the next. Hot splashes of wax sprayed his hands and arms, and splashes of something else—warm and wet and red—began to spatter the rough surface of the wall. The agony in his head sent him staggering onto his knees, but the driving, thudding blows followed him down, slamming again and again into his neck and skull.
Out in the low-ceilinged corridor, the captain of the prison guard, William de Braose, heard what he thought was the wail of a wounded animal. He reached for the latch of the cell door, but on a farther thought, hesitated. He was a large, square-jawed bull of a man but he knew the king’s rages all too well. To interrupt without being summoned could put him in his own shackles in his own cell with his back flayed to bloody ribbands.
So instead, he pressed his ear to the door and tried to identify the rhythmic, muted thuds. He tried for two, three minutes, his brow beading with sweat and his hands clammy with indecision. He glanced both ways down the corridor, but the other guards were long gone, dragging the weeping princess between them.
Suppose the prince had overpowered his uncle and was beating him to death? Suppose the wailing sound was the king trying to call for help? Suppose—?
De Braose lifted his ear away from the oak. The thudding had abruptly stopped, as had the eerie wailing sound. He glanced down and noticed there was no longer a sliver of light showing beneath the door … someone had doused the candle and thrown the cell into darkness.
De Braose drew his sword and reached for a torch smoking blackly in a nearby cresset. He adjusted his helm forward so that the steel rim was level with the slits of his eyes, and, with a caution born of many years spent as a mercenary and assassin-for-hire, he twisted the door latch and used his boot to kick the panel wide.
It was black as pitch inside the cell and at first he did not see anyone. A faint shuffling, snuffling sound was coming from the far corner and De Braose angled the torch higher to thrust the spill of harsh orange light over the disturbance.
The king was lying there, his limbs rigid and twitching like the wooden legs on a marionette. His eyes were rolled back in their sockets, his mouth was wide and flecked with foam. There was blood on his hands, blood soaking the sleeves and front of his tunic, blood splashed in his hair and in the forks of his beard, and sprayed down the legs of his hose. An iron candlestick lay beside one clawed hand, the candle knocked off the spike, the carved base clotted with gore.
De Braose edged farther into the room, the point of his sword beginning to tremble as he saw the second, crumpled body in the corner. There were dark, glistening stains on the walls and floor, and not much more than a shapeless lump of bloodied mush and shattered bone where the proud, golden head of the Duke of Brittany should have been.
De Braose, a hardened veteran of many battles and many battlefield slaughters, gagged over the sour taste of old ale that rose in his gorge. He sheathed his sword and choked back his disgust as he knelt beside the king and tried to determine, through the convulsive thrashings, if any of the blood was of royal leakage.
He had heard rumours of the king’s apoplectic fits, but he had thought they were just that: rumours. He had no notion of what to do or how to help his sovereign beyond some vague recollection of ensuring the tongue was not bitten off and swallowed. As far as he could tell, there were no other physical injuries, but the stench of blood and vomit and urine was nearly overpowering.
He sat back on his heels and stared at the king, then glanced over at the lifeless body in the corner. He should fetch help … not for the duke, but perhaps for the king, who might need some physic or potion to calm the spasms. At the very least, he thought with narrowed eyes, he should have another witness present, for had the king not just murdered his own nephew? Bludgeoned him to death with an iron candlestick?
Maude. His wife Maude would know what best to do. She could ooze sympathy and oaths of discretion in such a way that even a king who suspected treachery and malice behind every