EXTRACT FROM CHAPTER ONE
'My Lord Gaunt awaits you, Sir,' crowed the retainer, interrupting Priedeux as he thrust into the girl. Priedeux heaved himself onto one elbow, opened the makeshift curtains around the rope trestle bed and retorted, 'he can wait until I come, then,' and he knew by the way the servant smirked and hastily retreated the chamber that the double entendre was understood.
He turned back to his business. She was trembling now, not with ardour but fear. And he could tell, by the way she held her hands across her breasts, that her interest had waned, she no longer felt lust. The name of Gaunt had been enough. If he had been called by Richard, the King, he knew the girl would not tremble so. As he tried to caress her into willingness, he thought of their King. He was known publicly as a pious man and a man of knowledge. Priedeux knew that it was not so. He was privy to the secret whisperings of the King's vices. The girl was softening now, as if she could read his very thoughts. While the King might not condemn such activities in others, Gaunt might, if he thought there was disloyalty in the action.
No one knew where he stood with Gaunt. His power extended everywhere, even, Priedeux suspected as he thrust between the girl's legs, into the bedroom.
As he tarried with the girl his thoughts returned to the bawdy house he'd visited earlier that evening, not to find a whore, but a man.
The wait outside. Then the signal, the gently swinging light from the whorehouse. His nonchalant approach. His disregard for the guards waiting while their master enjoyed the delights of the place. 'No sword, just after a whore.' He brushes past them, spreading his arms wide to display his lack of weaponry. The open entrance. Soft lights. The run up the ladder, a wink from the madame, a sword collected from its hiding place above the beam. The stealthy creep to the door at the end. A pause, the lifting of the sword. With a great bound he crashes in. Good, the whore is not on top. His target looks over his shoulder, his buttocks still grinding. His face fixes in a look of stunned surprise. Priedeux's sword flashes once as he swings it across the man's exposed throat. The veins are standing high, through his sexual exertions, making it easy to aim. The carotid is cut immediately, blood fountains over the horrified woman beneath. She screams as her client topples onto her before she can scrabble out of the way. Priedeux does not stop, jumps over the trestle bed and its gory occupants, to the shuttered window, whistling as he reaches it. There are sounds of running along the corridor. He dives through shutters to land on his horse that has trotted into position, obedient to the whistle. He is away, out of Smithfield, his job completed, cries of 'havoc' and 'murder' behind him fading as he disappears into blackness.
He had come, satiated. The name of Gaunt, the memory of the murder he had carried out for him, had stirred him too.
He rolled off her. She was quiet now, her legs closing quickly. He pushed her off the coverlet, slapping her rump.
'Off with you.'
She quickly gathered her clothes and dressed, not caring whether her stockings were straight. With a couple of strokes through her ruffled hair with a bone comb she was gone.
© Jay Margrave
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