they were attracting no attention, she smiled reassuringly. “None will think it strange that we are together. I’m known to have an eye for a well-formed male, and people will assume we’re flirting. Clearly we cannot talk seriously here. I’d wanted to point out my likeliest suspect, but he has suddenly disappeared.”
Justin and Durand traded looks again. “And who would this suspect be?”
“Meet me in the gardens on the morrow,” she said, “and I might tell you.” She winked, and glided away before they could stop her.
Durand was scowling. “The fool woman thinks this is a game,” he said. Justin said nothing. He was troubled, too, by Arzhela’s insouciance, but he saw no reason to admit that to Durand. If they were choosing sides, he was on Arzhela’s.
They found Arzhela in the gardens the next day, holding out her fists to an urchin. The boy was very young, with a round face streaked with dirt, an untidy cap of curly hair, and much-mended clothes, which identified him as a servant’s child. He hesitated and then chose a hand. Arzhela opened it to reveal an empty palm. He swiftly pointed to her other hand and his eyes opened wide when it, too, was empty. He burst into giggles, though, when Arzhela found the missing coin behind his ear. She flipped the coin to the boy and he caught it deftly, running off as Justin and Durand approached.
“With fingers that nimble, you’d have made a fine cutpurse, Lady Arzhela,” Justin observed as they drew near and she glanced over her shoulder, smiling.
“A conjurer’s trick, but it never fails to amaze the little ones. Johnny taught me; he always did have a gift for sleight of hand.”
It was a moment before the men realized that her Johnny and their Lord John were one and the same. They digested this startling fact in silence, following as she beckoned them farther into the gardens. In summer it would be a small Eden, but now it was barren and desolate, the ground frozen, trees naked to the wind. Arzhela led the way to an arbor that would be lushly canopied in honeysuckle vines in another six months; till then, though, the latticework was skeletal, open to the pale winter sky. Feeling equally exposed, the men joined her upon a narrow wooden bench.
Noticing their unease, she gave an exaggerated sigh. “The two of you are as jumpy as treed cats. As I told you last night, no one will think twice about seeing me with a couple of handsome men!”
“You seem to think this is one great joke, Lady Arzhela,” Durand said sternly. “You need to remember how much is at stake.”
Arzhela refrained from rolling her eyes, but made her attitude quite clear by batting her lashes and simpering, “Yes, Sir Durand,” with mock docility. Although he did not look happy, he showed he knew when to push and when to back off by saying nothing. Once she was sure she’d made her point, Arzhela leaned over and picked up a stick. Smoothing the ground in front of the bench with her foot, she drew a circle in the dirt.
“Think of this circle as the conspiracy against Johnny. I made it so large because we have to fit quite a few people into it. My cousin Constance. Andre de Vitre. The Bishops of St-Malo and Rennes. Raoul de Fougeres. Alain and Pierre de Dinan. Geoffroi de Chateau-briant. Canon Robert, of St Etienne’s at Toulouse. Guy de Laval and Hugh de Gournay and most likely others whose names I have not yet learned.”
Arzhela paused, looking pleased with herself. “You were right, Master de Quincy… Justin. I could have been a good cutpurse. But I’d have made an even better spy.” Gesturing toward her scrawled circle, she continued. “I’d not call it a conspiracy, though, in the strictest sense of the word, for some of the men I named seem to believe that the letter is genuine, that Johnny was truly plotting to murder his brother.”
“And your cousin Constance?” Justin asked carefully. “Does she believe that?”
Arzhela hesitated. “I am not sure,” she admitted. “I think Constance and most of the men were more than willing to ignore any doubts. They wanted to believe in the validity of the letter, you see.” Her smile was rueful. “And Johnny’s history made that so easy for them.”
“But we know the letter was forged.” Durand was regarding Arzhela reflectively. “So if Constance did not forge it, who did? Where did she get it?”
“From the aforementioned canon of Toulouse. He is too clever by half, that one. He gives the impression of being forthcoming and affable, yet when you try to pin him down, he slithers away, as slick as you please. I have always read men as easily as a monk reads his Psalter,” Arzhela boasted, with what she felt was pardonable pride, “and my reading of Canon Robert tells me that he has the answers we seek.”
Justin felt a twinge of disappointment. He agreed that Canon Robert was a natural suspect, but he’d hoped that Arzhela would have more to offer than intuition. Durand seemed to share his disappointment, for he asked if that was all she had.
“Well, I did coax a confession from him, did I forget to mention that?” Arzhela’s sarcasm was good-natured. “When Canon Robert is revealed to be as guilty as Cain, I shall expect apologies from the pair of you.”
“Is he the one who vanished from the great hall last night, my lady?”
She nodded. “He fled the hall like a man pursued by demons, slipping out a servant’s entrance, and if that is not cause for suspicion, what is? When I looked for him today, he was nowhere to be found. I eventually learned that he’d taken to his bed, claiming to be ailing!”
Neither Justin nor Durand thought that sounded particularly damning, but Justin was tactful enough to keep his doubts to himself. Durand was not. Before he could further irritate Arzhela by expressing his skepticism, though, they were interrupted by the arrival of a newcomer to the garden.
He was tall and blond and stylishly dressed in the newest fashion-an unbelted sleeveless tabard, visible because he’d draped his mantle casually around his shoulders in defiance of the winter weather. Durand stared at the tabard like a man mentally making notes for his tailor, but Justin took more notice of the milky-opaque toadstone that the stranger wore prominently on his mantle, for toadstones were used as a protection against poisons. There was something about his demeanor-the jut of his chin, the swagger in his step-that made it easy for Justin to believe this man did not lack for enemies.
“There you are, Lady Arzhela.” He sounded aggrieved, as if she’d deliberately disappeared, and when he bent over her hand, he put Justin more in mind of a man marking a brand than bestowing a kiss.
Arzhela had already shown them that she did not suffer fools gladly. But she was regarding the youth with an indulgent smile, introducing him fondly as Simon de Lusignan, a name that resonated harshly with both Justin and Durand. The de Lusignans were a powerful clan ensconced in the hills of Queen Eleanor’s Poitou, blessed with high birth and cursed with hungers beyond satisfying. Their family tree had produced more than its share of adventurers, rebels, and brigands. If several had managed to lay claims to distant crowns, far more had cheated the hangman, and it was a common belief that if there was trouble to be found, a de Lusignan was likely to be in the very midst of it.
This de Lusignan acknowledged the introductions with a terseness that bordered upon outright rudeness, and insisted upon escorting Arzhela indoors. Durand and Justin stood watching them go. “She does like them young,” Durand commented after a long silence. From sheer force of habit, Justin started to object, but he could not really fault the other man’s cynical observation. Arzhela was in her late thirties and Simon looked to be barely beyond his majority. Moreover, now that he thought about it, he realized that she was at least ten years older than John, too. John and one of the de Lusignans. Passing strange, that a woman with so much mother wit should have such bad taste in men.
“I’ve heard the gossip about the de Lusignans,” Justin said thoughtfully, “those tales told over a wine flagon that grow worse with each telling. How they feud with their neighbors and prey upon travelers and dare to defy both Church and Crown. You think it is coincidence that one of their lot has shown up at the Duchess Constance’s court?”
“That same thought crossed my mind,” Durand admitted. “God smite them, de Lusignans take to conspiracies like pigs to mud. But why would Constance and her Breton barons confide in a stripling like Simon? No, I’d say he is Arzhela’s stud, no more than that.”
Justin was inclined to agree. He still had a suspicion, though, that Arzhela was not being completely honest with them.
'Ite, missa est.” With those words, the Mass was ended and the castle chapel began to empty. Justin was one of the last to leave. As he stepped out into the wan sunlight, he heard his name hissed, and turned to see Arzhela beckoning imperiously to him.
