CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
The King’s Gout Tavern
Kress, Achilles, Gart, Alexander, and Cullen were seated around a leaning, warped table at the tavern that was favored by most fighting men on the north side of London. It was the biggest one and had the best wenches. They had invited Sean and Kevin, and the de Lohr brothers to join them, but so far, they had yet to make an appearance.
It was well after the supper at Farringdon House, the one that had been so tense because of the friction between William and Maxton. It had been obvious when Maxton had joined their table later in the meal, informing them of his extended conversation with the St. Blitha pledge.
It had been rough from the start because William had asked, straight away, if Maxton had sent the girl back to St. Blitha yet. The entire conversation prior to Maxton’s arrival had been about the pledge and what a valuable spy she would make inside of St. Blitha, and when Maxton appeared, William went for the throat. When Maxton had explained that not only had he not sent the girl back, but that she was pregnant, it seemed to throw the entire situation into question.
To everyone but William Marshal, that was.
He saw no difference in the girl being pregnant. It wasn’t his concern that a pledge had conceived a child. His only concern was in keeping the nuns from accomplishing their task of killing the king, a hard attitude that seemed to turn Maxton into stone. He sat silently for the most part while William discussed their loyalty to the king and listed the reasons as to why that was all they should be concerned with.
Maxton had listened to William pound home his loyalty to king and country before replying to the man’s prattle by telling him that he would send her home as soon as she was rested. That evidently wasn’t good enough for William, who pressed him further only for Maxton to tell him that any man who would save a monarchy by sacrificing the blood of an innocent woman was not a man he had much respect for.
At that point, Kress and Gart ushered Maxton out of the hall and sent him back up to his chamber to avoid any further confrontations with William, who was clearly annoyed with Maxton’s behavior. It was concerning enough that Gart had sent word to Cullen, Sean, and Kevin, and the de Lohr brothers to meet them at The King’s Gout because they had to discuss the situation before it got out of hand. Concerns were running high that Maxton was deviating from the course set for them and the circumstances needed to be clarified, because it was increasingly clear that Maxton, the man who had changed since leaving Les Baux de Provence, had changed even more than they had realized.
He was a different man.
Which was why they all found themselves here, inhaling the smoke of the common room, ignoring the tables that were screaming with laughter, drunk as the minutes of the night ticked away. Cullen de Nerra seemed to be more distressed by the situation than the rest of them as he hovered over his half-empty cup.
“This does not sound like the Max I know,” he said quietly. “He actually argued with The Marshal? I’ve never known the man to argue with anyone other than the de Lohr brothers.”
They were nursing two pitchers of dark, heavy wine imported from the Mediterranean region. Gart picked up one of the pitchers to fill Cullen’s cup as he answered.
“The problem is that The Marshal has not worked with Maxton before,” he said. “He does not know that Maxton is a man of his word. He has been given a task and he will accomplish it regardless of his personal feelings, but Max was never one to hold back when expressing his thoughts on a matter. And he can be very moody, moodier still since his time at The Lateran Palace. I am not sure he is the Max that any of us knew any longer. He has… changed.”
“Mayhap he has changed in personality, but the soul of the man is the same,” Kress said quietly. As Maxton’s closest friend, he was the one best suited to speak to the situation. “Those of us who have spent time with him over the past year have seen it – the introspection, the seeking of knowledge from wise men, holy men, or any man who might have an insight into the world at large. Now that I’ve seen him react to the pledge from St. Blitha, it is increasingly clear that he’s growing a conscience. Something about that girl has stirred something in him, as if he’s only noticing the injustices of the world for the very first time.”
Gart grunted unhappily. “God’s Bones, of all time for the man to develop a heart,” he said. “What happened to the cold killer we all knew?”
“He is still there,” Achilles said. When they all turned to look at him, he merely shrugged. “Make no mistake; the cold killer is still there, as deadly as ever. But Maxton has grown up. He is a man of flesh and blood, and I think that girl has stirred the man in him – the romantic.”
The table looked at Achilles as if the man was crazy. “You must be drunk,” Gart muttered. “The man has no romance in him.”
Achilles was unrepentant. “All men have romance in them, Forbes,” he said. “Some simply keep it buried deeper than others.”
Cullen seized on the possibility. “Are you saying that Max actually has feelings for this… this pledge?” he asked, incredulous. “Not only is she pledged to the church, but she has clearly been with another man. The girl is pregnant. And this is the girl who is stirring Maxton’s romantic feelings?”
Achilles simply lifted his shoulders. “We have seen the girl,” he said. “She is not unattractive. In fact, she’s rather beautiful in a pale sort of way. Whatever she is, and whoever she is, she has bewitched Max, but I do not believe William has figured that out yet. He simply thinks Max is being stubborn.”
“Then he is risking his reputation for a woman he just met,” Gart growled. “In fact, I…”
He was cut off when the tavern door slammed back on its hinges and four big knights entered the common room of the tavern, adding to the noise and chaos. Gart could immediately see that it was the men they’d invited, and he stood up, catching their attention and waving them over.
Kevin de Lara, Christopher and David de Lohr, and finally Sean de Lara approached the table, grabbing chairs as they moved through the crowded common room and sitting down at the table with their pilfered seats. Cups and wine were passed to them.
“My wife is furious because I answered Gart’s summons in the midst of a family feast, so let this be brief,” Christopher said as he poured his wine. “What is so important that I had to travel across London for this meeting? And why are we not converging at Farringdon House?”
It was Gart who answered, since he was the instigator of the meeting. “Because we do not want The Marshal to be part of this conversation,” he said. “Much has happened since the meeting this morning, Chris. We now know the means by which the assassination against the king will be made.”
Christopher was very interested. “What is it?”
“Nuns.”
Christopher’s cup of wine stopped halfway to his lips. “What?” he hissed. “Nuns? Who told you this madness?”
Gart shook his head. “It is not madness, I assure you,” he said. Then, he looked to Alexander across the table. “Tell him, Sherry.”
Alexander sat forward, lowering his voice as much as he could in a room full of loud, drunken people. “I have been trailing a double agent since leaving The Lateran Palace,” he said. “In fact, a high-placed advisor to our Holy Father paid me to kill this man. There is far more to the story than I am going to tell you, but for the sake of time, I will tell you the gist of it. The man I was paid to kill is a Scotsman named Alasdair Baird Douglas. He delivered a message to the mother abbess of St. Blitha, a personal message from our Holy Father, that instructed the mother abbess to murder the king when he arrives at St. Blitha to celebrate her feast day.”
Christopher’s wine never made it to his mouth. Incredulous, he set his cup down and stared at Alexander as if the man had gone completely daft. “Christ,” he finally muttered. “The feast is in two days. And you are certain of this?”
Alexander nodded. “Unfortunately,” he said. “It was corroborated by a pledge from St. Blitha, quite by accident. In fact… the pledge is why we have called this meeting.”
“Why?”
“Because Max seems to have developed an attachment to the woman.”
As Christopher made a face suggesting complete confusion, David wasn’t so subtle. “That is ridiculous,” he said. “Max has no attachment to any woman.”
“That is what we know of the Maxton from the past,” Alexander countered. “But the Maxton who has returned from eight years away from England, including years of fighting with you two in The Levant, is a different man altogether. He is behaving in ways we never knew possible.”
“What do you mean?” David asked.
“He has come close to throttling The Marshal at least twice because of the man’s stance on the pledge,” Alexander explained. “William wants to use her to spy on the nuns of St. Blitha since she lives there, but Maxton does not want the woman involved. He says she is not a spy and does not have the skills needed for what William wants her to do.”
David didn’t have a quick answer to that. He looked at his brother, baffled by what he was hearing. “Since when does Maxton of Loxbeare argue with his liege?” he finally asked. “Better still, since when does he even care about anyone other than himself and a few fellow knights? Max is blindly obedient in all things. I’ve never known him to be otherwise.”
Alexander sat back in his chair. “He is still obedient,” he said, but it was clear that he, too, was confused with the change in his friend. “He’s not disobeyed any order from The Marshal, not yet, but he is not happy with the man’s intentions when it comes to the pledge.”
“Who is this pledge?” Christopher demanded softly.
Alexander looked at him. “A girl that Max met quite by chance this morning,” he said. “Through her, we have come to hear some terrible things about St. Blitha, mostly that the Mother Abbess is a thief and a murderess, and that she allows her charges to go hungry. That is the least of it, truly, but Max met the girl this morning when she was stealing food because she was starving. He fed her a meal and came to know her, and later in the day when she came into trouble, she sought him out for help. I would say that she is as attracted to him as he is to her. In any case, it has been a trial with the girl throughout the day, and Max is bewitched by her.”
The situation was coming clear somewhat and Christopher finally took a drink of his wine, pondering what he’d been told. “So it is the pledge who told him of the plans for the nuns of St. Blitha to assassinate the king?”
“Aye,” Alexander said.
“And your double-agent told you the same thing?”
“Aye.”
“Then is it possible she is setting him up?” Christopher continued. “What I mean to say is why would the girl tell him such a thing when that is exactly what he has been tasked to discover? Don’t you think that is too great a coincidence?”
Alexander shook his head. “The way Max explains it, it was purely coincidental.”
“Or it was fate.”
Everyone looked at Achilles, who uttered the softly-spoken words. When he saw all eyes upon him, he simply lifted his eyebrows as if it was the most simple explanation in the world.
“It was a chance meeting,” he said. “You all speak as if Max would be a fool to fall for a woman who was trying to betray him, and he is not the kind of man. He is too sharp and too seasoned for such a thing. No woman in all the world can get the best of Maxton of Loxbeare, so the fact that he met a woman who has helped us solve the mystery of the assassins meant for the king is purely, and utterly, fate. God put that girl there at the right time so that she would find Max. It is as simple as that.”
Devout Achilles had a way of looking at things that encouraged divine assistance, but some of the others weren’t so devout. Christopher was one; he simply scratched his head.
“I suppose I can take some things on faith, but this seems terribly coincidental,” he said. “In any case, we now know what form the assassin will take. Sean, did you know this?”
He turned to Sean, who had been sitting silent throughout the exchange. He was a man more involved than almost any of them since he was the one who shadowed the king. Everything they were saying was of great importance to him.
“I had received word about the nuns earlier today from The Marshal,” he said. “He also said that I am not to discourage the king from attending St. Blitha for the Feast Day. It is clear he wants to catch the nuns in the act. He’ll need proof if he is to arrest women of the cloth, and proof is not the hearsay of a pledge or a Scottish prisoner.”
Alexander nodded. “That is another reason why we have called this meeting,” he said. “We must have a plan for that day, Sean. I’ve not spoken to Max about it, so I do not know if he has come up with a scheme, but it is my thought that we must be within close proximity of the king if we are to prevent the nuns from moving against him. I believe Max would say the same thing.”
Sean was listening. “What did you have in mind?”
Alexander was much like Maxton in that he had a tactician’s mind. He was able to see situations clearly and map out an end result. But as he geared up to explain, the door to the tavern opened again and in stepped a familiar figure.
Kress saw him first and it was the expression on his face that alerted the others; they all turned to see Maxton entering the tavern, shoving aside a drunkard who came to close. As the man slammed into the wall, Maxton caught sight of Kress and Achilles, sitting at a table with many other faces he recognized. Shoving his way through the crowd of bodies, he headed in their direction.
“Sherry,” he said, his intense focus on Alexander. “Your prisoner has escaped.”
That was not what they had expected to hear. Alexander bolted to his feet, followed by the rest of them.
“Gone?” he hissed, unbelieving, as he moved away from the table. “How long?”
Maxton shook his head. “I do not know,” he said. “I went looking for Kress and Achilles, and finally you, and in finding no one, I went to the prisoner’s chamber to see if you were all there. I found an empty chamber being guarded by a knight who had no idea that his prisoner had escaped and we found a rope of linens that hung from the window to the alley below. The gate guards said they saw you leave with Kress and Achilles, so I took a chance that you had come to this place.”
Alexander growled. “I should have killed that bastard when I had a chance,” he said. “Does The Marshal know?”
“He knows. He heard the shouts when we discovered the man missing.”
Alexander was trying not to feel like a colossal failure when he suddenly came to a halt, his eyes widening with horror.
“Bloody Christ,” he breathed. “Douglas knows that we are aware of the nuns of St. Blitha. I mentioned it to him, thinking he would tell me more about his message from the Holy Father, but he didn’t. It never occurred to me that he would… oh, God…”
Maxton understood exactly what he meant; he could see the abject terror in the man’s eyes. “Then he’s gone back to St. Blitha to tell them that their plan has been exposed,” he said. “Sherry, you did not tell the man how we knew, did you? You never mentioned the pledge?”
Alexander shook his head. “Nay, Max. Nothing like that.”
Maxton’s relief was visible. “Then he’s gone back to tell the nuns that we know everything,” he said. “Come on; we have work to do.”
The ten of them pushed through bodies and chairs and tables of the common room, making their way back to the entry door, throwing it open and charging out into the icy air beyond.
Farringdon House was only a few blocks away, a relatively short walk, but at this moment, it seemed like an eternity. Christopher, David, Sean, Kevin, and Cullen had stabled their horses in the livery across from the tavern, and they ran to collect their animals as Maxton, Alexander, Kress, Achilles, and Gart began to race those few blocks back to Farringdon House, back to the scene of the crime so they could make plans for the fact that Douglas had probably already told the nuns of St. Blitha that their assassination plans for the king were already known.
And the nuns would undoubtedly wonder how those plans were known.
In truth, Maxton was muddled by the whole situation and trying to stay focused. After being hustled out of the Great Hall when the conversation between him and William had become too heated, and then discovering that Andressa had fled back to St. Blitha on her own, he’d spent some time alone in his borrowed chamber, wondering what he was going to do about all of this.
He’d never faced a situation like it.
Perhaps that was his problem. He knew it had been his kiss with Andressa that had chased her off, but he wasn’t sorry about it. He’d been with many women, and he’d even been fond of a few, but the kiss with Andressa felt like the first real kiss that he’d ever experienced. Perhaps feeling that way was the reason he’d been so petulant with William when the man bullied him about sending Andressa back to St. Blitha. As it turned out, he didn’t have to send her back.
She went back on her own.
After that discovery, he’d gone in search of Kress and Achilles, only to discover that those two, along with everyone else it seemed, had gone missing. Now, he wanted to know what his friends were doing in a tavern, evidently talking when he hadn’t been invited, but he couldn’t dwell on that now. He was more concerned with what Douglas’ escape meant to Andressa. Alexander said he never mentioned her name and he believed him, but still, the nuns would now know that their secret had been discovered. They would undoubtedly be looking for a traitor among them.
Perhaps a young woman who had been wandering in and out of the abbey for most of the day.
But he couldn’t think about that now. They had to return to Farringdon House and make plans to track down Douglas. The man had information that was far too sensitive, on many levels. His mind was wrapped up in what the Scotsman’s escape would now mean for all of them when he heard a distant scream coming from the direction of Farringdon House.
Something told him that he knew who it was.