The Agents of William Marshal Volume I: A Medieval Romance Bundle, page 22
Alexander wasn’t going to tell him who had paid him, so he simply shrugged his shoulders. “Does it matter?” he said. “I was paid to hunt you down and kill you, but you proved quite a challenge. I will congratulate you for evading me until now. I did not know that a Scotsman could be so clever.”
Alasdair smiled thinly. “There’s much ye dinna know about a Scotsman,” he said. “Now that ye know who I am, tell me yer name.”
“De Sherrington.”
That made Alasdair peer more closely at him, this time in surprise. “De Sherrington,” he repeated. “God’s Bones, it is ye. I dinna recognize ye without the hair on yer face and yer clothes on. The last I saw ye, ’twas during a summer feast at the Lateran Palace. ’Twas as hot as Hades, as I recall, and ye had women in yer arms. Yer part of the Sassenach contingent that the Holy Father invited tae the Lateran Palace.”
“I am.”
“I heard that ye and yer friends are called the Cavalieri de Boia. The Executioner Knights.” He suddenly grinned. “I was more clever than a bunch of Sassenachs. Admit it.”
Alexander smirked. “For a time, mayhap,” he said. “But I have you now.”
“Do ye intend tae kill me?”
“I’ve not yet decided. You are a very interesting man and it would be a shame to kill one so clever. In fact, I am very curious about you.”
“Why?”
Alexander shrugged. “You are a double agent,” he said. “I find that fascinating. And, by the way, the messenger you sent north to Scotland while you were in Berwick shall not make it to the king. He’s dead.”
Some of the smile faded from Alasdair’s face. “I see,” he said, rather calmly. “A pity.”
“He would not tell me the message he carried. Mayhap you will.”
Alasdair sighed heavily and scratched at his bushy head. “I hardly remember it,” he said. “It seems like it was so long ago.”
“Did you send him with word of the Holy Father’s directive to kill King John?”
Much to Alasdair’s credit, he didn’t overly react to the question, but that was the training in him. Years and years of training, of spying and lying, had given him excellent control over his moods and emotions. He continued scratching his head, casually, glancing up at the enormous English knight.
“I wouldna know, lad.”
“I think you do.” Alexander came away from the door jamb, wandering into the chamber. “In fact, I know you do. I have it on good authority that you delivered a message to the Mother Abbess of St. Blitha and instructed her to kill the king when he comes to the abbey for St. Blitha’s feast day. Did you think you were the only double agent around? Think again, Douglas. There is a mole at St. Blitha and we know everything you told them. You may as well confess the truth.”
Alasdair sighed again and dropped his hand. “Ye seem tae already know it,” he said. “What more could I say that ye dunna already know?”
“You can tell me that this is the message you carried all the way from the Lateran Palace,” he said. “Douglas, think of it this way – you carried a message from the Holy Father and I was paid to kill you, presumably before you delivered it. Someone at the Lateran Palace didn’t want that message to make it to St. Blitha. Someone there either hates the Holy Father enough, or loves King John enough, that they did not want you to succeed.”
Alasdair had been in the game a long time, enough to know that defeat was sometimes part of that game. He simply shook his head.
“Someone will succeed,” he said, a grin returning to his pale lips as he looked up at Alexander. “The hatred against John… it goes deeper than ye know, de Sherrington. ’Tis not only the Holy Father who wants yer king dead.”
Alexander thought about that for a moment before an idea occurred to him. His eyebrows lifted. “Of course,” he muttered. “I should have guessed. The Scottish king is in on the plot, also. That is why you were sending a message north to him.”
Alasdair lifted his hand in a way that was both vague and confirming at the same time. “Then ye know if ye stop the nuns at St. Blitha, someone else will come forward,” he said. “They always do. Ye canna cut all of the threads of the spider’s web. Where one is snipped away, others remain strong.”
“True enough,” Alexander said. “But we can hunt down Richard’s bastard son and kill him. With the boy out of the way, neither the Holy Father nor William the Lion, or any other enemies, will have a legitimate issue to place upon the throne.”
The fact that Alexander knew about Richard’s bastard son drew some reaction from Alasdair, however weak. His dark eyes flickered as he realized that, indeed, de Sherrington knew the extent of their plans. Whoever the mole was inside of St. Blitha had done a thorough job, which was rather disappointing.
“Ye’ll never find the lad,” he finally said. “The Holy Father sent him away. I dinna even know where he is.”
Alexander waved him off. “It is of little matter,” he said. “If enough money is presented, I am sure whoever guards the boy will happily turn him over to us. No man is more loyal to the Holy Father than he is to his own purse.”
Alasdair conceded the point. “Money is the most persuasive language in the world,” he agreed. “I wish ye luck, Sassenach. Ye’ll need it.”
Alexander dipped his head as if thanking the man. “Your confidence in me is overwhelming,” he said. “But have no fear; in the end, we shall do what needs to be done, for the good of England.”
Alasdair’s dark eyes glittered. “Would ye care tae wager on that, lad?”
Alexander couldn’t help the grin on his lips. “I may keep you alive just long enough to see who would win that wager.”
“If I win, then ye’ll set me free. If I lose, ye can slit my throat.”
“I do not need anything as frivolous as a wager to do that.”
“Then ye still intend tae kill me, in any case?”
“That is what I’ve been paid to do. And I am loyal to my own purse.”
Alasdair laughed softly, thinking of the words on the value of money presented only moments earlier. “If I pay ye more, will ye spare me?”
Alexander appeared intrigued by the offer. “Can you?”
“My king can.”
Alexander rather liked that. It was the mercenary in him. He had no great loyalty to Abramo or the money the man had paid him, but if he could make even more money by sparking Alasdair’s life, he would consider it.
“Then mayhap I shall send word to William the Lion and ask him what your life is worth to him,” he said. “Meanwhile, you will be my guest for a time. You may as well get comfortable. You are going to be here a while.”
Alasdair simply nodded, torn between showing de Sherrington just how clever he was and making the man think he had surrendered to his fate. He didn’t want to tip off the big knight with suggestions of a future escape, but from the moment he’d awoken in this unfamiliar chamber, that was exactly what he’d been thinking. As he sat there, rubbing at his head again and waiting for de Sherrington to say something more, another muscular knight came to the doorway.
“Max has more information,” the warrior muttered to de Sherrington, who turned to look at him. “The Marshal wants you down in the hall to hear it.”
Alexander grunted in acknowledgment. “Very well,” he responded, returning his attention to Alasdair. “I’ll send some food to you, ye madman. Behave yourself while I am gone.”
He said ye madman with a perfect Scots accent, using a Scottish insult for a drunkard. But Alasdair waved him off.
“Nay,” he said, falling back down on the bed. “No food now. Let me sleep, lad. That’s what I need most. I’ll see yer ugly face on the morrow.”
“You can stake your life on it.”
Alasdair put an arm over his eyes, indicating the great pain in his head, as de Sherrington was pulled away by the other knight and the door was closed behind him. The sound of the bolt being thrown was unmistakable.
The moment the door was shut, however, Alasdair sat up and rushed to the panel with movements that suggested he was much more sober, and far less hungover, than he had let on. Putting his ear to the door, he listened carefully for any sound that de Sherrington might be returning. When he was certain the coast was clear and the man wasn’t about to make a return, he bolted straight to the window.
It was a square window with shutters that Alasdair easily unlocked and threw open. Night had fallen, so all he could see below were houses, lit from the inside by weak fires, and a vacant alley below. There were no walls around the fortified manor because the first floor had no windows, so the alley ran right up to the house itself. There was a gutter down there that he could smell more than he could see it and, better still, no activity.
But it was a good drop from where he was, which is why they hadn’t barred the windows on him. Only an insane man would leap from the window with that kind of drop to the ground below, but Alasdair had never been accused of being sane. His mission to London had been discovered, and there was a mole in St. Blitha, and now the nobles of England knew that the Holy Father had ordered the nuns of St. Blitha to assassinate the king.
Like any good spy, Alasdair wasn’t going to give up easily. He wasn’t going to sit back and nurse an aching head while the entire objective of him being in England was at stake. The Holy Father himself had entrusted this mission to him and even though he hadn’t been the one ordered to eliminate the king, it would still be on his shoulders if the nuns failed.
He had to get word to them.
He had to get out of there.
The chamber he was in hadn’t been stripped; there were curtains around the bed for warmth and linens on the mattress, and he immediately went about constructing a rope from the fabric. With the three pieces of linen on the bed followed by all four brocaded curtains tied end to end, he peered from the open window again to ensure no one was watching before securing the linen rope to the heavy bedframe and throwing the rest of it from the window. With hardly a back glance, he leapt onto the windowsill and began lowering himself down the rope.
Reaching the bottom, he still had about ten feet to go, so he released the rope and fell the rest of the way to the alleyway. He landed awkwardly on his ankle, twisting it, but he didn’t stop to examine it. He was on the run, so he hurried down the alley as fast as his injured ankle would take him and having no idea that, at this time, the very mole he was seeking was also fleeing from Farringdon House down a different avenue, returning to St. Blitha before her overlong absence was discovered.
The mole, and the spy, would soon cross paths.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
“Where have you been, Andressa?”
Having barely just returned to St. Blitha under the cover of darkness, Andressa was in the dim corridor leading to her tiny cell, and her uncomfortable bed, when Sister Petronilla had come out of the shadows. Andressa hadn’t even heard the woman and now, suddenly, she was standing face to face with her.
For a moment, Andressa simply stared at the woman. She’d barely had five words with the old nun in the four years she’d been at St. Blitha, but now it seemed as if they were to have their first real conversation.
And not a comfortable one.
“I delivered garments to Lady Hinkley,” Andressa answered after a moment. “You heard the Mother Abbess give me permission to do so. Lady Hinkley then asked me to remain for a time.”
Sister Petronilla’s gaze lingered on her for a moment as if debating whether or not to believe her. In fact, she was sizing up the woman altogether. It was clear that she didn’t like the idea of someone new joining the Mother Abbess’ band of attendants, so her scrutiny was on the young woman that the Mother Abbess seemed to favor.
Everyone at the abbey knew that Andressa had turned their laundry into a business, a business that the Mother Abbess was profiting greatly from, but Sister Petronilla didn’t see anything quite so remarkable in the young woman. She didn’t appear all that special to her.
Her jealousy was rising.
“Why did you stay so long?” she asked. “Did she feed you?”
“She did not,” Andressa replied. “I remained in her servant’s kitchen and warmed myself until she told me to go.”
Sister Petronilla’s gaze remained on her for a few more moments before deciding that interrogating the woman any further would be fruitless. It wasn’t as if Andressa didn’t already spend a good deal of time going back and forth between noble households, collecting laundry when the household servants were too busy to deliver it. It was part of her job. Therefore, Sister Petronilla let the subject drop.
For now.
“Our Gracious Mother has plans for you,” she finally said. “As she told you, she feels that our work must be carried on. Unfortunately, we will not live forever.”
Andressa breathed a sigh of relief that Sister Petronilla didn’t press her further about her absence. Still, she received the distinct sense that the older nun was suspicious of her. There was something in the woman’s dark eyes that suggested doubt.
Her guard was up.
“I am honored to carry out God’s work,” she replied steadily. “I am not worthy, but I shall endeavor to do my best. And I am honored to work in the garden with you. You have great skill with the herbs and flowers.”
Sister Petronilla turned away from her, heading back down the corridor and towards the doors that led to the courtyard outside.
“Walk with me,” she said.
“Where are we going?”
“Into the garden.”
“Now? But it is dark outside.”
“Much of what we do is in the shadows, Andressa. Come with me.”
Andressa did. She scooted after the woman, wondering why they were going out to the garden and just the least bit apprehensive about it. They headed back to a main reception chamber where the front door to the church was located and a second set of doors that led to the courtyard beyond. It had been those doors that Andressa had just come through as she’d come in from the yard.
The main reception chamber of St. Blitha was a cavernous room, stripped of all furnishings except for a shrine dedicated to St. Blitha. There was a tapestry of her on the stone wall, the ancient Roman saint who had been martyred by Roman soldiers. Sister Petronilla collected a bank of yellow tallow tapers from the shrine, candles that were always there lighting the tapestry of the saint, and moved to the doors that led to the courtyard.
Andressa followed.
Once outside again, the temperature was brisk and cold, with moisture heavy in the air. Sister Petronilla headed straight into the garden, turning once to ensure that Andressa was still behind her.
“My father was an apothecary,” she said as they walked. “He knew what to grow and how to grow it. He knew the properties of everything that grew on this earth. What I learned, I learned from him. He was a great man.”
Andressa suspected the best way to deal with Sister Petronilla was to make it seem as if she admired the woman greatly. Perhaps flattery would cause whatever suspicions there might be to fade.
“I am sure he was,” Andressa said. “You must miss him, being so far away from him.”
But Sister Petronilla simply shook her head. “He was a great and knowledgeable man, but he was also quite wicked,” she said. “I was beaten every day when I was young, which fed my hatred against him. When I was nine years of age, I put a potion in his soup, a potion he himself had made, and it killed both him and my mother. That is why I was sent to the convent of Santa Giulia.”
It was a shocking confession but, in truth, it wasn’t surprising. After what Andressa had been told yesterday, it seemed that murder wasn’t something outlandish or new to these women.
It was a way of life.
“And now you find yourself here, in London,” Andressa said, truly having no idea what to say after that horrific confession. “I have no parents, either, as you know. Only an aunt who stole my fortune.”
Sister Petronilla glanced at her. “Then mayhap I can teach you something useful,” she said. “I am sure you have been wondering how we are to accomplish our task for our Holy Father. Our Gracious Mother has asked me to instruct you on our process, and I shall. The king shall be here for the Feast Day of St. Blitha and we intend to have a great feast set out for him, something prepared by our own hands. You, Andressa, shall be in charge of the kitchen that prepares his feast.”
Andressa looked at her with surprise. “But what of Sister Blanche?”
“Sister Blanche has been lost to The Chaos.”
Andressa was horrified by the news but, for her own sake, she knew she had to keep her composure. Guilt swept her; she knew why the woman had ended up there.
“Because… because she struck me yesterday?”
Sister Petronilla glanced at her. “She should not have struck you,” she said. “The Mother Abbess said she would protect you, especially from those who would attack you. Sister Blanche has been punished for her sin. Now, the kitchen shall be your domain and you shall oversee the feast for the king.”
Andressa knew something of the kitchens only because they were right next to her laundry area, so she had seen a good deal of what went on there. There were other nuns who cooked and prepared the food. The truth was that Sister Blanche had only ordered them about. She had been an older nun and she had a sense of self-importance.
But no longer.
Shocked at the cold demise of Sister Blanche, Andressa knew that the only thing she could do was go along with whatever the Mother Abbess and her minions wanted her to do. Any hint of resistance, or doubt, and she knew they would toss her into The Chaos, too. It was the ever-present threat hanging over her head.
She was starting to feel sick to her stomach.
“I will do whatever you wish me to do,” she said. “I do not know a great deal about managing the kitchen, but I shall learn quickly. Will you tell me what to prepare for the feast day?”
Sister Petronilla had led her into the heart of the garden by this time, the forbidden garden where no one but the Mother Abbess and those close to her were allowed to walk. It was damp and dark, only lit by the bank of tapers in Sister Petronilla’s hand, and most of the plants were dormant because of the season. Still, some things were growing in spite of the cold. There were shades of green amongst the brown.
