Chapter 20 #3
Stop! his agonized brain screamed. It couldn’t end like this. There had to be another way. Something he could do to keep them from taking her away. Something…
“Wait!” He shouted, pushing through the crowd and racing toward the dais where King Henry still stood.
“My lord, I ask a moment’s indulgence, that I might offer a proposal.
” He looked up at the king, fisting his hands and pressing them into the rich fabric draping the dais near his sovereign’s feet.
“Please, Sire, I beg of you to hear me.”
He added the last bit gruffly, not caring anymore that the eyes of all of the other nobles and barons in the court were on him.
Not caring that such a public plea would humble him unforgivably in their perception, likely costing him all of the power and influence he’d managed to amass in his years at Court.
Nothing mattered now but saving the woman he loved.
The chamber hushed again as Henry turned with a swish of his lustrous robes. “What is it, Camville?” His voice sounded flat, resigned as he looked down at Gray.
“I ask of Your Highness a boon. Allow me the right of wergild, my lord. I will pay whatever you deem fair for the loss of Lord Montford’s services to the Crown, if in return you restore Catherine’s freedom from the debt of his murder.”
“Wergild?” Henry scowled, staring down at him from his regal height. “You wish to invoke that ancient and barbaric ritual?” He shook his head. “The paying of man-money for murder was a Saxon practice, Camville. It has not seen use in England in nigh on three centuries.”
“Then restore it.”
Henry waved his hand. “Impossible. Even if We chose to allow such an outdated code of law, Lord Montford’s worth as one of Our High Champions is virtually incalculable. ’Twould amount to an enormous sum.”
“Perhaps,” Gray nodded, feeling more hopeful with every passing moment that kept Catherine from sentencing. “And yet I am willing to pay whatever you ask, here and now. Allow me that privilege, my lord, as your faithful servant.”
King Henry had gone still. He looked at Gray and then to where Catherine stood near the door, surrounded by guards. But Gray didn’t trust himself to meet her gaze himself yet.
Not yet.
Desperate to have this one, last chance, Gray added quietly, “I have never asked a personal boon of you, Sire. Not in all of the seventeen years I have served you. But I do so now, before these gathered here to witness your justice. Invoke your God-given power, Sire. Issue the command for wergild in this case, and name me your price.”
Henry’s gaze narrowed. The crowd remained hushed, every person teetering on the edge of anticipation as they awaited the king’s response to his greatest Champion’s strange request.
All of a sudden, the king folded his arms across his chest, his expression shifting to one of cold cunning.
The change made Gray’s gut twist, reminding him again of his sovereign’s penchant for fickle and often petulant behavior.
He only prayed that he hadn’t overstepped his bounds this time, for the results would surely be fatal.
“So you insist upon a man-price for Montford, do you, Camville?” Henry finally clipped.
“Very well, then, you shall have it. You must forfeit all of your titles. All of them, along with all of your estates, lands, and the taxes and income they entail. Surrender your entire wealth, every last piece of gold that you’ve earned since the day that I knighted you as a youth on Danbury Field. ”
The murmurs in the chamber swelled with disbelief, mingled with a few scandalized gasps.
“Do this,” Henry continued, “and Catherine de Montford will go free from the charge of murder.”
Gray felt his heart beating steadily in his chest. Air seemed to rush into his lungs once more, pure and sweet. Even the chamber torches burned brighter, somehow. And for the first time since this whole nightmare began, his lips edged up in a smile.
Raising his arms, he lifted from his neck the thick gold chain that secured the disk of his baronial seal—the emblem that marked him as a powerful peer of the realm.
Removing it over his head, he set it on the dais at the king’s feet.
Then he grasped the top edge of his surcoat, emblazoned with his device of a golden eagle clasping a thunderbolt in its beak.
With one swift motion, he rent the garment in two, pulling it off to lay it next to his discarded seal.
“It is done,” he said, his voice firm. “I accept your price, Sire, and I pay it in full, most gladly.”
The king gazed down at his former High Champion as if he were sure that the man had lost his mind.
“Do you know what you are saying, Camville? If you do this you will be left a pauper. A man without title, without fortune…without power of any kind. You will be left with nothing when you leave here.”
“Nay, Sire,” Gray answered, shaking his head. “I will walk from this chamber the richest of men. For when I leave here, my lady will walk beside me.”
Henry tried and again failed to keep the look of burgeoning shock and dismay from his expression. “Your lady is not even legally your wife, Camville, thanks to her duplicity. Do you not think such a sacrifice, noble as it may be, is excessive, considering the circumstances?”
A tender smile still curved Gray’s lips. “The answer is nay again, Sire.”
In that moment, Gray finally dared to shift his gaze to look at Catherine, to take in the vision of the woman who was the true wife of his heart, the woman to whom he’d long ago surrendered the keeping of his soul.
Her trembling hands were pressed to her mouth, her eyes glistening with tears of joy and love. Love most beautiful and sacred.
Love for him.
An incredible sweep of emotion rushed through him, blocking all else.
“In truth, my lord,” he added quietly, still gazing at her alone, “for Catherine’s sake I would give up everything that I possess, everything that I am.
God in heaven, but I would give up my very life for her if you asked it of me. ”
The chamber echoed with renewed murmuring. Only King Henry seemed rendered completely speechless. Catherine, however, wanted to cry aloud with happiness, feeling that her heart must burst from the surge of love and pride that swept through her at that moment.
She gazed at Gray, at this magnificent man who was her destiny and her life, and she knew without a doubt that there was nothing more on earth that could ever again come between them.
He had faced down the entire English Court and its king for her, pledging to forsake his vows as a knight in order to be her warrior, her champion alone.
He was willing to renounce all that had ever mattered to him.
To give up prestige, wealth, the positions of power that he craved—even his own body and blood, if need be—all in order to save her.
But oh, if only he knew…
If he only knew that he’d saved her long ago. From the very first day he’d taken her into his arms, he’d been saving her, one tender step at a time. Aye, he’d pulled her back from the brink of destruction, freeing her soul with the awesome gift of his love.
Straightening, Catherine shook off the hold of her guards.
They released her without argument, almost as if they too felt the magic, the power, in this moment.
She crossed the chamber to Gray, walking with slow, measured steps, until she stood tall and proud before him.
Then she took his hands in hers, raised his palms to her lips and kissed each in turn before sliding her arms up around his neck and throwing herself against him with a happy cry.
He held her tight, and she reveled in the feel of him as he cradled her close, in his murmured endearments as he buried his face in her hair.
When he finally pulled away, it was to let Ian and Isabel join in their embrace.
But he didn’t fully release her yet, keeping his arm linked round her waist as the twins nestled in.
Catherine held onto her children and to the man she loved, overflowing with emotion as they faced their king once more. Faced him together, as they were meant to be.
Gray’s face shone with a supremely happy expression, she thought, considering that he’d just forsaken all of his earthly possessions for her.
But in the next instant she realized that she’d underestimated him yet again.
Her heart flopped in her chest and her breath caught when he arched his brow in that infernally devilish way of his, matching it to the tilt of his smile.
“Have we your leave to go now, Sire?” he murmured.
Still holding her breath, Catherine waited for the king’s answer, relieved to see that his incredulous look seemed to have faded. More encouraging, even, was the warmth lighting his gaze as he looked at them now. His mouth looked softer, his face relaxed. He seemed almost…well, almost happy.
But then he surprised her by shaking his head and answering sternly, “Nay, Camville, you may not leave. Not until We have put to rest this messy business of wergild that you foisted upon Us today.”
Gray stiffened. “What else needs be done?” he asked calmly, though she recognized the tone of steel in his voice, saw the gathering storm clouds that turned his eyes to green ice. “I have already surrendered all that I possess into your keeping. What more do you seek from me?”
In a magnificent swirl of capes, the king stepped down from the dais again to stand before them, this time unable to mask his repressed glee, like a child who thinks that he alone knows the answer to some great and wonderful secret.
“You seem to forget, Camville,” Henry added, “that We have not settled the details of your property’s disbursement.
The ancient code of wergild that you invoked today requires the man-money be paid to the victim’s family.
’Tis only if there are no living relatives that the funds go to the Cyng himself.