Page 82 of The Knight's Pledge
“Money,” Gilboe sneered.
“Oh, that’s a relief. Usually—”
“Everything was about money,” Gilboe pressed on, as if Lucan hadn’t spoken. “The taxes on the church were hellish—and I do mean that literally, understand. And do you know where that money went, good Sir Lucan?”
“I can’t begin to guess.”
“Rome,” Gilboe spat the word, in a way he’d never heard him intone even the worst vulgarity. “The Pope. Not to the orphans. Not to the poor. Not to the small village churches that had too many mouths to feed. All. The way. To Rome.” He slapped his thigh with each phrase. “Gah. IhateRome.” He downed the wine in his cup.
“So how did you end up here?At the Warren?”
“We had just squeezed all the parishioners for their last coin, and I saw it piled up in a big golden chest, waiting for the guards to come and take it away. A golden chest, even! And something in me broke. I ran for my life, with the Cathedral tax chest.”
Lucan burst out in laughter. “Youactually ran?”
“Down the road. Carrying that bloody heavy thing. I couldn’t figure out a way to get mounted with it.” Gilboe chuckled. “Fool. Good thing Old Robin came out of the wood and tried to rob me.”
Lucan’s tipsy laughter shot into the night on a foggy bark. “What did you do?”
“I told him that the bastardsI’dstolen it from were right behind me, and if neither of us wanted to be drawn and quartered, not to mentionexcommunicated, we would do well to find a place to hide it.” Gilboe’s turn to pour. “I’ve been here ever since. The spiritual guiding light for all souls.” He toasted himself this time and drank the cup to its dregs.
“What will you do after?” Lucan asked suddenly. “If no one can return to the Warren. Go back to the Swan?”
Gilboe shrugged. “I don’t know. Perhaps for a while. I hope to eventually find my way to Bohemia. There was a man there, Hus, whose teachings I greatly admired. He’s dead now, but I’ve a feeling his ideas are only just the beginning of something great. Perhaps one day they will evenreach England.”
Gilboe stood and took up the empty jug and the cups. “Make sure you kiss Winnie goodbye before you depart. She’s fond of you.”
“She’s not going?”
Gilboe shook his head. “Nor I, nor Dana. London is not safe for any of us three to so tempt a second visit, especially when there is a near guarantee of trouble.”
His words sobered Lucan. “I might notsee you again.”
“You might not.” He transferred the cups to beneath his other arm and held his hand toward Lucan, who rose and took it firmly. “Dominus vobiscum, Sir Lucan.”
“Et cum spiritu tuo, Gilboe.”
The monk turned and began walking back into the shadows.
“Gilboe!” Lucan called out.
The rotund man turned. “Yes, Sir Lucan?”
“Forgive me, but whatever happened toyour eyebrows?”
“Oh, that,” Gilboe scoffed. “Dana plucked them all out. An experiment of sorts that didn’t exactly turn out as we’d hoped. I let that lunatic get away with too much. No matter, I rather like it now. Good luck, Sir Lucan.” With a wave of the cups held together like a cross, the monk vanishedinto the night.
Lucan sat in tipsy contemplation for hours before bedding down to sleep under the tree with what might have been his own sheep, Agrios keeping drowsy watch. He understood that this might be the last time he would ever touch Castle Dare lands, and Lucan left his fears, his wishes, and his prayers deep in the soil before he closed his eyes to a dreamless, cold slumber.
Chapter 21
Only six of the Warren family departed for London—Effie and Gorman, Chumley, James, Bob, and Kit Katey. Lucan Montague and Thomas Annesley made the party eight, which made Effie’s heart ache in a foreign manner. The even number of the group should have meant that each rider had a partner, but Sir Lucan seemed unobligedto participate.
Once more, he was the man she’d first known—solitary, stiff, proper. He held himself apart from the band despite Tommy and Gorman and Kit Katey’s best efforts to draw him back in on the journey south. Effie hadn’t realized how much a part of the group he’d become until he was no longer there.
Why had he become so cold toward her? Since the night at the Swan when he’d failed to visit her room, his demeanor had only grown more detached. He wouldn’t so much as look at her now, and that, combined with her anxiousness to see George Thomas again, caused the burgeoning spring warmth, the bright sunshine, to be somehow dimmed and still tainted with winter’s frost. The week’s journey seemed to last an eternity.
The morning they at last came upon the outskirts of London, a trio of riders passed them on the road just a mile from the city walls, single file; two men, with a woman riding in the center. Chumley tossed his head at them as they passed, and Effie looked closely. The woman’s face was bruised, and beneath the edges of her cloak, draped in an effort to hide it, her hands were boundto the saddle.
