Мериел Фуллер – The Knight's Fugitive Lady (страница 2)

‘It’s the Queen, Waleran,’ she managed to judder out. ‘Queen Isabella...of England.’ She touched a hand to her face, unsure, confused. ‘But I don’t understand. Those are not English knights...’

Waleran paled. He grabbed her hand. ‘This bodes ill, Katerina. We must run...and run fast, away from this place. It’s not safe.’

Heeding the wavering panic in Waleran’s voice, the warning, Katerina spun on her heel, leaping the ditch behind them with the easy agility of a deer, her tunic’s loose hem fluttering out over slim legs encased in woollen braies. Waleran paused, assessing the creek’s wide gap, wondering if he would make it.

‘Got you!’ a gruff voice echoed in his ear.

Something, someone, hauled roughly at his belt, dragged him unceremoniously backwards. All he could see was Katerina’s expression, white and stricken on the other side, the safe side of the creek, her mouth falling open in horror at whoever was behind him. Fear crawled in his gut; he had no intention of turning around.

A group of four or five soldiers clustered around her friend, the oldest and burliest of the group holding on to Waleran. There was no doubt as to their identity: gold fleur-de-lys glinted dully on their dark-blue cloaks and on their shields. Steel helmets obscured their faces, shining silver, the rest of their bodies clad in chainmail.

‘What’s in the bag, boy?’ The lead soldier indicated Katerina’s satchel, his eyes glinting out, narrow and mean, from the shadowed confines of his helmet.

‘Let my friend go and I tell you,’ Katerina replied. An angry helplessness swept over her as she watched Waleran’s futile struggles within the soldier’s burly grip. There was little point in her going to him; she hadn’t the physical strength to wrest him away, but every instinct in her body wanted to do it, to go there.

The soldier’s features darkened; he shook Waleran, but kept his eyes on Katerina. ‘Don’t play games with me, lad. You’re in no position to bargain. I ask you again, what’s in the bag?’ His voice was threatening.

One of the other soldiers, a younger one, shuffled uneasily. ‘Hey, Bomal, take it easy. We weren’t sent out to torture the locals, remember?’

‘Keep out of it!’ Bomal snarled back. Katerina lifted one hand self-consciously, making certain that her hood was pulled over her fine features. If they worked out she was a woman, the situation could develop into something far more serious for her.

The soldier set his head to one side, waiting for her answer.

‘A couple of rabbits,’ she relented, finally, remembering to keep her voice pitched low.

‘Been poaching on the lord’s land, eh?’ the soldier jeered at her. ‘Hand them over, then.’

Despite the spurt of fear in her veins and Waleran’s soft brown eyes imploring her, beseeching her to follow the soldier’s instructions, her fingers clutched more firmly around the bag-strap.

‘Let my friend go and then I’ll chuck over the bag.’

The soldier scowled, pulling a short knife from a leather scabbard attached to his belt. The steel blade glinted, the light bouncing off the shiny metal. He held the blade to Waleran’s throat.

‘What do I need to do to convince you?’ he shouted over to her.

Katerina was convinced. Body quaking with fear, she threw the bag over. Sheathing his knife, the soldier caught the bundle in his meaty fingers. ‘Thanks very much, young squire,’ he addressed her, his tone mocking, false. ‘And now you, young man—’ he kept a firm grip on Waleran’s upper sleeve ‘—you’re coming with us. We need someone to lead us to the nearest village.’

‘Let him go!’ Katerina’s voice rose perilously close to a screech. Stop playing with us! she wanted to shout out loud. We are nothing, nobody. We are just humble travellers, trying to earn a living, trying to find a morsel of food to fill our stomachs from one day to the next. And now these fat-bellied soldiers had stolen them, stolen the rabbits that they had spent all morning trying to catch. They couldn’t, they wouldn’t get away with this!

She watched dismally as Waleran was boosted up into the saddle behind the youngest-looking soldier, endeavouring to smile at her friend as he looked back at her, eyes pitiful. She refused to succumb to helplessness, to a wavering vulnerability that threatened to encroach her, to weaken her. A few stupid soldiers wouldn’t beat her! Without a doubt, she would find the means to outwit them.

‘Don’t worry, Waleran,’ she whispered, as the horses’ glossy rumps retreated, heading northwards to a dark stretch of trees. ‘I will come for you.’

* * *

Lussac, Count of Belbigny, leaned his elbows against the wooden rail of the forecastle and watched, through narrowed turquoise eyes, as the last of the soldiers, a jumbled mix of hired mercenaries and exiled English lords, made their way to the shore, dutifully following their Queen. Some were fortunate enough to clamber into the few rowboats brought with them across the North Sea from Hainault; others were not so lucky, splashing and stumbling in their heavy armour through the knee-deep waves, raucous curses splitting the morning air. Behind him, taut stay ropes now released, the huge square sail hung limp, ineffectual, beneath the crow’s nest, flapping dismally in the breeze. It had taken two days to sail from the Flanders coast, two long days and nights of churning seas, and an unexpected storm that had thrown the ships off course. Their exact location was unknown; it could be anywhere on the east coast of England north of the wide mouth of the river that led to London.

‘Lussac, come now, you are the last!’ A shout from one of the row-boats drawn alongside the high-sided wooden cog hailed him. He peered over the side, straight chestnut hair falling over his tanned forehead, trying to locate the owner of the familiar voice who shouted to him from the shadows of the vessel.

‘Come on, man! Do you want to go back? The ships will leave directly.’

Lussac smiled tersely, a muscle leaping in the shadowed hollow of his cheek. He had no intention of going back. After four years of battling the demons, of never being able to rid himself of the black bile that clagged his heart, King Charles of France, his friend, had offered him a life-line, a way out. When Queen Isabella, Charles’s younger sister, had announced her intention to overthrow her husband, King Edward II of England, by way of an invasion commanded by Roger Mortimer, Charles had suggested that Lussac travelled on the ships to England, to seek revenge and heal his tattered soul.

Lussac had agreed readily to Charles’s proposition. The passing years had failed to wash away the pain, to dull his memory. The scenes burst into his brain again and again, as if they had happened yesterday, vivid colours etched with dreadful clarity: the pall of smoke rising above his home, the charred rafters collapsing around him in plumes of hot ash. And the running, the breathless sprinting up the steps to find his family... The slipping time seemed only to intensify his feelings of loss, of desperation, of anger. Revenge burned, deep in his solar plexus, coursing through his veins like a sour, bitter liquid; he could taste it on his tongue. Around the bare skin of his wrist, the leather cuff wrapped tight, chafed at his skin, reminding him. Scooped up from the scene of the crime, the only clue to the identity of the English knight who had killed his family.

Ignoring the rope ladder, Lussac placed one lean, muscled hand on the side of the ship and jumped down into the rowboat, planting his feet out to steady himself against the inevitable rocking from his weight. His substantial frame tilted the smaller vessel from side to side, threatening to tip them both into the sea.

‘Careful! You’ll have us over, fooling around like that!’ Philippe clutched at the oars as they threatened to slide, pulling them back into the row-locks.

‘Philippe?’ Lussac sprawled opposite his friend, tilting his head in a quizzical look. He stretched out his long legs, encased in the fine silver mesh of chainmail. The sturdy boots that covered his calves were made of thick Spanish leather and stained with sea-water, each toe carrying a wavering line of white, drying salt. ‘Am I’m seeing things? A nobleman rowing a boat?’

Philippe grimaced, pushing a strand of fair hair out of his eyes. Sweat plastered his fleshy face, mottled cheeks flushed with a greasy sheen. He wore no helmet and the hood of his chainmail hauberk gathered at the back of his neck.

‘Do you think I have a choice?’ he hissed, although they were still some considerable distance from the shore. He wrangled tetchily with an oar, trying to angle it so he could manoeuvre them away from the ship. ‘I don’t think the Queen has any idea who I am! Me! Philippe, Comte de Garsan! She ordered me to come and fetch you, like I was some low-born soldier! All the others are running around, trying to make her comfortable! Look, they’ve even constructed a tent for her, already.’

‘And a fire, too,’ Lussac commented drily. The smoke rose, billowing up from the white-grey shingle, fanning out against the low, ochre-coloured cliffs that lined the shore. ‘Let’s hope the smoke doesn’t draw any unwanted attention; we have no idea whether we are in a safe area or not.’