A Man's Word (The King's Hounds series) Page 7

  I stood for a bit, allowing my rage to cool. Then I walked down to the paddock where my red gelding greeted me and snorted into my shirt in the hope of finding some oats or a crust of rye bread.

  The moon was just overhead and my shadow was short as it fell on the grass. I patted the gelding’s neck. It was dumb to get worked up about the farmer’s words, but his affront had been clear: I carried a sword, but even though I rode a well-fed horse and wore more expensive clothes than a farmer, I was not a thane, which stung.

  Then suddenly a thought struck me: What would my word be worth at court? I was no farmer, and a thane by lineage only, as the king had refused to give me land. I was a free man, but I had chosen to serve a master and was paid by him and by the king.

  Cnut’s reasons for denying me land were blatantly obvious: He knew that once I owned land and a farm, I would live as a thane and no longer serve Winston. If I wasn’t serving Winston, I would no longer serve the king, who would therefore be short a bloodhound. A detective, after all, was worth more to him than one thane among countless others.

  The red gelding snorted against my neck, and I did what he wanted, patting him again. To hell with the traitorous Eadric the Grasper, who had abandoned his own leader midbattle and sealed the victory for Cnut by switching to his side. It had cost my father and my brother their lives, and me my inheritance and birthright.

  I shuddered, shaking off thoughts that would lead to nothing. Destiny requires you to follow the path you’re on.

  But the path could be altered, if you set your mind to it. For me that meant holding out until the day when King Cnut owed me so much that he would have to award me an estate, land, and honor again.

  I gave the gelding one last pat, and then slowly walked toward the market, contemplating whether I felt like stopping at an ale stand and spending the rest of the evening in the company of some drinking mates who wouldn’t mean a thing to me tomorrow, or if I should bite the bitter apple and return to those I’d left at the tavern and spend the evening listening to the coin makers fawn over Winston. I had just decided that neither option was particularly appealing when I heard footsteps come running, wheezing and panting, and someone swearing.

  I grabbed for my sword, but before my hand reached the hilt, I was knocked over as someone darted around the corner and slammed into my chest. I cursed, slipped on a cow patty, and struck the dirt with a grunt, which became even louder as the person who’d smashed into me landed on my stomach.

  I cursed and flung my arms around the person, tossed them aside, and scrambled to my feet just as two dark silhouettes came thundering around the corner. My sword was drawn and my legs firmly planted, ready to meet them. Meantime I hoped the person I’d tossed aside wouldn’t pounce on me from behind, and I barked that the new arrivals should freeze. Immediately!

  The moonlight illuminated a couple of scruffy-looking soldiers. The one on the left wore threadbare breeches and a vest that had seen better days. His face was bright red, surely as much from drink as from the exertion of running. The one on the right didn’t look much better. He was missing his left eye, wore ragged clothes, and breathed in gasps so that his bad breath lingered around him in a cloud.

  Neither of them carried a sword, I determined with relief.

  “What seems to be the problem?” I decided to deal with these two first but kicked around to locate the fallen person just to be safe. I moaned reflexively as the tip of my toe struck the fallen figure’s ribs.

  The two shabby soldiers stared at each other indecisively. It was a good sign that even from the beginning they lacked confidence. As Harding said: A man should always act confident. You need to believe you will be victorious in order to win.

  “Well?” I prompted, staring hard to increase their uncertainty.

  “Uh, sir.” The man’s bad breath hit me. “She, uh . . .”

  “Yes?”

  “Uh, we . . .”

  So apparently I had prevented a rape, which seemed just, considering what had taken place at the court earlier in the day.

  “You just decided to find a different companion,” I completed the man’s sentence for him.

  He stared uncertainly at his buddy, who sized me up. So I whipped the tip of my sword up a little, which was enough. They left with their tails between their legs.

  I waited until their footsteps had completely died away, then walked around the corner to peer down the narrow lane. Only after determining that no one else was around did I turn back toward the men’s intended victim.

  She did not seem to appreciate my help, sitting there in the dust, arms clutched to her chest. To my delight, I saw that she was only a bit younger than I am, maybe eighteen summers old. She was wearing a gray dress, and had a clean, friendly face, which was now blushing.

  “You kicked me,” she sulked. She had a pleasant voice.

  “And hit you in the chest, I see,” I said, grinning at her.

  I held my hand down to her. She glared at it angrily, but then she took it and allowed me to pull her up. She came up to my chin, her blonde braids hanging down to her waist, and in her eyes there was an invitation that had been hidden by anger.

  “Did I break your breastbone?” I asked.

  She grimaced in pain, but shook her head.

  “It hurts, though.”

  “More than if those two scoundrels had gotten ahold of you?” I asked, almost with a chuckle.

  She shook her head. “They were lying in wait for me when I came out of the market stall.”

  “You own a stall?” She didn’t look like she owned much.

  Turns out I was right. “Can a woman own anything?” she spit out scornfully, then her voice changed, becoming charming as she explained, “I was just tidying and closing up, because my husband went to the ale tent.”

  “Husband?”

  She nodded and added, “My husband is very fond of the ale tent.”

  I cursed my luck that when I had finally played the part of noble rescuer, it was to a married woman. Then the import of her words and tone sank in.

  “So he’ll be in there for a while?” I asked.

  “And then he’ll return to our stall, where he prefers to sleep.” Now her invitation was clear.

  “Maybe we should check you over and make sure you don’t have a broken rib.” I reached out to lay the back of my hand against her cheek.

  “I think that would be best.” She grabbed my hand and led me down the street.

  11

  Her name was Brigit, since her mother, who some random man had planted his seed in back in the day, had been Irish. When it came to caresses, Brigit knew how to give and to receive.

  As we lay in her bed after our first bout of lovemaking, she told me in a whisper that she’d left her mother, who made her living as a whore in London, the day she turned eleven and heard her mother negotiating over her with a sweaty Viking.

  I didn’t ask what she’d lived on during the years she spent roaming this war-torn land. I assumed she had been out tempting the same fates I had in the years after my father’s death but before I met Winston. The difference was that I could rely on my strength and my skill with a weapon if stealing food turned out to be impossible. Obviously, though, she had her own methods of forcing men to comply with her wishes.

  I slid my finger over her breasts, felt her warm hand on my stomach, and her damp breath at my ear as she whispered confidingly that I had turned out not to be the least of all the men she’d known.

  I responded that as women went I had encountered few who possessed her abilities and asked her if I shouldn’t be leaving.

  She responded with the shake of her head, which I could just make out in the moonlight coming through the window. Her bed was in a room up under the roof in a post-and-plank building back behind Saint Edmund’s church.

  “But your husband?”

  “He doesn’t come here,” she replied, her fingers encircling my wrist.

  “He doesn’t?” I raised myself up on my
elbow and stared at her, lying there facing me with her hair flowing over her shoulders and her soft, inviting curves.

  “Does it look like there’s room here for two?” she asked, gesturing with her hand in response to my look of disbelief.

  Well, I had seen smaller spaces house more than two people in my time, which I pointed out.

  “Me, too,” she snorted.

  When she didn’t elaborate, I asked about her husband. What kind of man was he and how had she met him?

  When she revealed her sharp teeth in a smile, I understood that whatever she’d been up to since she fled from her mother, she’d certainly learned to control a man. As long as he was of the right makeup.

  It had happened a little more than six months ago. At a market in a town whose name she’d forgotten. As usual she’d been wandering around hunting for the opportunity to acquire food for her next meal when her eyes fell on a hollow-cheeked old man struggling with a large piece of canvas that the wind was threatening to pull away from him. Without thinking more about it, she grabbed the flapping cloth and pulled it down so that the old man could tie his leather cord through the grommet and attach it to a pole to form one side of a marketplace stall with the canvas.

  After thanking her grumpily, the old man reached for yet another piece of canvas, cursed the wind, and with a sour glance encouraged her to help him out again. Once the market stall was erected, she had set about arranging his wares without a word until they looked nice. Woolen goods, that’s what he sold. Felt caps and sweaters, hosiery and trousers, woven cloth from Flanders and thick fabrics from the islands north of Scotland.

  The whole time she was arranging things, the old man kept clearing his throat and coughing but had not said anything. Only once customers started flocking around did he push her aside and make it clear to her that he wanted to do the selling himself. Then she sat down in a corner and remained quiet, watching him make deals, and by nightfall she had realized two things: he was a shrewd businessman and he coughed like he was trying to spit out a lung.

  Without a word, she started helping him pack up once the last customer had left, and although he gave her a sidelong glance, he didn’t say anything and let her continue while he leaned heavily against one of the stall’s poles. When she was done, he invited her to dinner at the nearest tavern and then left her without a word.

  The following morning she was waiting for him and his mule-drawn cart. They walked together in silence the entire day on their way to the next market town, but that evening he did not invite her to dinner. The same thing happened the next day, but when they reached their destination three days later, she helped him set up his stall and take it down, and she ate her fill with him afterward.

  Then three weeks passed without an offer for food, so she left him.

  When she came back after five days, he lit up when she sat down on his cart and then he let her ride there. That evening he invited her to dinner again.

  The next morning she stood silently next to the cart and when he passed her the canvas, she set it back down on the ground without a word.

  It didn’t take long after that for him to understand that if he wanted her help, it had its price.

  “Marriage?” I asked. I’d been listening spellbound. She was a good storyteller.

  I could hear as much as see her smile.

  “He acknowledged me as his wife that very day.”

  “Why not just let him pay you for your work?”

  “I do,” she said, laughing loudly. “My payment is due when he runs out of time. When he keels over, I mean.”

  She must have noted my disbelief, because she said, “Can a woman own anything?”

  Then I understood. A woman can’t own anything within her marriage, but a widow owns her inheritance and whatever she can grow it into.

  “And he leaves you alone?”

  She chuckled. “He’s been sleeping in his cart for years. I refused to do that, but I also made it clear that I don’t see any reason to throw away any more money than absolutely necessary. So I always find the smallest room there is, and he’s happy because he’s saving money.”

  And that money, I realized, was being put aside for her inheritance.

  “And if by ‘leave me alone’ you mean he doesn’t demand his marital rights, well, that’s true, mostly. But it does happen that he occasionally says ahem and something about my being his wife, and then I help him out as best I can. He’s no spring chicken, so it usually takes most of a night to get him off. In return he’s so grateful the next day, he lets me have whatever I point to.”

  I caressed her breast and whispered that she was too good to make do with an old man, which made her roll over onto her back and say that she wasn’t ashamed of it, hadn’t I realized that by now?

  “There’s no shortage of young men willing to make a young lady happy.” Her hand slid down to my stomach. “The skill is in picking wisely, of course, but I know something about that from my earlier years. And if I get into a tight spot, of course I’ve planned for that.”

  “Planned for that?” I gasped for air as her hand encircled me.

  “By helping him come to me this way about once a month.” She giggled. “Can you imagine his pride if he ever got me with child?”

  Her fingers and tongue inflamed me. I hadn’t been with a woman in a long time, and I congratulated myself at having been in the right place at the right time.

  12

  Under a blue spring sky I walked through the narrow streets early the next morning toward the inn, the market and town waking up around me.

  Smoke rose from the smokeholes in the roofs, and horses whinnied down by the river as they approached the water. Girls sang through open half doors, and the air smelled of porridge mixed with the malty scent of ale being heated in taverns and ale stands.

  I greeted passersby, and I smiled at a boy with a prominent jaw who was struggling with an ale keg that was threatening to get away from him but which he gained control of at the last second. I drank in the crisp spring air in deep breaths and felt ready for whatever the day would bring.

  Which was good because when I turned into the little square in front of the inn, I saw armed soldiers in front of it and heard angry voices from inside the half-open door.

  The guards glared at me and stepped in my way, but they allowed me to proceed once I explained I was staying at the inn. I entered the tavern, where five men were in the middle of a major argument.

  One of them was that scrawny beanpole who ran the place, Willibrord. Sigvald and Alwyn were next to him, their faces bright red. Reeve Turstan sat across from them wearing blue breeches with a gold hilted sword at his side. A flat-bellied man with an enormous rib cage was at his side, and judging by the silver rings that decorated his powerful upper arms, I thought him to be a trusted soldier.

  Behind them I could just glimpse Winston, who hardly deigned to glance at me. He was leaning back on the bench, watching the loud men as he scooped porridge from a bowl in his lap. Seated across from him, Alfilda looked over her shoulder and gave me a jaunty smile. Then she tossed her head so that her hair fell over her shoulders and licked some honey off her horn spoon before dipping it into the bowl in front of her.

  I stood quietly listening to the argument without getting much out of it. Turstan vehemently insisted that the farmers and the host tell him “where he is,” and Sigvald crossly replied that as he had already told him, he had no idea.

  The soldier with the silver rings glanced over at me, but he didn’t say anything as I calmly crossed the room and sat down on the bench next to Winston and asked what was going on.

  “Arnulf is gone,” Winston said, calmly wiping his lips.

  “He left? Where did he go?”

  Winston shrugged and said, “No one knows. Turstan arrived a little while ago with a bunch of soldiers demanding access to the inn. Alfilda and I had just come down for breakfast when Willibrord answered the door and had to let them in. Reeve Turstan and his soldier dem
anded to speak to Arnulf, so Willibrord took them upstairs. But then they came back down again with the two farmers and there hasn’t been a quiet moment since.”

  I looked around and spotted a grimy wench, held up my hand to her, and nodded when she held up a bowl.

  “But Arnulf is here, isn’t he?” I asked.

  Winston shook his head.

  The porridge was as good as the day before, the ale not too hot to drink but warm enough to chase the cold out of your body. And I was hungry, so I dug in while the argument raged on. As far as I could make out, Turstan accepted that the farmers had no idea where Arnulf was, but he refused to believe that they didn’t know when he’d left the inn.

  “Nor did we say that.” Alwyn sounded tired, like a man who realized that no matter what he said, he wouldn’t be believed. “He left the inn yesterday.”

  Turstan made an angry gesture with his hand and roared, “I’m not talking about yesterday.”

  Sigvald sounded equally tired when he chimed in, “But we are because we haven’t seen him since then.” Sigvald looked over at us. “Ask those guys over there.”

  Turstan glanced in our direction for the first time, and said, “You were with Arnulf at the court.”

  Winston nodded.

  “But you didn’t testify.”

  Winston stuck his spoon in his pocket and explained succinctly who we were—just that we were on our way to Saint Edmund’s Town—and why we were with Arnulf. Then he cocked his head to the side and asked why Turstan wanted to talk to Arnulf.

  Turstan studied him and glanced at me and Alfilda before he raised his eyebrows slightly and responded that he had some questions about the murder that had been committed the day before.

  “The murder of Darwyn, son of Delwyn?” Winston asked.

  Turstan nodded.

  “Witnesses have testified under oath that Arnulf could not have committed that murder,” Winston explained.