Lady of Valor Read online

  “They have only one room left,” she said when Cabal stepped up close behind her.

  “One room is fine, my lady. I would not advise your lodging alone in this hovel.”

  “But to share quarters with three men...'twould hardly be seemly--”

  He did not point out that no one in this place paid any mind to seemly behavior or propriety. “James and Albert can sleep outside in the hallway to guard the door.” The knights nodded agreeably. “As for me, I shall sleep within, on the floor.”

  The innkeeper snorted, and pointed them toward their room. Without a care for what her guards or the others in the hostel might think, Cabal took Emmalyn's arm and led her slowly down the dark hallway, surreptitiously revealing the hilt of his sword and making sure that if any of the other men had designs on the lady, they would know that he stood in their way.

  The room could hardly be called such. It was a cramped little alcove that reeked of urine, stale smoke, and recent sex. The door would provide little use as a barrier against entry: it lurched at an odd angle, supported by only one leather hinge at the top of the battered oak panel. An old straw mattress lay rumpled in the corner of the small space, a moth-eaten blanket bunched up and evidently used for a pillow by the last tenant.

  Cabal turned to Emmalyn, ready to scoop her up and deliver her away bodily from the filth of the place. “There must be a better alternative than this.”

  She shook her head, frowning at the darkness that awaited her. “There is nowhere else,” she said remotely. “'Tis fine for one night. Really, I will be all right here. We'll just have to make do.”

  “As you wish,” he acquiesced reluctantly. He retrieved a candle from his pack and lit it, cursing the idea the moment the light traveled into each revolting corner and crevice of the cramped space. Gruffly, he sent one of the men out to get a blanket from the cart. The large square of wool was clean and worked well to create a makeshift pallet for Emmalyn. Cabal's satchel would serve as her pillow.

  “Thank you,” she told him as she removed her boots and settled in fully clothed. When the guards had been posted outside the door and Cabal had positioned himself against the wall at her side, sitting on the packed earth with nothing to cushion his body, Emmalyn rose up, frowning. “That cannot be a very comfortable place to rest.”

  A crash of pottery sounded from the main area of the inn, followed by a woman's sharp scream. “I do not expect to rest here much at all,” he told her. “But you should try. Close your eyes, Emmalyn. I'll watch over you.”

  Slowly, she resumed her place on the pallet, curled toward where he sat, her eyes half-open and watching him in quiet contemplation. “I missed you after you left last eve.”

  He turned to look at her and could not keep from echoing her warm smile. “It was very hard to leave you,” he admitted. “I came back to your door twice before anyone stirred within the keep. Both times I had my hand on the latch, ready to push it open and come inside.”

  “I would not have turned you away.”

  “I know, my lady. And that is the very reason I chose not to enter. 'Twould only make things more difficult for you, should your entire keep know that you have taken me as your lover so soon after learning of your widowhood.”

  She broke his gaze and toyed with the edge of the blanket. “Would it shock you if I said I do not care what people think? What if I told you that it does not matter to me who should find out about us?”

  Cabal smiled, humbled by her frank admission, but unable to accept such selfless consideration. “And how will you feel when King Richard is returned to England and you are sent away to marry one of his vassals?”

  “The king may command my future, but he cannot command my heart,” she whispered fiercely. “Until he's returned, I am free to live much as I wish. For now, I am free to...to be with whomever I choose.”

  Cabal did not miss the hitch in her voice, the sudden amendment of what she might have said on emotional impulse. Had she nearly said she loved him? The idea pained him more than it elated him, for if she did feel something for him, those feelings belonged to another man...the man she thought him to be. The man he could never hope to be.

  For long moments, he looked at the beautiful, trusting face of Garrett's wife, remembering her sweet innocence of the night before, the velvet warmth of her touch. Wondering what he had done to warrant the pure affection he saw shimmering in her eyes. Thinking how he did not deserve any of the bliss he felt in being with her. How he would never have known it, had it not been for Garrett's death....

  “Have I said something wrong, Cabal? You seem a thousand miles away.”

  “Just thinking,” he said, but in truth, his thoughts were very distant. More than a thousand miles away, in Palestine. Farther even, than that.

  The base sounds of sex and drunken fighting in the streets and beyond their room carried Cabal back to what felt like a thousand years ago, back to his childhood. In fact, the longer he remained in the hovel, the less it bothered him. It merely served to remind him of nearly every night he had spent as a child traveling from town to town, keep to keep, with his mother and her troupe of entertainers. The presence of sex and violence had been as much a part of his childhood as eating and sleeping. But it was because of Emmalyn that he felt embarrassment now. Knowing that she was awake and listening made him sick with disgust and eager to speed her away from the ugliness of it.

  “'Tis late,” he whispered, hearing the harsh grate of emotion in his voice. Hoping the dark would make the place more tolerable for her, he leaned over and blew out the candle. “Try to sleep now, my lady.”

  Her small hand reached out from under the blanket and curled around his fingers, warm and tender. So very sweet. “'Twill help, I think, if I can feel you there beside me,” she whispered.

  For a moment all he could do was sit in silence, feeling her trace his knuckles with her soft fingertips. “After my mother died and I was first sent to live in London,” he heard himself say quietly in the dark, “I used to tell myself stories when I could not sleep.”

  “What kind of stories?”

  He shrugged, trying to recall what had fed his child's mind all those years ago. “All sorts, I suppose. Mostly boyish fantasies of slaying dragons and wooing beautiful princesses. Foolish tales, anything to pass the hours till dawn.” A memory came back to him then, and before he could stop himself, he was telling her about it. “The tale I liked best was something my mother said King Henry had once told at a great feast she attended. 'Twas about a brave knight named Sir Lancelot.”

  “Arthur's champion,” Emmalyn supplied eagerly.

  “You know this story?”

  “Some of it, yes. But I would have you tell me what you remember of the tale.”

  She snuggled deeper into her makeshift pallet and Cabal began to tell her what he remembered of the life of the great white knight. He told her how Lancelot was rescued from abandonment as a young child and raised by the mystical Lady of the Lake. How he became the king's most trusted knight--Arthur's closest friend and the boldest champion of the realm. He told her the most troubling part of the story, too, of the noble hero's darkest hour, when he betrayed the king's trust and fell madly in love with the fair queen Guinevere.

  As a boy, when honor and duty had meant something to Cabal, he had never understood how a few stolen moments with a beautiful woman could have caused a man like Lancelot to betray his friend. How love could make a man forsake his responsibility to his king and country. But feeling Emmalyn's fingers entwined with his, hearing her soft sighs as sleep reached out to claim her, he finally knew how Lancelot had fallen.

  Cabal had not betrayed a friend to be with Emmalyn, but every moment he spent with her--every hour that brought him closer to telling her how much she was coming to mean to him--enmeshed him deeper in an impossible situation. Entangled him further in a seemingly inextricable deception.

  He should have told her in the very beginning of the full circumstances surrounding Garrett's death.
At the least, he should have made sure she knew before he had taken her to his bed. Now the situation was swiftly escalating out of his control.

  Now he suspected he was falling in love with her, and he was not sure he could bear the thought of one day losing her. From some cruel corner of his mind, his conscience warned that he would never truly have her--God knew he did not deserve her--so long as he chose to keep the truth from her.

  “Emmalyn?” he whispered haltingly. She did not respond, but her steady breathing told him that she had drifted into a peaceful slumber. Taking some measure of comfort in her restfulness, Cabal lay on his back on the cold, hard floor and stared up at the shadowy rafters until morning at last began to break through the cracks in the shuttered window.

  As soon as they finished their trading that day and returned home to Fallonmour, he would tell her everything.

  Chapter 21

  Cabal woke Emmalyn early and with a noticeable sense of urgency. He had already sent the two guards out to rouse the driver and the watchman, insisting that they get a start on the day's trading right away so they could be done with it and be off by mid-afternoon. He seemed troubled somehow, and very anxious to be back at Fallonmour. A feeling that Emmalyn shared.

  The night spent in the hostel was among the worst she had ever endured, but despite the despicable accommodations, she refused to risk a visit to Josette's castle, a move that might well put her in the company of the queen. It seemed strange to her, how determined she had once been to be rid of Cabal. Now, seeing his handsome face smile upon her as he helped her gather their things to leave, Emmalyn could hardly imagine life without him.

  Nor would she, until she was faced with the cold reality of the king's decision.

  Emmalyn craved a bath to wash away the day's travel and the mustiness of the night's stay in the horrid little room, but she did not so much as entertain the notion of obtaining an acceptable tub of water from the innkeeper. Instead, covering her nose in the edge of her sleeve and trying to ignore the many slumbering, filthy bodies littering the corridor and great room, she trudged along with Cabal out into the alleyway to meet the others.

  The streets of Lincolnshire were already crowded with people come to trade. Great throngs of finely dressed nobles paused at the silk merchants' and spice traders' stalls, sifting through the bolts of lush fabrics and sampling the varied herbs imported from the East. The cacophony of heated conversations and gay laughter mixed with the complaining of penned livestock, filling the air with a near-deafening racket. Fresh fruits and vegetables perfumed the small spaces they occupied, but nothing could mask the stench of tanning hides emanating from the leather worker's shop at the end of town.

  Emmalyn and her party ambled past the rows of foul stalls, following another cart laden with wool sacks to the area where the fleece merchants had assembled. The trade went quickly and in their favor, netting far more silver than Emmalyn had anticipated.

  “The finest quality he had seen all week,” she said to Cabal as she returned from the transaction, buoyed by the trade, jingling her fat purse and unable to keep from beaming with pride. She gave a few coins to her three men-at-arms and granted them leave to break their fast with instructions to bring back some bread and ale for the journey home.

  “Don't be too boastful about your wealth, my lady,” Cabal advised her when she drew near him, grinning even as his eyes scanned the crowd in wary observance. “Wag that purse around any longer and you are liable to lose it as quickly as you filled it. This town is swimming with cutthroats and vagabonds.”

  He was likely right, of course, and seeing his expression grow more stormy the longer they lingered in the market, Emmalyn became increasingly eager to be gone from Lincolnshire. “I have only a few items that I must buy while we are here: salt and candle wax and perhaps a skein of silk thread for embroidery,” she said as the two of them rode along behind the empty wool cart. “It should take no more than an hour to purchase them and obtain the arms you wanted for the garrison. Then we can be off.”

  Her assurances seemed to afford him little comfort. With his watchful eye trained on the crowd now filling the narrow streets, Cabal told her, “I believe we passed a bowmaker and an armorer at the head of the avenue. Wait here with the cart and driver, my lady, and I will get whatever we need.”

  “'Twould go all the faster if we split up,” Emmalyn offered, dismounting to follow behind him as he paid a groom to brush and feed their horses while he traded. “I shall fetch the household goods, while you see to the garrison's supplies.”

  Cabal scowled down at her in complete disagreement, but before he could argue that they should remain together, Emmalyn opened her purse and poured out a portion of the coins for herself. She tucked them into her satchel, then handed him the pouch containing the bulk of her trade. “So you will not worry that I will be robbed, you may take this. I will meet you here in one hour.”

  “My lady, I do not think--”

  Pretending she did not see Cabal's dubious expression, Emmalyn stepped into the street. “Your trade will surely take longer than mine,” she told him. “I shall wait for you over there, in the shade of the abbey wall.”

  Emmalyn afforded him no further dispute. She headed off in the opposite direction that she had sent Cabal, turning only to assure herself that he was not stubbornly following her despite her wishes. Spying his dark head moving above the others flowing up the street, she smiled. While she was anxious to leave and she did indeed have items to purchase at market, her boon at the wool trader's stall had put her in a generous mood. She wanted to find something nice for Cabal, something special, and she wanted her purchase to be a surprise.

  As she walked briskly up the alleyway, various silk dealers and perfumers called for her to come peruse their wares. Emmalyn ignored them all. With swift steps and a light heart, she hastened instead toward the snaking corridor of the artisans' row.

  * * *

  Cabal found the armorers' shops easily enough. Situated where the avenue widened and spread toward the massive city gates, the many stalls were crammed with weapons of varying quality and purpose. Maces, swords, daggers and battle axes stood on display with crossbows and lances, while outside, the booths were surrounded by similarly diverse packs of mercenaries and knights-errant. Some were clearly the younger sons of noblemen, out to seek their fortunes in the city, while still others were gray and hard-eyed, seasoned warriors who appeared more interested in their drink than in obtaining employment from any of the wandering barons and wealthy landowners.

  Among these dozens of fighting men were the wholly unsavory types: the cut-purses and murderers who frequently followed itinerant soldiers, too shiftless to make a living off their own sweat. Like vultures, they hung about at the periphery of the working men, begging for money or ale and greedy to make off with whatever scraps and refuse they could find.

  Cabal clutched Emmalyn's coin purse a little tighter in his fist and strode through the crowds, up to the front of the line of merchants' stalls. He passed the shieldmaker's booth but paused briefly at another to watch a smithy craft a finely tooled sword on his forge. A nobleman haggled with a merchant over a similar blade, scoffing at the handsome price the man wanted for the piece before walking off to another shop. His customer lost to him, the seller turned to Cabal.

  “Twelve deniers for a blade that will serve you well in this life, sir, and thereafter serve your sons and their sons after them. What say you? Twelve deniers for an heirloom. 'Tis a bargain at twice that price, sir.” Cabal touched the smooth length of polished, engraved steel, fingering the scrollwork and markings that decorated the gleaming blade. “'Tis inscribed in Latin, my lord. Read it for yourself and tell me if the verse would not be a testament to your line's courage and honor.”

  Cabal shrugged, looking at the indecipherable markings and suddenly losing interest in the exchange. “'Tis a fine weapon, but I'm not in the market for a sword today.” He started to walk away.

  “Might you be for ten
deniers, sir? Perhaps eight, then?”

  Cabal shook his head, chuckling as he left the booth and headed to the armorer's stall to conduct his business and be done with it. In little time at all, he had procured a dozen crossbows and a supply of two hundred bolts, six longbows and shields enough for half of the new garrison.

  “I'll have a cart sent around to pick up the lot within the half hour,” he told the armorer as he paid him the agreed-upon amount. He turned to leave the booth and nearly trampled a filthy wretch who stood too close, directly behind him. The beggar blinked up at him through long-unwashed, stringy brown hair, his eyes bleary and ringed with dark circles. A lice-infested beard covered most of his face. Blocking Cabal's path, he thrust a grimy palm out at him.

  “Spare a sous, lord?”

  “'Tis not mine to give you.”

  He stepped aside but the man followed, having evidently heard some of Cabal's transaction with the merchant. “Come now, lord, have a care for those less fortunate than yerself. I've been out of work for nearly three months now. Surely ye can spare a bit of yer coin for a returned Crusader. God would smile fondly on ye, were ye to bless me with, say, half a sous? Just to fill my belly for the night.”

  Fill it with ale, no doubt, Cabal thought, smelling the rank vapors on the beggar's tongue. “There's a man two stalls down, calling to hire twenty lances today. As you claim to be a returning soldier, why don't you go and ask him for work instead of begging for coin?”

  Cabal brushed past him and started to walk away, but stopped when he heard the man curse behind him. “Jesu! I do not believe my eyes! Can it be?”

  Hearing the unmistakable note of recognition in the man's voice, Cabal's stomach suddenly lurched; a cold wash of sweat broke out on the back of his neck.