King's Warrior (Renegade Lords)

Detecting Tadhg’s growing unease with all these questions about his travels, the captain finally subsided with a shrug. “Well, I can take you, sure enough.”

Tadhg looked over the man’s shoulder to the small boat he’d indicated with a jab of his thumb. The boat was peeling and listed to its right in the slack tide like a lame dog.

“In that?” he said incredulously. “I’m paying four deniers to cross the Channel in that?”

“Aye.” The grizzled captain sounded offended. “She’s sturdy.”

He nodded doubtfully and reached for his pouch.

“Won’t be on this tide, though. Nor maybe the next.” Tadhg stopped reaching. The captain looked at his stilled hand. “Nothing I can do about that, traveler.”

“Why not?”

“Haven’t you heard?” The captain tipped forward and his words sailed out on malodorous breath laced with hard drink and unscrubbed teeth. “There’s a bandit on the loose.”

A chill unrelated to the damp air crossed Tadhg’s skin.

“Someone wants him bad. Or a whole lot of ‘someone’s’. Half of King Philippe’s army is hunting the rogue, as well as that great hulking English baron out there.” He hooked a thumb at the ships behind him.

Tadhg could see soldiers moving along the quay, bending here and there to lift canvas covers, stopping seamen with rough hands.

“They say the English Prince John is in on this hunt too.”

“How is any of this my problem?” Tadhg asked coldly, ignoring the fact that it was precisely his problem.

The captain wiped spittle off his bearded face with the back of a grimy, calloused hand. “Well, you know your own business best, sir, but as you seem a man who enjoys his…privacy,” a shrewd glance accompanied this description, “you’ll not be pleased to know that, on account of the heightened security, there’s no ships going out, not without being searched, everyone on board questioned.”

His heart took an extra beat. “Every ship? That seems excessive.”

“Maybe yes and maybe no. They want this bandit bad.” The captain leaned a little closer. “Wouldn’t know anything about that, would you, traveler?”

It took all Tadhg’s strength not to step back into the shadows. The habit had become so ingrained, it was now an act of will simply to stand in the daylight.

He took a sweeping survey of the boats tied up at the quay and the larger merchant cogs out in deeper waters, tugging at anchors embedded in the muddy bottoms. He could see the figures of men-at-arms moving across the decks. The livery emblazoned across their tunics proclaimed they belonged to the baron of West Sherwood, Geoffrey d’Argent, one of the most rapacious, ambitious lords of England, who also happened to be hunting Tadhg down.

“I have to be on that tide,” he said grimly.

The captain shrugged. “Won’t happen here, nor at any large port within forty miles. They’re all under watch, guarded and searched. Gates, too: no one in or out without being searched. This bandit must have got hold of something precious valuable, what with half the kings and noblemen in Christendom fighting to find him first.” He grinned, revealing sizeable gaps where teeth used to be. “Makes a man wonder what it is.”

“What do men always fight over?” Tadhg said absently, eyeing the ships.

“The size of their cocks, the size of their coffers, and the size of the throne they sit upon,” came the captain’s quipped reply. “But I doubt a English baron sailed all the way to France to chase down a man over the size of his cock.”

“Maybe it’s the coffers then.”

“Or the throne.”

Precisely.

“Word is, he stole something from the king,” the captain added in a conspiratorial voice.

Tadhg’s jaw tightened. He disguised it by shrugging the heavy, fur-lined mantle closer around his shoulders. “Is that so? King Philippe should keep a better watch over his many ill-got riches.”

That earned a bark of appreciative laughter, but the captain’s gaze did not waver off Tadhg’s profile. “Not the French king, traveler. The English one. Richard, Coeur de Lion. They’re saying this rogue stole something from him.”

Tadhg looked over coldly. “Do you believe everything you hear, captain?”

“Well, you’ve a point there, sir. Seeing as how the English king is in the Holy Lands. Or was…” He tipped closer. “Fact is, he’s disappeared. On his way home from Jerusalem. All the other crusaders have returned, save for the English king and a few others who were near him at the end. They’ve all disappeared, right off the face o’ the earth,” he said, his voice low. “So, if anyone had had stolen anything off him out there,” he waved at the rest of the world. “He’d have to have carried here.”