Royal Blood. Rona SharonЧитать онлайн книгу.
A plethora of horn lanterns set in the rotund wall paid homage to marble busts of gods and emperors and to the arms man had wielded on battlefields since the birth of time: The twenty foot long sarissa Alexander the Great conquered Asia withal; the Roman gladius that taught the old Greek world Latin; the francisca that shattered the shields of the legionaries and catapulted the Roman Empire into darkness; the crushing Norse mjolnir, the bane of the Saxons, the Celts, the Franks, and the Iberians; the Mongol short bow that kept vast territories under Genghis Khan’s thumb; and Don Álvaro de Zúñiga’s innovative espada ropera, the light blade ushering the future.
Tonight, as it rained, instead of standing beneath the center skylight, training a rock crystal on a comet, the earl prowled round the cascade. “Trounced today, battered yesterday, and barely held your own with the sword the day before. You outwit your tutors in every discipline. Why can you not outmaneuver Sir Ferdinand in combat? The annual chapter of the Noble Order of the Garter approaches, Michael. My honor is at stake here, as is the future of my house!”
Michael shifted restlessly, his gaze on his toecaps, his conscience trammeled by unpalatable failure. It took all he had to drudge up the galling admission. “He is stronger.”
“Brains carry a man further than might, Michael! It would behoove you to know this!”
Setting his jaw, Michael lifted his eyes. “He knows my next move before I make it.”
“Then outthink him, damn you! Can you not keep your thoughts under lock and key? Must the secrets of your mind be an open tome? Did I waste two decades of my life teaching you the quadrivium, training and instructing you in the games of kings to be thusly disillusioned?”
Michael remained silent.
“Ferdinand knows that the future of my house depends upon you. He pushes you to excel.”
Michael bristled. “He pushes me to commit murder, my lord.”
“Alas, my only son was destroyed on a foreign battlefield years gone, and the gods have not blessed me with other offspring—until you came along. Your noble sire, who fought like a lion and died for his king at Blackheath during the Cornish rebellion, had sworn me to take his son, begotten off a second wife, and raise him as I would mine own, for fear his heir would reject a half sibling. He did not swear me to embrace you to my loving bosom and set you up as my legal heir, but I saw a bright-eyed lad, quick and sharp and steeled. I thought, ‘Here be my son, here be the man unto whom I shall bequeath my lands, chattels, and the honor of my name, my heart and soul and all that I am! Here be my future’!” The earl circled the waterfall, hands clasped behind his back. “I did not expect you to fell Sir Ferdinand. He is stronger, a bloody-minded bull who would sooner crush a lit candle than snuff it out. He has fought a thousand battles and lived. I expected you to persist! To take his blows and jolt his confidence! That was the point of the exercise! Now you come to me with your head downcast, all pity-pleading and beaten…”
Stoically Michael straightened his back. He had his lord’s inches now, yet, heart-burned, he felt shorter than a mouse. Tyrone gazed at him grumpily, fondly. “Ferdinand has his weaknesses, greater than yours. I want you to attend this year’s knightly chapter. It is important to me.”
Michael blinked in surprise. “You would still send me to court?”
“I would send a champion!” Tyrone’s dark eyes glinted. “Swift, cunning, and ruthless in his devotion to me! Indomitable. Unstoppable. Relentless. Are you this man? Or has the precocious boy I have nurtured to become the Seventh Earl of Tyrone traded his tiger spots for a plumule?”
Michael sensed without being told that his lord and mentor expected more than words from him, an assurance of sorts, some proof of his commitment and wherewithal.
“The greatest battles are not won on battlefields, Michael. They are predetermined in council chambers and ladies’ beds, in courtly banquets and tournaments, in the nursery and…up here!” He tapped his temple with a finger. “An illustrious general may win the battle and lose the war. In contrast, a downtrodden soldier who takes the worst punishment and rallies for another battle will triumph in the end. Remember the Battle of Cannae, Michael. When the Carthaginian army led by Hannibal slaughtered Varro’s army on Italian soil, the Romans, incapable of stomaching defeat, withdrew, recovered, and returned at full strength to ultimately obliterate Carthage to all eternity. Survival is the key. If beaten, retreat, regroup, and rally—and never ever give!”
“Give what, my lord?”
“Give up, give in, give out…Never! Till your last drop of blood! Do you understand?”
“I do.” Michael swallowed. “Command me to London, my lord. I will do you credit.”
“You will pledge it? You will do for me as I did for you?”
“More. I swear it.”
“Upon your honor, you will serve none but me and let not temptation lead you astray?”
“Temptation, my lord? What could possibly tempt me to violate my pledge to you?”
Tyrone’s mouth twisted wryly. “Think you I am ignorant of how you soothe your mind and body at night? You spill your vigor into wenches and souse your head with wine. You grin?”
Michael schooled his features. He could have sworn he had curbed the very emergence of a grin. Yet his lord was a master at diving thoughts. “I had as lief die than fail you, my lord.”
“Attend me, Michael. The rule at court is simple: Enthrall but do not love; be loved but do not become any man or woman’s thrall. Be a Spartan in an Athenian pelt, or all will be lost.”
“I know my duty.” Michael drew his dagger and knelt before the earl. “In blood I pledge my ever-binding fealty to you.” He fisted the sharp-edged blade and was about to wrench it hard.
“Spare your hand. You will have need of it.” Tyrone seized the dagger and walked over to a table laden with a gold chalice. “Come. Let us observe the proper rite of initiation. My son.”
Pain and desiccation harbingered the sunrise. Michael came awake parched, sweaty, and in a state of excruciating agony. He shivered violently with cold, his skin burned, his heart palpitated madly, his brain screamed in torment, as if a thousand heated pokers cut through his flesh, and he was overcome with irrational terror. A roar of anguish tore from his throat to echo throughout the vaulted passageways, halls, staircases, and chambers of the vast castle.
The door to his bedchamber opened. Cáit, the pretty maid he bedded on occasion, rushed in to light candles. Pippin barrowed in an iron casket on a pulley and left it by the bedside. An old man marched over to examine Michael. He wore a black houppelande, a hoary beard masked half his face, silvery hair flew down his back. Dark eyes gleamed at Michael. “Hold him down!” he told the servants. “Laddy, my name is Donough O’Hickey. I will make you well again.”
Michael thrashed wildly, flinging battle-hardened limbs pellmell and arching fitfully off the mattress. Semidelirious, he fought the invisible hellhounds tearing him to shreds from the inside out like a baited bear. His two attendants lost the battle in restraining him.
“Jesu, he is burning up!” cried Cáit.
The old man took charge with superior strength. He jabbed one of Michael’s eyelids open, felt his forehead, and probed at his mouth. “As I thought, food poisoning, same as His Lordship.”
“Food poisoning?” Cáit exclaimed disbelievingly. “Looks more like the Sweat to me.”
“I will give him a physic to cleanse his bowels of venom. Leave us. You may return later to clean him up. But mind, his ailment may not pass for a sennight. Food and drink are prohibited. He may only drink my physic until he is fit.”
Michael howled in frustration. “Seven nights like this?” Cursing at the violent pain ravaging his mind and body, he glared at the old healer and growled, “Get this thing out of me now!”
Cáit