Chapter One
Aquitaine
Near Midnight
12 June 1293
David
“Couldn’t sleep?” David straightened and turned to look at the French king, who’d just appeared on the top step of the stairs leading to the battlement. When David had been up here earlier in the day, he’d watched the river run past the walls and found it soothing and mesmerizing. A bridge spanned the river slightly upstream from his position, and if any of David’s twenty-first century companions had traveled to Aquitaine with him, he might have proposed a game of Poohsticks. He’d also taken a look at the castle accounts, which documented the money spent shoring up the wall.
“I was hoping the open air would provide a better atmosphere for thinking than my chamber.” Philip rested a hand on a nearby merlon and peered through the crenel into the darkness of the river below them. The crenels at Chateau Niort were lower than normal, well below waist height, and could be uncomfortable to get too close to. “It seems you thought the same.”
They were speaking in French—in Philip’s case with an austere aristocratic accent. David was fluent in the language, but even he could hear the lilt of Welsh in his voice, a holdover from his first teachers. David was dressed like a Welshman too, in simple shirt and tunic, belted at the waist, breeches, and boots, albeit all of fine quality. Philip, on the other hand, was dressed like a European aristocrat in a light green linen shirt, a gold-embroidered deep green kirtle to match, those tight-fitting stocking-like pants the French liked to wear, these in brown, and matching brown knee-high boots. It was a warm night so he, like David, had left off his cloak.
Neither man was wearing his sword or customary knives either. Gilbert de Clare, one of David’s foremost advisers and the man who’d done most of the work to arrange this meeting, had suggested that both men go weaponless this week as a gesture of good will. It was purely symbolic. Although David had climbed to the battlement alone, he’d left a fully armed Justin at the foot of the stairs. A half-dozen more of his men lounged around the bailey below him, keeping him safe while the rest of his guard slept.
David cleared his throat, searching for something to say to continue the conversation. Since he was technically host—Chateau Niort was David’s through his title as the Duke of Aquitaine—it was his duty more than Philip’s. “I hope your accommodations are to your liking?”
“I have no complaints.” Philip frowned. “I was sorry to hear that Lord Clare has not yet arrived. Throughout our negotiations, he has been a voice of reason, and I was pleased to learn that he would be accompanying you here. I hope the delay isn’t due to something untoward?”
“Not that I know of.” David had also been surprised at Clare’s absence. He’d expected to see Clare on the dock at Bordeaux, where the royal party had disembarked. Although Clare’s wife had died in childbirth in January, he retained her lands in Aquitaine, as was his right. These lands were not so far from either Bordeaux or Chateau Niort that he couldn’t have ridden the distance in a few days. “I do not know what has prevented his immediate presence, but Clare’s men are here, and they assure me that the man himself should arrive tomorrow.”
“That is good. Otherwise we’d be forced to speak without a mediator.” Philip spoke in a tone so completely flat that it took David a moment to realize that he’d made a joke.
David laughed. “It is good to finally meet you, Philip. It is my hope that we can put aside our recent differences and come to an understanding over the next few days.”
Although David had been proclaimed Duke of Aquitaine last autumn in the wake of the bombing of Canterbury and the Battle of Hythe, relations between him and Philip hadn’t exactly been cordial. David’s advisers had feared that Philip might refuse to talk with him as one king to another, preferring to deal with him as the Duke of Aquitaine and thus a vassal to the French throne. That had been one of the many stumbling blocks in the negotiations between them.
Then at Easter, the pope had issued a call for a new crusade. More importantly, Pope Boniface expected David and Philip to crusade together, and it was the frank admission that neither of them wanted to go at all that had ultimately broken the ice and brought them together. While their respective courts had told the world that they were meeting to discuss a possible expedition to the Holy Land, the real point was to put their heads together to find a way to present a united front—and a plan—to the pope. They had to explain—without appearing sacrilegious or irreverent—why they weren’t going.
“Such is my hope too,” Philip said. “Thank you for traveling so far to meet me. I understand this is your first time on the Continent.”
“Yes—”
David’s reply was cut off by the sudden extinguishing of all the torches in the bailey, excepting the ones near his head on the wall-walk. Since torches burned in all weathers and conditions—water wouldn’t douse them—they wouldn’t have all gone out at once unless someone put them out.
Then the unmistakable sound of clashing swords resounded from below, in the midst of which Justin called, “Jump, sire! Jump now! We are betrayed!”
“Justin!” David moved past Philip towards the stairs, intending to come to his captain’s aid, but before he could take more than a few steps, Philip gave a suppressed cry. David spun back and cursed to see the French king clutching at the arrow shaft sprouting from his left shoulder. A red bloom of blood stained his elaborately embroidered shirt and kirtle. Then a second arrow whooshed past David, ruffling his hair and clattering on the stones behind him, having missed killing him by millimeters. David’s sudden movement back towards Philip had saved his life.
David had been Prince of Wales longer than he’d been King of England, and his own wife was an excellent shot, so David knew full well how long it took to aim and loose an arrow: well-trained archers could shoot one every few seconds. But even five arrows a minute was too many. From this distance, missing even once was a statistical improbability. Unfortunately, throwing himself onto the stones at his feet would do David little good because there was no railing around the inside of the wall-walk. Both he and Philip were completely exposed to the archer firing from the wall-walk on the other side of the bailey.
Lili had made David swear never to take off his MI-5 provided Kevlar vest except if offered the opportunity of a bath—and then only if the door was locked and he was alone. She had demanded this of him because she hadn’t trusted the King of France. But it wasn’t the King of France who’d arranged this meeting, who’d garrisoned the castle, and who wasn’t here tonight.
It was Clare. And David didn’t need Justin’s shouted warning to know it.
The decision to step in front of Philip and take the next arrow—or two as it turned out, fired in quick succession, Legolas-style—was one that David made without thought as the only logical next step. Though Kevlar couldn’t stop an arrow all by itself, the interior ceramic plate, which protected his chest, would.
And did.
The first arrow struck David with breathtaking force and drove him backwards into Philip. The second one had him flailing his arms and lolling his head in hopes that these dramatized death throes would be enough to convince the assassin that if David and Philip weren’t dead yet they soon would be. Above all else, David needed the arrows to stop coming.
Then Philip showed he’d been doing some thinking of his own. Despite the wound in his shoulder, his arms came around David’s waist, and, with an athleticism that rivaled the best Olympic gymnast, he leaned back into the crenel behind him, flipped up his legs, which forced David’s upwards as well, and rolled backwards with David through the gap. The two men turned a complete somersault, ultimately falling feet first towards the river that flowed below them.
As they fell, David kept a tight hold on Philip’s arms so that when he traveled, Philip would come with him. But to David’s surprise and dismay, no black abyss appeared to save him from the dangers above and below. Avalon failed entirely to appear. There was only the same watery blackness of the river, flowing relentlessly and unchanged to the sea.