Medieval 03 - Enchanted

father
telling one ofhis knights, ’tis more
suited to a harem than a cold English keep.”
    A sensual smile changed the lines of
Dominic’s face.
    “I will look forward to that cloth most
particularly,” he said. “The sultan’s concubines
wore very, um, intriguing clothing.”
    As Dominic spoke, he shook out the bag of keys.
Clattering and clanging, they fell onto a stone ledge next to
battle gauntlets. He selected a key and went to the biggest chest.
Grudgingly the lock gave way. The seal broke a moment later. With a
creak of brass hinges, Dominic heaved up the lid and looked
within.
    “God’s teeth, what is this?” he
muttered. “Simon.”
    At the sound of his name, Simon went to
Dominic’s side and glanced into the chest. Torchlight showed
sacks made of coarse fabric. With a speed that made Ariane blink,
Simon drew his dagger and opened one bag.
    Coarsely ground flour spilled out. Simon grabbed a
handful, worked it through his fingers, and sniffed it. With a
sound of disgust he opened his fist and let the contents spill out
over the armory’s stone floor.
    “Spoiled,” he said curtly.
    “The silk?” Ariane asked, for
Simon’s broad back stood between her and a view of the
chest.
    “Flour,” Simon said.
    Dominic began poking around in the chest.
    “What of the silk?” Ariane asked,
perplexed.
    “There’s none in this chest,”
Dominic said, straightening. “The rest of the bags are dirt
rather than flour.”
    With a startled sound Ariane pushed between the two
men. She looked at the scarred chest, then at the broken seal, and
then at the chest again.
    “The seal,” she said. “Was it
intact?”
    “Aye,” Dominic said.
    “I don’t understand. I saw my
father’s steward fill the chests.”
    “One chest often looks like another,”
Dominic said. “Perhaps there was an error.”
    Simon said nothing. He simply took a key from the
pile and sought the correct lock. This key fit a smaller chest. He
inserted the key, broke the seal, and lifted the lid. The smell of
cinnamon and cloves wafted upward.
    Simon didn’t speak.
    “Well?” Ariane said.
    “Sand,” said Dominic curtly.
    “I beg your pardon?” she asked.
    “Sand,” Dominic repeated.
    “But there was cinnamon once,” Simon
said. “And cloves. The wood reeks of it.”
    “I don’t understand,” Ariane
said.
    Yet her tone said she was very much afraid that she
did.
    In a silence that grew deeper with each chest
opened, Dominic and Simon went through Ariane’s dowry. The
creak of a lid was followed by a single terse word that described
worthless goods in place of gems, gold, silver, silks, furs, and
spices.
    “Stones.”
    “Sand.”
    A Saracen curse was followed by more understandable
descriptions of what the chests held.
    “Rotten flour.”
    “Rocks.”
    “Dirt.”
    Ariane swayed and felt like stopping up her ears so
that she wouldn’t have to hear the ugly truth.
    Betrayed .
    When the final chest stood open, Dominic surveyed
the lot with his hands on his hips. Ballast rocks still smelling of
the sea were all the chest contained.
    The wolf’s head pin on Dominic’s mantle
seemed to snarl as he turned to face Ariane. His eyes were like
hammered silver.
    “It would seem,” Dominic said smoothly,

“that there is a discrepancy between the dowry promised by
Baron Deguerre and that which was delivered.”
    “Aye,” Ariane said in a raw voice.
    Though Dominic waited, she said nothing more.
    “Lady Ariane,” he said sharply,
“what say you?”
    “I have been betrayed. Again.”
    The bleakness in Ariane’s voice touched
Dominic in spite of his anger, as did the sight of her fingers
reaching for the strings of the harp she had left behind.
    “It would seem that the baron is trying to
provoke a war,” Dominic said.
    If Ariane heard, she didn’t answer.
    “Aye,” Meg said tightly. Her small
hands became fists. “But what does he gain from such
dishonesty?”
    “Freedom from an alliance he never
sought,” Dominic said.
    “But he went back on his given vow,”

Meg protested. “Surely such dishonor in the eyes of his peers
costs him more than a few chests of spices and gold?”
    “My father’s steward saw those chests
filled, sealed, and put under the guard of his finest
knights,” Ariane said tonelessly. “So did I. Those same
knights guarded the dowry until Blackthorne Keep.”
    “In other words, if I claim there was no
dowry, I will be declaring war,” Simon summarized.
    “A war that Deguerre