Prince of Darkness

CHAPTER 4

January 1194

PARIS, FRANCE

I hope you are not angry with me for my little deception, Justin.” Claudine was giving him her most irresistible smile, the one that set her dimples to flashing like shooting stars. “Lord John said that he had an urgent matter to discuss with you and he doubted that you would have agreed to come if he had asked you. I’ll not blame you for being irked, but he convinced me that this was the best way to do it…”

His utter silence was beginning to erode some of her self-confidence. “Justin?” She reached out to stroke his arm and gasped when he jerked away from her touch. By then John was at her side, gently cupping her elbow and turning her toward the door as he expressed his gratitude. Before she could protest, she found herself out in the stairwell, listening to the latch slide into place.

“She’ll probably hover by the door,” John predicted cheerfully. “There’s not a woman born who could resist the chance to eavesdrop. There is wine over there, and ale, too, as Claudine says you’ve a liking for it.”

He started toward the table, stopping when Justin recoiled, dropping his hand to the hilt of his sword. “What-you think I got you here to do you harm? Good God, man, use your common sense. If I wanted you dead-”

“You did want me dead!”

John paused. “Well, yes, I suppose so,” he conceded. “I’ll not deny that I did tell Durand to kill you. But that was not personal, de Quincy. I was simply trying to protect my aunt.”

“Very gallant of you, my lord,” Justin snarled, and John’s eyebrows rose.

“I like to think so.” Moving toward the table, he observed, “I am not about to lunge at you, am merely pouring myself a drink. I’d offer you one, too, but I fear you might fling it in my face.” Taking a swallow of wine, he regarded Justin thoughtfully over the rim of his cup. “Time for some blunt speaking, I see. Yes, I did give Durand that command. You know it, I know it, and by now, I expect my lady mother knows it, too.”

She didn’t, but Justin was not about to tell him that. He was still badly shaken, not only by John’s ambush and Claudine’s betrayal, but by the surge of hot, raw rage that had flooded his brain and submerged his self-control. He’d learned at an early age to keep his emotions under a tight rein, for a runaway temper was an indulgence few orphans could afford. Life could be cruel to the weak and the innocent. Nor was it kind to the unwary or the careless. In the world he’d grown up in, men paid dearly for their mistakes-unless they were fortunate enough to have the royal blood of England coursing through their veins.

“Put yourself in my place, de Quincy. What was I to do-let you go free to tell my mother that my aunt Emma had been plotting with me against her beloved Richard? If you’d been a more reasonable sort, I could have bought your silence. An argument might even be made that you brought some of your troubles upon yourself by being so incorruptible, so damnably honest.”

It was one of John’s saving graces that he found humor in the un-likeliest places, pools of water in the driest deserts, and Justin had long suspected that this was one reason he’d so often been able to beguile his way back into Eleanor’s favor. Even Claudine’s playful nickname for him, “the Prince of Darkness,” hinted at the seductive nature of his sins. But his sardonic charm was wasted upon Justin. “Out of morbid curiosity,” he said coldly, “how did Durand explain his failure to murder me?”

“As Durand told it, he was overpowered by a score of Welshmen masquerading as monks. Why? Is there more to the tale than that?”

“No,” Justin said grudgingly. Leave it to Durand to tell just enough of the truth to save his worthless skin. Justin’s loathing for Queen Eleanor’s spy made his distrust of John seem positively benign in comparison, yet he could deny neither the other man’s ice-blooded courage nor his unholy quickness of wit. Strangely enough, he did believe John’s claim that he’d been seeking to shield Emma from exposure. But he could find no excuses at all for Durand’s willingness to obey that lethal order.

John made another casual offer of wine, shrugging at Justin’s terse refusal. “So… where was I? Ah, yes, complaining about your unwillingness to take bribes. It is not as if I bore you some bitter, vengeful grudge, de Quincy. Since the risk of death is a natural hazard of your precarious profession, I do not see why you are taking this so much to heart. Hellfire, man, you won, did you not? You thwarted Durand, outwitted Davydd and Emma, recovered the ransom, and probably even earned a few words of my lady mother’s sparing praise. Now that I think about it, I am more the injured party than you are!”

Justin was not amused. “Why did you lure me here, my lord John?”

“Must you make it sound so underhanded and sly?” John protested, the corner of his mouth twitching. “I need your help, de Quincy. It is urgent that I speak with Emma as soon as possible. I want you to deliver a letter from me, convince her if she has qualms, and escort her safely to Paris.”

Justin shook his head in disbelief. “You cannot be serious. I am the last man in Christendom whom the Lady Emma would heed.”

“I agree that she has no fondness for you. But you are the also the queen’s man, as she well knows. She’ll not dare refuse you.”

In spite of himself, Justin felt a flicker of interest stirring. So John wanted the cover of the Crown. What was he up to and what part did Emma play in his scheme? “Why would I ever agree?”

“I can make it well worth your while.” John did not elaborate, nor did he need to. They both knew he was offering more than a pouch full of coins. He was offering, too, the favor of a future king. Richard had no heirs of his body. If he died before he sired a son, a distinct possibility for a man who flirted with Death on a daily basis, there were two claimants for his crown-his brother John and his nephew Arthur, the six-year-old son of his dead brother Geoffrey and Geoffrey’s highborn widow, Constance, Duchess of Brittany. The smart money was on John.

“I serve the Queen’s Grace, and I somehow doubt that her interests and yours are likely to coincide.”

“Actually,” John said, “in this case, they do.”

Justin did not reply; his incredulous expression spoke for him. John frowned, for he’d hoped to avoid trusting Justin with the specifics of his plight. “I have learned that I am about to be accused of a crime I did not commit, compliments of that Breton bitch, my sister-in-law Constance.”

“A crime you did not commit?” Justin echoed, with enough skepticism to deepen John’s scowl.

“Is that so hard to believe? Constance would accuse me of murdering babies and drinking their blood if she thought she could discredit me in Richard’s eyes.”

“Or she could let you do that all by yourself.”

“Damnation, de Quincy, will you listen to me? I am in trouble, and for once, none of it is my doing!”

“And that would grieve me because…?”

“Because it would grieve my mother, you fool!”

“Would it?” Justin did not know if that was true or not, and at the moment, he did not care. He’d had enough. “That is not for me to say,” he said, and started toward the door.

John moved swiftly to intercept him. “We are not done yet! At the least, you can hear me out!”

Justin discovered now that their difference in height gave him the advantage, for the queen’s son had to look up to him. “No, my lord, we are done,” he said, and pushed past John to the door.

As John had predicted, Claudine was waiting out in the stairwell. “Justin, we have to talk!”

“No, we do not,” he said, and continued on down the stairs.

She followed hastily behind him. “Justin, wait! I know you are wroth with me, but you do not understand. If you’d let me explain-”

“There is nothing you can say!” As Justin shoved the door open, she caught at his arm, crying out his name. Emerging from the stairwell, they came to an abrupt halt, for all in the hall were staring at them.

“Justin, please,” Claudine entreated softly. She was still clutching his arm, and when she would not release her grip, he pried her fingers loose, one by one, until he was free. He turned, then, and stalked away, ignoring her plea that he wait, that he listen. He’d almost reached the door when his gaze fell on Durand de Curzon, lounging against the wall, arms folded across his chest. As their eyes met, Durand raised his hand in a sarcastic salute.

Temperatures had dropped sharply with the setting sun, and Justin shivered as he strode across the courtyard toward the stables. Within moments, he heard the door slam and quick footsteps sounded behind him. He spun around to see Claudine hurrying toward him.

“Go back to the hall!”

“Not until we talk!”

He continued on into the stables, with Claudine almost running in order to keep pace. “Go back inside,” he snapped. Noticing for the first time that she’d neglected to take her mantle, he added impatiently, “You’ll freeze out here.”

“I do not care if I do!” Her defiance might have sounded more convincing if her teeth hadn’t been chattering. She half expected him to offer her his own mantle, was taken aback when he did not. “Justin, why are you being so stubborn? Why will you not listen to me?”

Justin ignored her and went to look for his saddle. She trailed after him, wrapping her arms around herself in a futile attempt at warmth. “You are going to hear me out if I have to follow you across half of Paris. I met Lord John at the French court, and he asked for my help. I could hardly refuse him, Justin. You may have forgotten that he is the queen’s son, but I do not have that luxury. Moreover, I saw no harm in doing what he asked. He said he needed to talk to you. Why is that so dreadful? Why are you acting as if I’d lured you into a viper’s den?”

Justin whirled, angry words of accusation hovering on his lips, only to be silenced by the look of honest bewilderment on her face. Remembering just in time that she did not know what had happened in Wales. She did not know that John had passed a sentence of death upon him. Nor was she aware that her spying for John had been discovered. And the queen did not want her to know.

“Justin, talk to me, please. Tell me what I’ve done that is so unforgivable,” she pleaded, and he stared at her mutely, overwhelmed by the burden of so many secrets. Not knowing what else to do, not trusting himself to hold his tongue, he turned away from her and fled out into the night.

The Greve was deserted and still, swallowed up in shadows. The only signs of life came from the river, where several boats were moored. Justin headed in that direction, tightening his hold upon his mantle as he faced into the wind. As he’d hoped, he soon caught a glimmer of light, and followed it to a small dockside tavern. It was half empty, the only customers a sleeping sailor and several men lingering over their drinks to delay going out into the cold. Justin found a table out of range of the door’s drafts and ordered a flagon.

The wine was wretched, so impure that he had to spit out sediment into the floor rushes. Shoving it aside, he made a resolute attempt to banish John and Claudine from his thoughts and focus upon where he was to spend the night. It made sense to leave his horse in Petronilla’s stable; he could claim it in the morning. Curfew must be nigh, so he had no time to roam the streets in search of an inn. After some thought, he beckoned to the tavern owner, and negotiated a bed for the night. The man agreed to provide a pallet in his kitchen, but he looked as shifty as any London cutpurse, and Justin decided he’d best sleep with one eye open.

Overhearing this negotiation, one of the other customers suggested he look for lodgings at St-Gervais, by the Baudoyer Gate, and Justin was getting directions when the door was thrust open and Durand de Curzon entered. He was wearing an elegant wool mantle trimmed with fox fur, a garment that looked utterly out of place in the seedy little tavern, and he attracted a few covetous, conjectural glances. When he swaggered toward Justin, though, men moved out of his way, theirs the instinctive unease of a flock sensing a predator in their midst.

“This day keeps getting better and better,” Justin said as Durand claimed a stool and a place at his table.

“You were too easy to track down,” the knight announced, reaching over for the wine flagon. “Had I been a hired killer, you’d have been a lamb to the slaughter.” Lacking a cup, he drank directly from the flagon, gagged, and spat into the floor rushes. “Christ on the Cross, de Quincy, I’d sooner drink horse piss!”

“What do you want, Durand?”

“I want you to fetch the Lady Emma for John and bring her back to Paris.”

“And I want you to repent your multitude of mortal sins and take the Cross, pledging to walk barefoot to Jerusalem. What are the chances of that happening?”

“If you are expecting me to offer an apology for what I did in Wales, you’ll still be waiting on the Day of Judgment. As I told you then, I had to choose which mattered more to the queen, that I continued to protect her son or that you continued to breathe. The hard truth, de Quincy, is that the queen needs me more than she needs you.”

“So does the Devil,” Justin said, pushing his stool away from the table. Once he was on his feet, though, with a clear path to the door, he paused. He did not doubt that Durand’s first loyalty was to Durand, not the queen. But he also knew that the queen would have expected him to hear the other man out.

Durand correctly interpreted his hesitation. “Sit down ere you attract attention and I’ll tell you what I know and why I think you ought to do as John bids you.” As soon as Justin reclaimed his seat, the knight leaned forward, saying quietly, “John got a letter from Brittany that rattled him good and proper. He balked at showing it to me, saying only that Constance was contriving his destruction. But I knew his favorite hiding places, so I just bided my time until I got a chance to read it for myself. It was a message from a woman named Arzhela de Dinan, warning him that Constance had written proof that he and the Count of Toulouse’s son were plotting to lure Richard to Toulouse once he is ransomed and there have him slain.”

Justin caught his breath, for John was right. Such a charge could indeed be his ruin. Richard had never seemed threatened by John’s attempts to steal his crown. Even in German confinement, he’d dismissed John’s intrigues with laughter and a mocking comment that John was not the man to conquer a kingdom if there was anyone to offer the feeblest resistance. Justin had often marveled at how often John eluded the consequences of his treachery, concluding that fortune had thrice favored him. He benefited from his brother’s amiable contempt and his mother’s protection, but above all from his position as heir-apparent. Most people were willing to turn a blind eye to the misdeeds of a man who might one day be England’s king.

But what if proof existed that he had connived at Richard’s murder? To kill a crowned king, God’s anointed, was regicide. Richard would not overlook that. Nor would Eleanor forgive. Justin suspected that John would have more to fear from the mother than from the queen, for Richard claimed her heart and John could only claim her blood.

“Two questions,” he said, his eyes searching Durand’s impassive, unreadable face. “Is there any chance this is true? And what have you been able to find out about this Arzhela de Dinan? How reliable is she?”

“Those are three questions,” Durand pointed out. “But no, I do not see how it can be true. It is a charge that could eventually be disproved-assuming John was given the chance to disprove it. On the surface, though, it has enough plausibility to hearten his enemies and fire Richard’s Angevin temper, for he has long been at odds with the lords of Toulouse. It is easy to believe that Raymond would concoct a murder plot, given the oceans of bad blood there. He is already suspect because of the heresies he and his father tolerate in their lands.”

Justin knew that the Church was increasingly alarmed by the spread of a heretical doctrine that denied some of the basic tenets of the True Faith, but his knowledge went no further than that. He had more pressing concerns now than outlaw sects, and he interrupted before Durand could continue. “Tell me about the woman.”

“Arzhela de Dinan’s warning has to be taken seriously, for she is well placed to know the secrets of the Breton court. She is a first cousin to Duchess Constance, and to judge by the tone of her letter, she was once John’s bedmate. She told John that she has not yet seen the letter for herself, but she is sure it exists. She believes it to be a forgery, or at least pretends to believe that. I’d say John has good reason for concern. He has enough penance due for past sins without adding regicide to the list.”

“But what does Emma have to do with a Breton plot?”

“I do not know,” Durand admitted reluctantly. “All I’ve been able to get out of John is that he has sent an urgent message to his favorite spy, the Breton. But Emma’s part in this remains murky. With luck, I’ll have been able to find out more by the time you get back to Paris with Emma.”

Opening his mouth to protest, Justin realized that there was nothing he could say. As little as he liked the idea of being drawn into John’s web, he had no choice. He knew what his queen would want, what she always wanted-to save John from himself.

Durand had told Justin that Lady Petronilla had invited John to spend the night, for his lodgings with the Templars were outside the city gate, now shut until daybreak. Returning to the house, he felt like Daniel going into the lions’ den and wondered grimly if he’d emerge alive like Daniel or if the lions would have the mastery of him.

Claudine was not in the great hall, to his relief. But John was still there, with the Lady Petronilla fluttering about him flirtatiously. His attention was distracted, though, his thoughts obviously elsewhere, and when he noticed Justin, he jumped to his feet with betraying alacrity. Extricating himself from Petronilla’s orbit, he strode toward Justin, saying, “Follow me.”

He led Justin across the hall into the small oratory, the most private place he could find. As soon as he closed the door, he demanded, “Why did you come back?” eagerly enough to reveal how dismayed he’d been by Justin’s abrupt departure.

Justin shrugged. “After traveling all this way, I decided I wanted to hear the end of the story.”

“Then you agree to escort Emma to Paris?”

“Only if I know why you have such an urgent need to see her, my lord.”

“That is not your concern,” John said curtly, and Justin shrugged again.

“As you will, my lord,” he said, and turned toward the door.

John impatiently waved him back. “If you must know, I need to contact the Breton. I daresay you remember him from your foray into Wales. He has never been an easy man to find, and the messages I’ve left for him have gone unanswered. Emma has more of a history with him than I do and she is likely to know other ways to reach him.”

Justin suspected there was more to it than that. For now, though, it would do. “I will leave on the morrow. But if the lady is not willing to come, I can hardly stuff her into my saddlebag.”

“She may not come for me,” John admitted, surprising Justin with his candor. “But she’ll come for the queen’s man. Emma is a clever woman, and she well knows how urgently she needs to regain my mother’s favor. Now, what will your cooperation cost me, de Quincy?”

“The queen pays me two shillings a day. For you, my lord, I would charge three, plus my expenses.”

“No more than that?” John tilted his head to the side, regarding Justin quizzically. “Why am I getting off so cheaply?”

“Because,” Justin said, “I am not doing this for money. After this, you will owe me a debt, my lord, a debt I may collect at my pleasure.”

“I see…” John’s eyes caught the torchlight above his head, giving off a golden glitter. After a moment, he laughed abruptly. “Since when did you become so crafty, de Quincy? I think you’ve been passing too much time with me!”

Justin was given blankets and he joined the other men bedding down for the night in the great hall. He was folding his mantle to use as a pillow when he heard a light step behind him, a step he well knew.

“Justin.” Claudine was standing only a few feet away. Acutely aware of the men within earshot, she said, very low, “I have too much on my mind to sleep, and will be awake very late tonight.”

“I expect to be asleep very soon myself. Good night, Lady Claudine.” Stretching out under the blankets, he turned his back on her, lying very still until he finally heard the soft rustle in the floor rushes as she withdrew. Her perfume lingered after she’d gone, a fragrant, ghostly reminder of all he’d rather forget. His body was treacherously tempted to accept her invitation, but he would not yield to the weakness of the flesh, not tonight. The bedchamber was her battlefield; he had no intention of giving her such a tactical advantage. He believed her avowal that she’d never meant him harm. But she was too susceptible to John’s inducements. Nor had she asked the question that would have been foremost in his mind if their positions had been reversed and she had been the one coming from England to join him in Paris. Not once had she asked him about Aline.