Free Roseblood by Paul Doherty Page B

which her father regularly seized and destroyed.
    She slipped through the half-open door into the dappled, sweet-smelling light of the barn, all warm and close. Her mind was a-tumble with lines from the poems about Arthur and the appearance of the Knight from the Red Lands, as well as snatches from the sequence of the mass for the dead. ‘See what fear man’s bosom rendeth.’ The sombre line echoed through her head, followed by: ‘When from Heaven the judge descendeth.’ She thanked God her leg was not troubling her as she climbed the ladder into the hayloft and hid behind the bales, holding her breath.
    The sound of voices grew louder. The barn door opened and her father, accompanied by Raphael and Ignacio, carrying a tray bearing a jug and three goblets, came in. Whilst Ignacio served the goblets, Raphael positioned two heavy lantern horns. Blackshanks and his companions stood slurping the wine, unaware of the danger closing in like a hawk. There was movement, her father crossing to the left, Ignacio to the right. Raphael had slipped behind the three wolfsheads. Katherine could feel her heart beating, her jaw tightly clenched.
    ‘Well?’ Blackshanks bellowed, taking another gulp of claret. ‘What do you have to say?’
    ‘Never drink wine with your enemies.’
    ‘What do you mean?’
    ‘Well, if you are holding a goblet…’
    Blackshanks dropped his cup, but it was too late. Her father’s sword came hissing out of its scabbard, and in a glittering arc of steel he severed Blackshanks’s head. At the same time, Gull-Groper was dealt with by one swift cut from Ignacio, while Scalding-Boy, still grasping his goblet in shocked surprise, never even saw Raphael’s sword as it whipped through the air.
    Katherine froze to the spot. She could only stare at the severed trunks, the spouting blood, heads rolling away as the bodies collapsed. She closed her eyes, but all she saw was Sevigny’s brooding face.

Raphael Roseblood
    London, April 1455
    R aphael Roseblood crossed himself and gazed around the beautifully furnished solar. The Camelot Chamber was exquisitely decorated, and its carved mantled hearth, with a woodwose in the middle and a Robin Goodfellow face on either side, housed a merrily spitting fire. The flames crackled the pine-scented logs and illuminated the gorgeous arras that adorned the pink-plastered walls above the polished oak wainscoting. The floor had a tiled mosaic replicating what the master mason had seen in an ancient Roman villa along the Great North Road: a brilliant depiction of leaping dolphins above cream-crested blue waves. The chamber was dominated by the splendid round table furnished with high-backed chairs cushioned in purple and red stuffing. In the centre of the table rose the gold-encrusted replica of the ship that took Arthur into the Eternal West. Simon Roseblood always met his council of sworn men here. Tonight the conclave was most serious in the face of the threats gathering against him.
    Raphael stared hard at his father: his black and silver hair was combed back to reveal his leathery face, and those clever eyes looked deeply troubled, whilst the resolute chin and mouth betrayed some of the tension he must be feeling. Father Benedict, sitting on Simon Roseblood’s left, claimed that his patron’s face was one well lived in. Raphael wondered what plots and counterplots his father’s teeming brain was sifting. Ignacio, Monkshood, Wormwood and the other principal henchmen were present; all had served with his father under Beaufort’s banner in France. Raphael smiled to himself. The only persons here who had not served in such an array were himself and his sister Katherine, who, hair decorously hidden under a veil, now sat nervously on her chair. Raphael had objected to her presence, rejecting her as being a woman of tender years, but his father had been adamant.
    ‘Blood is blood,’ he’d muttered. ‘If mine flows, so will hers. She deserves to be one of us. Mark my words,