears stung her eyes because Peter really had been a good man. He loved his sons, so when he needed a hold on her father—to be sure William Bowles would not take the seal and then betray its maker by running with it to the king—he had married her. Peter believed that William would do nothing that could hurt his daughter and thus would not betray her husband.

Lissa shuddered and Justin hastily finished what he was saying and murmured that they would soon be home. Then he mounted Noir, and Dick lifted her to be carried in his arms before him in the saddle. She could not stop shaking, and Justin asked for the robe she had shed to wrap around her. She did not bother to protest that she was not cold, only clung to Justin and in a whisper told the tale of the counterfeit seal and how FitzWalter wanted to use it, ending, “With such knowledge, he cannot let us live.”

“That is dangerous indeed,” Justin said, but calmly. “Though not so bad as you think, my love, because FitzWalter is already so deep in treason. Do you not see that his pardon, if peace is achieved, must read most generally ‘for all past acts that might be claimed offenses' or some such phrase and would excuse him for any crime at all. Still, I pray you are right and that we find the seal where you say it must be.”

“You
pray
we find it?” Lissa repeated faintly. “But then we will be neck-deep in treason ourselves.”

“Well, it will be a delicate balancing act,” Justin admitted, “but if I can find a way to return the seal to the king publicly, we will be rid of FitzWalter. And John will remember who made the counterfeit seal, so the treason will fall on Flael, who is already dead and beyond King John's vengeance.”

They came to the house then, which was blazing with light at every window, and before Justin could say more the door opened and Paul and Oliva came running out with the boys hard on their heels, all crying questions. Lissa was lifted down and hugged and cried over until, despite her exhaustion and fear, she began to laugh in the midst of her assurances that she was well and unhurt. The laughter did more to reassure her servants than all her words, and they at last made room for Justin to dismount. To be rid of them, Lissa set them tasks: Oliva to bring food and drink to the solar, Paul to take Noir to the stable, the boys to douse the torches and candles and then to go to bed.

At last she was in her bedchamber, pulling the box from her chest and watching with her breath catching as Justin pried and pried at the base. They were interrupted once when Oliva came up with the food. Justin went into the solar to take it from her. He said he would carry it in to Lissa, thanked Oliva, and told her to go to bed, that the clearing up could wait until morning. He dumped the platter on the bed and shook the box vengefully.

“I will have to break it,” he said.

“Break it! Break it!” Lissa urged. “Only let us see if I am right or wrong.”

With a grimace for the ruin of beauty, Justin hammered his heaviest hunting knife into the center of the base at an angle and levered up. Wood splintered, nothing but wood. He looked at Lissa and shrugged. For a moment she just stared, but then she said, “You will have to get the whole base off and break it in pieces. Peter would not put the seal in the middle; that is too obvious, once one thinks of the box as a hiding place.”

“Clever, was he?” Justin remarked.

“I did not know him very well,” she reminded him, “but he was successful, and he must have been angry and desperate when he decided to hide the seal—”

Lissa stopped speaking as the point of Justin's knife suddenly sank more easily into the wood he was probing. He pried and wood splintered again, but this time a cavity was exposed. No golden gleam showed though, only an ugly gray mass. “What in the world—” Lissa began.

“Wax.” Justin's voice held enormous satisfaction. “Flael knew what he was doing. He half filled the hole with wax, then wrapped the seal and put it in, then poured in wax until the hole was full. Maybe he had to wait until it cooled and shrank and filled again, but the wax would stick to the wood and hold everything firm.”

He probed around the sides of the gray mass, freeing the wax from the wood, and then lifted. Lissa helped him break the bulk of the wax away, but when the oiled silk wrapping was exposed, she withdrew, reluctant to touch the seal. Justin was extraordinarily careful too, she noted, trying to disturb the wax-sealed folds of the cloth as little as possible. He found an edge finally and lifted that and his breath hissed in. Lissa came and looked over his shoulder, shuddering and drawing back again as she caught a glimpse of the two lions passant. Without touching the seal at all, Justin dropped the wax-flecked cloth over it again and stood looking at his hand as if he had discovered an adder sitting in it.

“It is the king's privy seal,” he said at last. “I did not really believe it.” Lissa bit her lips and clasped her hands tightly together, fighting tears as Justin drew a long breath. Then he said, “Bring me a large piece of cloth, anything large enough to make into a gown.”