Sword of Justice (White Knight Series) (6 page)

Chapter 5
   
 

A SINGLE FLAXEN BRAID DRAPED
over one shoulder, Geneviève de Berneval was sitting on her haunches, her bare feet tucked beneath her and her back straight and proud. “Drake?” Her voice was hopeful yet laced with fear.

Sunrise was an hour off, but the setting moon filled the sky with ample light to behold a willowy body adorned in a blue kirtle embossed against the indigo grotto. The secret aerie, hacked by nature into the hillside, was tucked behind a gentle waterfall. A single approach led straight up from the riverbed. When Drake stepped into the mouth of the cave, Jenna lifted azure eyes to his and studied his face.

“Drake?” she said again. “Oh, Drake. I came every night. Hoping. Praying.” Moving with ease, she rose to her feet and sank into his waiting embrace. He gasped involuntarily. “You’re hurt.”

“No longer.” He smiled to reassure her.

They dropped onto the short-cropped grass. Craggy eaves of white granite enclosed them inside an enchanted dwelling, private and exclusively their own. She smelled of the night. The silver bobs in her ears tinkled whenever she moved. The entwined Celtic dragon she wore around her creamy neck settled into that tantalizing depression at the base of her throat. Fearful of what they might find, neither looked into the other’s face. Instead, they blindly groped to make sure the other was real.

“I’ve heard stories,” she said. “They’re accusing you of the most horrible acts.”

“None is true,” he said.

 “What will you do? Where will you go?” The moonlight captured the amulet on a shimmer. “You can’t stay here. There are men about. They want blood. They’ll stop at nothing until they find you. Oh, Drake,” she said on a sob.

Tears streaked down her pale cheek. Even in darkness, Jenna was beautiful beyond words. Day or night, summer or winter, she never changed, and hadn’t changed since they were children. Jenna was his first love, his only love, and he hers. There had never been another for either. “William is sending me to the continent. I leave at dawn.”

Her sobbing increased. She barely had breath enough to say, “F-for how long?”

He cradled her in his arms and used his mouth to find all the delectable parts of Jenna de Berneval. Her winged shoulder blade. Her willowy neck. The underside of her moist jaw. The throbbing pulse behind her ear. “As long as it takes for him to clear my name.”

“And how will he do that?” She wiped the tears away with the back of her hand. “Everyone is convinced you did what they say. The town is against you. We’re to be wed next month, or did you forget?”

“How could I?” He fondled the betrothal ring encircling the middle finger of her left hand. The master jeweler of Winchester used moonstone and Welsh gold to fashion it. The wedding contract had been signed. The nuptials were set for the end of September. 

“Where is your father sending you?”

“He hasn’t said.”

The normally soft planes of her heart-shaped face were drawn tight in worry. “I don’t want to lose you.”

“You won’t.”

“I will if you’re God knows where.”

“Then I’ll pretend to be Stephen. I’ll steal you from your aunt’s manor and spirit you away on my white steed. We’ll live like sprites in the weald. Eat nuts and berries year-long. Bear sons and daughters beneath eternal summer skies.”

An angry slap rang out and stung his ear. “It’s dreadful what has happened! How can you make light of it?” Her eyelids lifted with interest. “Have you done that before? Pretended to be Stephen?”

“Oh, aye. As boys, we switched places every other day, excepting holy days or if William was in a particularly bad mood.”

“And no one found you out?”

“Not even William.”

Her fingers stroked his face. Her touch became a healing balm to his bruises. “Then how do I know … who’s to say … the times we were together … it might have been Stephen.”

“I beg your pardon,
ma demoiselle
. I’m a much better lover than my brother.”

“How would
you
know?” She tweaked his nose. Her eyes laughed. “The first time, mayhap?”

He was fifteen, and she had just entered her twelfth year. Following the sudden death of Richard’s older brother, Old King Henry released Queen Eleanor from her strict imprisonment at Sarum Castle and installed her at Winchester, where the walls were not as formidable, and her guardians more amenable. That spring, Jenna and her family joined her father when he delivered the queen to her king. Summer, the season for farming and war, lay on the horizon. “When Stephen and I were about to begin our service with Richard, and we skinny-dipped in the river. Innocently. And then not so innocently.”

She twirled a sprig of clover between her fingers, and remembering, looked shyly at him. “Christmas court at Winchester?”

Reuniting after a decade of strife, the royal family gathered for a public reconciliation at Windsor. Prominent in their display were the three surviving sons of King Henry and Queen Eleanor: Richard, Geoffrey and John. Later, when the Plantagenêts returned to Winchester for the balance of the winter season, the brothers spent time with William at Itchendel. Never could he forget the second time they lay together. “When Eleanor tried to make up for so many wasted years, and we first discovered the aerie.”

She giggled at the memory. But still skeptical, she said, “The following spring, when Queen Eleanor held Easter court in Poitiers?”

His eyes surveyed the overhang. He reached up and traced initials scratched into the chalky stone: a delicate J and a snaking D. “When Richard fought with his father over the Aquitaine, and we built the warming fire that nearly burnt down the wayside hut with us inside in a state of disrobe.”

“Last year?” Jenna asked.

“When we spent Eastertide with Queen Eleanor at Winchester Castle.” Richard had been very busy that year, waging war on many fronts. He put down a revolt launched by the rebellious counts of Aquitaine, launched a massive attack on Toulouse, and beat back King Philippe of France, all in prelude to inheriting the crown. “Again in the aerie. Bluebells lay like a carpet at our toes.” Drake added, “Our wet and very naked toes.”

Preoccupied with thought, she stared in the distance. Her stormy eyes were troubled. “Have you heard? Prince John is to marry in a sennight.”

“Isabelle of Gloucester was promised to him when he was a boy of nine.”

He let his fingers explore forbidden reaches. She nudged his hand away and restored her skirts. “How can it be sanctioned? They’re cousins.” 

“Third cousins.” 

“Second, one generation removed, but still ….”

“When your brother is king of England, anything can be sanctioned.” He found a honeyed corner of her lips. “Now he will have Gloucester and a new title to content him.”

On a tide of anger, she sat up and glared down at Drake over a hair-draped shoulder. “To keep the peace between him and Richard, John will need more than Gloucester.”

“Aye, knowing John. But I don’t wish to speak of the future earl of Gloucester.”

He embraced Jenna and lowered her beneath him. In a ceremony as old as time, he unbraided her hair and splayed the silken gold into a crowning circle. Her face glistened with perspiration. She flung her arms to either side, the half-seamed sleeves falling away from milky flesh. Her mouth parted; she licked them moist.

Drake made love to her. He was not gentle since this stolen night might well be the last he would spend with Jenna, perhaps forever and a day.

Guilt having nothing to do with the crimes he was accused of committing, Drake fitzAlan had been made into an outlaw. As an outlaw, he must forsake Winchester and England. It behooved him to do so. But he had lied Jenna. He did know where he was going, to the day and the hour. Drake fitzAlan was to be so much cargo on the king’s ship
Esnecca
,
coming out of Portsmouth to Barfleur, with armed escort arranged from there to Chinon. At the castle, the elder son of William fitzAlan was to be put under close watch, knowing William and Richard, under lock and key until word was sent of his proven innocence,
if
word was sent of his proven innocence. And so, while one fitzAlan brother had comparative freedom to come and go as he pleased, the other was to become a virtual prisoner in a foreign land, his future given over to others.

But Stephen was the one sailing for Normandy, posing as Drake. And Drake was staying behind, answering to the name of Stephen, free to investigate his many crimes punishable by death. Poor Stephen. Poor Drake. For though he was to remain in Winchester, he would be cut off from Jenna as surely as if he were that cargo bound for the continent. But worse, if he were unable to prove his innocence, he faced exile from home, country, and everything else he held dear, not for a week or a month but for a lifetime.

Sensing the truth though unaware of the particulars, Jenna did not want him to be gentle. They took what comfort they could, little enough as it was. “Oh, Drake, Drake,” she whispered. “How can I bear being parted from you?” She ran her fingers through his hair. Wrapped her hands around his neck. Pulled his head against her rosy breasts. Moaned with pleasure as he drank of her flesh. And with the guile of a maiden who was a maiden no more, guided his hand into golden reaches and let him take her once more.

Later, when they collapsed in a fever and lay facing each other, moonlight stroking their naked bodies, they spoke without words. Drake wanted to lie in her arms from sunrise to sunrise until they grew old together, but it would have to wait for another night.

He stirred. She protested. “I must go,” he said.

She clutched him closer. They made love again while the moon sank and the first light of day appeared on the eastern horizon.

At first light he rode Jenna home on Stephen’s dappled gray, a twin to the one Drake had stabled back at Itchendel. His hands encircling her waist, a waist more slender than it had been mere days before, he helped her dismount. Holding onto her hands, he leaned close and kissed her. Ribbons of grief streamed down her face. His mouth tasted the salt. She gave him a final embrace and sprinted toward the manor house where she and her family had moved July last.

He soon lost sight of her slender figure as it disappeared into the muted brown landscape. She did not look back.

Chapter 6
  
 

OTHER THAN A
FIGHT WITH
a notable town bully, all that was needed to complete the transformation from Drake to Stephen was a change of clothes and a new sword.

He wore the sword already, having strapped it on immediately after climbing down from Nelda’s window. As for clothes, the bundle Stephen brought back with him contained garments from his personal wardrobe, recognizable as uniquely his by their cleanliness and fine cut, a sharp contrast to Drake’s usual slovenly dress.

After riding Jenna home, he changed quickly, mounted the gray, and rode for the castle of his recent captivity. When he was shown into the great hall of Twyford Castle, the kind of hush that welcomes Death itself palled the gathering of grieving kinsmen. Those who knew one or the other fitzAlan brother stared with contempt. More than one man put hand to sword. Those who didn’t were soon enlightened.

“Stephen, dear, how thoughtful of you to come. I know you and Seward were boon companions.” Everyone had presumed the young man standing before them was Drake fitzAlan—murderer and mutilator—until Elberta Twyford, Seward’s gracious mother, shattered the illusion.

Drake hitched a shoulder inside Stephen’s stiff but elegant tunic. Though Lady Twyford cleared up any misinterpretation concerning his assumed identity, the rest of Seward’s kin threw off the palpable opinion that the identical twin brother of a murderer and mutilator was little improvement. Leaving hushed whispering behind, Elberta ushered Drake into the chamber where Seward lay just outside Death’s door.

Sitting vigil beside the frail heap that was his only son, Corwin of Twyford stared blankly at the knight come to offer his respects. “Look. Look what your brother did to him!” His leathery face, marred with scars and grief, reddened with wrath. Elberta hurried to her husband’s side and calmed the man whose son was his spitting image. Lord Twyford looked again at Drake as if he were the brother of the Devil himself. Then he broke down. “I know, I know,” he said, and covered his face with a broad, shaking hand.

Taking a respectful course to the other side of the bed, Drake climbed the steps and gazed down at Seward Twyford, waxen as any man on his funeral bier and gasping shallow breaths through a slack-jawed mouth.

“My baby, my darling.” Elberta’s eyes overflowed.

Seward would not live, not because he looked like death itself but because his shattered skull had penetrated brain matter, evident through the swath of seeping bandages.

“You know that Seward … that he has been …?”

Drake nodded and gulped.

Elberta urged her lord away from the sickbed. “I’ll stay with Seward. You take Stephen to the stables. Go.” Casting Drake a sharp look of hostility, the lord of Twyford reluctantly obeyed his bride.