flowing wine. Guy de Laval welcomed them nervously, looking like a man in need of allies, and Claudine’s smile was dazzling, but Justin and Durand had eyes for no one but the Lady Emma, who greeted them with a nonchalance they found infuriating.
“Into the solar,” Durand rasped. “Now!” When Emma stiffened in outrage at that peremptory tone, he leaned across the table and jerked her to her feet, looking over then at Guy, as if daring him to object. Guy did not. Emma was made of sterner stuff than her son, and her hand closed upon the eating knife she’d been using to fillet her pike. But Justin now echoed Durand’s command with no less heat and she decided that submitting to their high- handedness was a lesser evil than making a scene in front of the servants. Flinging down her napkin as if it were a gauntlet, she marched across the hall toward the stairwell. Claudine followed her, and after a very conspicuous hesitation, so did Guy.
As soon as they reached the privacy of the solar, Emma turned on the men in fury. “How dare you put hands on me like that! I am not one of your kitchen wenches to be ordered about at your pleasure, Durand de Curzon! You’re fortunate I did not have my men flail you till your back was bloody.”
“First of all, Your Queenship, they are your son’s men, not yours, and I’d have liked to see them try! But if you think Sir Stoutheart there has the ballocks to give a command like that, you must believe in unicorns and barnacle geese and winged griffins!”
“I–I resent that,” Guy said, sounding more unhappy than indignant, and his flush deepened when Durand did not even deign to respond to his feeble protest.
Emma’s breath hissed through her teeth. Before she could lash out, Claudine stepped between them, speaking with an authority that reminded Justin of what he’d too often forgotten-that she was Queen Eleanor’s kinswoman. “Stop this! It serves for naught to be hurling insults at each other like brawling alewives. Why are you so wroth? No, not you, Durand. Let Justin speak; he has a far cooler head than yours.”
“By all means,” Durand said nastily, with a mocking bow toward Justin. “Go to it, de Quincy.”
“How could we not be wroth?” Justin demanded. “We reached Genets on Monday and found you gone!”
Emma blinked in surprise. “Is that what this is all about? We waited Friday night and all of Saturday, with nary a word from you, I might add. For all I knew, you’d be gone for a fortnight! How did I know how long it would take to catch de Lusignan? I made the sensible decision to await you in comfort back at Laval.”
“And of course you did not think to send us word of this decision.”
“How was I supposed to reach you, Durand?”
“The way anyone with the sense God gave a sheep would have done, by dispatching a man to Chester’s castle,” Durand said scornfully, provoking Emma into using her royal brother’s favorite oath.
“By God’s Liver, I’ve heard enough of your whinging! What difference does it make now?”
“About sixty miles,” Durand snapped. “That is how much farther we had to travel, thanks to your foolish, female whims!”
“Not to mention,” Justin said sardonically, “the pleasure of fearing that we’d be finding your bloodied bodies by the side of the road.”
Claudine deflected Emma’s angry retort. “I would never fault a man for caring about my welfare or safety, but we had an escort, Justin. Surely Brother Andrev told you that?”
“As if Rufus and Crispin would have been a match for Lupescar’s cutthroats!”
Claudine lost color. “Lupescar was nigh?” When Justin nodded grimly, she made the sign of the Cross. “We did not know.”
Emma was not cowed. “The Wolf is presently in John’s hire, so I rather doubt I had anything to fear from him. He’d not dare to molest his lord’s aunt.”
“There is a reason why shepherds use dogs and not tame wolves to guard their flocks,” Durand sneered. “A wolf is a wild creature, impossible to trust, for it can slip its leash at any time.”
“Moreover,” Justin said grimly, “the men riding with Lupescar are Hell’s dregs. If he’d sent some of them out scouting and they ran across two beautiful, rich, poorly guarded women, you truly think they’d humbly wish you ‘Good morrow’ and ride on by?”
Emma scowled, for she sensed that she was being outmaneuvered. “You exaggerate the risk. We had three good men with us. If we were in such danger, we’d have been in danger, too, when we first left Paris, for we had only seven then. Four more men could not make that much of a difference!”
“They could as long as I’m one of them,” Durand drawled, and Emma tartly called him an “insufferable, preening peacock.” But she tacitly conceded defeat by abruptly changing the subject, demanding to know the whereabouts of Simon de Lusignan.
“I did not see him being dragged in shackles into the great hall. So I assume he got away from the both of you, then.”
Neither Justin nor Durand cared for that implicit accusation, that they’d been bested by de Lusignan. “We tracked him to Fougeres Castle,” Justin said coolly. “But I’ll let Morgan be the one to tell you.” He half expected Emma to object, but she’d obviously done some reassessment of her hired man, who was constantly revealing talents above and beyond a groom’s skills at mucking out stalls or soothing spooked horses, and she said nothing as Justin moved toward the door.
Morgan responded so swiftly that Justin wondered if he’d been eavesdropping out in the stairwell. He showed no nervousness at being summoned into his lady’s solar, acting as comfortable as if they’d been meeting in the stables, and when Emma sent for a servant to fetch wine, Morgan took it for granted that one of the cups was for him. “You want me to tell them about Fougeres?” he asked Justin, and needed no further encouragement to launch into a vivid account that was quite polished by now, after much repetition.
“Simon de Lusignan rode his horse right into the great hall, just like King Henry used to do when he came to dine with Thomas Becket ere he became God’s man instead of the king’s. But Simon had murder in mind, not feasting. He leapt from his mount onto that canon from Toulouse and was making good progress toward strangling him ere they dragged him off.”
Guy gasped. “Why would Simon try to kill Canon Robert?” He was about to make an ill-advised defense of his friend, but he caught his mother’s eye and thought better of it.
“From what I was told,” Morgan resumed smoothly, “the people in the hall did not understand that, either, and concluded that Simon was roaring drunk. That was not unreasonable, as Simon had bloodshot eyes, slurred speech, and was stinking of wine. But we know he’d been awake for nigh on a day and a night, most likely had nothing to eat, and I’d guess he was drenched in wine from diving across that table. They decided to put him where he’d do no harm till he sobered up and so they confined him to a storeroom out in the bailey. Interesting that they did not toss him into the dungeon, is it not?”
Emma regarded him thoughtfully. “You are saying, then,” she said, “that Simon de Lusignan was accorded special treatment?”
Morgan beamed approvingly. “Exactly, my lady. It was like a signed confession from the duchess and her barons that they were up to their necks in this plot with Simon. Canon Robert insisted he had no idea why Simon had attacked him, and adroitly played the role of injured innocent. Apparently the others honestly did not know what had provoked Simon’s attack. We do, of course.”
“What-that the canon killed the Lady Arzhela?”
Morgan nodded so vigorously that Justin felt the need to interject a cautionary note. “Well, all we can say for certes is that Simon thinks he did.”
“I’m with Simon,” Morgan insisted. “That canon was always too slick for a man of God. And you told me yourself, Justin, that the Lady Arzhela never trusted him a whit.”
“And we know both Simon and Arzhela had judgment as infallible as the Holy Father’s.”
This acerbic comment came from Durand, and earned him no favor with Morgan, who showed a rare flash of irritation. But Emma was losing patience and she moved to take control of the conversation, saying swiftly, “Be that as it may, we are still waiting to hear what happened after that.”
“The next morning, they discovered the lock on the storeroom had been broken; inside there were signs of a struggle and blood, but Simon was gone.”
Morgan found the reaction of his audience quite gratifying. Guy and Claudine cried out, and even Emma looked startled. “There is more
… Canon Robert was missing, too!”
