Her Christmas Knight
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‘How did you escape my guards?’ He set down the flagon.
It took her a moment to realise he was talking about the game. ‘I waited in the dark until they were occupied by the other players, Your Majesty.’
‘Although I am not pleased that my guards should be so easily distracted, it is good that you show both intelligence and patience,’ he said. ‘You will need both.’
She didn’t reply. Being the last of three daughters, she had learned patience. The King was weighing his words and she was still waiting for an answer to her question.
‘Did you enjoy finding the seal?’ He grabbed a loaf of bread and tore it. The crumbs scattered across the table.
‘I did, thank you.’
He chewed slowly. ‘You hold your prize as if I will take it back,’ he said. ‘I promise that it is yours, but I do desire you to place it on the table so that I may enjoy it in these last moments.’
Her eyes fell to the horn still clasped in her hand. She placed it on the table.
He set down the bread and pointed at the horn. ‘You have not looked at it closely, have you?’
There had been little opportunity for her to inspect her prize. She shook her head, fearing she would offend him.
‘Did you not find it odd that the prize is a hunting horn?’
‘No, Your Majesty, it is a fine prize.’ She glanced at it, and noticed that numerous pictures had been carved into the thick silver bands.
He picked up the horn and turned it in his hands. ‘There are many tales told here.’ He touched the smallest band by the mouth of the horn. ‘This is the resolution of the story, although how it is resolved makes little sense in comparison to the tales told by the first two bands.’
‘And those tales, sire?’ she asked.
The King seemed in little hurry for their meeting to be over. And if he thought he was putting her at ease by talking about a decorative horn he could not be more wrong. She felt tighter than the silver bands.
He gave a slight shrug. ‘It tells of kings warring and lovers being torn apart. It is a typical story for troubadours.’
‘And what is shown in the resolution that does not make sense?’ she asked.
‘We only see the lovers joined again, their arms cradling a child between them.’
‘And this does not make sense?’
He set the horn down and reached for his wine. The liquid sloshed against the sides of the blue glass. In the light streaming from the stained-glass windows the dark red colour looked like blood.
‘We do not see what happens to the kings. I have to admit I am biased, but there should be some balance between the two tales.’
She glanced at the perfect workmanship of the horn. ‘Perhaps a band is missing.’
‘Or the craftsman didn’t think what had happened to the kings of different countries was important enough to depict.’ He drained his goblet. ‘I want you to know that I do not hold to such a belief. I could not care less what happens to the lovers, or to individual people. There are greater risks than the lives of two people. How old are you?’
‘I have known twenty-two summers, Your Majesty.’
‘You are old enough for what I need of you. You showed cunning and care in pursuit of the seal and you live in the very town that plagues me the most. So, although you have no training for such a task, I am ordering you to take on a mission of the utmost importance.’
‘I do not understand.’
She shifted in the seat that was no longer comfortable. Her first instinct was to leave the room, but she could not rise without his permission. Maybe she should not have been so clever in the game-playing. But she was coming to realise that perhaps it hadn’t been a game.
‘I want you to know that what I speak of now is between us. If this information becomes public before your duty to me is accomplished, you and your family will be placed in this very tower—and not as guests.’
She wished now that she had taken his offer of wine. The liquid would have quenched her suddenly parched throat. She nodded her head to let him know she understood, although she didn’t, not fully.
‘No need to lose your courage now. I am not asking you to break any commandments with God.’
Her heart did not ease. Maybe she wouldn’t have to commit murder, but it was something grave. Something that was important enough to bring the King back to London. Something that he felt necessitated his making a threat to her family.
‘In any war, information is as important a part of winning as the ability with a sword,’ he continued. ‘Right now there are letters that are passing secrets from this very chamber to the usurpers in Scotland. For distinction, or for pride, all these letters are sealed with the impression of a half-thistle.’
She could not be following this conversation correctly. It was too private, too important. The King of England was telling her that he had a traitor in his court. And the traitor closed his treacherous letters with a seal. A true seal.
‘The seeking of the seal...the riddle,’ she said, ‘it wasn’t a game.’
‘No, it was a test. I thought that whoever was cunning enough to find and escape with a fake seal would be cunning enough to find a real one.’ He tapped the table and smiled. ‘And, in case you were wondering, none of those seekers were randomly chosen to play the game.’
She had to concentrate on his words and not on the image of her sisters locked in the Tower. ‘What is it that you want me to do?’ She forced the words from her lips.
‘I think it should be clear to one who has beaten my best guards and won a testing game. It is the reason the winner’s prize must be a hunting horn. I wish for the winner to be a hunter.’
She must be shaking her head, for the King raised his hand and nodded.
‘Yes, Alice of Fenton from Swaffham. I wish you to find the Half-Thistle Seal,’ he continued. ‘Whoever has this seal will be the traitor. We believe that this traitor is in your very town—might indeed be among the people you know.’
She stopped breathing. This couldn’t be happening to her. He couldn’t possibly mean what she thought he meant.
‘I wish you to become a spy,’ he finished.
Oh, spindles—he did.
Chapter Two
The next morning was too clear and pretty for Alice’s dark mood, so she took comfort in the night’s damp that was still making the morning unpleasantly cold. Rubbing her arms, she walked briskly out through the iron doors and into the enormous courtyard.
The light had not yet crested the horizon and the courtyard was bathed in a glow somewhere between night and day. The dim light did not matter. She knew where she wanted to go. The kitchen gardens would be empty of courtiers and servants at this time. She needed the privacy. Better yet, she desired the ugliness of lacerated chopped vegetables and herbs. A mutilated barren garden might lighten her mood.
She had spent most of the night trying to resolve what the King wanted of her. When she hadn’t been able to, she had tried to sleep. Nothing had worked. The night had not been long enough for her to resolve anything, and the dark had made her already nightmarish thoughts more frightening.
She rushed up the inclined hill, and turned to walk through the lavender-hedged entrance.
The kitchen gardens were empty. She pulled her skirts tight against her to walk the narrow paths between each planting. She didn’t know why she bothered. Tearing her dress might be a welcome distraction.
In fact, she’d welcome company, too. She longed for Esther, her most loyal of servants, but she was too old for this trip. Esther’s cantankerous company would have kept her occupied with menial chatter. She’d would even have taken her father’s flighty personality for a diversion.
Then she wouldn’t have to worry about the task she had been ordered to do: to spy on her friends, to expose one of them for the enemy they were.
It would be impossible. The King was not asking her to delve into the personal belongings of strangers, but of friends. She would have to search their homes, their carriages, their wardrobes to look for a hidden seal. How could she betray her friends’ trust?
A crunch on the pebbled path announced that she was no longer alone.
‘Couldn’t sleep?’
She did not need to turn around to know who was behind her. His voice, as familiar to her as her own, confirmed her other nightmarish thoughts. She had indeed seen Hugh again. In the night, she’d hoped she imagined him because of the unfamiliarity of Court.
Releasing her grip on her skirts, she turned to face him.
He stood closer than she’d thought was possible on the pebbled footpath, and the morning light was strong enough to illuminate what she could no longer deny.
His lean, rugged body was solid; the blond hair that had once curled around her fingers was bright. Everything about him was all too real. Including her sharp anxiety at seeing him again.
It was as if six years had been stripped away and she was sixteen again. Sixteen and spilling out her naïve adoration with no reserve, with no thought that her affections would not be reciprocated.
She remembered every inflection of his sneering reply.
Shame flooded her limbs. She wanted to flee, to turn away, at least to lower her eyes—but she could not.
He approached her slowly, stealthily. The blue concentration of his eyes burned away her confidence. Even her skirts hung limply, as if the very clothing she wore was as insignificant as she felt.
‘So it was you,’ she whispered.
He took a step closer. The glint of the morning sun softened his features, or maybe it just hid the harshness she had glimpsed last night.
‘Did you doubt it?’ he answered. ‘When it was I who had you in my arms again?’
Hot embarrassment swept through her. It had not only been the King’s mission occupying her thoughts throughout the night. Hugh’s arms, his slightly crooked nose and all her embarrassing confessions to him had haunted her dreams and had her wishing for the light of day so that she could pretend he did not exist.
She had almost convinced herself, too. When the King demanded so much of her, she didn’t need her thoughts occupied by her childish vow to marry him. Certainly she never wanted to re-live her begging him for a kiss when she was sixteen.
And now he stood right in front of her, like a mocking reminder of her foolish youth.
A reminder of how he had rejected her.
But that did not mean she had to listen to him or repeat the mistake of conversing with him. He had purposely made it sound as if her running into him had been a clandestine affair. As if she would ever consider such thoughts again!
She looked pointedly around him and lifted her skirts—but he blocked the only exit from the garden. For one flaring moment, she fought the terror of feeling trapped. No doubt he had done that purposely, too.
‘Let me pass,’ she said, proud that her voice didn’t betray her true feelings.
‘After this long time, that is all you have to say to me?’
‘I’d say less if you would let me by,’ she replied.
‘You have changed much, Alice. You used to be more talkative.’
‘Maybe I thought you were someone worth talking to.’
She took a step in his direction. She’d force him to move if she had to.
He didn’t move. ‘I merely guessed that you couldn’t sleep. It was either that or you never made it to your bed. But you have changed your gown. I was always partial to that colour grey on you. It almost matches the colour of your eyes.’
‘You have been too long at Court,’ she said. ‘Save your pretty words for the more feeble-minded.’
‘Just as well you didn’t wear grey yesterday, for it seems the King prefers purple,’ he replied, as if they were carrying on a normal conversation. ‘Did you return to your room last night, or did one of your many servants bring you a change of clothing?’
Why was he talking of her clothing? He was close enough that she should have been able to know what he was thinking, but his eyes were like opaque glass—reflective, revealing nothing.
She didn’t need this confusion.
‘Why are you here?’ she demanded. ‘I know it wasn’t to talk of my dress.’
‘After we had run into each other in the hall, I thought we could meet once again—but then you spent time with the King.’
‘Are you following me?’ she asked.
‘Only enough to see you.’
His eyes held hers and his lips curved almost sensuously, almost as if he wanted her.
She couldn’t take his looking at her like that—not now, not when she was too tired to keep her defences up. Why was he acting as if he cared? She knew that he didn’t, and never had.
Treacherous tears were building. She would embarrass herself if she stayed.
But he wasn’t going to let her pass. He was going to stand there with his beautiful smile and his confusing words. A thought occurred. Something... No. Someone had brought him here.
‘It is the King, isn’t it?’ she asked, although she knew she was right.
‘The King?’
‘You want to know what the King wanted of me. You don’t want me.’
Some emotion flitted across his eyes like a jagged cloud. His intensity towards her vanished and he shrugged. ‘You cannot blame me for trying.’
Oh, yes, she could. If she hadn’t already wished him to hell, she was doing so now. Callous, cruel, arrogant... She was glad his words had cut so quickly into her softening feelings. Her tears had dried and she could leave without another embarrassing scene.
‘I owe you no words, no explanation,’ she retorted. ‘I owe you less than that—I owe you nothing.’
‘Oh, do you?’ he replied. ‘In front of all those courtiers you would have fainted from exertion if I had not been holding you up.’
Let him think it had been exertion and not his presence that had caused her to feel faint.
‘You cannot keep me here for ever.’
His stance changed, became more relaxed. He had that air of boredom she had seen in the other courtiers. But Hugh didn’t fool her.
Oh, he was dressed as ornately as any courtier. The green of his tunic, woven very fine, lay perfectly over his chest and tapered slightly at his waist. His tan leggings fitted seamlessly over his legs and his boots gleamed new. Yet none of his frippery hid what he had become. He was too unyielding, too rugged to look like anything but what he was: a warrior.
She had never thought of him that way, although he had trained for knighthood all his life. She had watched him broaden into a man, but he had always been Hugh...a girl’s infatuation.
Now he was something more. Something she didn’t understand.
‘I do not need for ever,’ he said. ‘I need enough time for you to tell me what you did with the King.’
‘Did?’ she repeated. ‘What I did with the King? Don’t you mean “spoke of”?’
‘Do I?’
He would not let her avoid this conversation. She had wanted—no, needed to confide in someone. And here was Hugh, asking her to do so. As if she would ever confide in him again.
‘He congratulated me on my winning,’ she said.
‘Something more happened; the King doesn’t just share pleasantries in his private chamber.’
‘Nothing of importance.’
‘Your blushing gives you away. You were never good at lying.’
She’d have to get good at it. Her sisters’ lives were at stake.
‘It is of little consequence for you.’
His eyes narrowed and he abandoned his appearance of nonchalance. ‘Maybe you haven’t changed. I see you have kept your stubbornness.’
She’d have preferred to keep her pride, but it hadn’t take long in Hugh’s presence for her to know that it was still in tatters.
‘I do not see how it concerns you.’
‘The King and his friendships always matter to me.’
‘I am hardly his friend.’
He eyes hardened with a heat that slid along her face, taking in her eyes, the slant of her jaw, and resting on her lips. She felt his eyes there, felt his words as he answered.
‘No, I suppose friend doesn’t quite capture your role in the King’s life, does it?’ His eyes were back on hers and the heat was gone. ‘But I refuse to think you’ve changed that much. Whatever the King wants of you, you won’t be able to do it.’
Shock caused her to ask, ‘How do you know what the King wants of me?’
‘It isn’t hard to guess. You were in his private chamber for over an hour.’
He had been watching her—maybe even listening behind a door or a tapestry. The King had made her think it was a private conversation. There could only be one reason why Hugh would be privy to this secret: the King did not trust her.
Well, she’d show them both.
‘What do you know what I can or cannot do? It’s been six years. Long enough for both of us to change.’
‘Not long enough. Not to betray your family like this.’
‘It’s not a betrayal. It’s an honour!’
Colour left his face. ‘To hell with this pretence. What has he done to you?’
He moved to grab her.
She jerked her arm away. ‘Do not delude yourself into thinking I would welcome your touch again.’
Anger blazed in his eyes before he could hide the emotion from her. She fought the instinct to step back. Hugh wasn’t pretending he was angry; he was acting as if he hated her.
‘No?’ He dropped his arm. ‘Or maybe it is the King’s touch you prefer.’
The insult seized at her thoughts. This wasn’t a conversation about her spying. Hugh didn’t know what the King had asked of her. He thought she was whoring.
Rage whipped and tightened her throat. ‘I’d prefer anyone to you!’
‘Then you have changed from the girl I once knew,’ he said. ‘What happened after you threw yourself at me and I refused? Did you throw yourself at another? Did he refuse too? Or were you simply waiting for the King to notice your...charms?’
She clenched her skirts so she didn’t strike him. ‘If I was, that would be my affair.’
His mouth curved cruelly. ‘An interesting choice of words.’
Her fingers bit into the cloth. It didn’t matter what he thought. He didn’t deserve the truth.
‘I don’t have to listen to this.’
She stepped over the plants, not caring when her skirts snagged on some rosemary.
He shifted away and let her pass. ‘There is no need to ruin your gown in order to escape from me. I will go, but I will stop whatever has been started here.’
‘Only if the King wishes it.’
She smiled and knew it didn’t reach her eyes. Let him make what he would out of her words. She was beyond caring.
His hands flexed at his sides and he loomed over her before he settled back on his heels.
‘He will wish it,’ he bit out as he pivoted away. ‘I’ll make sure he wishes it.’
He was out of her sight before she could take two breaths.
She felt rooted where she stood. Rooted. And she was standing amongst the herbs.
A tight rumble rose involuntarily from deep inside her. She bit her lips to seal it in but the sound burst out of her. Then there were more—too fast, too quick to control—until she was laughing and crying in the garden. Hysterics amongst the herbs.
She clamped her hands over her mouth and wiped furiously at her tears. Frustrated at herself, she brushed at her skirts until she could take large gasps of air.
By the time the sun had risen and the opening of shutters echoed in the courtyard, she could breathe again and felt lighter. Better.
Better than she’d thought she would after seeing Hugh again. Maybe all she had needed was those hysterics to settle her thoughts.
She strolled further into the garden and picked an apple from the arbour.
When she had first come to the garden she had thought being alone would sort out her thoughts, but it was her outpouring that had made two things painfully clear.
The first was that she knew herself better than Hugh did—and in more ways than she had ever guessed.
She could do what the King commanded. Spying was no more than discovering information and lies. It was no more than seeking the truth. Her worries over betraying her friends were misplaced.
She would find a way into their homes. If someone she knew was a traitor then searching through their belongings would not be a betrayal of friendship. If treason against her King had been committed, she had already been betrayed.
She couldn’t believe she had ever wondered if she could spy. A wrong had been committed. What did she always do when there was an injustice? She made a plan and corrected it. If there was a wrong, she’d set it right. She couldn’t believe she had ever questioned herself.
It had to be the surprise of seeing Hugh again that had muddled her thinking about spying.
Her thinking always became ensnared when it came to him. Their conversation today was proof of that. Over the years she had imagined many conversations with Hugh, but in her imaginings the conversations had made sense.
This conversation certainly didn’t. He had never given her an honest answer as to why he’d sought her in the garden. The flattery about her dress and wanting to see her alone had been a lie. He might remember differently, but she would never forget his rejection of her.
She bit hard into the apple. It was mealy from the cold, but she didn’t care. He believed she was the King’s mistress. He thought she whored with other men. He had come to the garden to find the answer for himself. Maybe he’d thought she would lie with him as well!
Hurrying her pace, she revelled in the crunch of the pebbles beneath her feet, but it didn’t ease her heart. And that was the second pain-filled fact she had learned from her crying.
She was still in love with Hugh.
For six years she had fooled herself into thinking she no longer cared for him. How wrong she had been. She might as well be sixteen again, with all her wild longings.
But she didn’t feel sixteen around him. There was something more now. She felt...
She took another bite of the apple. What good would it be to delve into what she felt around him? Hugh had ridiculed her youthful declaration of love. And now he thought she whored with the King.
What manner of man was he?
She knew the answer to that: the wrong manner of man.
Anger rushed through her limbs and sent heat to her face. She had been wronged for many years by Hugh. And, no matter how much of a wrong it had been, she could never set her heart to rights.
Pivoting, she strode towards the exit. She had lost in the battle of love, but there was more to her than her heart. There was her loyalty, her honour, her determination.
Throwing the apple core onto some shrivelled clippings, she made her decision.
To hell with Hugh and her heart. No more distractions, deliberations or confusions.
She had a traitor to catch.
Chapter Three
November, 1296
Of course, making the decision to be a spy and knowing how to do it were two different matters entirely.
Alice walked purposefully through the town square to the widest house in Swaffham. Icy rain pelted against her. She clutched her green cloak tighter. It was a futile gesture. The rain had already found gaps around her neck and cuffs, and her dress lay coldly sodden against her trembling skin.
She sped up her walking, aware of other unfortunate drenched souls jumping out of her way.
Two weeks of wasted time at Court and travelling to Swaffham and she only had vague ideas of what she could do to find the Seal. It wasn’t as if she could ask anyone how to spy. She was sworn to secrecy.
At least she knew what she had to do first. She needed information about the people in town—which meant she needed to be around them and invited into their homes. And there was only one place to go for those types of invitations.
Pushing open the door, she walked quietly into the building that held many town meetings. The hall was a simple large room, filled with chairs and tables. The walls were covered with plain unembroidered panels of green linen cloth. A fire blazed in the hearth under the hood of a huge chimney, and showed light that the narrow windows fitted with oiled parchment could not.