Lion Heart (38 page)

I brought David and Allan into the room with me. Rob were already there, and he stood as I came in.

“Well?” he asked.

“Winchester and Margaret ran off,” I told him.

His face broke into a grin. “What? Really?”

I nodded. “And we need to do this tonight. Eleanor put the chests in place, just as I asked. Her carriage is full of them and waiting in the courtyard.”

He drew a breath. “Very well. David, Allan, get horses and meet us by the carriage.”

David glanced at me, ever loyal, and I nodded once.

They had just bare left when a knock came to the
door.

Our maid opened it and announced Essex. Rob bristled as Essex came into the room, coming straight for me. His cheeks were filled with color and bright, and he looked wild.

“Is it true?” he asked. “Everything you hinted at—is Prince John a traitor?” he demanded.

“I don't know,” I told him. “We'll find out soon enough. Why? What's the matter?”

“He struck her,” he growled, and Rob came closer to me. “He struck her and he's going to annul their marriage.”

“What?” Rob said.

“Isabel?” I asked.

“You'd think pain would count more than children,” he said. “But it doesn't. He tortures her and she has yet to give him a child, so he will annul their marriage and marry Isabelle of Angouleme.”

My breath caught. “Good Lord. The knights—they're her men.”

“What knights?”

“The prince put the ransom in the White Tower. The men guarding it are French knights—he claims they're from Aquitaine, but they can't be.”

He nodded. “That must have been what Isabel meant.” He looked at me. “Please tell me you have some scheme to stop this, Marian. John Lackland will purchase a crown with his new wife's money. Isabel said he told her himself he's planning on sending the money to France to make sure Richard never returns.”

Rob crossed his arms. “Scarlet. Her name is Scarlet,” he snapped. He shrugged his shoulders at me. “I can't stand hearing that name on everyone's mouth.”

“My name doesn't matter,” I told him. “What they call me, the words I use—they don't matter. Our actions, and what we will do to bring the King of England home matter.” I looked at Essex. “So yes, I have a plan.”

CHAPTER

“I look terrible in this,” Allan whined.

David scowled at him. “The great trickster. I thought you could pretend to be whatever you wanted. Having difficulty pretending to be me?”

“But I look so much handsomer as
me
,” Allan said.

I frowned at them from the carriage seat. “You'd make a terrible knight, Allan. Try to look intimidating.”

“David's not intimidating,” Allan said, looking at David on his horse.

“Be thankful you haven't seen that side of me yet, Allan,” David grunted.

The gates round the White Tower came into view, and David rode forward to trot abreast of the carriage with Rob and me on the coachman's seat. The French guards came out to greet us, looking wary.

“Open the gate,” David ordered.

“On what business?”

“We have contributions from the queen for the king's ransom,” David said.

They opened the gate.

There were more knights now; at least thirty, ambling around. They didn't help us as we rode the carriage close, and Rob and David hefted a chest between them. They walked it to the stairway, a wooden thing that led up to the entrance of the tower and could be rolled away if enemies approached.

The thing creaked as they went up, and I followed slow behind them.

They brought the chest into the treasury room on the lowest floor of the tower. They set the chest down and went back to repeat the task, and I stood watch over the room. The man of accounts came to me and asked the sums, and I told him.

He left, and I unlocked the chest that Rob and David had just set down.

A dirty face looked up at me. “Quick,” I told him.

The young man leapt out of the chest. I went out to the hall and Allan were there. “This way,” he told me, and he grabbed one chest while the boy grabbed another.

They disappeared into a smudge of darkness underneath the stairs.

Rob and David came down again with a chest.

I frowned. “Where are your swords?” I asked them.

“They keep hitting the stairs,” David said. “We put them in the carriage.”

Hairs raised on the back of my neck. “Hurry, then.”

Rob gave me a solemn nod, laying the chest down.

Again, one of Kate's orphans sprang out of a chest, and he waited for Allan and the other to return, leading them down to a secret entrance in the bottom of the tower that let out onto the river.

“We call it Traitor's Gate,” Allan had told us. “But seeing as thieves don't have much say about it, I doubt that name will stick.”

David and Rob took as much time as they could. We had seven boys hidden in chests, and they made quick work of secreting the ransom away to the water gate and Kate's rowboats. It were a short trip down the river to where her ship were docked.

One by one, the chests disappeared, and the sky didn't fall upon our heads.

Rob and David dropped a chest to the floor of the treasury, and Rob kissed me, sweat heavy on his brow. “We have one more chest,” he said. “Get them ready.”

There were only two left in the treasury.

I nodded. Allan returned with three boys. Two took the chests that sat there, and one waited anxious for Rob and David's footsteps.

I held my breath.

Long moments passed before Rob and David appeared, hefting the chest down the stairs.

The boy took it, turning under the stairs as a set of metaled boots appeared at the height of the stairs.

I pulled the door shut. “Can someone lock this?” I called.

The knight ducked so he could see us, and came downstairs, replacing the lock and inserting the key. He stood by the door.

We nodded, and started up the stairs.

The night were thick and warm, one of the first that didn't get cooler without the sun. Summer were close, hovering, waiting to make her mark on us. To push us through another year.

I stood at the top of the stairs, and Rob's arm came round me. He were bright and shining with sweat. David glanced at us and turned his head, trotting down the stairs.

Rob kissed me, and I tasted salt on his lips. “I love you, Scar.”

“I love you too,” I told him. “Let's get back before anyone misses us.”

He leaned forward and touched my lips to his. It were quick and brief. A kiss that were meant to be a beginning, a start, the first of a thousand.

We hadn't made it to the bottom of the staircase
when the gate began to open.

I looked at Rob, and David.

We hadn't asked them to open the gate yet. It were too early.

We made for the carriage. I had knives in my dress, but Rob didn't have his sword. David didn't either.

The knights stopped us, blocking us off. David, Rob, and I stood close together. I didn't see Allan.

Prince John stood outside the gate, mounted on his horse, with a legion of men holding torches around him, beside him, behind him.

He rode in slow, looking at us with a smug smile on his face, and my heart slammed against my chest.

“Lady Huntingdon,” he said. “Earl Huntingdon. Now, tell me this. Why would my mother come to London, escorted by two noblemen and a legion of knights, and then send her precious ransom off with her granddaughter? Hm?”

I didn't open my mouth.

“It's strange, isn't it? Meanwhile, my nattering wife says she has friends, friends that will stop me. There aren't many people foolish enough to cross me. Except you two. So it could all be a rather strange coincidence, or perhaps it isn't.”

Rob took my half hand in his.

“Jacques,” Prince John called, snapping his fingers. The knight who had taken our accounting stepped
forward. “What did they do while they were here?”

“They dropped off the silver, my lord,” he said.

“Did you watch them do it? Pick it up, put it down, you watched every chest?”

He paused. “Yes,” he said. But he hadn't.

“And you went through each chest? Matched the amounts, verified their contents?”

He paused longer. I tugged Rob's hand to sit on the small of my back over the hilt of my knife, and his eyes met mine for one brief look.

“Go check the silver,” Prince John snapped.

He went. We only had moments.

Prince John dismounted. The knights parted for him, and he came into the circle with us with a wide grin. “Anything you want to confess, Marian?”

“Don't speak to her,” Rob snapped. “You want to accuse her of something, speak to me.”

“Confess,” he said, stepping close to me. “And I'll make up a good lie about how you died.”

“I'll confess,” I whispered.

He stepped a tiny bit closer. “A little louder, Marian.”

“You used to be afraid to get so close to me,” I told him, and he met my eyes. “That was a good instinct.”

I slammed my knee into his crotch, drawing my knife as Rob pulled the other knife from my back. Prince John grabbed my hand with the knife, but I pushed back on his hold, forcing the knights to break the circle as he
fell back.

Quick, I grabbed Prince John while he were off balance. I kicked at his knees and stepped fast to the side, grabbing his hair and jerking his head back as I moved behind him.

Two knights came for me, and I pressed the knife to his throat. “Stop!” I yelled.

I saw Rob and David fighting, and they looked at me. A knight hit David across the face, and he fell, and a knight wrapped his arm around Rob's throat.

Rob stabbed his knife into the knight's arm, and the knight dropped him. Another knight held out his sword to Rob, while the other knights were backing up, looking at me.

“Move away from him. Now,” I told the knight.

“Kill him,” Prince John grunted.

“I will slit his throat,” I told the knight.

“No, she won't!” Prince John said. “Kill him! Now!”

The knight were looking at me, not Prince John. “Do it and he dies,” I warned.

“You're under orders,” John told him. The knight met his gaze. “Kill him!
Tuez-le maintenant
!”

The knight drew his arm back, and I pushed Prince John aside, leaping over him to grab the knight's arm and prevent it from moving forward. I buried my knife in his side.

Another knight pulled me off. He slammed his fist
into my stomach, and I lost my breath at the burst of pain.

A hand closed on my wrist with the knife, and someone else hit me across the face. Then I were in the grass, on my back, and people held my wrists and feet; someone even had a boot on my stomach.

“Get her up,” Prince John said.

They dragged me to my knees. Rob and David were on their knees too now, and they pushed us into a line.

Our revolt had lasted roughly a minute.

With three against thirty, two knives between us, we'd never had much hope. Except for delaying long enough to let Kate get away.

“Do you men even know what you do?” David shouted. “You strike the daughter of the King of England! A princess!”

“A bastard,” Prince John dismissed. “Jacques?” he asked.

I looked at Rob. His mouth were drooling blood, and a cut on his eye were bleeding too.

“My-my lord,” he stammered. “
Mon seigneur, il est vide.
”

I didn't speak French, but I knew what that room contained well enough.

Prince John picked up one of my knives from the ground. He came close to us and looked at Rob for a long while. Then he looked at me. “So. I need to know where my money has gone, and I need one of you two to tell me.”

We didn't say anything.

“These things—information, and the ways we request it—they're very simple. It's a transaction, you see. For a fine woolen coat I would pay a certain sum. For boots, a different sum. So the question is, what sum will you pay to conceal the information I need? And what sum is too high a price to ask?”