Page 83 of An Earl for the Archeress

“Be damned!” he cursed.

He shook his thoughts away again. Crawford was right. He had naively trusted his people too much, a sad but valuable lesson. He would never make that mistake again, if he ever got out of Nottingham’s prison alive, if he ever found Mariel again, if he ever saw his people again or held land and title again.

Despair threatened to darken his heart. What would his father do in this situation? His father would ruthlessly root out the traitor and drag him into the bailey for all to see, tie him to a post, and slice his neck. And he felt anger such as that begin to well within him. Yes. He would escape, and he would find the traitor who had ruined him and worse, fed Mariel to the very wolf she had spent months escaping.

The torchlight wavered on the wall. Like a hawk, his senses sharpened to the most banal of happenings and he focused on it, hastening the few steps he could to peer down the corridor and see who might be entering the dungeons. He stiffened. Jonathan was striding side by side with Nottingham.

He couldn’t believe it. He had been right. John, his friend, his head guardsman, his former peer, had turned on him. Over Mariel. It wasn’t possible, he thought, and yet he had come to the obvious conclusion time and again over the sennights of his incarceration.

John and Nottingham arrived in front of him.

“Good God, man, what did you let them do to you?” Jonathan asked, ignoring the frown de Wendenal leveled on him.

“Well, well. The traitor finally arrives,” Robert replied, standing tall, if not leaner, before his former guardsman.

John crinkled his brow, staring into Robert’s eyes. Robert felt his gaze cool with hatred.

“Has prison made you unwell?” John asked.

“It will do that to the best of us…and the worst of us,” Nottingham drawled. “There must be something betwixt you to which I’m not privy.”

“And you, a liar. I’m not surprised,” Robert said. If Nottingham would play daft to having turned John a spy for him, it didn’t really matter now. Neither man would live once he got his shackles off and lodged his hands around their throats.

“Indeed…mayhap there is,” John remarked, though his eyes looked confused.

In his most commanding voice, Nottingham continued, his dark hair framing his sallow face. “King Richard has finally returned and holds court. You, Robert, formerly the earl, now go before him to hear of your fate.”

“Can I at least be afforded a tunic?” Robert growled. “I’d hate to impress the ladies with my cock swinging freely like a breeding stallion.”

“Such cheek is unbecoming, Robert. You go as you are. If it humiliates you, more’s the pity.”

Nottingham produced the keys and turned the lock, passing the keys off to a prison guard to do the unseemly task of bending at Robert’s feet to unlock his chains. If he was as confident as he was acting, Robert thought, then King Richard might already be tainted by Nottingham’s lies.

“Why are you here?” Robert snapped, his attention returning to John.

Jonathan, his brow still confused, stepped back as Nottingham’s guard walked him out, a hand clenching his upper arm. “I gained royal permission to accompany Nottingham, to determine your state of health. To ensure you had not been abused. I told the king that your former men-at-arms feared for your welfare. Nottingham agreed to let me come to inspect, in case he lied.”

Robert wanted to laugh at the genuine lack of guilt John portrayed…unless he spoke the truth. Unless he, as a loyal man to Huntington, had truly begged to see his former lord, now fallen from grace. The possibility that it had not been John who betrayed him niggled. What if he was wrong? What if it had been Wesley? What if he had allowed the blackness of prison to seed mistrust in his heart?

They walked as a group down the corridor, past the filth and stench of other men in other cells, and Robert was grateful for having had the use of his legs in his cell, no matter how limited his radius of movement, for he was able to walk with ease. They emerged into the light of midday, the sun peeking through rain clouds and piercing his sensitive eyes. He closed them as they watered, producing tears to glaze over the stinging.

Nottingham’s inner yard was filled with the typical stench of waste, workers, and animal dung, and the air was frigid. His bare chest stung as icy winter wind lapped across him. Winter was truly arriving and Christmastide would begin soon. Huntington would have been festive this year had he been there to ensure it was celebrated with the proper traditions. Pine boughs, holly berries, Yule logs. More indeed was the pity.

Thankfully, they rounded to the front of Nottingham’s keep to enter, blocking the wind, and Robert noted the royal red banners bearing the king’s three lions-passant, dressing a contingent of horses. Unstabled in this cold wind? Either Nottingham had a horrible groom or his stables were too small to accommodate the king’s horses. Interesting. Just looking around, he could tell Nottingham’s castle and lands were thinly stocked and pathetically run, despite the castle being proudly built. Huntington must have seemed like a treasure vault to the bloody urchin now strutting ahead of him like a peacock. Cock was to be certain. As was pea. That part of the comparison was correct. He was a giant cock of a man with a pea-sized appendage.

His muscles felt weakened from the exertion and as much as he wanted to drag his escort down while simultaneously strangling Nottingham with the chain between his manacles, he knew the rest of the guards on the parapet and flanking the main doors would have him tackled once more. And with King Richard here to watch, the act might make him look guilty of Nottingham’s claims.

The great hall of the keep was vast but poorly tended, and the rushes he trod barefoot upon appeared stale and in need of sweeping out. A cur in the corner, rummaging through the hay, eating bits of leftover food confirmed it. He would likely have worms or a festering sore on his soles by the time he left.

A royal contingent filled the hall as well as Nottingham’s ladies, soldiers, and an unmistakable gaggle of whores. Crawford, draped in his red-and-green Scottish tartan, sat along the periphery with some of his guardsmen, though Robert noted that Teàrlach wasn’t there.

And to his surprise, Will, Alan, and David, stood in attendance, too, luckily all with boots on to protect their feet from the cesspit within the rushes. And there was King Richard, sitting at the head of the main table at the dais, food and drink placed before him. His beard was a well-kempt ginger. He looked more mature than when he had left to fight in the Third Crusade. Still, the man was formidable, poised, and regal in his red surcoat trimmed with gold threading and bearing the three lions of the Plantagenet house. To his irritation, Crawford leaned forth, seething, as Nottingham walked to his side. Did he and Nottingham hope to skewer him together?

The king watched as Robert was dragged down the aisle between the trestle tables, but waited until he reached the space before him.

Robert bowed. “Your Highness. You return to a broken kingdom.”

“That I can see, Robert. And imagine my surprise when Sir Jonathan Naylor delivered to me a missive all the way in Aquitaine, stating your duress,” King Richard replied.