At the door to the kitchen garden, Ambrose gestured for Matthew to stay back while he checked for a guard – or Carl, then took Matthew’s things and proffered the boots. ‘Best to start out well shod. It will be a long walk.’
Bending over the boots, the youth glanced up. ‘You mean to go with me?’
‘I planned to leave tonight. You are merely an unexpected encumbrance.’
‘I can manage.’
‘We waste time. Come.’
As they began to move across the courtyard two figures approached from the fields, a bare-assed man tottering after a woman who yanked him along by his member. Carl and the assistant cook. Ambrose felt a laugh rising and covered his mouth as he backed farther into the shadows. As the two passed nearby, Ambrose felt the heat of the woman’s fury. Near the door to the kitchen she let go of Carl. He stumbled forward. She kicked him aside and disappeared within. Carl groaned. Grabbing Matthew’s hand, Ambrose hurried on. Clouds hid the moon, forcing them to move with care down the paths. But Ambrose had planned for it, walking the route several times, learning the contours, the obstacles – like the thorn hedge.
Near the gatehouse he froze in mid-step as a guard called out a challenge. But it proved to be directed at a rider who approached the gate from the road. God watched over them. The distraction would give them the cover they needed.
A forceful knock on the door. ‘My lord!’
Sir John kissed the wench tenderly – a woman bedded is a dangerous creature should she feel used and discarded. ‘Forgive me, my beauty.’
With a sigh, she slipped from beneath the sheets. John groaned at the vision, her curves caressed by the candlelight, in full view as she wrestled her simple gown over her head, dropping over that lushness. She blew him a kiss and scampered out, trading places with Pit, the man he had set to watch the players, especially the minstrel in the squirrel-lined cloak and robe. The elegance of the clothing had been his mistake, and his choice of instrument. Few played the crwth. Fewer yet with such a voice, and clothes unmistakably the work of tailors for the French court. And the intensity with which he had regarded those gathered in the hall – Sir John included. He’d not needed the curvaceous kitchen wench to tell him of the man’s interest in hearing ‘what the nobles said amongst themselves’ to know he was a spy. But who had hired him? At one time or another Ambrose Coates had been rumored to be the lover of every man in the French court – and a few women. Or was he now spying for someone in the English court? Of late John had been on the Scottish border, too far afield to stay current with court gossip.
Pit slouched to the bedside, keeping his eyes averted as if fearing he might see his lord’s nakedness.
‘You had best have news after so rudely interrupting my pleasure,’ John growled, more for the sport of seeing the man even more discomfited. Whence came these fine sensibilities in hired brutes? It was ever the same, a taste for all but a certain vice. Pit feared naked flesh, and pleasure. Pain, blood, splintered bones, guts spilling from sliced velvet, gouged-out eyes – nary a flicker of unease. But show him a woman’s bare breast or a cock wet with sex and the man blanched and bowed his head.
‘The minstrel and the fair-haired lad, milord. They have gone. Left all the rest asleep.’
‘Have they?’ John smiled to himself. ‘You know what to do.’
‘Alive?’
‘Alive if you catch him on the road. I should like to know who sent him. But if you follow him into a town or guarded manor …’ John paused, considering how likely it was that Pit and his fellows could be discreet. ‘If you might be seen dragging him away, dispatch him in the shadows, leave him to die.’
‘And the lad?’
The beautiful youth with the voice of an angel. Were the pair lovers? If so, the youth might know much, might be able to carry out the minstrel’s mission.
‘The lad likewise.’
Pit managed to bow even lower as he backed from the room.
‘Take as many men as you see fit. And some horses – they took no horses, I presume?’
‘No, my lord,’ Pit mumbled at the door. ‘They were on foot.’
‘Do not disappoint me.’
‘May God bless this mission.’
John almost laughed out loud. ‘God has little to do with such work. Get on with it!’
When the door closed he lay back, contemplating the bed curtains. The kitchen wench was a delicious piece of flesh, but now, should the minstrel be found dead and she hear of it … He would order her death on the morrow. Tempting to send for her and enjoy her once more before his man took her away. Or he had that slow-acting poison … Rising, he knocked on the door, and when his manservant answered he told him to send for the wench. ‘And bring more wine.’ She would find her death in a fine claret. A kindness.
TWO
A Fell Night, An Angel’s Voice
York
At the dying of the year the minster stonemasons worked a short day, heading for home as clerics gathered in the choir to chant the prayers of nones. As soon as the yard no longer rang with the hammering of chisels on stone and the dust settled, the poor crept out of their makeshift hovels on the north side of the great minster to light their fires against the deepening dark.
Brother Michaelo stepped out of Archdeacon Jehannes’s house. In honor of the first snow of the season he wore an old cloak over the tattered habit he donned to perform his penitential service, his feet clad in boots rather than his customary sandals. He need not add frostbite to his penance. In one hand he carried a
