Now, it was spoken plainly, the very reason they had summoned True Thomas and kept the man close until the conditions were right for his prophesy.
Now, they knew what had to be done.
A child of de Soulis blood and a de Wolfe ally.
“I will go to Deadwater and I will continue to return until I can discover information on de Leia’s daughter,” Nicholas said, feeling some excitement now that a plan was set. “Deadwater is on her father’s land, so surely she is not a stranger to the village.”
“Assuredly not,” John said. “But you must be cautious. If her father hears you are looking for her, he will keep her safely tucked inside the walls of Falstone.”
Nicholas shook his head. “I will be careful,” he said. “I have not been to Deadwater in years, so I will not be recognized. But make no mistake, Father – this is a hunt. And I shall be very careful in my hunt.”
“As you lie in wait.”
“Exactly.”
That was exactly what John wanted to hear. The prophesy had been delivered. Soon, so would a child.
A child that would cause the fall of the House of de Wolfe.
PART ONE
LONDON
CHAPTER TWO
Year of our Lord 1292
London
The Pox Tavern
“Dray! Down!”
A very big man in the midst of throwing a punch suddenly fell to the floor as another man, who had rushed up behind him with a chair held aloft and intending to smash it on his head, went sailing over his head and crashed into a wall.
It was time to get out.
Andreas de Wolfe, his two cousins, Thomas “Tor” de Wolfe and William “Will” de Wolfe, and his close friend Theodis de Velt, had come to the legendary London tavern known as The Pox. It was a rather large establishment, situated in a seedy part of London, and nestled down by the riverbank where the cogs would come to shore and anchor. The Pox had been around for over one hundred years and, in those years, had established a reputation as a lively place with a deadly underbelly.
But The Pox was unique.
So unique, in fact, that it drew a massive crowd from the lowest of the low to princes and kings. Everyone wanted to spend time in a place that wasn’t fashionable, or beautiful, but had reputation built on two distinct things – excellent food and drink, and a gambling reputation that was second to none.
At The Pox, anyone could bet on anything – literally.
That’s exactly what Andreas and his cousins had been doing. They had come into the tavern to sample the good food and drink that they had heard so much about, but they ended up in a drinking game that had become quite revolting.
It had all started because Theodis had purchased several different medicaments from a local apothecary, stuff that was difficult to find in the north. He’d purchased ingredients that were guaranteed to ease a fever, some to cure a cut or a puncture, some to fortify the blood, and yet another that guaranteed to evacuate the stomach at an alarming rate. It was called a “purge” and it was used when men ingested poison or rotten meat, or something that needed to come out of the body quickly.
And that had given the knights an idea.
The premise was simple – one of them added a tiny bit of purge to the cheaper ale they were drinking. The glasses were then shuffled and distributed, and the men bet on who would be drinking the glass with the purge.
There was an element of danger as well as an element of hilarity. Too much purge could kill, but a small amount would do terrible but recoverable things to a human body. Whoever got the drink with the purge in it would know very quickly, because within a minute of drinking it, everything would come right back up again.
At first, it was just the four of them indulging in the game, but then others began to see what they were doing and they wanted to join in. Very quickly, there were ten to twelve men indulging in the vomiting game that was becoming the focus of the entire tavern.
Andreas was a man who would be considered the strong and silent type. He wasn’t one to say much, but when he did have something to say, it was worth listening to. He’d built a reputation for giving sage advice and a fighting skill that was one of the very best in England. His particular attributes made him quite dangerous because he was adept at hiding his emotions and his expression would maintain a neutrality even if, inside, he was plotting a man’s death. One could never tell what Andreas de Wolfe was thinking at any given time, and that included during the stupid drinking game.
He had gotten the purge once during the entire game. He had vomited so hard and so far that, now, they were taking bets on just how far men would and could vomit. They had cleared away several tables while they passed around the drink and waited to see who would erupt and just how far they could go with it.
It had been messy, but it had been quite funny. There was an added benefit to drinking the ale with the purge in it because it evacuated the alcohol out of the stomach, meaning the person drinking was delaying their path to drunkenness. But those who couldn’t hold their liquor very well were already quite drunk, regardless of having the misfortune of the purge in one of their cups of ale, and the bets were flying fast and furious as vomit covered the floor of the tavern.
Even now, as it grew late into the night and the River Thames outside of the tavern’s front door lapped softly upon the rocky shore, The Pox was filled to the rafters with questionable women and even more questionable men, at least half of them indulging in the messy and sometimes violent vomiting game.
Every time someone vomited, the roof was practically lifted off the tavern by people laughing and cheering. Andreas and his cousins had been having a marvelous time, but that quickly changed when one of the men betting suddenly decided that the game was somehow rigged. He couldn’t quite explain why he thought that or how he even knew that, but he was unhappy because he felt as if he’d lost too much money trying to predict just how far someone was going to puke. He began arguing, Will delivered a well-aimed insult as only he was capable, and the entire room deteriorated into an all-out brawl.
And that was where Andreas found himself now, throwing himself onto the floor so he wouldn’t be crowned by a chair. Once his attacker was sprawling several feet away, he leapt to his feet and turned to make sure his cousins were unharmed.
“It is my sense that we need to leave this place,” he said to them. “Poppy warned us against coming here, but we did not listen.”
“Poppy” was his grandfather, William de Wolfe, the mighty Wolfe of the Border. He was the greatest knight in northern England, and probably all of England, having served three kings. He had been to The Pox in his youth and had tried to dissuade his grandsons from venturing to it on their visit to London, but like moths to the flame, they were drawn to something legendary, dastardly, and exciting.
And now regretting it.
Mostly.
“Come on.” William “Will” de Wolfe, the oldest of the de Wolfe grandchildren and named for his famous grandfather, grabbed his younger brother and was moving for the door. “This place is full of clay-brained halfwits. Dray, grab Theodis! We leave!”
Andreas whirled around, looking for his best friend in the entire world, a massive and frightening beast of man who was part of a family whose entire foundation was built on brutal conquest and death. Theodis de Velt was a true-blood of those lines because he had three of their most defining characteristics – being enormously built, having long and dark hair, and two-colored eyes.