CHAPTER FOURTEEN
“I was told you were awake,” Alexander said. “How do you feel?”
While the men of Farringdon House were feasting in the hall and Maxton was off dealing with the St. Blitha pledge who had unknowingly solved all of their problems, Alexander had been informed that his prisoner had awoken from his drunken stupor. He’d left William and the other men supping on boiled beef to tend to Alasdair, who looked as if he’d been hit by an ale wagon and then some. The man groaned as he rubbed at his head.
“I feel as bad as ye smell, Sassenach,” he muttered. Then, he looked up at Alexander and seemed to have some clarity. The light of recognition went on in his eyes. “’Tis ye. I should have known. Are ye behind all of this, then?”
Alexander leaned against the door jamb, feeling rather smug. After the months he took to follow this man, he had every right to feel victorious.
“Do you recognize me?” he asked. “I thought you might. There is no way you could have avoided me as much as you did without knowing me on sight.”
Alasdair sighed heavily as he blinked, trying to clear his vision. “An leanabh,” he said. “You are The Follower. Ye’ve been following me since I left Italia.”
Alexander nodded, feeling some sense of satisfaction now that they had acknowledged each other. Not that he had any doubt, but the truth was that he’d followed Alasdair around for so long he felt as if he was seeing an old friend.
“I have,” he said. “Do you know why I have been following you?”
Alasdair shrugged. “Someone put ye up to it, I imagine,” he said. “Who paid ye? Was it Abramo? Or Idiamo? I can only guess it would be one of those two, shadows of the Holy Father and suspicious of all who come near him. Well? Which bastard was it?””
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 dunna 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 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 know.”
“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 whilst 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 heavily 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 along 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 cannot 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 or 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 dunna 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 littered. “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 sparing 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 away 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 over-long absence was discovered.
The mole, and the spy, would soon cross paths.