Free Stronghold by Paul Finch Page B

determined to. He drew his final weapon, a small crossbow. Cranking the string back and fitting a dart onto the stock, he took aim. Though aged and corpulent, with legs bandied beneath his immense gut, Hugo d'Avranches was still a knight in the service of Earl Corotocus of Clun and King Edward of England, and he would make sure these rapscallions knew that.
    But when they came into the light, it was a different story.
    When he saw their cloven skulls, their smashed jaws and eyeless sockets, the clotted brains that caked their blue-green faces, the ribs showing through their worm-eaten rags - his courage failed him.
    They were inches away from falling upon him when d'Avranches placed the crossbow at his left temple, and shot its lethal dart deep into his own head.

CHAPTER NINE
     
    Ranulf was in the castle kitchen, with a hunk of bread under one arm and a bowl in his hands, when Hugh du Guesculin caught up with him. After the events of the last few days, Ranulf wasn't particularly hungry, but he now had a full night's watch duty ahead and knew that he had to get something into his belly. In addition, the game broth, which Otto, the earl's corpulent Brabancon cook, now ladled into his bowl from a huge, steaming pot, smelled delicious.
    "I've been looking for you," du Guesculin said.
    Ranulf didn't at first respond, even though, with nobody else in the kitchen, du Guesculin could hardly have been addressing anyone else.
    "FitzOsbern, I said..."
    "I hear you," Ranulf said, picking up a spoon.
    Du Guesculin smiled in that usual self-satisfied way of his. Stripped of his mail, he now wore comfortable clothes: green hose and a hooded green tunic, with long, unbuttoned sleeves. He had donned a dagger at his belt in place of his sword. He'd even brushed his bobbed black hair and clipped his short moustache; all the more remarkable given that he was sharing the earl's spartan accommodation in the Constable's Tower.
    "I hear you've formed quite an attachment to our prisoner?" he said.
    Ranulf shrugged. "Then you hear wrongly."
    "Ahhh... so you object to being replaced as her personal jailer because you deemed that an easier tour of duty than standing sentry on these walls?"
    "At least I'd be out of the weather." Ranulf made to move through the archway into the refectory, but du Guesculin stepped into his path.
    "Except that I don't believe a word of it, FitzOsbern."
    Ranulf feigned shock. "You don't?"
    "I believe that you feel sorry for the girl, or guilty about the way she's been treated, and are now concerned for her welfare."
    "What you believe or don't believe is of no importance to me."
    Ranulf pushed his way past and sauntered down a flight of four steps into the refectory, a low, vaulted chamber, lined with benches and long tables, but currently empty due to the lateness of the hour. He sat, tore his bread into pieces and, one by one, began to dunk them in the broth. He tried not to show irritation when du Guesculin sat down across the table from him.
    "You really dislike me, don't you, FitzOsbern?"
    "I don't have any feelings about you at all."
    "Do I disgust you?"
    Ranulf smiled. "You don't really want me to answer that question, do you?"
    Du Guesculin pursed his lips. "You consider that you're not part of this tragic affair, is that right?"
    "I wish I wasn't."
    "How noble of you. But let's not conveniently forget the past, FitzOsbern. You are only in the earl's service because you yourself are a murderer."
    Ranulf eyed him coldly, but continued to eat.
    "Don't be embarrassed about it," du Guesculin added. "There are few men who reach your age in the order of merit without making... shall we say 'errors of judgement'. Even fewer reach Earl Corotocus's age. Tell me, what did you think of his wife, Countess Isabel?"
    "I never met her," Ranulf said, wondering where this was leading.
    "She died a considerable time ago, of course. Now that I think about it, well before you joined the earl's mesnie." The banneret hooked his thumbs