Chapter Fourteen
The Pox tavern
London
Three Months Later
It was the kind of place one’s mother warned against.
Situated in the Ropery district near the River Thames, the dangerous establishment known as The Pox was legendary.
It had excellent food, excellent wine, and beautiful women who smelled like flowers.
Those were the positive aspects. The negative aspects involved the fact that at The Pox, one could wager on anything.
Anything. There were the usual games of chance, but a man could also wager on things like how far blood would spurt if a man was stabbed in a certain place.
Or how much a man could drink and then how far the same man could vomit.
There were no rules on wagering at The Pox, and things had been known to get out of hand too many times to count.
It was a paradoxical place—fine food, beautiful women, and then dangerous or immoral surroundings.
Great lords would speak disparagingly about the place, yet they would secretly go, not telling their wives, and then sit in a corner and enjoy the best wine from France.
Elite knights and drunkards, lowly villeins would sit alongside one another.
As long as a man had coin, The Pox wasn’t particular. But it could be quite lively.
As it was today.
Two of those elite knights were in The Pox when the smoke and fog hung around London, so thick that it was as if some great, unseen hand had knitted a blanket and decided to throw it over the whole of the city.
Sometimes the smoke from all of the fires around London could be choking, sitting heavy, especially in the summer when there were no breezes to blow it away, and today happened to be one of those days even though it wasn’t the season for it.
The Pox was full of men and women trying to escape the choking air today, and the knights sat in a corner, backs to the wall and facing the door, as they shared a beef knuckle and fine wine between them.
“Where do you go now, Myles?” a man with somewhat dirty, shoulder-length hair said. He was young and handsome, but he had the look of exhaustion about him. “It seems like we have been on this mission so long that I almost don’t know what to do with myself now that it’s over.”
Sir Myles de Lohr, son of the legendary Christopher de Lohr, Earl of Hereford and Worcester, smiled weakly at his companion’s assertion.
“It’s like this every time we finish with a task,” he said.
“You feel lost somehow. You’ve been going at full pace for months on end in a life-or-death situation and, suddenly, it is over.
Every Executioner Knight feels like that after a mission.
You’ve been doing this long enough to know that, Brenton. ”
Sir Brenton de Royans nodded in resignation. “Almost two years,” he said. “Ever since your brother came to Bowes Castle and practically forced me into service.”
Myles snorted. “Your father had nothing to say about it.”
“My father was helping your brother,” Brenton said with some animation. “The two of them, taking turns bending my arm behind my back until I cried for mercy and agreed to join the Executioner Knights. You should have seen it!”
Myles was laughing quietly. He wasn’t normally the laughing type, but a rather serious personality, but young Brenton’s description of Peter de Lohr, Christopher’s eldest son and the head of the Executioner Knights network, physically forcing a big, healthy knight into submission was indeed a humorous visual picture.
Not that it wasn’t true.
Peter did have that way about him.
“So you joined us,” Myles said. “And you have performed flawlessly. My brother will know about that because I will tell him myself.”
Brenton smiled, a smug gesture. “I am a de Royans,” he said. “We are always flawless.”
“And modest.”
“And modest,” Brenton agreed with exaggerated flair. But he quickly settled down. “In all seriousness, I want to go home and see my father. It has been almost a year and he’s an old man. I must spend some time with him.”
Myles nodded. “You will,” he said, eyeing the men at the next table as they began to argue over something undoubtedly stupid. “In fact, if you want to leave immediately after debriefing my brother on your activities for the past few months, I’m certain he will let you go.”
“Is he at Farringdon House?”
He was referring to the London townhome, and main headquarters for the Executioner Knights, and Myles nodded.
“Aye,” he said. “Especially since he knew that most of us were in Lincolnshire heading off that Flemish spy. God help us if that woman had made her way to London. A beautiful courtesan who is also clever is a dangerous tool, indeed. Especially to a king who has come of age. She might have gotten close to her had we not identified and neutralized her.”
Brenton lifted his eyebrows in agreement. “But we did,” he said. “At least Henry seems to be easier to protect than his father was, or so I’ve heard.”
“It’s true,” Myles said. “John was a nightmare.”
Brenton grunted. “I had a cousin who served him, you know.”
“Who?”
“Creston,” he said. “Have you met him?”
Myles shook his head. “I do not think so,” he said. “Does he still serve the Crown?”
“Nay,” Brenton said. “He was one of John’s closest knights.
The things John had him do… Well, you can imagine.
Creston is a man of honor and integrity, however.
When he could take no more, he simply walked out on him.
At least, that’s what my father said. I know my father approved even if Creston’s father did not. ”
“That is because Juston de Royans has a greater sense of intelligence and morality than most,” he said. “He knows what John was capable of. Where is Creston now?”
“Blackchurch,” Brenton said. “He is a senior trainer at the Blackchurch Guild.”
Myles’ eyebrows lifted in surprise. “Truly?” he said. “Blackchurch, you say?”
“Aye.”
“That’s quite impressive,” Myles said. “He’s your cousin, you said? How is he related to you?”
“My father has one brother, Quinton,” Brenton said. “Creston is his second son.”
“I see,” Myles said, picking up the pitcher to pour himself more wine. “A Blackchurch trainer in the family. That’s something to be proud of.”
“Did none of the de Lohr sons train at Blackchurch?”
Myles shook his head. “Nay,” he said. “My father never discouraged us, but we’re all very highly trained anyway, and we went straight into service for my father and the Crown.
Most Blackchurch warriors are men seeking positions with great lords or kings or princes.
Only a few train to return to the place where they started.
Frankly, none of us ever saw the need to train with Blackchurch and, to be perfectly honest, the Executioner Knights have been as intense a training field as Blackchurch is, only we’ve done it on the job.
At Blackchurch, when they fail during their training, they simply go home.
With the Executioner Knights, if we fail, we die. ”
That was the truth. The Blackchurch Guild and the Executioner Knights were two different beasts, each with their own merits, each with their own downfalls.
Each one was spoken of with awe in every hall in England.
Brenton sat back in his chair, holding his cup of wine, thinking of the cousin he’d not seen in a while as he watched the crowded common room.
Most men were simply eating and drinking, with the more private chambers in the rear of the establishment housing nobility that had come in to seek respite.
A game of chance over near the door that led to the kitchens caught his attention, men rolling a pair of dice, and he was about to point it out to Myles, to see if the man wanted to participate, when something suddenly fell against him.
Brenton’s wine went onto the floor.
Startled, he quickly rolled out of his chair because what had hit him was a body—a man falling into him. It was the man at the table next to him where the stupid argument had been going on, only one of them was now collapsed in Brenton’s chair as the other man went after him with a dagger.
Swiftly, Brenton grabbed the wrist of the man who held the dagger, twisting and yanking.
Bones snapped and the dagger went flying as the man began to scream.
Myles was up, and between the two of them, they rushed the screaming man out of the common room and onto the roadway outside.
Beyond was the dirty, muddy ribbon of the River Thames, and as the man pulled out another dagger with his good hand and charged them, Myles turned the dagger back on the man, so he ended up stabbing himself.
As he collapsed, Myles picked him up, literally, carried him down to the river, and tossed him in.
Both Myles and Brenton stood there as the body, face-down, was surrounded by a dark red stain. Slowly, it floated down the river before finally submerging.
It was just another day in the life of an Executioner Knight.
“Did he nick you?” Brenton asked.
Myles looked down at himself and then to both arms. “Nay,” he said. “Pity he had no common sense.”
“You’re still in the killer mindset, Myles.”
Myles turned to look at him. “That is because I’ve had to be for the past several months,” he said. “Kill or be killed.”
“By that courtesan.”
“Exactly.”
Myles was standing ankle-deep in the dirty river and sloshed back onto the shore, following Brenton across the roadway and back into The Pox.
They entered, but no one gave them a second glance.
Things like that happened at The Pox all the time, so it wasn’t anything unusual.
By the time they returned to their table in the crowded chamber, however, the man who had fallen into Brenton was waiting.
“My lord,” the man said, obviously drunk. “My deepest apologies that you were involved in such a tangle. I do not even know who that man was. He simply wanted to sit at my table and then became irate when I would not pay for his drink.”