Crown of the Realm (A White Knight Adventure Book 2) Read Online Free Page B

met him halfway up castle hill and raised a questioning brow.
    “You won’t like it.” Drake took bow and arrow quiver from Stephen’s outstretched hands and slung them over a shoulder. 
    Like adjoined mirrors, the brothers advanced on the festive party at the base of the grassy hill. Lissome and graceful of limb, the fitzAlan brothers projected predatory qualities, further accentuated by high foreheads, sculpted cheekbones, and untamed hair. Given their age, fresh out of innocence, those who did not know the brothers readily dismissed them as easily mastered, mistakenly so. Certainly less than a year ago, they had been wide-eyed squires at the brink of manhood. Now as knights serving the king of England, they were paragons of that very manhood. Where demeanors of blithe care once dwelled, fierceness now resided, and a kind of recklessness. They had seen the best and experienced the worst of England’s underbelly and political treachery. Yet they were the ones least aware of the invisible yet genuine line they so recently crossed. To see themselves, they had to look into someone else’s eyes. Even then, they perceived but the faintest of reflections. This they did know: trust was earned and never conferred. And aside from each other, they trusted no one.
    By the time they reached the bottom of castle hill, Drake had apprised Stephen of the juicy details. Between the insults heaped on them by two kings and the notion of an assassin skulking about the rafters of Nonancourt Castle, an assassin they were expected to somehow unmask, Drake and Stephen were in spiteful moods.
    Taking up the brothers on either side, Baldwin de Béthune, André de Chauvigny, Tancrede d’Évreux , and Guillaume de Fors—all trusted knights in Richard’s service—took it upon themselves to dash those moods by the sharing of camaraderie, wine, and ribbing. The brothers swapped punches and lighthearted cursing with the king’s declared favorites and settled shiftlessly onto the turf. Several wineskins, somehow always full, flowed from fist to fist and gullet to gullet. As the sun began to sink, the knights sang along with the troubadour’s songs. And though the lutes and rebecs were mellifluous and on key, their voices were slurred and drunkenly off-key. Laughter tripped along like a stream, sputtering now and then in harmonizing melody and intensifying in direct proportion to the wine consumed. Drake and Stephen added to the merriment by trading bawdy prose composed in the spirit of the moment.
    “Ah,” sighed Drake, an elbow dug into the ground and his hand waving above him, “to mount a beauteous white mare in a single leap, straddle legs on either side of her bountiful girth, and with the heels of one’s boots, kick the flanks of her rounded hips until she screams for mercy but begs for more.”
    Stephen allowed no opportunity for any one man to recover. “Afterwards to plunge the sword of ardor into that sweet golden valley between furry mounds of pure perfection and ride the sun-kissed mare from the owl’s hoot to the cock’s crow, not once taking a moment’s rest . That is, if one has the stamina.”
    “And then,” bellowed Drake, feeding the laughter, “to crawl off to bed and sleep out the day, dreaming of a blade honed sharp from the fire of delight only to be cruelly quenched in a waterfall of ice.”
    Giggling themselves witless, six knights removed their belts and put aside their swords. Wineskins were brought to parted lips and drained. The western sky turned opaline. The knights grew as mellow as the setting sun.
    Escorted by guards, squires , and servants, the kings of England and France arrived amidst laughter and song. A raised platform providing elevated sight lines awaited their occupancy. An elite cortège of intimates joined the kings on the torch-lit scaffolding. On Richard’s side, his brothers: John resplendent in rubies and pearls, and Geoffrey severe in black. On Philippe’s side: Comte Thibaud of Blois,