“There’s no smell of ale on him.”
Eleanor ran fingers over the man’s head, then held up her hand to show the others: there was blood.
“That was wonderful!” King Henry exclaimed. Awkwardly but with great enthusiasm, he clung to a branch and lowered himself from the tree, dropping the last few feet. “You fought off those men with nothing but your hands and a rake!”
?
?They didn’t do very much fighting,” John said. “They weren’t fighters.”
Mary hurriedly stood, flushing till her cheeks burned. This was the king, and here they were out in the middle of the night with would-be murderers . . . She curtseyed. “Your Grace, please excuse my brother’s awful behavior and recklessness—”
“Be easy, Lady Mary. We’re having an adventure! And we have saved this man’s life, I think.”
He was right. “But what were those men doing with him?”
“Is there a letter?” John asked. “One of them said something about a letter.” Eleanor patted down the man’s coat, looked in the pouch at his belt, then shook her head.
“I know this man,” Henry said, crouching to look more closely at his face. “He’s one of Lord Peter’s clerks.”
“Peter des Roches?” Mary exclaimed.
John added, “They talked of drowning him.”
Eleanor had started shaking his shoulder and patting his cheeks.
“Eleanor, that may not be such—”
The young man groaned and batted clumsily at his head. Eleanor took his hands and folded them to his chest. Mary knelt to touch his face.
“Sir? Sir, can you hear me? Can you tell me your name?”
“Ah . . . Walter? Where . . .”
“You’ve been attacked,” she said. “What do you remember?”
“Something . . . hit me from behind. I don’t know what. It all went dark.” The man looked around, and his gaze rested on Henry. “Oh God, my liege!” He tried to sit up and immediately rolled to his side and moaned worryingly.
Voices came through the orchard again, and the figures of men stalked toward them through the trees. Four of them this time, moving with determination. One of them had a lantern, a speck of light dangling at his side. Another had a sword. They might have fetched a guard. A troop prepared for a hunt.
“We have to get out of here,” John murmured.
“Walter, you’ve got to get up,” Mary said, and drew one of his arms over her shoulder. John got the other. Eleanor picked up the rake. “Your Grace—”
“Henry,” he said. “Call me Henry.”
That seemed a vast gulf to cross, an enormous breach of manners, but she nodded. “Henry. We can get help at the abbey, I think.”
“The way is blocked,” John said. The approaching men were between them and the abbey grounds beyond the orchard. “We’ll have to go around.”
“To the palace, then?” Mary asked.
“Just away!”
The hedgerow that bordered the orchard offered some shelter. Sticking close to it, they crept as fast as they could, hauling the still-vague Walter. The rake Eleanor carried was taller than she was, making her seem like some fairy soldier guarding the king.
Henry kept looking behind. “There’s more of them. I see six now. Two with swords.”
“Good God, who are they?”