Chapter Nineteen #2
He wanted the ring to be a surprise.
The area containing the jewelers was near the end of town that had three taverns.
It was quite crowded on this day, with people drinking in the street.
He could see a few Alston soldiers near one of the taverns, and he was about to turn down a small alleyway next to the man who sold knives when he saw Adonis heading in his direction.
De Mora lifted a hand to him, so he came to a halt, waiting impatiently while the man caught up to him.
Had he not been so impatient to get to the goldsmith, he would have seen the expression on de Mora’s face.
The man looked as if he’d just seen a ghost.
“My lord,” de Mora said. “I think… I think you must come with me.”
Addax frowned. “Why?” he said, gesturing to the goldsmith alley. “I have business to attend to and not much time to do it.”
But de Mora didn’t back down. In fact, he grabbed Addax by the arm. “You will want to come with me, I promise.”
Now Addax could see that the man looked almost sick. “Why?” he said. “What am I to see?”
“Bretherdale.”
“Make sense, man.”
De Mora took a deep breath and pointed down the street. “Maximilian de Grey,” he said. “I’ve found him.”
Addax hadn’t been expecting that. In fact, he looked at Adonis as if the man had completely lost his mind. “Are you mad?” he asked. “It’s not possible.”
“It is possible.”
“But he’s dead!”
But Adonis shook his head. “Nay, my lord,” he said with some force.
“He is not dead. He is at the tavern at the end of the avenue, offloading barrels of wine. I saw him myself and tried to speak to him, but he ignored me. He did not seem to know me. He does not look like himself, my lord, not at all. You must come.”
Addax did. He took off at a dead run. Adonis caught up to him and pulled him back to a walk, but Addax was trying to push past him the entire time, as if he knew where he was going.
But he didn’t. He was moving blindly until they came to the last tavern on the left, one that had a sign hanging above the door that announced “the Scot’s Head.
” It was a large, rambling, one-storied tavern, and even at this daylight hour, it had people coming in and out of it.
The entry door swung open, and Addax could hear laughing and shouting.
But that wasn’t what caught his attention.
Adonis was pointing to the side entrance of the tavern, where a group of men were offloading barrels of wine and ale.
As they watched, one slipped and fell to the ground, exploding all over.
The tavern keep, a burly man with a big nose and surprisingly small hands, cuffed the man who dropped it.
Addax watched as Maximilian fell to the ground, bleeding from the side of his mouth.
“You stupid fool,” the tavern keep boomed. “I’ll take that out on your hide!”
He kicked Maximilian in the thigh for good measure, grumbling and cursing. Astonished, Addax watched Maximilian pick himself up from the ground, wiping at the blood on his mouth. But Adonis had been right.
It didn’t look like him at all.
The Maximilian he knew had kept his hair neatly cut and liked finer clothing.
This Maximilian was dressed in rags. His hair was long, he was unshaven, and he had the general look of a wild man.
But he was also big and strong, so he was offloading the barrels with the help of others, carrying them inside and then coming back out again as the tavern keep continued to yell at him.
Addax couldn’t have been more stunned.
“Oh… my God,” he breathed. “What in the hell is he doing here? Maximilian!”
He boomed the name, shouting so loudly that it echoed off the wattle and daub walls of the tavern. It startled those working on the wagon, and they all turned to look at him. Everyone but Maximilian, who was shouldering another barrel. He wasn’t looking at all.
Like he’d never heard that name in his life.
“You see?” Adonis said as Maximilian went inside. “He ignored me, too. I do not think he is deaf, because he responded to the tavern keep, but it is as if he does not know his name.”
Addax’s initial shock was starting to wear off, replaced by rage.
Blinding rage. Before him was a man who was believed to be dead, only to be found working in a tavern.
For what? To pay off his drinking debt? Because he was obligated to?
Because he wanted to? Addax couldn’t think of a good reason as to why Maximilian would be here.
Worse still, the man wouldn’t answer to his name.
What was going on here?
Determined to find answers, Addax charged over to the wagon just as Maximilian came out of the tavern again, preparing to load up with another barrel. But Addax shoved one of the tavern workers aside to get at him.
“Max?” he demanded. “Maximilian, answer me!”
Maximilian looked at him with a face that was battered and sagging on one side, but there was absolutely no recognition. Nothing. He didn’t even look confused. He simply reached for another barrel as the man Addax had shoved aside now shoved Addax.
“Leave him alone,” he said. “Go about your business.”
Adonis appeared, pushing the worker back, hard. “Still yourself, you fool,” he growled. “Lay hands on him again and you’ll lose them.”
Adonis flashed his broadsword, and the man, who was just a tavern worker, put his hands up in immediate surrender.
“Easy, knight,” he said nervously. “I meant no harm. It’s just that he won’t understand you.”
Addax was standing beside Adonis, listening closely. “That man?” he said, pointing at Maximilian. “Why not?”
The worker kept his hands up because the knight hadn’t lowered his sword. “Because he cannot speak,” he said. “He hears well enough to do what you tell him to do, but he can’t speak. He doesn’t know anything.”
Both Addax and Adonis looked at Maximilian as he took yet another barrel off the wagon and lumbered inside with it. Addax was as confused as ever.
“Do you know who he is?” he finally asked the worker. “Do you know his name?”
The worker nodded. “His name is Gorach,” he said. “At least, that’s what we call him. It means ‘stupid’ in the Gaelic, and that’s what he is—stupid.”
“Gorach,” Addax repeated, looking at Adonis, who shrugged in a manner that suggested he had no idea what was going on. Neither of them did. Addax returned his attention to the worker. “How did he get here?”
Because Adonis had finally lowered his sword, the worker lowered his hands. “You’ll have to ask Wat,” he said. “He owns the tavern. Wat Glidden is his name.”
“Fetch him to me,” Addax said. “It is important.”
The worker gestured to the barrels being brought in. “He’s busy, my lord,” he said. “Can you come back later?”
“Nay,” Addax said. “Tell him that Sir Addax al-Kort, a knight in the service of the Earl of Hereford, wishes to speak with him. Do it now.”
The man darted off. All the while, Maximilian kept coming in and out of the tavern, rolling out barrels or carrying other things—working as the man had never worked in his life, because Maximilian had never been the industrious sort.
Addax and Adonis watched him with shock that had not yet diminished.
“Did you see his face?” Adonis said. “He looks as if he’d been severely beaten.”
Addax nodded. “That is not Maximilian de Grey,” he muttered. “I do not know who it is, but that is simply a beast of burden. The Max I knew never worked that hard in his entire life for anything.”
Adonis looked at him. “And he cannot speak?” he said. “He does not know who he is?”
Addax had the same questions with no answers. All he could do was shake his head, struggling not to let his horror of the situation get the better of him. The very real horror that if Maximilian was alive, Emmeline was still married.
She still belonged to Maximilian.
The Earl of Bretherdale.
Addax was genuinely trying not to become ill at the thought.
He felt nauseated with the reality that Maximilian had been found alive.
He couldn’t even think how Emmeline was going to react to this.
A local magistrate had declared Maximilian dead without a body.
Even as Addax rolled that around in his mind, he’d never heard anything so stupid in his life.
No body didn’t necessarily mean death. It simply meant that there was an absence of a corpse.
But Addax had been more than happy to accept that and claim Emmeline, ignoring the very real fact that Maximilian could be alive somewhere.
But the truth was that he’d ignored it because he wanted to ignore it.
God help him, he just wanted to be happy for once in his life.
And what was he looking at now? Taking Maximilian back to Alston so Emmeline could take care of him for the rest of his life?
A man who’d tried to kill her, tried to ruin her life?
Was God really so cruel?
As he was pondering the darkness the future might hold, the tavern keeper emerged from the warm, stale tavern, and he didn’t look happy. The worker who had fetched him pointed to Addax, and the tavern keeper stormed in his direction.
“What do you want?” he demanded.
Addax pointed at Maximilian, who was now swabbing out the wagon bed where he’d broken the barrel. “That man,” he said. “How did he come to work for you?”
The tavern keep turned to look at who Addax was talking about, but there were a few men standing around. “Who?”
“The man you call Gorach.”
That brought recognition. “Ah, him,” he said. “Why do you want to know?”
“I may recognize him. Can you tell me where he came from?”
The tavern keeper mulled over a response before finally answering. “I found him.”
“What do you mean, you ‘found’ him?”
“Just that,” the tavern keeper said, wiping his hands off on his apron. “I was coming back from Penrith, crossing a bridge over the River Eamont, and I saw him lying on the riverbank. He was nearly dead. I brought him back here, my wife nursed him back to health, and he works for us.”