Chapter Eleven
Farringdon House
“Has he awoken yet?” William asked.
Maxton shook his head at The Marshal. “Nay, my lord,” he replied. “We plied him with much alcohol after he was already drunk, so it may take time to sleep this off.”
William sighed heavily. He was standing on the top floor of Farringdon House with Maxton, Kress, Achilles, and Alexander.
The four men had just brought in an unconscious man who stank to the heavens of alcohol and body odor, tossing him into a bed to sleep off his binge before telling William who, exactly, the man was and why he was there.
It had been the catch of a lifetime.
William, who happened to be at Farringdon House because his meeting with the king and the marcher lords had dispersed early, stood in the doorway of the chamber that held the snoring drunkard, hoping that they’d found the key to the papal assassins in that smelly, slobbering Scotsman.
“Then I suppose we’ll have to wait until he decides to awaken,” William said. “There is nothing more we can do.”
“Nay, my lord,” Maxton agreed. “We will send a guard up to keep an eye on him.”
Alexander, who was still by the door, shook his head. “Nay, Max,” he said. “I will remain here. He is my quarry, after all. Moreover, I feel as if he is an old friend now. I must stay and greet him when he awakens.”
Maxton agreed with the wave of a hand and the men moved away from the chamber door to go their separate ways. Before they could get too far, however, William stopped them.
“Max,” he said. “I saw Sean at Westminster Palace earlier. It seems that John is, indeed, hunting tomorrow in the woods of Windsor, so you and your men may wish to shadow the hunting party for John’s sake.
But he mentioned something else, too, because you asked to be apprised of his movements – John is going to St. Blitha in two days to take part in the feast day.
St. Blitha is the patroness of hunters, as you know, and he intends to offer prayers so she will bless his hunting bloodlust. It might be wise to appear at St. Blitha as well. ”
St. Blitha. There was that name again, that abbey that kept popping up.
It wasn’t as if St. Blitha was the only abbey in or around London; there were several.
But on this day, St. Blitha was the only one he’d heard of.
First with Andressa, then with the drunkard Douglas, and now the king.
Rather fortuitous, he thought. He would happily shadow the man to St. Blitha – he was only sorry it was two days away.
“Aye, my lord,” he said. “In fact, I was already at St. Blitha today. It is a very long story, but I shall do my best to make it concise – this morning, as I was returning to Farringdon House after my night of food and drink, I came across a young woman stealing bread. As it turned out, she was a pledge from St. Blitha.”
“So that’s what happened,” Kress said. “You mentioned St. Blitha this morning, but you did not say why. What in the world was a pledge from St. Blitha doing stealing bread?”
Maxton held up a hand, asking for patience as he continued.
“Feeling pity for the woman, I fed her,” he said.
“But what she told me… God help me, St. Blitha’s is a place of sin and sorrow.
She said that the Mother Abbess sells the food meant for the nuns and pledges of St. Blitha to fill her own table with fine food, leaving her charges to starve.
That is why she was stealing bread. The pledge further told me that the Mother Abbess murders women who displease her. ”
That drew a reaction from all four of the men; eyebrows lifted in surprise. “A Mother Abbess who murders?” William repeated, shocked. “Are you certain? I have never heard such madness.”
“Nor I,” Maxton assured him. “The pledge, whose name is Andressa du Bose, told me that the Mother Abbess carries a staff with her that she calls the Staff of Truth, but the bottom half of the staff is really a sharp blade sheathed in wood to make it look like it’s part of the staff.
She sends those who displease her into the dungeons of St. Blitha, a place she calls The Chaos.
No one returns from The Chaos alive because the Mother Abbess evidently murders them with the blade from her Staff of Truth. ”
More shocking information. “My God,” William breathed. “A horrific tale, if true.”
Maxton shook his head. “I did not sense the pledge was lying. If you’d only seen the woman, my lord, you would believe her, too. It was a terrible story she told.”
“St. Blitha belongs to Essex, doesn’t it?
” Achilles spoke up. Surprisingly, he was the most pious of the Executioner Knights, and often wrestled with that faith when carrying out his dark missions.
“It is part of the Bishopric of Essex, and I am sorry to say that it is well-known that Essex is a man of questionable honor.”
“Exactly.” Maxton pointed a finger at him to emphasize his point. “He also has questionable morals. Remember the nun that was executed in Chelmsford the year we left for The Levant? She told everyone she was pregnant by Essex and was executed for her blasphemy.”
William pinched the bridge of his nose as if struggling with the dark and dirty deeds from people who were supposed to uphold the morality of the church. He’d had his own troubles with them, which made the story Maxton was telling more than believable in his mind.
“I remember,” he muttered. “I’d also heard through reliable sources that it wasn’t the first bastard of the Bishop of Essex. It was simply the one that became public knowledge.”
Maxton shook his head. “Given that quagmire of sex and lies, I tend to believe the pledge,” he said grimly.
“She lives behind walls that hide that hell from the world. But more than that, remember that St. Blitha’s was the abbey that Sherry tracked Douglas to.
He knows that Douglas spent some time there for an unknown reason. ”
William nodded, remembering what he’d been told of the entire situation with Alexander and Alasdair Baird Douglas.
He’d also been told of the ensuing conversation in the tavern when Maxton, Kress, and Achilles plied the man with drink and tried to interrogate him, a conversation that still had his head swimming.
So much of it was leading, with very little answers.
He felt as if they were no better off than they were before.
“We need to find out why Douglas was there,” he said. “If the man is our assassin, then we must find out all he knows. Your conversation with him in the tavern has brought us more questions than answers, unfortunately.”
Maxton leaned against the wall behind him, lost in thought.
It was a conversation he’d been stewing over since it happened.
“When we spoke to Douglas earlier, he said something that caught my attention,” he said.
“He said that our prayers will be answered and we shall have a new king, so clearly, he knows about the assassination order. That was increasingly evident as we spoke.”
“But he also said that no man will answer our prayers,” Achilles put in. “He was very clear about no man answering our prayers.”
Maxton looked at him, his eyebrows lifted. “So we shall have divine intervention?” he asked. “A saint is supposed to answer our prayers for the death of a king?”
“He was at St. Blitha,” Alexander entered into the conversation.
When the men looked at him curiously, he continued.
“I know, I said I was staying with Douglas. But the man is still unconscious and I felt the need to help. I have a guard watching him for now. You just finished telling us of the terrible darkness of the abbey, of a Mother Abbess who murders and pledges who starve. Mayhap Douglas went to St. Blitha to pray for a successful assassination, knowing of the evil of those who control St. Blitha. Think of it; the Holy Father has a devout servant in the Bishop of Essex, and Essex controls St. Blitha. There must be a connection there that we are not seeing.”
Maxton held up a finger as a thought formed. “Or…” he said, paused, and started again. “Or, given the fact that the Mother Abbess is a murderer, mayhap he sought her advice on how to proceed. Mayhap, she is part of the assassination plot, too.”
“Or mayhap she is the assassin,” Achilles said quietly. “Douglas said that no man would answer our prayers. The Mother Abbess is not a man.”
Maxton’s eyes widened as the logic of that statement made complete and utter sense. “The nun,” he hissed. “And John is due to St. Blitha in two days.”
The hammer had fallen. Now, the pieces of the puzzle were falling in line and the astonishment was clear on their faces. An assassin nun? It seemed far too outlandish but, given the clues, it made sense.
No man shall answer yer prayers, Douglas had said.
But a woman could.
“God’s Bones,” William hissed. “Is it true? Do we have to protect John from a nun?”
No one had a definitive answer for him because they were all swept up in the shocking possibilities. As Maxton opened his mouth to speak, a guard from the manor gate appeared on the stairs, distracting them.
“My lord?”
William responded. “What is it?”
The guard shook his head. “Nay, my lord,” he said. “I meant Sir Maxton.”
Maxton looked over his shoulder. “What do you want?”
The guard gestured with a thumb down the stairs. “There is someone asking for you at the gatehouse,” he said. “He says he’s from The King’s Gout. He wants to talk to you.”
Maxton didn’t react for a moment, but then his eyes opened wide and he flew down the stairs without another word. As the guard ran after him, William, Kress, Achilles, and Alexander looked to each other with some concern.
“The King’s Gout?” Kress repeated. “That’s the tavern over by the Street of the Bakers, isn’t it?”
Alexander’s brow furrowed, as if a thought had suddenly occurred to him. “Didn’t Max say that the pledge this morning was stealing bread?”