Constantine stopped again, his feet sticking so firmly that he swayed in his stance.
“You’ll never outstaythatrumor, Gerard,” Felsteppe chuckled. “It will live with you—and the boy—for the rest of your lives. Christian will neverreallyknow if you’re his father or not. Rather sad, isn’t it? I feel sorry for the lad, truly. Whore for a mother and a coward—”
Felsteppe continued to talk as Constantine turned and stalked back toward him, but he had no idea what the man said; the blood was roaring in his ears so loudly that it drowned out all other sound. Felsteppe, however, must have realized he had finally hit his mark for now he drew his sword and sank into a defensive posture with a satisfied smirk.
Constantine, too, swept his weapon from its sheath as he continued to rush forward. When he was nearly close enough to strike, Felsteppe changed tactics and charged. But Constantine was ready, and in two swings, Felsteppe’s weapon went sliding and clanging across the floor. Constantine was upon him, then, and rammed the butt of his hilt into Felsteppe’s nose once, twice, sending blood spraying from the man’s face like a fountain.
Felsteppe staggered back with a cry, his hands covering his dripping face while Constantine sheathed his weapon—if he didn’t, he was certain he would kill the man outright. But even though he was no longer readily armed, he wasn’t yet finished with Glayer Felsteppe.
And neither was Felsteppe finished. Once he saw the weapon was sent home, he charged at Constantine with his bloody fists clenched, a scream of rage coming from his sticky mouth. Constantine met his fury with his own, ducking Felsteppe’s swing and coming up with a fist under his chin and then two swift blows to the man’s abdomen. When the redhead doubled over, Constantine grabbed him by the back of his leather hauberk and slung him around in an arc.
Felsteppe flew through the air toward Adrian Hailsworth’s corner table and landed across the end of it, sliding through the piles of parchment as his hands scrabbled for purchase. Adrian pushed his chair back with a screech and stood.
Constantine stomped after Felsteppe, seizing him and flipping him over on his back, a shower of crumpled ivory pages raining down around them. Felsteppe swung with a weak yell, his fist clenched around a wad of parchment, and Constantine took the blow on his chin. He hardly felt it, though, as he drew back and hit Felsteppe in his already battered face, his knuckles making sick, splashing sounds by the third blow.
Before the sixth could land, Adrian hooked his arm around Constantine’s and pulled him backward with a mighty heave, allowing Glayer Felsteppe to slide to the floor in a crumpled, gasping heap.
“Killing him won’t make Baldwin change his mind,” Adrian said near his ear as he pushed between Constantine and the bleeding, wheezing man on the floor. “You’ve made your point.”
As much as Constantine appreciated the friend he had found in the brusque, scholarly Hailsworth, he was not quite satisfied that he had indeed made his point. He swept Adrian aside and after two strides sank to one knee over Felsteppe, seizing the front of his sodden tunic and pulling the limp rag of the man close to his face.
“Dare not speak my son’s name again. Verily, never be in my sight after this day, Glayer Felsteppe,” Constantine said as calmly as his still seething rage would allow. “Whether Baldwin allows your return from Tiberias or nay. Perhaps I could not prove them before today, but I have not forgotten—nor will I—your many, many misdeeds at Chastellet. The rapes of the merchants’ slaves; the thefts; the traitorous discords with which you sought to infect the men. You arescum, and you deserved to be wiped from the land. The next time I see you, Iwillkill you.”
“You think everyone is afraid of you, Gerard,” Felsteppe rasped, bloody spittle flying from his split lips. “I’m not. You’re notholy; you’re notsuperior. You’re a pampered house cat who’s been made to believe he’s above covering over his own shit.”
“I do believe this particular house cat has shown you his claws,” Hailsworth muttered as he returned to his chair, his eyes for naught but his precious scrolls as he straightened his exploded stacks.
“Fuck you, scribe,” Felsteppe snapped, and then he glared back into Constantine’s face. “You’ll pay for what you’ve done today. Today and every day since you came here and tried to ruin me.” Felsteppe pushed at Constantine, and he stepped back and allowed the beaten man to stagger to his feet at last.
Felsteppe pointed a bony, stained, trembling finger toward Constantine, his other hand still curled around the ruined parchment he’d dragged from the tabletop. “I will see everything you love burn. Everything.”
“You couldn’t come within a score of miles of anything I love, Felsteppe. You’re fortunate the king didn’t dismiss you outright. I believe he still might. Then where will you go? Back to Land’s End to herd sheep?” It was a low blow, but his fury seemed to let the words flow like the water from yonder cask.
Felsteppe’s face matched his bright hair, between the blood in and on his cheeks. “Everything you love,” he repeated. “No matter what I must do.”
“Get from my sight,” Constantine demanded and then turned away from the man before he was tempted to fall upon him again.
He heard the door open, and Adrian Hailsworth called out in a sardonic tone, “Oh, no, please—do keep those parchments. They weren’t quite right and rather covered in your blood any matter.”
The door slammed shut.
“Maggot,” Adrian muttered.
The air in the room seemed to tingle with the altercation that hadn’t fully absolved Constantine of his anger. And when his gaze fell upon the pile of contraband Felsteppe had failed to collect and return, as commanded by the king, Constantine sighed. Even though his muscles still burned and his breaths left a metallic scent in his nostrils, he crossed the floor and began gathering the broken swords, the cracked shields, the worn pads himself, his hands still wet with Glayer Felsteppe’s blood.
It was his duty, after all.
* * *
Glayer Felsteppe staggered through the narrow, dark interior corridors of Chastellet, his humiliation unrelieved by the fact that he passed no one. It mattered not—by now, Glayer knew every warrior monk, every base laborer, even the meanest slave had been appraised of the goings-on in Baldwin’s antechamber. No one at Chastellet would ever let him forget what had happened. Perhaps it was best that he left.
He swiped at his dripping face with the wad of soft paper in his hand, then paused near a tall, wide tapestry to press a finger to one nostril and blow the contents of the other into the seam of floor and wall. His breath hitched in his chest as he coughed and spat; he thought perhaps at least one of his ribs was cracked. He stood there a moment, looking at the tapestry while he tried to regulate his searing breaths. The symbols of the Templars seemed to mock him as they hid among the trees and rivers woven into a rich, fantastical battle landscape: a dragon flying from a castle perched on a craggy peak; giants treading through a surf littered with wreckage; a figure with flowing red hair hovering above it all, seeming to stare down the corridor in the direction from which Glayer had just come.
Baldwin would never elevate Glayer to a senior officer of any kind now. Bastard leper, prancing about as if he were fit to command battalions when he was barely out of nappies.
Glayer reached up suddenly, flinching at the stabbing pain in his side as he grasped the heavy tapestry and wrenched it from the wall. He spat again upon it, then strode across it and down the corridor, his pace quickening as his mind urged him on.
Bastard Gerard, behaving as though he owned the world, with his title and his estate and his heir. His pious standards and pharisaical morals.
