Chapter Twenty-Five
It hadn’t been much of a fight.
In fact, Christopher’s army saw about an hour of serious fighting before the royal soldiers began to surrender in droves. Perhaps that was because they’d lost about one-third of their numbers in that hour, or perhaps it was because they’d grown lazy and simply didn’t want to fight anymore.
Whatever the reason, Christopher had sixty-one prisoners surrender to him by midday and by nightfall, he decided to send them all back to John with their weapons stripped and their tunics torn up and vandalized. Come the next morning, he planned to do exactly that.
While his men guarded the prisoners in a field south of town, Christopher and David and Peter had supped heartily and slept in The Cock and Bull, a tavern that they found to be a step above most. The food was excellent, the beds soft, and Christopher was awakened before dawn the next morning by Peter, shaking him gently.
“Papa?” Peter whispered loudly. “Papa, wake up.”
Christopher had been sleeping heavily, enjoying his first real sleep in days. “I am awake,” he muttered. “But you had better have a good reason for disturbing me.”
“I do,” Peter said. “Christin has returned!”
Christopher sat up so quickly that he nearly hit his son in the chin. “Where is she?” he demanded.
Peter was pulling him out of bed. “She just rode into the livery,” he said. “Sherry and Maxton and Sean and the others are with her. They brought her back!”
Christopher was in his breeches and a thin tunic and nothing else. He yanked on his boots, tying them haphazardly as he rushed out of the chamber after his son. He was just passing David’s door when he kicked it open, revealing David passed out on his small bed.
“David!” he hissed. “Get up! Christin has returned!”
David struggled to rouse himself, rolling out of bed and ending up on the floor as Peter and Christopher continued down the stairs into the common room of the inn.
As David scrambled up and grabbed his boots, Peter and Christopher were already out the door, rushing over to the livery just as Christin and Alexander and the rest were dismounting their thoroughly exhausted horses.
The first thing Christopher saw was the headless body on the back of Sean’s sweaty horse. He came to a halt, peering at it and suspecting who it was before he was even told. Sean, seeing where Christopher’s attention was, made his way over to him.
“It’s FitzRoy,” he said as he wearily removed his helm. “Christin and Sherry made short work of him.”
“Sherry killed him because he was trying to kill me,” Christin said as she came out from between a couple of horses. She went straight to her father and they embraced tightly. “Sherry saved my life, Papa.”
Christopher was holding her so tightly that he was certain that he was squeezing the life out of her, but she clung to him tightly as well. The joy of having her back in his arms, safe, was almost more than he could bear.
“Are you well, sweetheart?” he asked. “He did not hurt you, did he?”
Christin shook her head, releasing her father but realizing he had no intention of releasing her also. She had to pry his hands from her.
“I am fine,” she assured him. “Did you hear me? Sherry killed him.”
Christopher took a deep breath, struggling to compose himself because he was so damned relieved to see her. “I heard you,” he said. “Tell me what happened from the beginning.”
“We reached Fairstead Manor, which is FitzRoy’s home,” Alexander answered him.
He was standing a few feet away, back behind the butt of a horse, and all attention turned to him as he spoke.
“When we arrived, FitzRoy came to speak with us and Sean told him that his father wished for him to marry Christin, but there was an immediate complication with that because FitzRoy was already married.”
Christopher’s eyebrows lifted in surprise. “He was?” he said. “And John did not know this?”
Alexander shook his head. “He did not,” he said. “FitzRoy ranted about how his father never cared for him, so he’d evidently married without permission.”
That changed the entire dynamic of the situation and the impact wasn’t lost on Christopher. In truth, he was stunned.
“Christ,” Christopher hissed. “So FitzRoy was already married. But what happened that you had to kill him?”
“Because he considered Christin a gift and wanted to take her as his whore,” Alexander said. “She fought against him valiantly. But in the end, I stepped in to end it. I was not going to stand by and watch her fight for her life.”
“And that is how he ended up headless?”
“Aye, my lord.”
“Where is his head?”
“Here,” Kress said, lifting up a bloody tunic he’d wrapped around the skull. “He is in pieces, my lord.”
Christopher stood there a moment, pondering the situation, before going to Kress and collecting the head. He opened up the tunic enough to examine the state of the head before wrapping it back up again.
“The damage to his face,” he said. “How did that happen?”
“When your daughter hit him in the face, twice,” Alexander said. “As I said, she fought valiantly, but I delivered the final blow before he could gain the upper hand.”
“I told you that he saved me, Papa,” Christin said, wrapping her hands around his forearm and gazing up at him with her big, gray eyes. “Does that not deserve a reward?”
Christopher knew what she meant, the little minx. Like her mother, she knew how to manipulate him. He was so glad to see her that his defenses were down and she knew it. He lifted a disapproving eyebrow at her before handing the head over to Sean.
“You are going to take the head and the body back to John,” he told him.
“You will tell him that I killed FitzRoy in retribution for the abduction of my daughter. I am the one who delivered the death blow and I captured you and your army and forced you to return the body to the king along with a message.”
“What message might that be, my lord?” Sean asked.
Christopher’s eyes narrowed. “Tell him that if he ever seeks to touch my family again, in any way, that I will find him and I will kill him. That is my message to the king, Sean, and know that I mean it. If you stand in my way, I will consider you the enemy as well. I will have little choice. Do you understand me?”
Sean nodded. He wasn’t offended. In his position, he couldn’t afford to be. “I do, my lord,” he said. “John… it could go either way with him. He will either single you out for a vendetta or he will leave you alone.”
“He hasn’t left me alone for twenty years.”
“There is always a first time for everything, my lord.”
Christopher nodded as if he didn’t quite believe that.
“We shall see,” he said. “In any case, the remainder of the king’s troops are south of town, being held captive by my men.
I shall have Peter take you over there with a sword to your back so that your men believe I captured you also and gave you FitzRoy’s body.
That should keep the illusion of your loyalties alive for them. ”
Sean nodded. “Thank you, my lord.”
Christopher reached out, clapping Sean on the shoulder. “You do valuable work for us, Sean,” he said. “I would never knowingly betray your position and I would kill anyone who tried. That being said, get back to John and deliver my package. If he is wise, he will let things lie. If not…”
They all knew what was at stake. Sean tied the head off on his saddle and with Peter to his back, led the horse back down the road, towards the group of men being held by the de Lohr army. As he faded into the coming dawn, Christopher turned to the other men around him.
“Thank you,” he said. “For helping regain my daughter, I am indebted to all of you. You are all great men in your own right and I respect you for it. Except for Maxton, of course. I reserve a special sentiment for him.”
Everyone grinned except for Maxton, who pursed his lips wryly. There was no love lost between him and Christopher, yet they would die for each other without question. It made for a strange relationship, indeed.
“If Sean is heading back to London to deliver FitzRoy to the king, I do not think it would cause The Marshal too much trouble if the rest of us took the day and night to sleep,” Maxton said. “None of us has slept very much in the past few days. I could use a good meal and a soft bed myself.”
Christopher waved him off. “All of you need a good meal and some sleep,” he said.
“I will send Peter to The Marshal to report on what has happened because I am quite certain that my son has slept more than the rest of you have, and also because I doubt Sherry is going to want to take the time to report to the man even though he is the mission commander. He has other things on his mind.”
Whenever the Executioner Knights went on a mission, it was usually Alexander in command because he had a natural air of leadership about him and was flawless in his decisions.
Technically, Sean may have concocted the plan, but Alexander had commanded the men to it.
But Christopher’s final comment had Alexander looking at him strangely.
“My lord?” he said.
Christopher looked at him, his eyes glimmering at him. “My daughter says you saved her life,” he said quietly. “That, indeed, deserves a reward. Tell me what you desire and you shall have it.”
A smile spread across Alexander’s face. He wasn’t sure if Christopher meant Christin, but he suspected he might.
Perhaps the man had finally decided to leave his daughter to her happiness, after all.
It couldn’t have been an easy thing for Christopher to acknowledge and Alexander understood that.
Surely it was difficult for any man to let his daughter go and Alexander hoped to find that out for himself, one day.
He hoped to have many sons and daughters with the woman he’d chosen for his wife.
For the man who had been a loner for most of his life, it was truly a time of end.
But it was also a time of beginning.