The Orphan King (17 page)

“A farthing each dozen,” William offered. “If the candles are as good as any to be found, what of the rest of Magnus? Is it the horrible place it is rumored to be?”

“Two farthings and no lower,” Geoffrey countered. “And strangers as good as you have said less about Magnus and died for it.”

Thomas gave the conversation his full attention.

“Two farthings for a dozen and a half.” William lowered his voice. “And who might be doing the killing?”

Geoffrey shook his head and held out his hand. “The color of your money first. This box holds three dozen candles.”

“Four farthings, then. You drive a hard bargain.” William counted the coins. “About this fearsome domain …”

Even in the dimness of the shop, Thomas could see the eager glint of a born gossip in the candle maker’s eyes.

“A fearsome domain indeed,” Geoffrey said. He looked around his shop, as though searching for eavesdroppers. “Ever since Richard Mewburn disposed of the proper lord.”

“Surely the Earl of York would not permit such an unlawful occurrence as murder within his realm.”

“Bah.” Geoffrey waved his pudgy fingers. “That happened twenty years ago. Since then, murder is the least of evils here in Magnus. The slightest of crimes results in hideous punishment. Men with their ankles crushed for failing to bow to Richard’s sheriff. Branded faces for holding back crops—even though the poor are taxed almost to starvation.” Geoffrey lowered his voice. “The Earl of York is paid rich tribute to stay away. It is whispered that some evil blackmail prevented the earl’s father from dispensing justice after Magnus was taken by force, blackmail that still holds the current earl long after the father’s death from—”

Katherine gasped. She had not moved since delivering the candles. The first sound of her voice, eerie and muffled from behind the swath of dirty rags around her head, startled Thomas.

“You cannot reveal this to strangers,” she protested. “It is enough to sentence them to death!”

Geoffrey brought his hand up quickly, as if to strike her. She stepped back and bumped a table. Two clay candle molds teetered, then fell to the ground and smashed into dust.

“Clumsy wretch!” the candle maker snarled. He grabbed a thin
willow stick from the table beside him and whipped it across the side of her head.

Had Thomas paused to think, he would have decided it was her complete acceptance of the pain that drove him to action. She did not cry, did not whimper, merely bowed her head and waited for the next blow.

The animal had struck her face. What more cruel reminder of her deformity could exist?

Holy rage burst inside Thomas.

The candle maker raised his arm to strike again. Thomas roared and dove across the narrow space between them. He crashed full force into the candle maker, and they both fell to the ground. Before the candle maker could react, Thomas pounced on his chest.

Fury possessed Thomas and he grabbed Geoffrey by both ears. He pulled the candle maker’s head inches from the floor and held it. His arms shook as he fought an overpowering urge to dash the candle maker’s head against the stone in one savage motion.

“Foul, horrid creature,” ground Thomas between clenched teeth. “You shall pay dearly for the abuse—”

He did not finish his threat.

William pulled him upward, and during that motion, soldiers burst into the shop.

Had William not been so helpless with both his arms around Thomas, he might have been able to reach between his shoulder blades and pull the sword free from where it had been strapped in a sheath on his back.

Instead, less than a second later, three soldiers had him pinned against the wall. Two other soldiers grabbed Thomas.

“You hail from the abbey at Harland Moor,” one of the soldiers holding Thomas said. It was not a question. “Three monks have been found dead there. One by a blow to the head. Two by poisoning.” The soldier grinned. “You and your large companion here will hang. You for murder. Your companion for aiding a murderer in escape.”

L
ate morning heat baked the bandages that covered Katherine’s face. In heat like this, it always seemed that she could not draw enough air, no matter how she strained her lungs. Yet it was more than the heat outside that made her long for the cool shadows of the candle shop. She hated crowds. She hated the mockery and taunting of children; she hated the unexpected jostling, for the small holes left for her eyes gave her little vision, and most sounds that reached her were muffled and displaced.

So she walked with hesitation through the marketplace, holding her basket as close to her side as possible, and hoping Hawkwood might find her soon.

“Fresh bread! Fresh bread!”

Katherine turned her head to seek the source of the cries.

No. It wasn’t Hawkwood. This seller of bread was a man with only one arm. The other arm, ending at his elbow, tucked a long loaf of bread against his ribs. Hawkwood was a master of altered appearances, but even he could not give the illusion of a stumped arm.

“Potions! Healing potions! Love potions!”

Katherine turned her head in the opposite direction. An old woman, face half-hidden in the shadows of a bonnet, leaned over a rough table covered with dried herbs. Inside her bandage, Katherine
smiled. Hawkwood would enjoy the irony of posing as someone with knowledge of herbs and potions.

Katherine moved closer to the old woman and pretended to scan the table.

“Potions!” the old woman screamed again to be heard above the din of the market. “Healing potions! Love potions!”

Katherine waited. Would Hawkwood give her the phrase?

“Scat, girl,” the old woman hissed. “You’ll turn others away. I’ve nothing to restore a face like yours.”

Katherine hesitated. There might be someone standing right behind, unseen to her, and Hawkwood had no choice but to react thus.

“Scat! Scat!” The woman’s voice rose to a strained screech. “No love potion would earn you even a blind fool!”

Katherine backed away. What was it in the weak and the hurt, so far from nobility, that took satisfaction in showing cruelty to those even weaker and more hurt?

Something bumped her ankle. It was awkward, bending over so far that she might be able to see the ground through the eyeholes of her bandage.

The object at her feet was a red ball.

Before she could puzzle further, a second ball, blue, rolled past the red one. Then a green ball.

“Ho, ho, fair lady! A tiny farthing is all I require.” A man danced in front of her, scooped the balls into his hands, and began to juggle. “One farthing and laughter is yours.”

Katherine shook her head. Whatever reason Hawkwood had for arranging the three lit candles at the altar of the church to wait her morning prayers, it was important enough to have summoned her forth. She could not dally, not even for a jester with a bouncy,
belled hat, twinkling eyes, painted face, and ridiculous red and green tights.

The jester spun the balls in a tighter circle so that they were almost a blur. Blue, red, green. “Come, come, fair lady. The Lord loves laughter. Heaven stands open at the sound!”

Heaven stands open.

Katherine did laugh. Again, Hawkwood had managed to arrive unexpectedly. “One farthing, then. For when heaven stands open, only fools turn away.”

Hawkwood nodded, satisfied from her answer that it was indeed her beneath the bandages. They both knew that should she ever be discovered, two things were certain. Her death, and then someone put in her place behind the bandages for the very purpose of capturing Hawkwood.

“Arrange to deliver candles to Gervaise,” he said in a lowered voice. “I shall be in the church when the midafternoon bells ring.”

Katherine set down her basket and clapped as his juggling continued. Appearances might be important.

The jester bowed, then reached into a bag at his feet and pulled out a short, straight stick. He tilted his head back and balanced the stick on his chin. He began to juggle again, stick tottering, as he walked away from Katherine to cajole attention from others in the marketplace.

The stone walls of the church provided cool air, and as Katherine entered, she stopped to set down the cloth bag of candles. She pulled her clothes away from her body and flapped them to enjoy the relief of that air against hot and sticky skin.

“Welcome, Katherine.” The words greeted her from the shadows of a large pillar. “I trust these candles are of the same fine quality that our father priest has come to expect.”

“Yes, Gervaise,” she answered as her eyes adjusted to the dimness. “Geoffrey complains, of course, that for what payment he receives, he should call the candles a contribution of charity.”

Gervaise was an elderly man with gray hair combed straight back. A plain cassock covered his slight body, and he stood with his hands in front of him, folded together. “Please, Katherine, let me help you with that bundle.”

“Thank you,” she said.

As he stooped to take the candles, he said, “Will you bring these to the nave? I’ll set the others in storage.”

Again Katherine nodded. The elaborate acting, she felt, was rarely necessary, but Hawkwood insisted they always behave as if enemy ears were nearby and open. He said the island of Magnus was riddled with enough hidden passages that those ears could very well be there.

In the nave she began to remove from the candelabra the stubs of burnt candles to replace them with new. Not for the first time did it anger her to see the finely wrought gold of the candelabrum gleaming in the light that poured in through stained glass high above. How many mouths could this gold feed; how fat must the clergy become?

Something bumped her ankle and rolled over her foot. A red ball.

She smiled, a movement that scraped her skin against the tight bandages. When she turned, she saw the outline of a figure in the shadows behind the beam of light. Wordlessly, she moved closer.

She saw Hawkwood as he usually was. An old man, bent beneath a black cape.

“M’lord,” she whispered, “fare thee well, here where heaven stands open for those who believe?”

Hawkwood relaxed at the familiar words and pressed farther back so that he stood in a recess of the wall, invisible in deep shadow. Katherine moved in front of him and bowed her head. Any unexpected visitor would see only her, deep in meditation.

“Katherine, I fare well. Magnus, however, may not.”

“M’lord?”

“In the candle shop, you were visited yesterday by two men, each now in the dungeons.”

“Yes. They were strangely familiar.”

He nodded. “The older is one of us. A knight and a good friend of mine.”

Katherine drew in a startled breath, loud enough in the cool silence of the inner sanctum of the church that it echoed from the far walls.

“The other,” Hawkwood continued, “is one I had hoped long ago might take Magnus from the enemy.”

“Then if we release them from the dungeon …,” Katherine began.

“We must, yet the knight is well known to the enemy,” Hawkwood said. “He fought hard when Magnus fell all those years ago and was barely able to escape with his life. We must find a way to let them escape without revealing how we have hidden ourselves in their presence all these years.”

“If he is well known to them, why did he return to certain death?”

“Because of the other,” Hawkwood replied. He took a moment to gather his thoughts. Katherine did not interrupt. She rarely did. “The one named Thomas. We play a terrible cat-and-mouse game with the enemy.” Katherine could not see his grim smile, but she heard it in his voice. “And we are the mouse. They know, as do we, the knight’s
purpose here. They can afford to let him live while the rest of the game is played. What we do not know is the heart of the other, Thomas.”

“Thomas? He is a good man,” Katherine said quickly. Too quickly.

“Katherine,” Hawkwood said gently, “do not let his countenance sway you.”

She stiffened. “Hardly. Do I forsake what little teaching I have received?”

“My apologies.”

“He defended me,” she said. “A man comely enough that he could choose among maidens fought for a freak behind bandages. What says that of his heart?”