A Murderous Procession aka The Assassin

They were out in the tunnel, following a torch held by the strange familiar man.

Up the stairs to the guardroom, where a figure in Aveyron uniform was lying on the noor-his throat cut.

The man put the torch he was holding into a wall sconce and left it there, so that its light shone wetly on the blood of the guard he’d killed.

Up again, into the palace hall. Darkish, lit by a single flambeau; bodies lying in the shadows of the niches. Dead, too?

No, asleep. Servants. She could hear snores. It was night, then. The floor seemed to spread for miles, like a lake, before it reached the outer doors leading to the square; impossible to cross without waking the sleepers.

She was gathering herself now, terror replaced by another comprising wild fear and hope as their bare feet hurried soundlessly over the tiles, following the man… it was the Irishman. The O’Donnell was helping them escape. Rowley had sent him to get them out of here.

But he wasn’t getting them out. Instead of heading for the main doors, the man was taking them toward the entrance to the tower in which they’d first been imprisoned. Its door was open. He stood beside it, waving them to start the ascent ahead of him. We’ve been up there, she thought. There’s no way out that way. I don’t trust him, I don’t trust him.

She could hardly stand and argue; one of the sleeping bodies against the nearer wall was muttering and stirring. Mansur, Ulf, and Rankin were already at the foot of the tower steps, looking back to make sure she and Boggart were following. Quickly pushing Boggart into the turret, Adelia went in after her, the Irishman at her back. As he closed the door behind them, its hinges squeaked-and her nerves with them, so that she stood still, frozen, waiting for discovery. Instead she got a shove and a hissed: “Mother of God, will you move?”

With the door shut, they were in blackness. Up, then, up the winding thread of steps, feeling their way, up past doors leading to store cupboards, some of them open, others shut, none of them apparently occupied. Adelia gave a fractious whisper over her shoulder: “Why are we going up, not out?”

“This is out. Get on.”

It cost her, it cost all the prisoners, weak as they were, to keep climbing. Sobbing for breath, Boggart was beginning to lumber and Adelia had to reach up until, with her one good arm, she located the girl’s backside and she could push.

An unencumbered moon shone into the top room; better still, night air came in through the windows smelling of fields and distance; their laboring lungs sucked it in.

Boggart sank down on the floor, exhausted, but the Irishman pulled her to her feet. “Not yet, missus. Now we go down.”

The mullion of the window overlooking the rear roofs of the palace had ropes tied round it in complicated knotting; a grappling hook by which they’d been thrown up in order to catch round it was on the floor.

“Who goes first?” the O’Donnell said. “Easy as kiss-me-hand and the good Deniz down there ready to catch you.”

He looked toward Adelia. She shook her head at him; if it was as easy as kiss-me-hand, then Boggart must have the first chance of escape. But the maid shrank back, frightened, and Adelia wasn’t going without her. Probably, she thought, I’m not going at all, not with this bloody shoulder.

“I’ll go,” came Ulf’s voice.

Was that Ulf, that stick of a boy with hollow eyes and cheeks? Was the bearded scarecrow Rankin?

The others watched as the Irishman put a loop round the boy’s left foot and made sure his hands were firmly grasping another length of rope. “I’ll ease you down, lad. Just keep hold.” He leaned out of the window and, cupping his own hands, hooted like an owl.

There was an answering hoot from far below. “Off you go now, as my old granny said when she kicked the peddler over the cliff.”

Leaning out, Adelia saw the moonlight touching Ulf’s tow-colored hair and the white of his knuckles around the rope as he went down with the O’Donnell above paying it out, using the mullion as a fulcrum. The black depth below rushed up at her so that she flinched back before forcing herself to lean out again.

Ulf had stopped, he was stuck; he was struggling with a shadowy figure.

“They’ve got him.”

“Who has?” The O’Donnell stuck his head through the window. “No, that’s Deniz. Your boy’s just made the first of the descents, that’s all.”

There were two? Yes, of course, this was the window at the back of the turret, but after the roofs below it lay another drop of at least fifty feet. Again, Adelia felt the helpless irritation of hunger and fear. This was overelaborate and dangerous; Boggart wouldn’t be able to do it; she didn’t think she could. “Why couldn’t we go out through the doors?”

O’Donnell raised an eyebrow. “Well now, I don’t think the guards outside would’ve liked it. They’ll not be as sleepy as the lad downstairs.”

Whom he’d killed.

Outside an owl hooted.

“He’s down,” the Irishman said, pulling the rope back up. “Next.”

Rankin went, breathing hard. After an age, the owl hooted again.

Mansur was next; he didn’t want to go before the women, but Boggart was panicking and Adelia wouldn’t leave her. As the Arab clambered out into the moonlight, Adelia saw that his robe was filthy he who’d always been immaculate.

We stink, she thought, all of us. Except him. From what could be seen in the moonlight, O’Donnell looked neat and contained; he was insouciant, as if unloading cargo from one of his boats, whistling quietly to himself when he took the strain, his muscles stretched against his shirt which, she knew, was splashed at the front with the blood of the guard downstairs.

Mansur’s descent seemed to take longer than Rankin’s, which had taken longer than Ulf’s. Over the noise of her own breathing, Adelia listened desperately for an outbreak of shouts from outside or from the base of the turret when it was discovered that their cells were empty… They couldn’t be so lucky; this was a big palace, heavily populated baby…

“Now, then, ladies.”

“I can’t,” Boggart said. “The baby…”

“Just the thing for him,” the Irishman told her firmly “Dandling in the air? He’ll love it. Come on now.”

Between them, he and Adelia persuaded Boggart to put her foot in the loop. Getting her squeezed through the window’s frame and its mullion was more difficult-Adelia gritted her teeth at the thought of what the constriction might be doing to the fetus in that extended belly-but at last the girl was out. Her agonized face went down into the darkness.

When the owl hoot came, O’Donnell hauled in the rope again. “Come on, missus.”

Adelia gritted her teeth. “My collarbone is broken.”

“Which side?” There was no sympathy

“The right.”

“Hold on with your left hand, then.”

Her foot was put into a loop, an extra swath of rope wound around her body and tied with another complicated knot.

“Don’t look down,” the Irishman said. “Keep your eyes on me.”

She didn’t; she looked firmly at the stones that went sliding just beyond her nose.

Actually, with her good hand clinging onto the rope, her left foot braced against her own weight, and her right pushing herself away from the turret wall, the descent wasn’t as horrendous as she’d thought.

When at last her feet touched tiles, she was enveloped in a strong smell of sweat as the waiting Turkish squire released her from the harness and put his little hands to his mouth to give a final hoot. Her rope went snaking upward.

She was on a flat roof of some building. At last she saw what they were about; on this side the turret towered over a building that formed part of the palace’s rear wall and the wall gave onto wasteland that, in turn, gave way to a hill.