"Be assured"—he snarled—"you will not hear it today."
"Be assured," she vowed softly, "I will."
She turned her back on him briefly and danced her fingers across the assortment of small metallic hooks, wires, and serrated rings that were lined up on the table behind her. Malagane's mouth went dry and his face beaded instantly with sweat. He glanced into the darkness, in the direction of the stone steps leading up out of the donjons, but he was in a place where screams went unnoticed and cries for help won hardly more than a bored yawn from the guards upstairs. Any other man, faced with such a threat from Solange de Sancerre, would have felt his bladder squirt and his blood freeze in terror. Malagane only stared through glazed, hooded eyes while she made her final selection and turned into the light, smiling and dangling a small, spiked metal ring in front of her naked breasts.
She waited for his body to shudder through several tight spasms before she frowned at the pearly ooze dripping down the front of his hose.
"As usual." She sighed disparagingly. "You are too eager, my lord. We are going to have to start all over again."
She spun the little metal ring in her fingers and melted deftly down onto her knees in front of him. He spasmed again when he felt the cold sliver of steel tighten around his flesh, and then again when her hands, tongue, and teeth began to work their torment. For half an eternity afterward he was aware of nothing. Nothing but the reverberating echoes of his own screams bouncing from one damp wall to the next.
Solange stood back and surveyed her handiwork. The elegant and distinguished Count of Saintonge hung limp from his shackles, his mouth ringed in froth, his chin hung with strings of spittle. His hose was bagged loosely around his knees and the tops of his hairy thighs were mottled red. She had upturned the hem of his tunic and tucked it into his belt, and the blotched, exposed strip of pale white flesh between his belly and thighs looked ludicrous in the midst of the fine gold silk embroidery and expensive woolen hose. A fine hour's work, she mused, and wiped the back of her hand across her own mouth and chin. Her gaze remained fixed on her lover's drenched, pallid face as she gently smoothed the wet locks of his hair back off his brow and bathed his skin with a damp cloth. "Thirsty?"
His mouth worked a few moments but he had difficulty forming a coherent word. She smiled and found his wine goblet, still half full from before. She tipped up his chin and tilted it to his lips and he swallowed the contents slowly at first, then eagerly, greedily, finishing with a great, shuddering gasp.
She licked away the drops that trickled down his chin and inquired solicitously, "Shall I send for your squire to help restore you?"
"Jesu, no. No," he rasped. "We would never be able to explain ..."
She offered up a throaty laugh. "I could explain for you, my lord. I could explain how the sight of pain and blood excites you, how the sound of screams—especially your own—bring forth a veritable floodtide of pleasure."
The cerulean blue eyes were as yet unable to focus, but he glared at her anyway. The lids were polished with moisture from his exertions, a drop of which stung his eye, and when he attempted to wipe it free, he was painfully reminded of the shackles.
"You may release me now. I believe I offered petitions to every saint and martyr whose name I could recall."
"Indeed you did. And with such frantic desperation too. I gather you liked my newest little amusement?"
He only grunted an acknowledgment as one wrist, then the other was freed from the manacles. He flinched and stiffened when he felt her hair brush his thigh, but she was only bending down to loosen his ankle rings, and when she straightened he allowed himself to breathe again. A further clutch of courage was required before he could bring himself to inspect her handiwork. His sigh was heartfelt and somewhat incredulous when he found his flesh intact.
Shriveled, drained as a dried udder and red-raw from abuse, but intact.
"Is there more wine?"
She disappeared into the shadows a moment then returned with his goblet refilled, taking a sip first to sweeten her own mouth before she passed it to him.
"A shame Gerome is taking so long to answer your summons," she mused. "He might have been the one jealous of you, for I warrant you could have filled this tankard yourself."
"God's blood," he muttered, and glanced again at the disheveled state of his clothing. "Help me, witch, then make haste to cover yourself."
Her laugh was brittle with sarcasm. "Would you not prefer to return the favor and see Gerome scald himself red with envy?"
"Cover yourself," he ordered sharply. While he fumbled to refasten his hose and straighten his tunic, Solange fetched the clean blanchet and cotte she kept hanging on a peg and slipped them over her head. Both garments were silk and clung to the curves of her body like water flowing over smooth stones. Long before she was finished braiding her hair and winding it into a regal coronet, she could feel the heat of Malagane's eyes on her, following every gleaming movement of the cloth. His own tunic was made of samite, woven with six depths of sky-blue silk that flattered the color of his eyes, and when she finally deigned to glance his way, he spread his arms and posed for her inspection, tall and elegantly lean in his restored finery.
"Well?"
She glided up to him and pushed a thick lock of silvered hair off his brow. She pressed a long, wet kiss over his lips and smiled. "Good as new. Better, in fact, for you have been looking quite dour these past few days."
His gaze went to the corpse where it still steamed faintly in the cool air. "I have been given a great deal to think about in that time. Our friend here may have inadvertently provided the clue to a puzzle that has gone unsolved for nigh on twelve years." "A puzzle?"
"Mmm. The answer to which could bring us power and wealth beyond our wildest imaginings." "How so?"
"As you know, I pay a great many men a goodly sum of money to keep me well informed about a great many things.
I, in turn, am paid handsomely that others might profit from that information. This brave but foolhardy fellow, for example." He strolled over to the table and stared at the body for a long moment. "I have suspected for some time he has been the source of communication between Amboise and Pembroke. A seemingly simple linen merchant who traveled with regularity and ease across the Channel, always with lengthy intervals between so as not to draw too much notice, and always following an established route through Normandy and Touraine. This time, however, his ship barely docked at Portsmouth before it was turned around to catch the next tide. Even more unusual, he did not land at Cherbourge or St. Malo, where he maintains the pretense of a business, but came by way of Le Havre and Rouen.
"I have left him alone until now because frankly, both William Marshal and Randwulf de la Seyne Sur Mer have always taken great care in choosing their couriers. In most cases, you could feed them their own entrails and they would not tell you anything you wanted to know. But this ... this sudden erratic behavior by one of their most trusted pigeons suggested something out of the ordinary, something that might have been urgent enough or important enough to cause even the bravest of tongues to fall victim to panic. The king of France pays me exceptionally well to know how his barons are thinking, what they are planning, how they will respond to events fomenting across the Channel, and should the Black Wolf of Amboise or any of his brood be showing any inclination to turn their sentiments toward
England's plight, our liege would want—nay, need to be the first to know."
"Why would you suspect La Seyne Sur Mer's loyalty at all? He has given his blood oath to Philip of France. We were there in Paris, not two months ago when he pledged homage alongside his sons, presenting his sword that it might be called upon again whenever, wherever needed to defend the sovereignty of the French king."
"They pledge homage and loyalty to Philip only because they hate John of England more, but I wonder: how soon would the echo of those pledges fade if William Marshal were to whisper four small words in their ears."
"Four words?"
"I need your help."
"You believe the Marshal would appeal to the Black Wolf?"
"He has done so before with much less to lose. And I believe he would appeal to Lucifer himself if the effort were required to safeguard the throne of England. This despite the fact the devil's spawn currently resides in Whitehall."
Malagane's mouth turned down in a sneer. "His own son has even turned away in disgust. I heard only last week the younger Pembroke has joined FitzWalter's rebelling barons. Indeed, there are few men with William Marshal's fortitude. Fewer still I can recount by name."
"Randwulf de la Seyne Sur Mer," Solange provided dryly. "Eduard FitzRandwulf of Blois, Robert Wardieu d'Amboise, Richard and William Dagobert Wardieu ... and lest we forget, his ally FitzAthelstan." She paused and regarded him closely. "I am still of the opinion you credit the Marshal with too much influence. The black-and-gold will do nothing to aid the cause of the English king."
"Ahh ..." Malagane smiled and held up a finger like a lecturing prelate. "But he might be inclined to aid the cause of an English queen. Especially if that queen had a more legitimate claim to the throne than John Plantagenet. Doubly so if that queen's name was Eleanor and she was the granddaughter of the old dowager, Eleanor of Aquitaine."
Solange objected with a bewildered shake of her head. "The Princess Eleanor of Brittany? She died eleven years ago with her brother."
"No." Malagane's eyes glittered in the half light. "I do not believe she did. I suspect she is very much alive and living somewhere in the north of England. Biding her time, I would imagine, quietly gathering support among the barons who have grown disenchanted with her uncle's ineptness and flagrant misuse of power."
"How the devil do you surmise that? And why have we not heard of this resurrected princess before now?"
"There have always been rumors that Eleanor survived her uncle's murderous purge. As many as there were stories of her having been tortured, beheaded, poisoned, or impregnated by Celtic faeries."
"So what makes this one worth repeating—or believing?"
Malagane gazed down at the corpse again. "Do you recall the words he babbled each time you cut off a toe?"
"He babbled a good deal of nonsense, as I recall, mainly to do with taking some jewels out of some little shire in middle England."
"One jewel," Malagane corrected her softly. "A pearl, to be precise. And his exact words were: 'There is danger.
Remove the pearl from Nottingham.' I would have thought it nonsense also had he not mentioned a name at the same time—a name I had not heard in over a decade."
"He mentioned dozens of names," she remarked caustically. "Screamed them, actually, faster than Aelred could scratch them down."
"So he did—a credit to your improving techniques, I am sure. But only one—Henry de Clare—fit the puzzle."
"De Clare? Is he someone important?"
"Perhaps yes, perhaps no. Lord Henry de Clare was, according to one of the more romantic rumors, among the party of nameless knights reputed to have rescued the princess from her uncle's donjons at Corfe Castle all those years ago. There was never any proof of his involvement, naturally, and since the king never actually admitted to having taken her out of Normandy—and certes not that she had escaped his custody—the story was given little credence."
"Why give it any now?" she asked bluntly.
Malagane studied a torn nail on one of his long, tapered fingers. "Did I neglect to mention ... Henry de Clare was the nephew of William Marshal, Earl of Pembroke?"
"Was?"
"He reputedly died too. And was buried with great pomp and ceremony ... at Amboise." Solange's eyes narrowed and Malagane smiled.
"It could just be a happy coincidence, I suppose, but then we would have to regard the sister's circumstances as being somewhat fortuitous as well."
"The sister?"
"Lady Ariel de Clare. Some years ago—about the same time the princess disappeared—it seems she took a sudden dislike to the betrothal arrangements made for her by King John and, while on her way back from Normandy—after appealing to her uncle, William Marshal, for reprieve—she was kidnapped just outside of Corfe Castle and went missing for a time. She reappeared, a month or so later at Chateau d'Amboise, wedded and bedded to—"
"Eduard FitzRandwulf of Blois," Solange breathed. "The Wolfs bastard son."
Malagane stroked the backs of his fingers affectionately down her cheek. "The same bastard son who, as it happens, was a close, intimate friend of Princess Eleanor."
"Then this is more than just a guess. You believe the Lost Princess of Brittany is alive and living in England and about to challenge her uncle, King John, for the throne?"
"I am saying only that two dead people with such close links coming suddenly to life are two too many for my liking."
"You think the funeral at Amboise was a ruse?" "And a good one, for it stopped the king's hounds from sniffing after him. It also gave him the freedom to assume
another guise and return to England—if, indeed, he ever left."
"But if there was some question of his involvement with the princess's escape, does it not stand to reason he would want to disappear from sight?"
"Of course he would. Which makes it all the more curious for him to have remained in England, where the chance of discovery was ten times, a thousand times greater than if he had retired to France, or even remained at Blois with his sister." He touched his finger to the side of his nose. "Unless there was something ... or someone of great importance keeping him there."
"The Lost Princess? But the Welshman said nothing about her. Furthermore, if what you say were true for Henry de Clare, would it not also hold true for her? Why would she remain in England when she would have been welcomed with open arms in Brittany, or Normandy, or France? My God, even Philip would have taken her in and guarded her life with his own."