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DRAKE STIRRED PAINFULLY as his befuddled mind raced to catch up with time and place. Wherever he was, it was damnably cold.
He moaned, pried open eyes gritted with uneasy sleep, and sat up on reflex. Manacles weighed down his hands and feet. They clanked. He collapsed back to the hard shelf at his back and waited for the dungeon to stop spinning. Two cresset lamps fluttered and whirled, then slowly unwound and came into focus. The air rustled. A cloth of mean material covered him. A moment before, he had been naked. He turned his head, too abruptly for comfort.
Sitting on a stool, Randall of Clarendon stared down at Drake, hands folded between splayed knees. He waited for the most recently installed prisoner of Winchester Castle to come to full awareness before saying, “What am I going to do with you, Stephen ... or Drake ... as the case may be.”
“Lock me in an underground hellhole and throw away the key?” He pressed a hand against his forehead. The chains rattled. “Come to think, that’s been tried.”
A maniacal grin formed on Rand’s lips. “Even better, a double hanging and not a single fitzAlan brother to trouble Winchester again.”
“I’ll opt for the hellhole.”
The sheriff kneeled beside Drake and unlatched the manacles. He held Drake’s hands in his and turned them over, studying the blood-encrusted, rope-burned wrists. Rand took from his tunic the frayed ropes, stained with Drake’s blood. Further noting similar bloody formations on his ankles, Sheriff Clarendon gently fingered the nicks along his side. Saying not a word, he went back to the stool and tossed Drake a change of clothes. “You didn’t kill Drogo.”
“I was hoping I did.”
“Don’t you know?”
Shaking his head, Drake slipped Stephen’s chainse over his head. “Why do you think I didn’t?”
“You would have been covered in Drogo’s blood, not just your own. And”—he chewed a fingernail—“unlike the other three, Drogo held onto his manhood.”
“Oh.”
“Since I believe you’re Drake and not Stephen, that fact holds significance. But as to what, I’m at a loss.”
He paused for Drake’s reaction, which came as a single intake of air.
“Of course, I have no way of proving who you are one way or the other.”
Drake released his breath and felt his face wash over with three separate rushes of relief. He pulled on Stephen’s hose.
“You’re not absolved yet.”
“Your reasoning was going so well.”
Randall ran a hand through his limp hair. “Witnesses at Hogshead claim you had a confrontation with Drogo.”
“Untrue. He had a confrontation with me.”
“Who won?”
“He did.”
“Then what?”
“I was bounced into the soothing arms of a lady.”
“What’s the last thing you do remember?” Rand’s stare was unnerving.
“A flagon of wine, a bowl of mussels, a canopy bed, and four scarlet tassels.”
“Was it Mat?”
“A lass named Tilda.” Even as he said it, he knew.
“Mat,” Rand confirmed. “Short for Matilda.”
“Mat is supposed to be a man,” Drake said. “He doesn’t exist. He’s a figurehead.”
“True enough. She is the front for the Merchants Alliance Trust, which is cunningly called Mat, in honor of the madam.”
Drake whistled. “And what a front.”
Rand grinned the way a man does when in the company of like-minded men who think of nothing but women. “After the four tassels, what do you remember?”
“Waking up in the hellhole where you found me, thence being transferred to another more odious hellhole, but this one containing no corpse save my own. For which I have yet to thank you.”
“You’re welcome. And the dudgeon?”
“Wasn’t mine.” Drake tugged on Stephen’s boots.
“How convenient.”
“Just as I thought. At the time.”
“Which is where you acquired all those nicks, cuts, and scrapes?” The penetrating stare returned. As sheriff, Randall of Clarendon was an expert interrogator. His eyes alone must have coerced countless confessions, both true and false. “And not in a fight to the death with Drogo?”
When Drake laughed wryly, a twinge in his side made itself known. “If I’d been in a fight to the death with Drogo, it wouldn’t have been in a barred undercroft.”
“There’s a certain logic to that.”
Drake grimaced as he pulled on Stephen’s tunic. “How did you find me, anyway?”
“A little bird. An anonymous little bird.”
“As you said before, how convenient.”
Rand let out a sigh. “One of the reasons I’m letting you go.”
“And the others?”
“Too numerous to list, but one in particular.”
“I’m dying to know.” Drake dropped a weary head onto a wearier fist. “Sorry. Bad choice of words.”
“So you can lead me to the proof of your guilt, sparing me the trouble.”
Rising unsteadily to his feet, Drake said, “You must be a patient man.”
“One of my character flaws.”
