Alys Clare - Heart of Ice

The man was watching him closely. ‘A King’s man,’ he repeated softly. ‘The King that is or the King that shall be, I wonder?’

‘King Richard!’ Josse exclaimed angrily. ‘Beware of treason, sir, to speak of a future king while the present one yet lives and reigns!’

The man waved his hand as if treason held no fears for him. Then, looking down the ward, he said, ‘They have promised to find a priest for me, Sir Josse, for I have much that I wish to confess before God and I stand face to face. There is no sign of the man as yet, so may I ask a favour of you?’

Feeling that he could hardly refuse, Josse said, ‘Aye.’

The man’s face twitched into a brief smile. Then he said, ‘Hear my tale, sir knight, and tell me, if you will, what you think this priest will say to me, for I would know for how long I must do penance for my many sins.’

It was a strange thing to say. Intrigued, Josse said, ‘Tell me the tale, then, for I have no pressing duty.’

‘Very well.’ The man shut his eyes tightly for a moment, his lips moved, perhaps in prayer, then without any warning preamble he said, ‘I have killed many men. Some I slew in battle, engaged as I was in the squabbles of lordlings and counts. But I have also killed thirty-two men and two women in the role of hired assassin. I am good at my job, Sir Josse; they used to say that I was the best.’ A puzzled frown creased his white face. ‘I could not kill her, though. I stared down at the bed and I thought, what is the point? If she has revealed the secret, then I am too late; if not, then why should she not live? I am tired; I have had enough of death and there is too much blood on my hands.’

There was a silence.

Stunned, Josse brought to mind the matter that had been obsessing him before the Abbess fell ill and everything else was obliterated. He knew how this man had come to be arrested; had been told by Gervase de Gifford of the trap set and sprung, of the sick man extracted from it and brought up to Hawkenlye. ‘You broke into Gervase de Gifford’s house with the intention of murdering Sabin de Retz and her grandfather,’ he said sternly. ‘Before that you killed Martin Kelsey in his sickbed in Hastings and you struck down Nicol Romley here in the Vale.’

‘Those deeds I admit,’ the man said. ‘But I was not going to kill Sabin; I just told you that.’

‘You say you are a paid assassin,’ Josse pressed on, ‘and we have surmised that you came to England on a killing mission.’ The man smiled wryly at that but did not speak. ‘I would say that Sabin learned who it was that you were going after and, becoming friendly with Nicol Romley when the two met at the market in Troyes, she confided in him what she knew. You learned that your secret was out and you tried to kill Sabin by firing the lodging house. Then you set out after Nicol to stop his mouth too, but by the time you caught up with him he was already travelling with Martin Kelsey who, for all you knew, had now also been told the identity of the man you were setting out to kill.’ A new thought occurred to Josse and, excited, he leaned forward and said, ‘You had to kill all of them in case they warned your intended victim! That’s it, isn’t it?’

‘I am sorry,’ the man said courteously, ‘but I must correct you on one or two points. First, I was not coming to England to fulfil my mission; the victim, as you call him, is not in this land. So, although I hate to dampen your ardour, I must tell you that it was not to prevent them issuing a warning that I killed the apprentice lad and the merchant. It was, as you earlier suggested, with the intention of keeping the matter secret.’

‘ What matter?’ Josse almost wailed the question.

The man smiled; he seemed to be enjoying the game. ‘See if you can guess, Sir Josse. Think of what you have already worked out.’

With an effort, Josse thought back to the evening three days ago — only three days! God’s boots, but it felt like a lifetime — when he had hurried back to Hawkenlye to tell the Abbess his thoughts on Sabin and Benoit de Retz. Recalling his impressions, he said, ‘I was summoned by Gervase de Gifford to speak with Sabin. I was aware that she was careful to give little away but I noticed a few interesting things. One, when I spoke to her in French she said it was not her native tongue. I listened carefully after that and it occurred to me that she is a Breton.’ If he had expected confirmation from the man, it was not forthcoming. ‘Then I noticed a faint scent on her which I recognised, for I have smelt it on others who habitually work with herbs. Added to the fact that she spoke of visiting the fair at Troyes for purchases needed in her work, I guessed that she is an apothecary, for I know that Troyes market is an excellent source for the rare and the exotic. Later in our conversation she said that she had to buy particular ingredients in order to treat her employer. Here again, I made a guess, and this time it was indeed an outrageous one.’

‘What was it?’ The man sounded amused, indulgent.

‘I am probably wide of the mark.’

‘Never mind! Let me hear your outrageous guess.’

Josse went over the small clues that had seemed to point in the same single direction. ‘I would say that Sabin and her grandfather are the private apothecaries of some rich man, for she at least, whom I have seen, I know to dress in plain but costly garments of fine quality. In addition, she rides a good mare. She has, or perhaps I should say they have, rare skills that have earned them their employer’s respect and indulgence, for he was willing to have them ride off to Troyes to fetch whatever it was they claimed to require. I would further surmise’ — here he was on shakier ground, for he was basing this guess on the flimsy foundation of a piece of gossip picked up some months ago when on the fringes of court circles — ‘that the master who pays so much to have Sabin and her grandfather’s discreet and expert care suffers from a disease of which he is ashamed. I was told,’ he lowered his voice to a whisper, ‘that Philip of France has syphilis and my guess is that Sabin and her grandfather have the care of him.’

To his dismay, the man burst out laughing. After a moment, he controlled himself. ‘I am sorry, Sir Josse, for my laughter. You reason so well, right up to the last, and my amusement was simply because, in the matter of the French king, I fear you have been listening to barrack-room gossip. He is, I am sure, as free of the shameful disease that you ascribe to him as the good infirmarer over there.’

‘Oh.’

‘But in all other respects, I believe I underestimated you,’ the man said. ‘Sabin and her grandfather are indeed Bretons and they practise the profession of apothecary, as you say, in the employ of a wealthy and important patron. My mission was to kill a member of this patron’s household and I was on the point of making my strike when my master called me off. By an ill stroke, Benoit heard the exchange between my master’s messenger and myself; the old man may be blind, Sir Josse, but he has keen ears and misses little. He must have overheard the identity of the person I had been sent to kill and it would not take a genius to work out from that the man it was who had sent me and who wanted the victim dead, and why they wanted it. Benoit had therefore to be stopped, for if the secret were to get out, then my master would have had me killed instead; be in no doubt of that. But before I could apprehend the old man, he and his daughter disappeared, and it was some time before I knew where they had gone. I tried and failed to kill them in Troyes, by which time they had also revealed the secret to Nicol Romley, who, or so I feared, passed it on to Martin Kelsey. Two of the potential leaks have been stopped for good; two now remain.’