Court of Wolves Read online

  Court of Wolves

  Robyn Young

  www.hodder.co.uk

  Also by Robyn Young

  The New World Rising Series

  Sons of the Blood

  The Insurrection Trilogy

  Insurrection

  Renegade

  Kingdom

  The Brethren Trilogy

  Brethren

  Crusade

  Requiem

  First published in Great Britain in 2018 by Hodder & Stoughton

  An Hachette UK company

  Copyright © Robyn Young 2018

  The right of Robyn Young to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead is purely coincidental.

  A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library

  ISBN 978 1 444 77779 6

  Hodder & Stoughton Ltd

  Carmelite House

  50 Victoria Embankment

  London EC4Y 0DZ

  www.hodder.co.uk

  CONTENTS

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Map 1

  Map 2

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  CHARACTER LIST

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  A huge, heartfelt thank you, first, to all my friends and family for their continued and much appreciated support as cheerleaders, pub-buddies, plot-wranglers, sounding-boards and huggers, with special thanks to Imogen Robertson and Alex von Tunzelmann for the timely reminder to ‘follow the marsh lights’.

  Thank you to Vincent Benham for the introduction to Mark Simpson who was kind enough to treat me to an incredible tour of Westminster. Thanks also to Helen and Anthony Riches for allowing me to hijack the Florence trip for research purposes and for generally being splendid. A big hug to my dad, Andy Young, for stepping in at the last minute to drive me around Andalusia (I don’t think you minded too much), and thanks to Mark Griffin and David Boyle for helpful loans of books.

  A special thank you goes to my historical consultant, Kirsten Claiden-Yardley at Oxford Heritage Partnership, for keeping me on track. My gratitude to Floriana at Riva Lofts, Florence, for helping me get a peek inside Villa Fiesole and to Claudio Nardi and Catherine for a memorable evening which opened a window into the soul of this beautifully elusive city.

  Many thanks to the fantastic team behind the books at Hodder & Stoughton, with a huge shout-out to my wonderful, patient editor, Nick Sayers, and also to Cicely Aspinall, Kerry Hood, Alice Morley, all in the production and art teams, marketing, sales, publicity and to my copy-editor, Morag, and my proof-reader, Barbara. Thanks also to Rupert Heath, Meg Davis, Dan Conaway, Roberta Oliva, Camilla Ferrier and all at the Marsh Agency, and the brilliant overseas teams. And a round of appreciative applause to all the booksellers who have supported me over the years and, of course, to you wonderful readers!

  Last, my love to Lee – for everything else.

  1

  The prisoner rose with the dawn. In the half-light, he poured water into a jewelled basin and splashed his face, smoothing back his dark hair. Stray droplets threaded down his chest where faded scars told stories of violence. The most prominent began near his shoulder and snaked in a knotted line to the palm of his hand, where it cut through all the other lines there: heart, life, fate.

  After shrugging on his robes, the silk cool against his skin, he settled himself for prayer. The large chamber at the top of the tower filled with his chanted words, rising and falling like a song. The floor bruised his knees with each prostration, even through the softness of the mat. He prayed, as he always did, for God to grant him the strength to endure this day and to bless his family, wherever they might be.

  When he was done, he moved to the window. Gripping the iron bars, he surveyed the slit of land his world had been narrowed to. To the east, the first shafts of sun were streaming through a bank of clouds in ribbons of light, gilding the tops of the trees that tumbled from the base of the tower into a valley, before rising up the other side in forested hills. It was late summer, but there was a sharpness to the air; a smell of change coming. Soon, those trees would begin their slow turn from green to bronze. Then, the leaves would fall and, finally, he would glimpse the river in the valley. In one sense he longed to see the water, desperate for something new in this vista. In another, he dreaded it. The sight of anything that moved through this place on its way to somewhere else – whether water, cloud or bird – pained him.

  As the light spread, bathing his face, the prisoner closed his eyes and tried to free his mind, let it wing him home. But the pale sun and the scent of damp forest kept him tethered. After three years in foreign lands, even the faces of his family were hard to conjure in detail, like old paintings whose colours have faded. One visage, though, remained perfectly clear. He guessed that when all else had slipped from his memory it would remain: that hard jaw and aquiline nose, those steel eyes, clear and merciless. The face of his brother. The prisoner’s hands tightened around the bars, but only for a moment. Even the deep well of his rage had become silted by time and silence.

  Turning, he crossed to the table, where a stack of books awaited him, each a world into which he could escape the day. There were religious texts and grand romances, books on law and philosophy, poetry and war. His gaolers, seeing his appetite for them, brought a new pile each week. He wondered where they got them from. A library in the Grand Master’s castle perhaps?

  Some were old, bindings crumbling, the paper brittle, crackling under his fingertips. Others were pristine, boards wrapped in velvet. A few were in his tongue, but more were in French and Latin, Greek or English. Those languages he did not know, he learned, with the help of an elderly priest of the Order. Often, he paced the chamber as he read, trying to keep his limbs supple and strong. One day, God willing, he would need his strength again. One day, he might return to take back all that had been taken from him.

  Settling himself on to a cushioned chair, he opened a book, smoothing the pages. Soon, the servants would come, bringing his meal, emptying the pot beneath his bed, thumping the pillows back to life. He liked to be deep in the words before they entered. He was halfway through the second page when he heard the scream.
r />   The raw human sound tore through the silence, jolting him from the text. He rose, listening intently, hearing only the agitated chatter of birds. For a moment there was nothing, then harsh shouts sounded, followed by a familiar clashing of steel and the clap of wings as scores of birds lifted in fright from the trees outside the tower. Dropping the book, the prisoner darted to the window.

  He could see nothing from this vantage except the tops of the trees, but more clashes and anguished cries told him the fighting was close. His heart pounded, blood pulsing, sharpening his mind. Through all these monotonous years, danger was a beast that had never left him, lurking ever near the surface, ready to rise. He knew his brother would finish him if he could. A well-paid assassin with a hidden blade, a drink laced with poison proffered by an unknown servant, an arrow lancing from a rooftop. He had expected them all.

  Snatching up a silver candlestick, he tested it with a swipe through the air. It was hefty, but short. He needed something more defensive. A deep thudding reverberated through the walls of the tower, telling him the door was being broken down. Discarding the candlestick, he picked up a stool. Solid oak. A shield and a weapon. There was a splintering crash, shouts and more cries, some of which cut off abruptly. He imagined the attackers, whoever they were, moving through the guardrooms on the lower floors. He knew every inch of this tower for he had watched men build it, just for him. Tall and strong: a prison to last a thousand years, each stone settling heavy in his heart, every scrape of saw on wood a song of despair.

  There were footsteps rising, heavy and purposeful. He slipped behind the door as voices echoed in the stairwell. He thought at first it was Latin, but as the men came closer he realised he didn’t know the tongue. Still, it seemed akin, as though the words were different notes plucked on the same instrument. It gave no clue as to their intentions, however, and he gripped the stool tightly, heart thrumming. There was a rattle of keys and a snap of bolts. The door thrust open.

  The moment he saw a figure enter – caught a glimpse of brown hair and a blue cloak – he attacked. The stool struck the man’s shoulder with such force one of the legs broke. The man went flying, dropping the sword he was holding. As he fell, he cracked his head on the solid edge of the bed and crumpled to the floor. With a fierce cry, the prisoner swung again, but more men were piling into the chamber. Too many to fight.

  One ducked his attack, then barrelled into him, catching him around the waist and throwing him to the floor. Another moved swiftly in to wrest the stool from his grip. He heard words, sharp and commanding, from an older man who was brandishing a broadsword, its blade slick with blood. The prisoner was hauled to his feet and marched towards the door. He glimpsed a young man, crouched beside the one he’d struck with the stool, now slumped on the floor unmoving, blue cloak tangled around him. The young man shook his head at his older comrade, whose jaw tightened, then he gestured with his sword, motioning them from the room.

  The prisoner’s feet slipped unsteadily on the narrow stairs as he was half pushed, half pulled down through the tower. He wasn’t used to this much movement. In the guardrooms below furniture lay overturned around the bodies of four men. Blood arced across the whitewashed walls in violent sprays of red. Sprawled among three dead guards in their piebald tunics was a figure in a black surcoat and mantle, splayed like wings around him. His garments were embroidered with a forked white cross – symbol of the Order of St John.

  The prisoner was bundled outside, the dewy grass soaking through his silk slippers. There were more men out here, some brandishing swords, others thick-barrelled guns, fuses smouldering in their hands. Several were wounded, leaning on comrades. Faces taut, the men beckoned the two holding the prisoner towards a small gate in the castle wall. A bell began to clang. Twisting round, the prisoner saw knights spilling from the castle all clad in their black surcoats, the white crosses on their chests bright as stars in the morning light.

  He was forced through the gate, out into the trees beyond, thorns snagging his robes, twigs scratching his face. Some of the men hung back, forming a defensive line. As his captors brought him to a clearing in the woods, the ear-splitting crack of guns erupted behind them. There were dozens of horses here, stamping and snorting at the commotion, more men trying to calm them. The prisoner addressed his captors, first in his own tongue, then in Latin, demanding to know who they were, where they were taking him, but they ignored him, heaving him up into a saddle in front of one of their number.

  Pinned to the pommel, he could only hold on as the man behind him kicked at the horse, sending it racing away through the trees, which opened on to a narrow track. As the clanging bell and the sounds of fighting receded behind them, the prisoner felt his heart lift with the sudden exhilaration of speed. For a moment, his fear forgotten, he gasped at the rush of wind and the sun on his face, the air grass-sweet and the jewel-blue glints of the river in the valley.

  His world was all at once huge, opening before him.

  2

  The day was dying as the five men approached the city, passing close to the gibbet of Montfaucon, which towered over the road on its bald mound, two tiers high. Bodies, hanging from the beams like withered fruit, turned slow half-circles in the raw November wind, bones knitted loosely by wisps of clothing and ribbons of flesh, dry and brown as tanned leather. The air carried on its shifting currents the stale echoes of decay.

  Jack Wynter’s gaze was drawn to the hanging place, eyes moving over the ropes that had squeezed the life out of each man dangling there. He imagined the crowds, some silent, others roaring as the condemned were forced to mount the scaffold. The nick of hemp on skin, the tightening of the rope, the knot jammed up against the left ear. A last breath snatched. He wondered how many deaths had been witnessed here, the grass around the gibbet flattened by years of pressing feet. How many men strung up? Thieves. Traitors. The falsely accused. Left to hang – a warning and a promise – until their bones crumbled into nothing and their souls were left to wander. His mind filled with an image of his father, twisting on a rope in a far northern castle.

  ‘Jack.’

  He realised he’d slowed, the others moving ahead along the road.

  Ned Draper nodded towards the city walls, looming beyond muddy fields. The large man lifted his voice above the wind that whipped his thatch of hair around his face. ‘They’ll be ringing the bell for curfew soon.’

  Jack joined his companions, unclenching his fist, where the gold ring engraved with a caduceus – two serpents entwined around a winged staff – one of the last tangible pieces of his father left to him, had pressed hard against his fingers. He noticed Valentine Holt’s dark eyes remained fixed on the gallows. Catching his gaze, the bull of a man spat in the dust before walking on, shifting his arquebus, swaddled in sacking, higher on his shoulder, his pack of powder and shot swinging against his back. Jack wondered if he too had been thinking about Sir Thomas Vaughan, or whether the gunner’s thoughts were on his own neck, likely as not for the stretching had they stayed in England.

  As Ned whistled, Titan left the pile of horse dung he’d been nosing in and bounded to his master’s side, his white belly and legs caked with dirt. The little dog kept pace as the men lengthened their strides, heading for the walls of Paris.

  They made it to the gates just in time, the watchmen preparing to heave the barriers closed as the bell clanged. Jack felt the guards’ eyes linger on them as they passed through. Five men in travel-worn clothes with nothing but the packs they carried, battle scars and an assortment of weapons concealed beneath hoods and cloaks. He tensed, waiting for the shout at their back, the questions. Who were they? Where had they come from? Why were they here? But a mist of rain was blowing in on the bitter wind and the bell was calling the guards with the promise of fire and shelter now their watch was ended.

  As they headed through the muddy streets beyond, Jack took point, eyes on the distant markers of Notre-Dame and the palace, glimpsed in gaps between timber-framed buildings. The two ston
e beasts faced one another across the Île de la Cité, towers rising like pale horns. The rain was falling harder now, soaking his cloak. He caught odours of their journey trapped in its weave: sour seas, cold earth, smoke from damp and cheerless fires. Ahead, two men ducked into an inn, the open door spilling a warm wash of firelight and laughter before it closed behind them.

  Adam Foxley, strands of his greying hair stuck to his wind-reddened cheeks, nodded towards it. ‘Looks as good as any we’ll find tonight, no?’

  ‘Agreed,’ said David, gripping his brother’s shoulder and stepping towards the inn.

  ‘No.’

  The Foxleys turned at Jack’s call. Two sets of sharp blue eyes narrowed.

  Adam, the older of the brothers by several years and thicker-set than David, but with the same letter branded on his forehead – a faded F for felon – gestured at the inn. ‘We’ll be wanting a bed. Why not here, before we’re soaked to the marrow?’

  ‘I want to see him first.’

  Ned stepped in, rainwater dripping from his nose. Titan was shivering at his heels, fur plastered to his body. ‘Come, Jack, let’s be in. What difference will a night make? We’ll go to him at first light tomorrow.’

  Jack had held his impatience in check these past weeks, all through the delay at Dover, where they waited for the storms raging in the Channel to die down before seeking passage on a balinger carrying wool to the English enclave of Calais. He had held it in through their journey south to Paris, resting in the ruins of churches and farmsteads – old victims, perhaps, of the long war – to save the few coins they had left between them. But he was here now, so close, and could no longer press it down. ‘You stay. I’ll find you when I’m done.’

  ‘No.’ Valentine had hunched his shoulders around his thick neck and was clutching his pack of powder to his chest to keep it from the rain, but his slab of a face, peppered with powder burns, was set. ‘We was agreed – we stay together.’