Chapter One
Stretford Castle, Dorset
Seat of Benoit de Wilde, Sheriff of Ilchester
They could hear screaming.
It was dark this night, a moon so dark that it was barely seen hovering over the shadowed landscape.
It was an omen of what was to come, that dark moon, a harbinger of ends and the gateway of beginnings.
In truth, it was a night of great foreboding and the screaming of the woman didn’t help matters. It simply complicated them.
They couldn’t take the screaming into account.
They had a job to do.
Slapping sounds and more screaming. Four men, heavily armed and dressed in black, were on the darkened grounds of Stretford Castle, which was more of a manor house than an actual fortress, and the sounds coming from the second-floor window above their heads were distressing.
A woman was being thrashed; that much was clear.
She was being beaten within an inch of her life and they’d been listening to the sounds since they’d made their way across the clogged moat on a raft they’d brought with them.
The sounds, however, had worked to their advantage because the soldiers on duty were also distracted by the noises.
Lured by them, in fact. They’d seen one man on the wall walk, his attention turned towards the window where the screams were coming from as he’d rubbed at his groin, stimulated by the sound.
That stimulation had been the last thought on his mind before a silent arrow had slammed into his back, taking him down as the four men used a grappling hook to pull themselves over Stretford’s sand-colored walls.
With the wall sentry out of commission, the men had stowed their raft and slinked across the side yard, through the garden, and to the walls of the manor itself.
They were prepared to enter any window in order to reach their target, but they suspected their target was the very man beating the woman on the second floor.
Rumor had it that de Wilde was a brute, a nasty bastard that the king despised, so they rightly assumed that their best option in finding this man was directly over their heads.
Follow the sounds of the screaming woman and they would find him.
“I shall go first.”
A very big man with smoky gray eyes and a square jaw hissed the words.
Clad in black leather from head to toe, he was protected against weapon strikes for the most part, but the nature of his job prevented him from wearing the technology of the day, the heavy plate armor that knights currently wore.
In fact, he preferred the outdated chain mail, which he wore around his neck and shoulders.
For this job, he needed to move swiftly and silently, and he couldn’t do that in clanging plates of steel.
Crouched next to him was a younger man in much the same dress. He watched the big man gather the rope on the grappling hook they’d used to mount the wall.
“Why should you go first?” he whispered. “Let me go in first and catch him off-guard. Then you can come in after me and capture the man while I have him occupied if, in fact, this is the man we are looking for. It could very well be someone else, you know.”
The man with the gray eyes cocked a dark eyebrow.
“The man up there is in that room beating a woman to death,” he said.
“You know de Wilde. You know his brutality; we have all heard rumors of it and, now, we hear the reality. The world will be a better place without him, so shut your lips and let us get on with it. Henry is waiting for him.”
But the second man shook his head. “Trenton, listen to me,” he said, grasping him by the arm as if he were about to tell him something life changing. “Let both of us go up at once. He cannot fight off both of us at the same time. Timothy and Adrian will bring up the rear.”
Sir Trenton de Russe eyed the young, eager knight who had been his partner in crime for the past six years.
Sir Anthony de Witt was a brilliant egotist who sopped up glory and excitement like most men sopped up gravy from a trencher – the man literally fed off of the thrill of an operation like the one they were in the process of performing.
As agents for the king, this was their vocation – the king commanded, and they fulfilled.
If the king told them to remove an enemy, that was exactly what they did.
And they did it without an army.
Only their wits, skill, and cunning.
Like tonight. They’d been sent to capture Benoit de Wilde, the Sheriff of Ilchester and a strong opponent of the king’s agenda.
De Wilde held his position by legacy, meaning his father and his father before him had held the post, and de Wilde had been a thorn in Henry’s side long enough.
He made it no secret that he thought the King of England to be a vile piece of work, and Henry had enough of the man when de Wilde had stolen a mistress away from the king.
Literally, spirited the woman away so Henry couldn’t get to her.
Perhaps that didn’t seem like a deadly offense to most, but to Henry VIII, it was a clear sign of disrespect and disrespect would lead to retaliation.
At this time in his life, he was almost ten years into his reign and he’d already established himself as a strong king who didn’t tolerate opposition.
That was where Trenton de Russe came in.
God, but he was deadly.
A deadly man from a long line of deadly men, his father being the deadliest of all.
At least, that was the general opinion until Trenton grew into adulthood and came into his own.
Because his father, Gaston de Russe, had served Henry VII for many years, Trenton and Henry’s son, the future Henry VIII, had grown up with one another.
Trenton was several years older, but young Henry looked to Trenton as the older brother he’d never really had – powerful, intelligent, respectable, and talented.
He’d long admired the man and when he became king, Trenton had been offered a most special post—
The Crown’s Own Agent.
It meant that whatever Henry needed Trenton to do, the man did.
He and his team of three specialized knights could do it all, and they often did.
They were masters of many trades, and most of them deadly, as Benoit de Wilde was about to discover.
When Trenton de Russe was on a scent, nothing short of God’s intervention could prevent him from completing his mission.
In fact, that was the very thing Trenton was thinking of as Anthony begged him to alter his plans slightly.
Instead of Trenton going in head first and alone, he and Anthony would go in together and create a distraction.
That meant that one of them could surely capture de Wilde, with Timothy and Adrian backing them up.
It was a safer plan, but not nearly so fun.
Yet Trenton suspected Anthony had suggested it so he could share in some of that glory that seemed to follow Trenton around.
Whatever the case, it was time to move.
“Then get up there, you glory whore,” Trenton growled, picking up his iron grappling hook and preparing to throw it to the window above. “Move when I move. And watch out for the guards when you climb.”
Anthony nodded eagerly. Taking the second grappling hook, he moved down the wall, his gaze fixed on the large window overhead, emitting both light and screams. The screams were growing weaker, however, and now there were growling words intermingled with them.
A woman was sobbing. Trenton caught Anthony’s attention and nodded, once.
The grappling hooks flew up and hooked onto the edge of the stone windowsill.
There was no time to delay. The sentry with the arrow through his torso hadn’t been discovered yet, but it was only a matter of time. Trenton and Anthony heaved themselves up the wall, deftly climbing the rope until they both reached the windowsill at nearly the same time.
Unfortunately, they were met with an obstacle.
Because the windows were set back from the sill, they hadn’t a clear view of them until they were upon them.
Now, they saw that the windows were made from crown glass, cylinder shapes in a pattern that comprised the window itself.
The windows in the center were fixed, but smaller side windows were open for ventilation.
This meant they would have to go through the glass, which was heavy and imperfect, and secured with wood or iron braces.
They really couldn’t tell. All they knew was that they had to get through it.
Trenton released his grip and slid down the length of the rope until he was on the ground, followed by Anthony a split second later.
As Anthony and the others watched curiously, Trenton dislodged his grappling hook, gathered it up, and swung it again, this time harder.
It sailed up at the edge of the broad window, lodging itself in the top of the windowsill now.
Without pause, he began to haul himself up again.
Anthony, puzzled at what he was doing, followed suit and, soon enough, he had his grappling hook wedged into the top of the stone window frame, too.
But Trenton was already halfway to the window.
Not to be outdone, Anthony followed eagerly and recklessly.
He was grunting, making some noise, as Timothy and Adrian looked around the grounds, concerned that they were going to be discovered.
But preserving their secrecy fled when Trenton suddenly took a big swing on his rope and broke through the window, creating something of a racket.
As Anthony sailed in behind him, and Timothy and Adrian began to swiftly make the climb, Trenton’s main focus was on the man who was now standing near the blazing hearth.