The Conqueror Page 2

  He was headed directly for her, the crowd parting before him in a river of samite and silk. He strode past great nobles with faint smiles and rich burgesses with polite nods, intent on her. Gwyn’s knees quaked, her mind whirled.

  Reaching her side, Stephen of Blois directed a faint smile towards Marcus, who had somehow positioned himself behind her. She could feel coldness emanating like a frozen river at her back, knifing through her gown and freezing her blood. Before she could do more than stare like a dolt at her king, he had her hand at his lips.

  What was she doing staring straight into his eyes? She toppled down into a curtsey.

  “Lady Guinevere.”

  “My lord King,” she breathed reverently. Papa had spoken about this man for sixteen years, told of how he had taken the crown when the Old King died, how he’d held Mathilda, heir to the throne, at bay and bested the most skilled troops of England, how he had held sway over rebellious lords and money-hungry burgesses for almost two decades. Now he stood five inches away with his lips on her hand.

  And Marcus at her back.

  “Your gift was well-received,” the king said, tapping a cluster of dried rose petals pinned to the inside of his vest. Gwyn had sent the rare, twice-blooming rose of Everoot along with her relief payment when her father had died.

  She lifted eyes that had grown as round as the stopper on a flask. “’Twas well-sent, Your Grace,” she stammered.

  “It came with a message.”

  “Aye, my lord,” she murmured, ducking her head again.

  “Which spoke of the undying loyalty of the de l’Ami heiress.”

  She bowed her head further. “’Tis but a pale symbol of the devotion and constancy of your northern province, my lord.”

  “And a beautiful one, lady. One I will recall ere the need arises.” He lifted her to her feet with a light touch on her hand. “Your father’s loyalty was steadfast, and I will miss him. He was my friend.”

  “And so our name,” she murmured.

  “De l’Ami,” the king mused with a faint smile. “A friend, and so he was.”

  “My father would have been honoured to hear you speak suchly. That he is gone brings me great pain, but the chance to do your will eases it, Your Grace. I am ever at your call.”

  The king’s dark eyes regarded her bent head carefully. “I will remember that.”

  “My lord,” Gwyn murmured. Her face was bleached white when she rose. There had been no chance to request an audience; he was already disappearing into the crowd.

  She started to follow when Aubrey de Vere, one of the king’s closest advisors, stepped into her path. Earl of Oxford, he was yet another with a chequered history of allegiances. Their fathers had been together on Crusade, though, and Gywn felt a small spark of hope that brightened when he grasped both her hands warmly in his.

  “My lady, please accept my condolences. How sad I am to hear of your father’s—”

  “My lord Oxford,” she interrupted, closing her hands around the edge of his palms, “I need an audience with the king. Now. Can you make it so?”

  He squeezed her fingers back. “Surely, my lady,” he said soothingly. “First thing in the morning, I’ll review the king’s schedule and—”

  “No. I need to see him now.” She pushed forward, craning to see around Oxford’s huge shoulder. She pushed so insistently, in fact, that she might have completely pushed by, had he given even an inch.

  “Ahh, but my lady,” he said in a smooth, polished voice, designed to make her relax. It made the hair on the back of her neck stand up. “The king cannot. He has had too many demands on his time this evening.”

  “That is ridiculous,” she snapped. “He is right there. It will only take…” Her voice drifted away as she became aware of two things: one, the king was nowhere in sight; he’d hurried—or been hurried—away with astonishing speed; and two, the earl of Oxford and Marcus were holding each other’s gaze over the top of her head. Oxford gave an infinitesimal nod.

  Cold fear dripped down her spine. She stared without sight at the back of someone’s blue gown, heart thundering in her chest. The earl lowered his gaze and bowed with a gallant flourish, his polished smile firmly in place.

  “First thing in the morning, my lady, upon my word. Would you care to stay here at the king’s residence, to ease your travel back in the morn? No? You needn’t be startled, my lady; ’twas but a question. Well, then, in the morning.”

  He moved away through the crowd like a ship cutting through water. Gwyn’s head spun. Shivers spidered across her skin, a web of tingling terror. This was not possible. St. Jude, this could not be happening.

  Marcus’s voice murmured by her ear, “You know, Gwyn, the king thinks your loyalty will hold me to his cause as well. Who knows but that it will? With such beauty to come home to”—he picked up a strand of her hair in his fingers—“mayhap I could find some measure of loyalty in my heart.”

  She stomped her heel on his boot and fled.

  Only after he’d searched the crowd for her, after he’d poked his nose into every crevice and cranny for the green-eyed beauty, only then was Marcus fitzMiles forced to admit she had left. The little fool.

  She thought to be rid of him so easily? Not with an earldom at stake. And more to the point, not with an estate once worth some two thousand marks annually clasped between those shapely thighs. Nay, be she a trull with eyebrows that met in the middle, the Countess d’Everoot would be worth the agony.

  When Ionnes de l’Ami had died a fortnight back, a fact Marcus knew simply by virtue of being there when it happened, he swooped in immediately, deciding the raven-haired birdling in the Nest had simply become far too tempting.

  And, to his surprise, found he had to bide his time. Lady Guinevere’s wings may have been inexperienced but they’d never been clipped, and what she lacked in leadership, she made up for in her capacity to earn loyalty. Her knights were like attack dogs. Marcus found he had to cluck and pet them when what he wished to do was kick them from here to the Cinque Ports.

  So he waited, standing at her side when her father was laid in the crypt, offered condolences which made her frown, extended administrative counsels which she shunned with an airy disdain—and which he tolerated with a smiling good grace that made his jaw ache—and waited. Biding his time.

  But the waiting was over. De l’Ami was dead, d’Endshire soldiers were at her gates, and King Stephen was in disarray, unable to offer more than feeble resistance to the takeover, if indeed he offered any at all. The king had not agreed to his petition to wed Guinevere, fool that he was, but if the countess believed it, so much the better. It would be easier to convince her.

  But easy or not, Guinevere would be his wife. The Everoot empire had some of the deepest roots in all England, tendrils that spread in a series of manors and forest rights from Scotland to the Irish Sea. And the Nest in Northumbria was the heart of the wold.

  And in that beating heart lay a treasure far too spectacular to be imagined.

  He scanned the crowd one last time. She was indeed gone.

  He wanted to spit on the fragrant rushes in fury. Shouldering through the crowd, he found one of his men outside the huge wooden doors. “Find the Countess Everoot; she’ll be at her home on Westcheap. Keep her there until I arrive.”

  The knight turned to go, but Marcus clasped his shoulder and spun him back around.

  “And send for the priest,” he hissed.

  Chapter Two

  Twenty minutes later, d’Endshire kicked open the door to the Westcheap apartment. Throwing off his cape, he stood momentarily in the flame of torchlight, then looked to the grim-faced knight who stood beside the door.

  “She’s gone, de Louth?” he asked.

  The place was in shambles, as if a storm had moved through. Shelves were cleared of their contents, swept in wild disarray over the floor. Clothes were scattered over the rushes and benches and a toppled trestle table was upended in the shadows. Tapestries that once hung on th
e wall lay slashed to ribbons on the floor. But there was no woman.

  De Louth nodded grimly. “She left everything behind.” By way of illustration, he picked up the end of a gossamer length of yellow silk trailing down the stairs. The delicate fabric caught on his calloused hand as he held it out for inspection. Marcus barely glanced at it.

  “Gone when we arrived, my lord. No woman, no servants, no guards—”

  “And no chests, I’ll venture?”

  “Chests?”

  “Coffers. Chests. Small wooden boxes.”

  The reply was indeed dry, but not as dry as de Louth’s mouth became. He shook his head.

  “She made a speedy exit but I didn’t see where she left any small chests behind, other than the one at the foot of her bed. And we went through that. See for yourself.” Marcus pushed by and took the stairs two at a time.

  The room was in greater shambles than the downstairs. Dresses and tunics were thrown about in long, twisting heaps of colour. A candle had been knocked over and hastily extinguished, its thick tallow congealing in a warm puddle on the floor. Marcus’s gaze swept to the chest. The padlock was wrenched in hideous twists of iron, the chest’s curved lid flung open.

  He crouched on his heels, fingering the twisted iron latch.

  “Nothing?” he asked, his tone alarmingly soft. “You found nothing?”

  De Louth swallowed. “This.” He extended a small silver key, hung on a rusting linked chain. Marcus unbent his knees. “I found it on the floor, my lord. Looks like it fell when she fled.”

  “Christ on the Cross,” Marcus murmured, almost reverently. “One of the puzzle keys.” He pulled the chain from de Louth’s palm, his eyes locked on the steel key, his voice soft and almost crooning. “I recall seeing this, years ago. There are three, you know.” He slid the long silver chain between his fingers, smiling faintly.

  “No, my lord. I didn’t know.”

  Marcus’s eyes snapped up. “Find her. Tonight. Now.”

  “My lord.” De Louth choked out the words and left the room. The gossamer veil he’d held in his hand fluttered to the floor, a tawny splash of colour against the dull wood. Marcus barely spared it a glance as he trod behind his man, crushing it under his boot.

  Gwyn dug her spurs hard into the horse. “I am sorry,” she muttered, and then did it again.

  Steam rolled from the stallion’s flared nostrils as he snorted in anger and half rose on his hind legs, his monstrous hooves pawing at the air before dropping back to the earth. Great clods of damp earth flew into the air as he leapt forward in a ground-eating gallop.

  Gwyn rolled wildly around on the saddle, jamming her pelvis into the pommel before righting herself again. Biting her lip to clamp down on a screech, she bent low over the horse’s withers and guided him with a deft but trembling hand.

  Sunset had come and gone, evening had turned into night, and she was barely two miles from London and the danger it held.

  When she had arrived back at the apartments on Westcheap, no one had been present, not even Eduard and Hugh, the two young knights left behind to guard Gwyn when the others were sent north to relieve the siege. The house had been eerily quiet. She’d flown through the dark rooms, skidding on her knees to a stop in front of the huge oak chest at the base of her bed.

  Gowns and smallclothes and bolts of bright fabric flew into the air as she searched frantically for one of the “promises,” the small, simple but exquisitely-wrought chest her father had bequeathed to her on his deathbed. The padlocked, curved chest held letters of love her father had written to her mother when on Crusade.

  She was not leaving it behind.

  She almost screamed in frustration as she flung another handful of underlinens over her head. Through the window floated the sound of booted feet.

  “Please Jésu,” she begged softly, practically in tears. As if in answer, her hand alighted on a soft, bulky felt bag. She grabbed for it and tore a fingernail in half on an iron hinge.

  An unintelligible shout blew through the window.

  “A few more doors up,” answered another.

  Sweat pouring down her chest, she flung herself to her feet and grabbed the one remaining pouch of silver. The chest tumbled out of her hand and fell, spilling parchment scrolls across the floor. Gasping, she bent and swept up the box and the parchments. Tying both satchels around her waist, she clattered down the stairs to stare wild-eyed about her. Hair tumbled from its knot as she shook her head, trying to clear it.

  Eduard and Hugh, the two guards left behind for Gwyn’s protection, were still nowhere to be found. One thing was certain; she couldn’t waste time to find two errant knights. Spinning into the stables, she saddled a sidestepping Crack, Hugh’s newly acquired warhorse. He would be heartsick at finding the stallion gone.

  “’Twill teach him a lesson,” she huffed as she guided the sensitive, thousand-pound behemoth to a block of stone and scrambled into the saddle, throwing her leg over top. She had no time for wayward knights, less so for the niceties of riding sidesaddle. Reining around, she shot out of the stable yard less than ten minutes after returning home.

  Aldersgate would be long closed, as would all the gates leading in and out of the city. She galloped towards it, slowing only when it came into sight. A hefty bribe ensured she was allowed passage through. It also ensured anyone who wanted to follow her could, but there was little she could do about that. Trotting under the gates, she had kept to a placid pace until a rise in the land and a copse of trees hid her from view. Then she’d dug her spurs into Crack and sent the wind whipping by her ears.

  The autumn night was chilly and damp. Thin slivers of fog hovered a foot in the air like ghostly ribbons. Crack’s churning forelegs tore through them, sending the mists spiraling away to cling around tree trunks and reeds. The only sound was the cold wind whistling by her red-tipped ears.

  Crack suddenly threw himself up in the air, ploughing the earth into furrows with his hind legs, his head swinging to and fro in fury at the conflicting messages of bit and spur. Gwyn pulled harder on the reins and threw one terrified glance over her shoulder. It couldn’t be. Not so soon.

  Hooves. Coming up on the road behind her. At a dead gallop.

  She slapped the reins against his shoulder, sending him into a frenzied, bounding leap. Hair stuck to her neck in long, sweated claws. She plucked at them furiously, gasping for breath. Twice she craned her face over her shoulder and peered through the whip-like strands of hair. Each time there was nothing, only low ribbons of fog, deepening darkness, and the thundering of hooves dim beneath the sound of her pounding heart.

  A third twist in the saddle brought the awful sight: the outline of five horsemen and their monstrous stallions on the crest of a small hill. With billowing capes, swords swinging from their sides, and steam pouring off their surging mounts, they looked like spectral beasts from Hell.

  She dug her heels into Crack. The boggy, pockmarked highway was dangerous in daytime but an exercise in madness at night, which is why it was with a curse but no surprise that she almost pitched over the horse’s head as he went down on his knees, his hooves splayed in four different directions. A wave of mud crashed over the saddle.

  She slithered off. The stallion threw his head into the air, his eyes red and wide and wild, then scrambled up and raced away into a stand of trees, leaving Gwyn on her knees in the centre of the road, muddy and bedraggled and utterly alone.

  Chapter Three

  “Dear Lord, save me, for ’tisn’t possible to do so myself,” she whispered, staggering back to her feet.

  The moon was rising and she could just make out the crossed swords that heralded Marcus’s device as the five soldiers advanced. One was a knight she recognized as part of Marcus’s personal guard: de Louth. The others were men-at-arms clad in hauberks and steel helms. She stood, wiping mud from her chin and chest.

  On they came, the soft clop of hooves turning into a sucking sound as the horses waded into the edge of the wide mud pud
dle that had sent Crack flying. She locked her eyes on de Louth, riding two paces before the others. Five against one.

  “My lady Guinevere?”

  His voice carried in an eerie echo through the darkness. They were about twenty paces away. “My lady? Lord Endshire sent us to seek you.”

  “You may tell him,” she said in a breathless pant, swirling her skirts around her ankles as if straightening them, “that you found me in good spirits, and do thank him for his concern.”

  The knight paused, checking his horse momentarily. The others stopped behind him, dark mirrors. Their eyes were almost invisible under their helms, their noses covered by the trunk-shaped nasal that fell down from the steel.

  De Louth cleared his throat. “He sent us to assure your safety.”

  “Be assured, sirrah, Lord Marcus sent you to assure his wealth.”

  De Louth touched his heels lightly to the horse’s side and began moving forward again. She swallowed a ball of fear. That would never do. Hair plastered to her mud-streaked face, she lifted her chin.

  “I am well safe, sir, and would appreciate being left alone to be on my way.”

  The men checked their progress again, exchanging glances.

  “What foolishness, this, my lady?” De Louth’s voice was pitched around surprise. “We have left the king’s court behind where such pleasantries count for something. You are alone, unhorsed, on a deserted highway. And you think yourself safe?”

  She shifted her weight and mud squished out of her slipper. “Safer than with your lord, methinks, and I will stay here until my horse returns.”

  The knight chuckled, a low, amused sound as the five advanced further through the fog. “Do you know, my lady, there was rumour only yester morn of one of Henri’s spies inhabiting this very stretch of highway? What do you think he would do if he found one such as you upon it?”

  “Mayhap the same as you? Truss me up on the back of a horse and take me where I don’t want to be?” She pushed her sleeves up her arms. They slid back down to her wrists, wide, embroidered things that were more irritating at the moment than was warranted. “I have already been enlightened as to what awaits me with my lord Marcus, and prefer to take my chances with the Norman rogue.”