Court of Wolves Read online

  Jack looked over at him, surprised by his support. He saw at once that it wasn’t sympathy in the gunner’s eyes, but blunt self-interest.

  Yes, they had agreed to stay together. The events of the past year had bound them all in fate and fortune. He had known these men since he was a boy. Ned, Valentine, the Foxleys – they had served under his father’s command through the wars between the houses of York and Lancaster, marching with Sir Thomas Vaughan on the road to battle, following him into every bloody fray. It was they whom Jack had called upon for help two years ago when he’d returned from Seville, sent there with the map Vaughan had ordered him to guard with his life – home to find his father executed for treason by Richard, Duke of Gloucester, and his mother murdered. They had been the ones he turned to when he’d been left with nothing but questions and grief, and they had come, risking their lives in his quest for answers.

  They had been with him when he entered the Tower to liberate the Duke of Gloucester’s nephew, Prince Edward, the boy who’d been raised by Vaughan, his chamberlain. The boy who should have been king. With him when he spirited Edward from London in the hope the young prince could tell him his father’s secrets: what the map, stolen from the Bristol merchant ship, the Trinity, showed, and who the men searching for it were – those who had killed his mother in pursuit of it. With him when he returned, broken and desperate, Edward wrested from his care and delivered into the hands of the new king, Henry Tudor, who would not have a prince of the blood free to challenge his rule.

  Their actions had made them outlaws, any life they could have lived in England impossible with prices on their heads and Tudor – an avowed enemy – upon the throne. In helping Jack they had lost their homeland. None of them had been left with anything but what each carried to his name and Valentine wasn’t about to let him seek out a possible future, in which they might all benefit, alone.

  Jack owed them that.

  ‘We go to the priest together,’ finished the gunner, glancing at the Foxleys.

  ‘If memory serves there are scores of inns across the river,’ said Ned lightly, breaking the edge of tension. Tugging his hood higher, he clicked his tongue for Titan to follow. ‘We’ll drink with doctors and philosophers for a night.’

  The Seine was swollen, its dark waters cascading between the arches of Le Pont Notre-Dame, the tangled flotsam of fallen branches, dead leaves and rubbish whirling around its piers. The bridge was congested, people hurrying between the rows of shops and houses that spanned its length, rain tumbling from overhanging eaves, the last traders slamming their doors shut. Once on the island, they wound through the riddle of houses and inns between Notre-Dame and the Palais de la Cité, the walls of which were pitted from the kingdom’s long war with England, which had ended thirty-two years ago at Castillon, in a storm of shot and gunpowder, and English defeat.

  As they made for Le Petit Pont, memories flared in Jack like dull sparks. He had walked these streets only months ago, back in the heat of summer, before the great Battle of Redemore Plain which had seen King Richard, the man who sent his father to the gallows, cut down by the blades of his own countrymen. Before Tudor seized England’s crown. The memories were fitful, more like dreams. He had been burning then with fever, half mad with thoughts of vengeance and the agony in his scorched skin. He still bore the scars, his hands mottled pink and white beneath the dirt.

  Often, even now, he would wake sweating and gasping, having dreamed he could smell smoke turning the air to poison, filling his lungs; fierce fans of flame buffeting him, his hair beginning to burn while he twisted on the floor of the hunting lodge, the knife stinging his skin as he tried to cut the ropes that bound him. Trussed like an animal and left to burn. By his own brother.

  Harry Vaughan.

  Just thinking the name sent a pulse of hatred through Jack and made his hands itch for his sword. The prince he had freed from the Tower, the map he swore to his father he would safeguard – Harry had taken both from him. And so much more besides.

  Stumbling the endless miles from the smoking ruins of the lodge, it was here in Paris that Jack had been found and delivered to Amaury de la Croix. Only the priest had offered any relief: salves for his blistered hands, water for his parched throat and the promise of the answers he craved, if Jack brought him what Harry had stolen.

  So, he had gone, back to England to seek out his half-blood brother. But he had failed. Now, the precious map was most likely under the control of Tudor, to whom Harry Vaughan had pledged his allegiance, inheriting their dead father’s fortune. And the prince . . .? Jack didn’t know for certain, but his gut told him young Edward and his brother, two princes locked in the Tower of London, were long past saving.

  But, still, those questions were left hanging inside him and Jack needed answers more than ever, if only because they might offer him – all of them – a direction. That was what he’d been walking towards these past weeks, like a sailor searching for land after months at sea, desperate for some sign, some course to follow in this wild nothing of a life that was now his. He had no home, no family, no money and no kingdom. With his father and mother dead and, with them, any hope of the knighthood he’d dreamed of and trained for, he was just plain Jack Wynter. Bastard. Orphan. Outlaw.

  Only the priest offered him anything more.

  ‘We’re here.’

  At Ned’s voice, Jack realised they’d entered the familiar street in the Latin Quarter that wound away from the river following the stinking Bièvre, an oily slug of water that emptied sewage into

  the Seine. A little way down, caught between two booksellers,

  was the bakery above which lived Amaury de la Croix. The shutters and door were closed, no sign of life beyond. Blinking into needles of rain, Jack stared up at the narrow building, whose upper storey jutted into the street, giving the impression the whole thing was about to fall on him.

  ‘It’s dark,’ said Adam, brow pinching.

  It was true – of all the houses in the street it was the only one where no firelight flickered behind the windows. Jack shook his head, unwilling to accept that Amaury might not be home. The man was ancient, with one hand and a limp. Where else would he be on a night like this, except perhaps at Mass? In which case, he would be back any time.

  Hearing raised voices, Jack glanced down the street to where a group of young scholars were piling into an inn. ‘Why don’t you get us lodgings there for the night?’ He turned to his companions. ‘If the priest isn’t home, I’ll wait for him.’ He met Valentine’s narrowed eyes. ‘He’ll be more forthcoming, I believe, if I see him alone. I’ll come as soon as I’ve spoken to him.’

  ‘You’ll ask him,’ Adam Foxley said. In the soldier’s gruff voice it was more statement than question.

  ‘Yes.’

  Slinging his pack from his shoulder, Jack passed it to Ned. The sad droop of leather contained most of what he owned in the world: a crusty blanket and pair of hose, a pouch of coins and the Book of Hours – a well-thumbed keepsake – taken from his father’s deserted mansion on London’s Strand. Jack kept hold of his father’s sword, strapped to his body beneath the folds of his cloak, the broad blade concealed in an old scabbard Grace had given to him back in Lewes, the day they left for Dover. He guessed it had belonged to her dead husband.

  ‘I’ll save you a cup of wine,’ Ned offered, his smile not reaching his eyes, which told Jack – don’t be long, don’t forget about us.

  Jack watched them walk to the inn, Titan barking in expectation as the door was opened. Valentine paused and looked back at him, his squat frame silhouetted in the lantern-glow, his scarred scalp gleaming. As they disappeared inside, Jack headed for the side door in the building, which led into the lodgings above the baker’s. He was relieved, but not surprised that it opened at his push, remembering the dwellings within all had their own locks and bolts.

  The door opened on to a dank hallway, cracked flagstones and crumbling plaster walls, a set of wooden stairs leading up. Closing the doo
r, Jack let his eyes grow accustomed to the gloom, rainwater dripping on the floor from his clothes. Sweeping back his hood, he climbed the stairs, the treads creaking beneath him. As he ascended, Adam’s words echoed in his mind.

  Back in Dover, storms hurling waves against the cliffs and tossing the boats in the harbour like toys, they had discussed how they might survive on the Continent. They could join a mercenary company – all of them were skilled fighters – but they would have need of more weapons and armour than they owned and hadn’t the funds to buy any.

  It was Ned who suggested Jack ask Amaury for money. None of them, not even Ned, knew the full extent of what the priest had told him about his father and the Academy, the brotherhood Amaury had recruited Vaughan into during his time in France as ambassador for King Edward IV; about the map from the Trinity and their vision for the strange new coastline inked across its margins.

  We call it New Eden.

  Jack had kept his silence, promised to Amaury, on that. But his men knew enough to know the map was valuable beyond the telling and that Vaughan had been somehow involved with the House of Medici: rulers of the Republic of Florence and one of the richest, most powerful dynasties in Christendom, with banks and businesses in almost every city from London to Naples. Jack knew, through all the months they’d followed him, they had really been following the ghost of his father and while Vaughan could no longer reward them for their loyal service maybe, they now reasoned, the men who had directed him from the shadows could.

  He had reached the upper floor. Darkness shrouded the passage leading to a door at the far end, where a faint sliver of light bled around the frame. He headed towards it, footsteps quickening. As he reached it, he raised his fist to knock, then paused. The door was badly cracked around the lock, splinters of wood poking like bones from a shattered limb.

  ‘Amaury?’ His murmur was loud in the hush.

  There was no answer.

  Jack pushed the door, which bumped into something solid, wedged against the other side. He shouldered it open, the object scraping the floor in protest.

  The long, narrow chamber with its slanting beamed ceiling was in gloom, the only light the last of the murky dusk seeping through the shuttered window. The place was a mess, things strewn across the chamber. The small bed where he’d been nursed back from his smoke-choked delirium had been overturned, the mattress torn, its straw stuffing ripped out; chests opened, their contents flung carelessly about, books and papers pitched across the floor. The object that had been wedged against the door was the priest’s writing desk. All the shadows were still. No sign of life.

  The shock of the room’s ransack, and its clear abandonment, struck Jack almost as a physical blow. All these weeks he’d been tilting at this target he had never once thought what he would do if the priest wasn’t here. They were down to their last few coins, with only their weapons left to sell. What would they do for food and shelter, winter coming on? Options flashed through his mind, none of them palatable. Would they be forced into begging in this foreign city, or become thieves and risk the gallows? Like father like son.

  It wasn’t just a question of money. As he picked his way through the debris to the window, things crunching under his boots, Jack felt the void inside him open wider – an emptiness filled only with restless ghosts. Could he go home to Lewes, back into Grace’s arms? Play father to her children, start a new life? A new family? Try to forget all that had happened? All he’d lost?

  The wild thought offered a moment of comfort, his heart poised, hoping. But it was swept away in a sobering instant. He couldn’t go back. Go home. Home no longer existed and a sad life he would make for Grace; a sheltered fugitive, a danger to them both, haunted by that scorched patch of earth in the woods mere footsteps away, that had once been filled with a little wooden house and a garden of flowers, and his mother’s laughter.

  As he pushed open the shutters, the grey light intensified, along with the sound of rain clattering on the roof. Stooping to pick up a crumpled roll of parchment, he found it smeared with dried oak gall ink. Another was mottled with a substance that looked reddish in the half-light. Ink? Or blood?

  Near the writing desk, Jack crouched to find a gnarled stick, snapped in two. He had an image of the old priest limping towards him with its aid. Rising, he stood there, the rain hammering outside, the last of his hope wilting inside him.

  Amaury had answered some of his questions about the Academy, about what his father had been involved in and the dangerous game he’d found himself drawn into after the man’s death – a game that cost his mother her life and ripped apart his world, challenging everything he thought he knew about the man he had once admired above all others. But the priest’s explanations, coming at a time when all Jack had been able to think about was wrapping his hands around his treacherous brother’s neck, now seemed incomplete, confusing; all that talk of a World Soul, Greek philosophers and pagan gods. All those things that sounded like heresy.

  He needed more. Needed to know who his father really was and what that made him; his bastard son, so desperate to believe Vaughan’s promises that he would make him a knight and open the door to a glittering life that he never stopped to question what dark paths his father might be leading him down. He had set out from Dover determined to follow in his father’s footsteps, the need to understand his past and divine his future driving him on. Now, the path stopped dead before him. No way forward. No chance back.

  Jack stared around the chamber, willing some answer – some sign – from the wreckage. As his eyes fixed again on the writing desk, he realised something was wrong. If the room was empty, abandoned, who had wedged the heavy desk in front of the door?

  Alert, he turned, scanning the darkness. There. Hunched in front of the window. A shadow. He swore it hadn’t been there before. As he went for his sword, the shadow rose and sprang at him with a cry. There was a flash of a blade slicing towards him. No time to draw his weapon, Jack dodged the wild swing of the knife and grabbed hold of the shadow’s wrist, twisting it roughly aside. The figure screamed and dropped the blade, before ducking to sink its teeth into his hand. He shouted in pain and lunged with his free hand for the throat, squeezing until the teeth released and the shadow came up, choking and writhing. The figure, whip-thin with short, matted hair, was soaked through. He realised she had come in through the window.

  ‘Amelot!’

  The girl kicked out, catching him on the knee, although her soft hide shoes did little to hurt him.

  ‘Amelot, c’est moi!’

  She stopped struggling.

  ‘C’est moi, James Wynter. Jack.’

  For a moment, the girl remained in his grip, taut as wire, then all the fight left her and she slumped, fists falling to her sides.

  As he released her, she backed away, touching her neck where his hand had crushed her. Her breaths rasping, she stared at him unblinking in the shadows. She was skinnier than he remembered, her hair a mess of sawn-off hanks, cut short like a boy’s, only badly. The orbs of her eyes seemed the largest thing about her.

  ‘Amelot, où est Amaury?’ As soon as he asked the question, he remembered she didn’t speak.

  She turned away, shaking her head. Jack stepped towards her, impatient, wanting to press her, but she flinched back, wary as a spooked cat.

  He held up his hands. ‘I just want to know what happened here.’ He spoke slowly, the French tongue taking a moment to come back to him.

  After a pause, she seemed to settle.

  ‘Someone did this?’ Jack gestured at the room. ‘Not you? Not Amaury?’

  She nodded.

  Jack glanced at the papers strewn on the floor, some of them flecked with dark splatters. ‘Was Amaury here when it happened?’

  Her head dropped forward. A smaller nod.

  ‘Was he hurt?’

  A sigh from her lips told him yes.

  ‘Was he . . .?’ His mouth tightened on the word, but he had to know. ‘Killed?’

  Her h
ead shot up. She shook it fiercely and pointed at the door.

  ‘Taken?’

  Yes.

  ‘When did this happen?’ He rephrased it. ‘Days?’ No. ‘Weeks?’ Her frown told him she might not understand time. After a moment, an uncertain nod. So perhaps weeks, or at least not that long ago? He wondered how she had escaped harm. His gaze flicked to the window. Perhaps she had witnessed it from outside, or some other hiding place – watching, helpless, as the old man was overpowered. The haunted look in her eyes told him she had. ‘Did you know those who took him? Did you recognise them?’ A long, slow shake of her head. He scanned the papers again. ‘Were they looking for something?’ His mind filled with a dark web of coastlines and islands inked across yellowed vellum, the words of Hugh Pyke, murmured in the gloom of the Ferryman’s Arms, echoing back to him.

  If this showed a route to the Spice Islands? A way past the Turks? Then I would say it would be worth all the gold in the world.

  ‘Was it the map, Amelot? Did they come for that?’

  She nodded, then darted towards him to snatch aside his cloak, eyes searching.

  ‘I don’t have it. I tried to get it for him, but . . .’ Jack trailed off. ‘It is gone.’

  Her shoulders slumped again.

  ‘Have you searched for him? Tried to find who took him?’

  A contemptuous hiss told him she’d been doing nothing but. Amelot paused, then swept her hand in a long, slow movement.

  Jack took a guess. ‘You think he was taken away? Out of the city?’

  She nodded forlornly and made the motion again, as if to emphasise either distance or her own desperation. After a moment she crouched and began picking through the debris on the floor.

  Jack turned away, thinking. The list of those who would want to take possession of the map was surely long, but those who would think to come here for it – to Amaury’s lodgings? That, he did not know. But without knowing that how in God’s name could he even begin to search for the priest?