The Conqueror
Page 1
Prologue
Barfleur docks, Normandy, France
1 April 1152
“How much?”
The ship’s captain looked suspiciously at the rough-hewn man before him. Rain slanted sideways on the empty Barfleur docks and it was dark, filled with echoing silence. Eerier still, though, was the way the man’s dark hood was drawn forward over his head, his grey eyes glowing like banked coals.
“More’n the likes of ye can afford,” the captain muttered and started to turn away.
A hand closed around his forearm. “I can afford more than the likes of you have ever dreamed of.” A bag of coin was shoved into his calloused hand. “Is that sufficient?”
The captain lifted a bushy eyebrow, then dumped open the bag. Gold and copper coins spilled out, clinking loudly in the wet silence of the docks. He glanced towards the tilting, swaying sign of a pub several yards down the quay, then shoved the coins back in the bag and lashed it shut. “It’ll do.”
A low-pitched, mocking laugh met this.
He slid the pouch under his mantle and squinted against the glare of torchlight reflecting on the slippery docks. The man’s cape blew in the misting rain; he was hard to make out as a figure of substance—he looked like black wind.
The captain fingered his grizzled beard. “How many did ye say there were of ye?”
“Thirteen.”
He leaned closer, trying to discern a face amid the darkness of night and the hood the man wore. Even the man’s horse, standing a few feet back, was so pitch black he could have coated a torch. “Aye. A right unlucky number, to be doing unlucky things, no doubt.”
Bunched muscles lifted as the man—surely a knight—crossed his arms over his chest. “No doubt. But not as unlucky as you will be if you speak of this to anyone.”
The captain touched the lump under his mantle. “Aye, well, when my mouth is spilling with good food and wet ale—and wet women,” he barked in laughter, “it don’t feel no need to be spilling tales.”
The banked grey eyes regarded him levelly. The captain stopped laughing and cleared his throat. “Where to?”
“Half a league west of Wareham.”
He froze. “What? A school of fish couldn’t navigate that cove. Nay, I can’t be taking the risk—”
The knight uncoiled suddenly. Without seeming to move, his hand was inside the captain’s mantle, removing the pouch of money. “Someone else will take the risk, then. And the money.”
“Now, sir, all right and all right,” the captain mewed, licking his lips as he watched the bag hovering in the air between them. “I ne’er said I won’t, just that it’s unwise, my lord”—that phrase came from nowhere. What other than his manner bespoke this black, swirling shape as a lord of anything but trouble?—“and I can’t be answerable for any misfortune.”
He saw a gleam of teeth as the hooded figure smiled grimly. “I shall do many unwise things, captain, and not ask you to answer for any of them. At Prime, tomorrow, I shall be here with my men.”
“D’accord,” the captain grunted, pocketing the money again with a sigh of relief.
The dark figure turned away. “And we have horses.”
The captain spun too late. “Well, what the—” He stopped, realising he was alone, left to stare at empty darkness.
Chapter One
Six months later, October 1152
London, two hundred fifty miles south of Everoot’s
principal castle, the Nest
The crush of people was enormous. Nobles they might be, but they were as noisome and unruly as a drunken crowd.
She wore a green gown. Woven of rare and expensive silk, it shimmered like an emerald waterfall. The bodice hugged tight, as did the sleeves, until they opened wide at her elbows and fell in graceful folds of silk. Ebony curls spilled down her back with loose sprays dancing by her cheeks. A thin circlet of silver clasped a light veil of p
alest green over her forehead. On the outside, she was a vision of proper breeding and improper beauty.
Inside, she was a simmering cauldron of nerves.