A Flight of Arrows by A.J. MacKenzie (mobi reader android .txt) 📕

‘Don’t try to soften me up!’ she snarled. ‘He took the tavern because he felt sorry for me. The armour is worth twice as much.’

‘Sweetheart,’ he pleaded. ‘You know I only went to war because we needed the money. I hoped I could make our fortune and we would be free to leave that wretched hovel and roam the world together, as we once dreamed of doing.’

‘Then why didn’t you tell me you were going?’

‘Because I thought you would try to talk me out of it.’

Gráinne hit him again. ‘Of course I would have tried to talk you out of it, you witless fool! You might have got yourself killed, and then where would I be? I cut myself off from my father, I abandoned a life of wealth and privilege, all for the love of you. And you repay me by deserting me and going off to fuck some French bitch behind my back!’

‘You can stand there and hit me all night,’ Courcy said with injured dignity. ‘But I have never been unfaithful to you.’ He looked her up and down, and a slow smile spread across his face. ‘And you’re right,’ he said. ‘That gear does suit you. Do you know what, sweetheart? I’ve never loved a lady in armour before.’

‘Oh, God’s curse on you!’ Gráinne snapped. ‘I swear by the bones of Christ I have never hated anyone so much as I hate you!’ And stepping forward, she took Courcy’s bruised face between her gloved hands and kissed him, grinding her mouth hard and powerfully into his.

The floor of the chapel had been laid with rush mats, and long trestle tables had been set up in the nave; the prince’s servants had even climbed up and hung branches of greenery and sheaves of wheat stalks from the capitals of the pillars. Candles flickered in silver and gold candlesticks and torches burned in sconces along the walls. Model ships, artfully made from bread with straw rigging, sat in the middle of each table with ornamented silver salt cellars resting on their crusted decks.

‘First the two Red Company archers, and now this,’ Merrivale said. ‘How many more women in armour have we among us, I wonder?’

‘I wouldn’t care to speculate,’ said Sully. He sat opposite the herald, his dog curled up beside his feet. ‘It happens in every army, boy. When the men go off to war, the women don’t always remain behind.’

‘Has that been your experience, Sir John?’ asked Edward de Tracey, smiling.

‘Aye. I counted twenty-six maids amongst the Welsh archers at Halidon Hill, and one of Ralph Ufford’s grooms was a damsel of good birth from Rutland who had run away from her family. And you remember Algeciras, Simon? That young Moorish crossbowman, Jalid?’

‘Yes,’ Merrivale said warily.

‘I never told you, but he turned out to be a she. Her real name was Durr. It meant pearl, she told me. Aye, well,’ Sully said nostalgically. ‘Enough said about her.’

‘You were at Algeciras?’ asked Mortimer. The question, to the herald’s mind, rather missed the point of the anecdote, but he was glad of the change of subject. He wondered where Tiphaine was.

‘I was, lad. So was the herald here, though he held no such lofty post back then. It was a grim siege and a bloody one, with all the forces of Morocco and Granada arrayed against us. I’ll never forget the bodies floating in the water after the battle on the Rio Palmones.’

‘I imagine Durr helped you forget the hardships,’ said Hugh Despenser, seated beside Merrivale and pointedly ignoring Mortimer. ‘How did you come to meet a Moorish woman? Wasn’t she one of the enemy?’

Sully shook his white head. ‘Spain is a land of complicated loyalties, Sir Hugh. There were many Moors serving in King Alfonso’s army, just as there were plenty of Spaniards serving with Sultan Yusuf. Durr’s father had been executed by the sultan, so she changed sides.’ He grinned at Merrivale, lined face lively with mischief. ‘Just like your demoiselle.’

‘She is not my demoiselle,’ the herald said.

Servants were carrying food into the chapel, and the smell of roasted meats and hot bread floated among the candles. Despenser pulled a plate of roast goose towards him and began cutting slices of breast meat and laying them on his trencher. ‘That’s not what the gossip says.’

‘I am not interested in gossip, Sir Hugh. And neither should the rest of you be. You are men-at-arms, not fishwives.’

It had come out more sharply than he intended, and even Mortimer smiled. Despenser put a spoonful of salt on the edge of his plate next to the trencher and picked up the sauce pot, pouring brilliant green sauce over his meat. The smells of wine and garlic and fresh parsley rose to their nostrils. ‘I think we have touched a nerve, gentlemen,’ he said. ‘You should have brought her with you, herald. I’d like to hear her side of the story.’

He stabbed a piece of meat with his knife and raised it to his lips, then stopped, wincing in pain as Merrivale’s hand took his wrist in a crushing grip. ‘No,’ the herald said.

‘What in hell’s name are you doing?’ Despenser demanded.

‘If you eat that, you will die.’

Letting go of the other man’s arm, Merrivale picked up his napkin and used it to remove something from the sauce. He held it up to the light, and saw a chunk of bulbous root, about an inch long, dripping thick blobs of green sauce back onto the table. Around them, everyone had stopped eating.

‘Do not eat the juvert sauce!’ Merrivale said sharply. ‘If it is already on your trencher, push your plate away and do not touch your meat!’

‘What is it?’ Tracey asked.

The herald dropped the root on the table. ‘Wolf’s-bane,’ he said.

A gasp went up around the room. ‘Aconitum,’ said John Sully thoughtfully. ‘Poison, said to come from the mouth of Cerberus, the dog that guards the entrance to the underworld. Just what is it doing