Chapter Seven
He was dirty, dark, and exhausted. Having recently disembarked from one of the many cogs that traveled from Dover to Calais on a daily basis, he rode into the small village of Dover astride his shaggy brown mount, reeking of musty leather and body odor.
He was a knight, as he wore well-used armor and carried with him an array of weapons, but there was something darker about him than merely his color.
Dark hair, dark eyes, dark skin, and a crescent-shaped scar near his nose.
He was darkness personified and Hell followed with him.
Dover was a busy seaside village at any given time but on this night, it was particularly busy.
Fog was rolling in off the channel and men were moving about, trying to find a place to sleep for the night.
The air smelled of salt and of mist, and through the growing fog, the dark man saw a sign hanging above a tavern.
Gull and Piper, it said, in a terribly painted sign.
Looking up and down the street, the dark rider didn’t see any other taverns, at least on this avenue, so he reined his steed to the post and dismounted, wearily.
Securing the horse, he went inside the tavern.
It was crowded with bodies inside. The hearth purged great clouds of smoke into the room, hanging up near the ceiling, as the dark rider made his way into the room in search of the tavern keeper.
He found the man near the rear, getting drunk with a couple of women.
He wouldn’t have known it was the proprietor but a couple of patrons had pointed to the man.
Approaching the bald man with the big teeth, he interrupted his revelry.
“Est-ce la seule taverne dans la ville?” he asked.
The laughter, the smile, vanished from the tavern keeper’s face. “What do you want to know?”
The dark rider lifted his bushy eyebrows wearily. “A business matter, my friend,” he said. “Is this, in fact, the only tavern in town?”
The tavern keeper looked him up and down as if determining he was worth answering. After a moment, he shook his head and turned back to his female companionship. “Nay,” he said. “There are two more but this is the biggest. My place is the biggest in all of Dover!”
He was boasting. His female friends laughed. The dark rider had little use for arrogant English. Reaching into the leather vest he wore over a heavy tunic and a mail coat, he pulled two coins out of a hidden pocket and slapped them down on the table in front of the tavern keeper.
“I am looking for information,” he said, his voice rough and hoarse.
“I am looking for a knight; a very big knight with a shaved head. He may be traveling with two companions. He may have passed through this town yesterday, last week, or even last month. Have you seen anyone matching that description?”
The tavern keeper suddenly wasn’t laughing so much. He eyed the two gold coins on the table but made no grab for them.
“There are many knights who pass through this town,” he said. “This is a very busy port.”
The dark rider nodded patiently. “I know,” he said. “But this man is very large. He also has an inking on his back that extends onto his neck.”
The tavern keeper shook his head. “I’ve not seen anyone like that here.”
“He rides a big white horse with a black mane and tail.”
That brought a reaction from the tavern keeper. “Two companions, did you say?”
“Oui.”
The tavern keeper thought on that very distinctive horse.
He remembered seeing the butt-end of it as it rode out of town a few days ago.
The more he thought about it, the more he recalled that there were indeed three knights that had ridden out of town, fleeing the chaos they had left behind in their wake.
He sat back in his chair, an arm draped over one of his female companion’s shoulder.
“I remember the horse,” he said. “The man who owned it was a very big knight who killed someone in my tavern and then fled. He had two companions with him.”
The dark rider seemed to perk up a bit. “Indeed?” he asked. “Big men?”
“They were all big.”
“Where did they go?”
“North,” he replied. “All I can tell you is that they rode north. The road out of town goes straight into London so unless they took a different course, they headed into London.” He scooped up the two gold coins on the table, figuring that he had earned them.
“A man with a horse that distinctive will be easy to follow. If I were you, I would stop at every town within a day’s ride along the road to see if he stopped there.
Others may have more information for you. ”
The dark rider thought on that; the truth was that it would be quite a chore to find the Scorpion now that he had settled back in his native England.
The man probably had friends and allies everywhere who would protect and hide him, which was unfortunate for him.
He had been sent to hunt the hunter, as the high command of the Templar order had instructed him to find Kevin Hage at all cost.
His name was Piers de Evereux and he had been a paid assassin for the Templars alongside Kevin Hage, only his advantage had been that the leader of the Templar contingent, de Clemont, was his cousin and when Kevin murdered a fellow knight named de Evereux, it became a family matter.
De Clemont wanted the matter settled and he wanted Hage’s head on a platter.
They’d tried to do that several months ago but Hage had fled the country and de Evereux had been following him ever since.
He knew now, as he’d known back when he’d started this venture, that he had quite a task on his hands.
Hage would not make it easy.
Acknowledging the tavern keeper’s advice with a nod of his head, de Evereux turned to leave. He hadn’t taken two steps when he came to a halt and returned his focus to the tavern keeper.
“The man who was murdered,” he said. “Who was he?”
The tavern keeper was in the process of inspecting the coins in his hand. “He was the son of the Earl of Salisbury,” he said. “One of his guards lived long enough to tell us that. Why do you ask?”
De Evereux appeared thoughtful as he considered the information. “It is possible that they knew one another, this knight I seek and the earl’s son,” he said. “Has the earl been summoned to collect his son’s body?”
The tavern keeper shook his head. “Three of my friends have taken the body back to the father,” he said. “I am sure the earl will pay very well for the return of his son.”
And, undoubtedly, the earl would want to know who murdered his son.
He would be a man bent on vengeance, to seek justice for his son’s murder.
De Evereux decided that it might be a good idea to pay a visit to the Earl of Salisbury because it would seem that they both had a common goal now – the destruction of Kevin Hage. A very good idea, indeed.
Thanking the tavern keeper for the information, de Evereux mounted his steed and made haste for great city of Salisbury in search of a certain earl.
*
It was a surprisingly bright and clear morning as the Duke of Dorset’s party made its way out of London, heading west towards the duke’s seat of Ilchester Castle.
Kevin, astride his big, beautiful stallion, rode point with Adonis several feet behind him.
The duke’s escort was one hundred and fifty soldiers, all of them armed to the teeth, well-fed, and well-dressed.
It would seem that Victor never traveled with a shabby or half-trained entourage; every man in the party was highly seasoned.
Kevin discovered that almost immediately.
Victor’s image as having the best army in all of England was very important to him, and Kevin had to admit that the army was exceptional. He’d seen enough armies to know that.
After waking at dawn with Annavieve snuggled in his arms, he’d hastened out of the bed, threw his clothes on, and left the chamber about the time the duke’s guard in the corridor was changing to a new shift.
The guards who had been in the corridor all night knew very well that Kevin had gone into the room with the duchess, alone, and had not come out until sunrise.
Kevin made sure to grab those four men and threaten their lives if they told of what they’d seen and the four men solemnly agreed to keep the secret.
When Kevin said he would kill all four of them if even a hint of a rumor leaked, it seemed to be enough to still them completely purely out of fear.
That had been Kevin’s intention. No man betrayed the Scorpion and lived to tell the tale.
After leaving the duke’s chambers, Kevin went in search of Victor himself and found the man staggering back across the palace grounds, half-dressed and still drunk.
He escorted the man back to his apartments but made sure to escort him into a secondary bed chamber, away from Annavieve, where two male servants went to work bathing and grooming the man and trying to sober him up.
Victor was lucid enough to tell Kevin he wanted to leave for home that morning so, taking a seasoned de Ferrers soldier with him to assist, Kevin went about assembling the duke’s party for the trip home.
Once the party was gathering with the assistance of Adonis and Thomas now, Kevin had returned to the duke’s apartments to ensure that Annavieve was awake and dressed. He found her in the bedchamber where he had left her and she was indeed dressed, breaking her fast on bread and cheese.
Servants had helped her dress so that she was neatly styled, and someone had found her old nurse, Magda, and the woman sat alongside Annavieve like some ancient protective watchdog.
Kevin wasn’t sure if Annavieve had told her nurse what had transpired on her wedding night but he was fairly certain she hadn’t.
She knew not to tell anyone and she didn’t seem the type of woman to break her word.
Moreover, the old nurse hadn’t made any move to kill him so he was almost positive she didn’t know.