Chapter 6 #2
Ben sighed, his expression a combination of long-suffering and acceptance, and Damien almost smiled.
He knew his friend didn’t relish confrontation, but there was no help for it right now.
Shifting his gaze, Damien saw Fitzgibbon glance warily toward the back of the group, where one of the men seemed about to speak; Fitzgibbon cast him a silent look of warning.
“Nay, let him have his say,” Damien called to the captain.
“Better to bring it all out in the open now than to let it continue brewing beneath the surface while we swing blades at each other.” He did allow himself a kind of smile, then, though it was a tight, bitter look he had perfected over several years…
an expression he knew was far more feral than friendly.
“I have something to say, then, if you want to know.”
The hostile statement came from the back of the group, and as the men shifted out of the way, Damien at last saw the speaker clearly.
He was a man of about Damien’s own age, he’d guess, well built for fighting, as were all of these soldiers Fitzgibbon had chosen for the training—but possessed of a cocky manner that had no doubt forced him to use his fists in defense on more than one occasion.
Several of the other men seemed uncomfortable, a few shuffling their feet and looking down, while the one who had taken up Damien’s challenge stood with an insolent posture, his muscular arms folded across his chest as he continued to gaze at Damien.
“Your name?” Damien called in a voice that was deceptively calm.
“I am Sir Gareth de Burton, second in command of Lord Denton’s garrison,” the man drawled.
Damien didn’t respond at first, letting the insult wash over him before he tilted his head in barest acknowledgment, countering in a voice thick with sarcasm, “I hate to be the bearer of bad tidings, but Lord Denton has left this world and is no longer in charge of this garrison. I am.”
“By right of a hasty marriage, perhaps, naught else.”
“The status of my marriage does not concern you. And as for my right to lead you, I can promise that my military experience gives me far more claim to command you in training and battle than I possess in many of the other areas of duty required of me as the new lord of Glenheim Castle.”
Damien looked around the group of men, meeting Sir Gareth’s gaze again as he added, “Fighting and winning are what I know best. If you will follow me, I will provide you with instruction in all that I have learned in seven years of skirmishing, tournaments, and actual combat, both here and abroad.”
“Sir Damien is one of the finest knights I have ever seen, and I know of what I speak,” Ben interjected from where he stood, leaning against his sword just behind Damien. “Though I am a Franciscan now, as a young man, before I took my vows, I fought in the Holy Land—”
Damien’s gaze snapped to him.
“—and I was at Acre when it fell to the Saracens.” Ben looked serious, his usually ruddy complexion seeming paler with what he apparently was recalling from that time.
At last he nodded and finished, “I saw some of the most impressive fighting skills a man may see in his lifetime there—and more barbarity than I would ever hope to see again. It was my reason for turning my life over to God. But I can tell you without qualm that Sir Damien possesses greater skill with blade, arrow, and spear, in hand combat and upon horseback, than any I witnessed during my own fighting days.”
The group fell completely quiet as Ben spoke, and Damien gazed at his friend now in stunned silence.
He’d known Ben had learned to wield a sword at some point in his life, simply based upon his level of skill when they’d begun sparring together as he’d helped Damien regain his fighting abilities.
But he’d never known the whole story behind it.
Ben met his gaze with that wise, calm expression in his eyes that Damien had come to know so well during his time of painful healing, nodding to him in support.
The tension seemed to have dissipated somewhat with Damien’s answer to Gareth and Ben’s startling testimonial, but it was clear that something still simmered, so Damien remained quiet to see what else would come out into the open.
It took only another moment before he got his answer.
“My lord, I also have a question for you, if we may still speak freely.”
The man who spoke this time, and in a far more courteous manner than Gareth had, stood to the right of Fitzgibbon; he appeared to be several years younger than most of the other men—a new knight of perhaps only eighteen or so, which was the age Damien had been upon his first arrival to court.
“Aye,” Damien answered. “You may ask without fear, and I will answer, if I can, though as with your comrade, I would ask your name first.”
The young man nodded. “I am Sir Reginald Sinclair, my lord, and I wish to know if it is true, as we have heard, that you were a Templar Knight of the inner circle—and that you were arrested by the Inquisition in France, under the charge of heresy.”
Damien had known this would likely come up, but it nevertheless unleashed a fierce aching, as the vivid and painful memories suddenly reared up from the abyss inside him. Reginald seemed sincere in his asking, however, so Damien resolved to do his best to address the lad’s question.
He nodded. “What you have heard about my service with the Templars is true.” His jaw clenched tight. “And in answer to your second question—yes, I was brought into captivity and interrogated by the Inquisition in France late last year, during the mass arrests.”
“We are not fools, my lord,” Gareth broke in again in a scoffing tone, clearly still not mollified in any way.
“Word has reached us that thousands of Templar Brethren arrested in France have already confessed to heretical practices under the very questioning you mentioned. If you were indeed a Templar in that place at that time, how is it that your outcome was so different?”
A charged hush spread over the yard in the wake of Gareth’s thinly veiled accusation of deceit on the part of their new lord, the area ringing with the silence of all that had not been said.
Damien felt his fists clench and found himself needing to call on his inner resolve to keep from striding over to the wretch here and now and rewarding his insolence in a way he would have no difficulty understanding.
“I did not confess under interrogation, Sir Gareth,” Damien finally ground out, “because I was not guilty of heresy.”
“So you say,” the knight muttered. His eyes flashed with righteous fire, and Damien was reminded of himself, those many years ago, when the world had been cast in shades of black and white, with little, if any, gray.
“The fact that Sir Damien is standing here before you should provide some assurance to his innocence in the matter,” Ben offered smoothly, attempting to diffuse the rising tensions, and again, Damien found himself glancing to his friend in surprise.
Ben’s own morals would not allow him to lie outright, Damien knew, but he wasn’t exactly being truthful about the way things had transpired with Damien’s rescue from the Inquisition, either.
“That proves only that he takes breath upon the earth like the rest of us,” Gareth countered, shifting that fiery gaze to Ben.
“We have naught but your saying so to convince us of anything. It is common knowledge that every Templar in France was taken into custody in October of last year, to be questioned by a branch of the Inquisition notorious for the severity of its interrogations—yet here Sir Damien stands before us, hale and hearty.”
Gareth’s face tightened as if he knew how closely he was treading on the edge of disaster, but apparently he found himself unable to cease, by reason of his own pride.
Lifting his chin in defiance, he swallowed hard and added in a quiet, but damning, blow, “I say I am not alone among the men of this garrison in thinking we have been fed a great lie. We do not believe that Sir Damien was ever a knight of the Brotherhood’s inner circle—or that he was interrogated in France.
Nay, more like he is a common soldier as any of us are, only one who somehow managed to coerce our lady into a union, with the sole purpose of gaining control of her vast wealth and estates. ”
There it was. The accusation that was behind all of the sidelong looks, grumbling, and antagonism he had felt in various forms since his arrival here.
All the muscles in Damien’s body tightened.
He had hoped to avoid the kind of visceral, violent confrontation this was going to require, but it was clear now that it had to be done if he had any hope of leading these men and commanding their respect and loyalty for the six months he would need to count on them, while he served out the agreement he had made with Alissende.
Gesturing for the men to widen their positions into a half circle, Damien began to loosen his shirt, taking a few steps back away from the group, though never altering the steeliness of his gaze on Gareth as he said, “If you think that I will sully Lady Alissende by discussing any aspect of my union with her, then you are sadly mistaken. However, I possess no similar qualm in addressing your complaint about the truth of my experience with the Inquisition”—he felt his mouth twist in bitterness with the utterance—“or my service as a Templar Knight of the inner circle.”
By this time he had freed his shirt from his breeches and unlaced it at the neck as well.
Now he pulled it over his head and tossed it aside, standing before them all with his entire upper body revealed to their gazes.
They could not help but see the scars—of burns, lash marks, and other wounds—that spread across his torso, ribs, and back.