Chapter Seventeen #2
Everald didn’t like being on the losing end of his own blackmail scheme.
“Then we shall find out whom he believes,” he said.
“I not only intend to tell him that I saw you, but I intend to tell him that I overheard you speaking of stealing from him. Better still, murdering him in his sleep. Those men you met with are murderers and you have promised them riches if they will do away with your liege, a man you detest. Will you risk that?”
Langford didn’t say anything right away.
He simply looked at him. Then, he burst out into laughter, revealing stained and crooked teeth.
“You are a bigger fool than I thought,” he said.
“But mayhap you are right. Mayhap that is really what I was doing. Mayhap those men are murderers, because if they are, you will be their next victim before you can open your stupid mouth and lie to Cambridge.”
Everald took a step or two away from him, backing up to the open door of The Pox. “They can try,” he said. “But they will have a fight on their hands.”
“From whom?” Langford said. “A useless knight who failed in the Levant and then came to England and failed here, as well? You are a failure, de Beaumont. The only thing of value you ever did was father Cleodora, who is a genuinely sweet and intelligent lass. It was her horrific misfortune to have a worthless father like you. God help the woman, truly.”
Everald’s features tightened with rage. “You will not say such things.”
“Or what?” Langford said. “What could you possibly do?”
Everald intended to show him. He produced a dagger, one of the only possessions he had left that he hadn’t sold for money for the poppy.
As he took a step toward Langford, someone grabbed him from behind and threw an arm around his head, grabbing his face and pulling it upward.
The same person then dragged a razor-sharp dagger across Everald’s throat, cutting him so deeply that he nearly decapitated him.
As Everald fell to the ground, bleeding out and unable to call for help because his windpipe was cut, Langford watched without emotion. So did two other men who had come out of The Pox behind him, one of them having cut Everald’s throat when he made a provocative move toward Langford.
The three of them watched Everald die.
There was no remorse.
“You did your good deed for the day,” Langford said, glancing up at the man nearest him. “Thank you, Perrin.”
Perrin de Lohr was still looking at Everald. “Who is that?” he said.
Langford’s gaze moved to the dead man on the ground.
“The father of the Pearl,” he said. “Cambridge’s Jewel.
That bloodied corpse is Everald de Beaumont and he is as foolish and dishonorable as they come, so you just did Lady Cleodora a good turn.
Now she doesn’t have to worry about her father selling her again to the highest bidder. ”
Perrin glanced up at him. “Is that what he did?” he said. “He sold his daughter to Cambridge?”
Langford shrugged. “More or less,” he said.
“He had the power to stop her from becoming a courtesan had he protested enough and got the church involved, but once Cambridge started giving him coin, his protests died. Trust me when I tell you that you did the world a service, Perrin. No one will miss him.”
Perrin simply shrugged and motioned to the man with them, a young knight who had just begun his service with the Executioner Knights.
Sir Thad du Reims was from the powerful Earls of East Anglia family, an intelligent lad with a muscular body, who easily heaved Everald onto a broad shoulder and carried him off into the night to dispose of.
But that left on the ground a puddle of bloody mud and a man whose absence would have to be explained to at least one person.
Perrin turned to Langford.
“I must go,” he said. “You have given me information to relay to the Guard of Six and the sooner they have it, the better.”
Langford nodded. “I am not entirely sure when he intends to gift the king with the Pearl, but know that it is a trap,” he said. “He’s sending the lass to the king so she can kill him.”
Perrin understood. “The question in my mind is, how does she feel about it?” he said. “The order to kill a king is something even the most seasoned knight would wrestle over, so how is one of the Seven Jewels of London feeling about it? Does she care? Is she glad to do it?”
Langford looked at the blood at his feet. “Cambridge used her father as leverage to force her to his will,” he said. “It would seem that her father is no longer a consideration.”
“But she will not know that,” Perrin reminded him. “She could think that the man has merely gone away. She will not know of his death, even when he does not return a year, two years, or ten years later. She will never know what has become of him.”
“True,” Langford said. “But she will not care. From what I could see, she did not have any affection for him. As I said, he sold her to feed his poppy habit. He did not place her above his own needs and she knows it. Whether that will make her more, or less, agreeable to Cambridge’s scheme is unknown at this time. ”
“Do you think she’s capable of an assassination?”
“I do not.”
That was good enough for Perrin, but he still had to tell the Guard of Six what Langford, a man who had been the perfect mole for many years, planted by the side of a man who needed watching, had just told him.
The truth was that Perrin would do anything to protect that asset, so when Everald de Beaumont began lobbing threats to expose Langford, Perrin had had no choice to silence him.
It was an action he did not regret.
Langford departed The Pox and headed back to Thornhill, but not before he stopped at a shop that sold licorice root and candied fruits.
They were Cambridge’s favorite, so his excuse for leaving Thornhill would be procuring some of the things that Cambridge loved to eat.
God knew, there were many things the man stuffed his face with, but sweets seemed to be his particular Achilles’ heel.
Fortunately for Langford, he knew that Cambridge would never question his going into London to purchase treats, and he thanked God for the glutton.
Therefore, back to Thornhill he went while Everald was thrown in the river.
Such were the perils of crossing an Executioner Knight.
Everald had had to learn that lesson the hard way.