Sword of Justice (White Knight Series) Read Online Free PDF Page A

companions—”
    “As were you!”
    Stephen ignored the reproach. “When I didn’t find Drake at the de Lacy manor, the next best guess was the fitzHughs, and lastly the Twyfords.”
    William fitzAlan’s temper was known far and wide, but no one experienced the repercussions more than Drake and Stephen. “Why didn’t you storm the castle? Why didn’t you muster help? Why did you wait like a thief in the night in case they happened to bring your brother out?”
    “Should I have knocked on the drawbridge and demanded they raise the portcullis?”
    “Yea! A resounding yea! Particularly since Twyford Castle is no more than a fortified pigsty, and a badly fortified one at that.” Next up for William’s verbal lashing was Drake. “Did you do it? Did you hack off Maynard of Clarendon’s genitals and fling them to the pye-dogs?”
    “If you knew your son,” Nelda said, “you wouldn’t ask a foolish question the likes of that.”
    “And how in God’s name did you allow yourself to get taken in the first place?”
    “Four against one, he might have been able to handle,” Stephen said, coming to his brother’s defense. “Five against one is beyond even Drake fitzAlan’s ability.”
    “What do I care about numbers when my sons’ lives are in the balance? Especially when they can do something about it. Which neither apparently did!” His sunburnt complexion deepened. As angry as he was, he was holding most of his wrath inside. If he weren’t held together with flesh and bone, he would have exploded on the spot. He wanted to kill every man who did this to his son, even if it meant the gallows for himself. “If you didn’t kill Maynard, who in God’s name did?”
    “Tha’,” said Drake, “is wha’ I mean t’find out.”
    “By Christ’s pain, you won’t! Have you forgotten Maynard of Clarendon has well-placed kin?”
    Drake would have gotten a queasy stomach if he didn’t already have one. Maynard’s older brother was Randall of Clarendon, the acting sheriff. Winchester had been temporarily left without a real sheriff inasmuch as Richard of Ilchester—who had served as both bishop of Winchester and sheriff of Hampshire—died earlier that summer. But since Randall performed the duties of the sheriff’s office, everyone addressed him as Sheriff Clarendon.
    William stood. “When you’re able, you’re sailing for the continent, there to await your fate, whether foul or fair.”
    “You want your son branded an outlaw?” Nelda asked.
    “A breathing outlaw is better than a dead one.”
    Enyd returned bearing sloshing basins. After Nelda dipped his hands into one of them, Drake let the pillows swallow him. Wearily he asked, “Di’ you receive a ransom deman’?”
    “If I had, I would have gladly paid.”
    “Then Graham meant t’hang me from the first.” Drake should have felt something—remorse, dread, rage—but he was beyond feeling much of anything.
    “All the more reason to get you out of England. Soonest won’t be soon enough.”
    Nelda covered Drake’s eyes with a moist compress of another of her concoctions. “Out. Everybody out. And let this boy rest.”
    Enyd helped him swallow a third potion, which eased him into sleep as soon as the cup left his lips. Disobeying Nelda’s orders, William and Stephen stayed with him until his groans fell off.
    He didn’t hear them leave.
    * * *
    A high-pitched shriek sounded from one of the upper chambers.
    “That would be Enyd,” Nelda said. “Your men had better keep their distance. Taken with fever, she has, and tucked into my own bed until she be recovered or sent to her Maker.”
    A few minutes earlier, and without warning, Nelda’s strapping sons had lugged Drake out of his sick bed, carted him on a bumpy ride down the back staircase, and lowered him into a cramped undercroft. The hatch closed above. A storage chest moved over the hatch. And Drake, not yet fully awake, found himself entombed in a dark underground chamber, his head