Read Sword of Justice (White Knight Series) Online
Authors: Jude Chapman
Tags: #mystery, #Romance, #medieval
Sword of Justice (White Knight Series)
Chapters
Sword of Justice
A NOVEL
Jude Chapman
Sword of Justice
Copyright © 2013 by Jude Chapman
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Published: November 22, 2013
Weatherly Books
The publisher and author ask that you not participate in or encourage piracy of this copyrighted work. Please don’t scan, reproduce, or distribute this book except to use short excerpts for the purposes of critical reviews.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
~ Chess ~
An ancient game of strategy and tactics in which two players move pieces around a square board composed of 64 alternately dark and light squares with the object of capturing the opponent’s king or thwarting the attempt into a stalemate.
A Parable
It happened one day that the prince and his brother were alone in a chamber playing chess.
When the prince lost the game, he took the chessboard and smote his brother upon the head with it, wherefore the brother kicked the prince hard in the stomach, causing him to bang his head against the wall, become dizzy, and fall into a faint.
Afraid he had killed the prince, the brother rubbed his ears and brought him around. Whereupon the prince went wailing to his father the king.
“Hold your tongue!” said the king. “If your brother has done what you say, no doubt you deserved it.”
Upon which the king called for the prince’s tutor and ordered his son to be well beaten for complaining.
From Ralph of Coggeshall’s “Chronicon Anglicanum”
Prologue
THE HOUR OF
VESPERS BROUGHT
the chevalier
galloping into the precincts of Fontevraud Abbey accompanied by upwards of a hundred men. The sweat-streaked destriers, having ridden hard and long, whinnied and grumbled, though out of deference and the shock of disbelief, no man spoke.
The knight himself was a magnificent specimen, endowed with all the beauty and strength wished upon him by his mother, and more arrogance and pride than his father allowed. After dismounting his steed, the knight strode alone into the abbey church.
Fading daylight imparted an ethereal grace on the holy tabernacle, its limestone walls and vaulted arches creamy white and seemingly otherworldly. Lord and leader, the knight brashly approached the altar, his jangling spurs breaking the unutterable silence. But as he approached the place where lambs were slaughtered in times before memory, his footsteps faltered and at length halted.
Before the sacrificial stone, in the light of a hundred flickering candles, an old man lay on a bier for all to view. Befitting his rank, the corpse was righteously clothed in the finest of robes: a blouse of gold-embroidered linen, a damask tunic of rich emerald green, and a magnificent ermine-lined cloak embroidered with crescent moons. His feet were clad in satin slippers. A ceremonial sword girded his waist. His ringed hands were crossed athwart his breast. And two silver coins, stamped with a coarse likeness of himself and inscribed with the legend HENRICVS REX weighed down his eyelids.
Like the lordling that looked down upon him, the deceased had once been a beautiful youth, possessed of flinty blue eyes, golden-red hair, and long limbs. Also like the knight, he had an insatiable appetite for women, for wine, and especially for war. Now he was reduced to a wintry reflection, his hair the same metal as the coins, and the wear of a century imprinted on his face though he was but fifty-six years of age, not an old man by any standard, not even in the year of grace 1189.
The withered visage made it difficult to imagine that this man had fashioned through fortune, luck in marriage, and sheer fortitude an empire so vast it stretched north to Scotland and south to the Pyrenees. His English kingdom was a united whole, in name if not in fact, and his Gallic nation was greater than that of the reigning king of France.
He attained his supremacy at the youthful age of one-and-twenty. Over a lifetime of warring and whoring, he spawned eight legitimate children and innumerable bastards to carry his legacy forward. Regrettably, he also waged war on his grown sons, and they on him, eventually leading to his humiliating defeat. Worse, he imprisoned his queen over sixteen interminable years for the unpardonable sin of inciting her sons to rebellion, and never once considered that this one unfortunate act had unraveled, thread by twisted thread, a once-glorious reign. In the end, he died broken, bereft, and betrayed, having only one bastard son to witness his final tortured breath.
Kings, even when graced in life, more times than not die ignobly.
Though king of England, Henri, the second of his name, had been born in his beloved Anjou, died in his beloved Anjou, and would be entombed in his beloved Anjou. But in England, where he was coronated thirty-five years ago, they held him as their native son and long since dubbed him Henry.
The knight dropped to his knees and said a brief prayer, his lips moving but his voice silent. Since the two faces were near one another, those near at hand would have seen the fair likeness between the departed king and the vibrant knight, separated as they were by a mere twenty-four years. The assumption would have led to a further truth: that one was the father and the other, his son.
The knight genuflected as a dutiful son but rose to his feet as a king. Turning on a heel, he thundered out of the church with nary a backward glance. And in England, where tidings had already been carried across the Channel on the wings of doves, they were singing his praises. “Richard Cœur de Lion is king! Richard the Lionheart is king!”
Heralds called it from the saddle. Townsmen boasted it from the rooftops. Alewives spread the news from behind cloaked hands and lustrous eyes. Lads shouted the tidings in alleyways and streets. Cottagers trumpeted the message from field to field. And priests ordered cathedral bells to send forth the word.
But in private, where no one could hear, everyone whispered the unspeakable. “Richard is king.” And in the same breath, “God save England.”
~ Gambit ~
The first move of the game in which the players give up pawns or other minor pieces in exchange for advantageous positions.
Saturday, the 19
th
of August, in the Year of Grace 1189
Chapter 1
THE DRIFTING BLUE
WATERS OF
the River Itchen sliced through a boundless panorama, an emerald backdrop of rolling terrain at its back, and white-stoned battlements setting off its prominence.
Itchendel Castle rose up from bedrock like a mystical vision of old. Serving not only as a citadel of Norman rule, it was also home to the fitzAlans. Father William, sons Drake and Stephen, and mother and wife Philippia of Aquitaine, entombed alongside a stillborn daughter beneath the chapel’s flagstones.
Clothed in their gayest costumes, townsfolk and country folk streamed onto the castle grounds. Though they came for the food, the drink, and the
fête champêtre
on this, the first sanctioned tournament to take place on English soil in many a year, it was the romantic notion of dashing knights in shining armor and secretly for the blood sport to come that brought them in droves.
At the base of castle hill, white-clothed pavilions sucked like sails in strong winds. Cooking pits flamed. Wine casks brimmed. Banners fluttered and flew. Jongleurs, acrobats, and troubadours entertained. And song and laughter drenched the fine summer air.
On the occasion of his sons being dubbed knights two days since in Winchester Cathedral by King Richard’s own sword and hand, William fitzAlan had emptied his purse. His largess was grand and knew no bounds. Common folk and nobles alike salivated at the mere thought of the feat and the accompanying feast to come. Of swans cooked fully feathered, stuffed pigling and cormorants, lampreys in galytyne, blancmange with anise and almonds,
viaund royal,
capon de haut de grace, venison en frumenty,
and not to be left out, raisins, figs, dates, and pomegranates; pies, pasties, and sweetmeats; and to wash it all down, ale and mead.
On a long stretch of field, two sides formed up, fifty knights to a side, ranks split by familiarity, friendship, and habitual alliances. After donning armor at either end of the virgin meadow, one hundred knights mounted their warhorses and galloped towards each other, hoofs drumming. Lances were couched securely in one hand while shields were held fast in the other. To mark the opposing forces, banners of red and blue flew aloft, snapping in breezes coming off the river. The silver-clad warriors stopped a bowshot apart, reining in their chargers. A safe distance away, spectators climbed into stands or meandered along the riverbank, eager for the contest to begin. Cheers broke out in support of each side, everyone claiming a favored champion.
Standing on a platform for all the riders to see, Lord William fitzAlan of Itchendel separated the two forces by his presence. He held aloft a white banner and waited for order. When an impatient rustling took hold, he dropped the pennon and shouted, “In God’s name, charge!”
A cloud of dust rose from the trampled plain. Horseman rushed on horseman, shimmering steel met shimmering steel, and everything melded amidst sibilant war cries.
Tournament or not, anything could happen on a battlefield. Few rules applied in
à outrance
contests and those that did were soon discarded for the promise of stature, exaltation, and treasure. Honor quickly broke down. Fair was fair when a knight lost his horse, lost his weapons, lost blood or freedom, all to be claimed by the other side for prizes and glory. Since dead men paid no ransoms, capture rather than harm was the object, but fury was indiscriminate. Knights went down, scrambled to their feet, drew sword, grasped shield, dodged weapons that could impale, slash, and draw blood, and outmaneuvered raging horseflesh that might easily trample them to death.