Chapter One #3
Aramis nodded. “He is,” he replied. “We are all there. Come and see Braxton before you go, Bastian. You know that your father has not been well.”
That seemed to slow Bastian down somewhat. He nodded, with some regret. “I do,” he replied. “My sisters have sent me missives detailing his health as of late. His heart, isn’t it?”
Aramis confirmed it. “The physic says he is growing steadily weaker,” he said. “I do not relish outliving my younger brother, Bastian, but your father has not been at all well since losing your mother. It took something out of the man to watch his wife die of a cancer.”
Bastian remembered his mother, Lady Aderyn de Lara de Russe, a fine and intelligent woman with a very funny sense of humor.
She had been his source of wisdom, and of strength, just as she had been those things to the rest of the family.
Bastian was the eldest child with two younger sisters and another brother who had died in infancy, and the family had been very close knit until Aderyn’s death.
Like an explosion, her passing had scattered them to the wind with nothing left to hold them together.
Bastian missed those days of familial closeness.
Therefore, he reconsidered the priority to visit his father.
“Tell my father I will see him before I head north,” he said after a moment. “It will more than likely be tomorrow sometime and I cannot stay for long, but I will come and see him. You will tell him that.”
Aramis nodded, satisfied. “I will,” he replied. “Are you off to see Gloucester now?”
Bastian nodded, slapping his uncle on the shoulder and nearly sending the man crashing into Worthington. “I am,” he said as he moved for his muzzled warhorse. “I will see you at West Court tomorrow, I swear it.”
As Aramis watched his big nephew move off, satisfied that he would again see the man, Worthington took a few steps after Bastian as if to follow him.
“Do you want company, Bas?” he asked. “I could ride with you. We have not seen each other in two years. Would you truly deny me the pleasure?”
Bastian didn’t want his cousin along but stopped short of insulting the man. “Not tonight,” he said. “I am weary and would make terrible conversation. We shall see each other tomorrow when I visit my father.”
He mounted his horse before Worthington could protest, spurring the charger onto the road that lined the docks, the avenue that led into the walled city of London.
His knights mounted swiftly and followed him, all three of them disappearing into the darkness of night that was cloaking the city.
The sounds of their horses’ hooves echoed off the streets, the structures, long after they had disappeared from view.
Aramis and Worthington stood there for few moments after Bastian had faded from their sight, their attention turning to the hundreds of men that Bastian’s sergeants were now starting to move.
The shouts of men reverberated all around as the weary army, so very weary from years of war, began to move like a great tide of men.
Worthington finally turned to his father.
“You did not tell him of the threat Uncle Braxton received,” he said. Then, he shook his head with great regret. “If you had told him, he would have ridden straight to West Court.”
Aramid nodded faintly. “I know,” he said.
“But Bastian is exhausted. Could you not see that? Any mention of threats against him, threats that his father has been receiving no less, will not help his state. Let him settle his business with Gloucester first. When he sees Braxton tomorrow, he will know the extent of what has been happening.”
Worthington’s jaw flexed. “Supporters of the Maid have threatened him for his role in her demise,” he said quietly. “The Armagnacs threaten him because he did not save her from the flame.”
“We do not know it was the Armagnacs for certain.”
“It could only be them. Uncle Braxton said so.”
Aramis suddenly looked very old and very weary himself.
As the head of the House of de Russe, he assumed all family burdens, even if they weren’t directed at him.
The latest threats against the Beast, the greatest knight England had ever seen, were almost too much for him to take.
But in that sorrow lingered a more realistic thought.
“I am sure he already knows of the threats against him by the Armagnacs,” he muttered. “What he does not know is that they have threatened Braxton as well. Certainly, Bastian must know. Braxton’s heart is too weak to take such a strain.”
Worthington simply nodded, thinking on his hulking, infamous cousin and the life the man led. Surely, he would not have traded places with him. Not for anything.
Silently, Aramis and Worthington left the dark and smelly shoreline where the boats bobbed gently in the night tide, finding their way back to their steeds and looking forward to a warm bed and a good night’s sleep but wondering all along if they were about to see the Beast unleashed against the threats against him.
Aramis wondered, too, if battle and warfare weren’t in his own future.
Old as he was, if Bastian called upon him, he knew he would go.
He would fight the threats against the Beast. De Russe family honor would dictate it. Suddenly, the future, to Aramis, wasn’t so clear.