“Or a woman,” said Blanche, who was riding with the Queen. She was doing well.
At the Freeford crossroads, where the Harndon Road and the Eastern Road crossed the Meylan Stream, Gabriel gave them an hour. Toby led the squires off in search of food and came back with a laden mule and links of sausages flung casually over his shoulder. They all ate, even the Queen. In fact, she was ravenous, and Blanche accosted the captain again.
“She needs to eat. She’s not one of your mercenaries.” Blanche put her hands on her hips. “You can’t make her ride all night.”
Most of the casa looked away in various directions. But Ser Michael bowed and said, “The captain is doing his best-”
“I’m helping him make the right choice,” Blanche said.
Tom was looking back under his hand. “I think there’s men on the road,” he said.
It was early evening, and darkness was not so far.
“Get over the ford,” Gabriel ordered. “Now.”
Ser Michael reached down, plucked Blanche off the ground, and rode across the ford with her. The casa was mounted in moments, and Ser Francis and Chris Foliak got the Queen across-still eating.
Gabriel and his brother sat and chewed sausage.
“Local men,” Gavin said after a time. There were fifty or sixty men coming-a handful mounted.
The two of them were still in all of their tournament finery. Gavin tossed the last knot of his sausage into the river behind him and missed the swirl and snap as a pike took it. He and Gabriel rode forward, side by side, their right hands in the air.
One of the mounted men pressed forward to meet them. He took off his right gauntlet and held it up, too. “Ser Stephan Griswald,” he said. He was over fifty, and running to fat, and his coat of plates didn’t fit well-but the sword at his side spoke of some use.
“Ser Gabriel Muriens,” Gabriel said.
“That’s they!” shouted a spearman.
In fact, there were three or four dozen spearmen-with gambesons and good helmets, most of them with a chain aventail.
Ser Stephan nodded heavily. “Those your men?” he asked, pointing at the knights across the stream.
“Yes,” Gabriel said. In fact, his men were readying lances. “Are you the sheriff?”
“I am, my lord. And it is my duty to arrest you, in the name of the King.” The sheriff reached out with his truncheon, like a mace.
Gabriel backed his horse. “The King is dead,” he said. “And has been since this morning.”
That brought the sheriff up short. “My writ has just come from the King,” he said
“It is no legal writ, but a forgery by the archbishop,” Gabriel said. “Did he order out the militia?” he asked.
The sheriff shook his head. “Every county. By the saints, my lord-the King is dead? What mischief is this?”
“He took an arrow in the chest.” Gabriel nodded. “But you see the woman sitting under yon tree? That’s the Queen. The Galles want her, my lord sheriff. And I will not give her up. So you and your brave lads will have to fight us.”
Tom Lachlan was recrossing the ford with all the men-at-arms at his back. He and Ser Michael looked like the left and right hands of God in the setting sun.
“I think you’d need a legion of angels to arrest this lot,” said another old man in armour. “Leave it go, Stephan.”
The newcomer rode forward. Under the trees that lined the road it was almost night. He emerged-a straight-backed old man in fitted steel.
“Lord Corcy,” Gavin said.
“Ah-Hard Hands himself. And that’s young Michael, Towbray’s scapegrace older son.” He smiled and offered his hand. “Would you gentlemen send my duty to the Queen? And will you give your word not to attack us? You have more men and are far better armed-but we are”-he didn’t chuckle, but he sounded amused-“the arm of the law.”
Corcy was an old man, one of the old King’s military barons.
Gabriel took his hand. “I give you my word. Just let us go, and that’s the end.” Then he dared. “Unless you’d hide us?”
Lord Corcy thought for a moment, and his face became hard. “No,” he said.
Bad Tom came up on his bridle hand side. “If we kill them, they can’t tell aught where we went,” he said.
Lord Corcy’s hand went to his sword hilt.
“Damn it, Tom!” Gabriel spat. “Lord Corcy, we will offer you no violence unless you attack us.”
Corcy backed his horse. “My sons are at court,” he said.
Ser Gavin nodded. “We understand.”
Corcy’s eyes were lost in the darkness under the visor of his light bascinet, but he shook his head. “I’ll keep the news from court as long as I can. Who killed the King?” he asked suddenly.
“Honestly? I have no idea,” Gabriel said. “If I had to guess, I’d say the Jacks killed him. Or the Galles.” He shook his head. He was tired-too damned tired. He couldn’t see the shape of the plots. He’d lost the threads.
Lord Corcy spoke out of the darkness of his helmet. “It will be war. Civil war. With wolves on every border.”
Gabriel took his own hand off his sword hilt. “Not if I can help it,” he said.
Corcy leaned forward, and just for a moment, his eyes glittered. “Think the Queen’s brat is the King’s?” he asked.
Gabriel was too tired for this. But it occurred to him, in that moment, that he had the Queen. In his possession.
Possibilities unrolled like carpets. No-like a spider rapidly spinning out silk, the plots unwound. Structure after structure, faster than speech. It was, in every way, the opposite of the feeling of entanglement.
The civil war starts right here, he thought. I’m a side. And Corcy could be won over.
Is the baby in her womb the King’s?
Does it matter? As plots and plans and counter plans exploded in all directions in his head, he realized that it was not whether the Queen’s baby was legitimate that mattered.
It was what he decided.
This is Mater’s doing. But the sense of power was heady-like the moment in which he’d first really worked in the aethereal, and made fire.
If her child’s a bastard.
Stillborn.
Dead.
Then I’m the King. Or at least, it’s mine for the taking.
If the child is the King’s…
… and I have the Queen-
He allowed himself a brief smile, and all the realities and futures rattled around the hermetical multiverse for the time it took for a pretty girl to flash her eyes.
“My lord, I believe the Queen’s child is the rightful King of this realm,” the captain said.
He heard Gavin’s intake of breath. Tom wouldn’t know, yet, what that pronouncement meant. Michael would.
Amicia would.
Sometimes, the “right” thing is the Right thing. It’s beautiful when it works that way.
Ah, Mater. You are about to be cruelly disappointed.
I think.
Michael had it immediately. “My Lord Corcy, Ser Gabriel today upheld the Queen’s right in the lists against the King’s Champion, and slew him.”
“Christ, boy, you killed de Vrailly?” Corcy asked.
“Only the Sieur de Rohan, I fear,” Gabriel said.
The sheriff, silent until then, spoke up. “Trial by combat is barbaric,” he said. “And not recognized by law.”
Gabriel had to laugh, and did. “I agree,” he said, and slapped his thigh a little too hard, so that he yelped in pain as his left hand reminded him that it was not healed.
But he had Corcy’s eye.
“I would bend my knee to the Queen,” Corcy said. “And though I am loath to offer you poor hospitality, I have a barn-a storage barn. It would hide you all.” He let his horse take another step forward, so that he and the captain were shoulder to shoulder-inside each other’s guards. “I will cover you for one night. God help me.”