CHAPTER 1
The blade plunged gently between the man's buttocks, then pushed its full length in one slow movement to the hilt. The action was perfectly controlled. The stiletto was withdrawn and the assassin wiped the blade on his surcoat. His accomplice, pressing the man's face into the bedclothes, felt the shudder run through him.
Replacing the stiletto in its sheath, the assassin picked up the leather document bag from beside the bed, fingered through it, then threw it to the floor, grunting, "Untie him. Let's get out."
* * *
They had picked up the courier's trail outside York after he left the archbishop's palace, taking over from the previous riders, who had followed him all the way from Westminster. For sure he became aware of them fairly soon. The flat November light could conceal no one. The roads were deserted, apart from a few peasants walking to the fields.
Autumn rains had churned the track through the forest to mud, and even the well-maintained king's highway made hellish going. Horses up to their bellies in mud. Slipping, stumbling, near enough breaking their legs to keep up. He was riding at a desperate speed. To make it worse, the rivers were in spate, and many fords were impassable. He gave them a run for their money all right, doubling back on himself, even turning off the road and striking out into dense woodland when the opportunity arose, and generally making life difficult for them. They cursed when they lost him somewhere near Knaresborough but rejoiced when they picked up his trail-more by chance than from their own skill, as they admitted-when he started out across the moors.
"He's going the wrong away about it if he thinks he's heading for Alnwick Castle," observed the elder of the two. His accent was northern but not Scottish. The man with him gave a growl of assent. Like a lymer, he hunted in silence. And he didn't care where the man was going. He wouldn't get there.
On the high moor, the trail led towards the coast, Whitby the only town of note unless he decided to strike north to the Tees. He was perfectly visible now, with nowhere to hide in the oppressive desolation. It was made worse by bellied clouds full of sleet. The load was scattered now and then, driving hard fragments of ice into their muffled faces. They allowed him to keep a mile or so ahead, as if running free. He was a dot in the landscape, the only moving thing. A speck of colour hardly brighter than the winter moors, comical really, riding hard down one side of the undulating moorland and equally hard up the other. All that effort.
They saw him disappear over a far ridge, and when they reached the top themselves, there he was again, still kicking up the mud, horse racing as gallantly as ever, with mane flying, across the wide dale below. But even the best courier has to stop sometime.
He chose an inn conspicuously in the middle of nowhere. Perhaps he thought nothing could happen to him with so few travellers on the road. A stranger highly visible in such a place. Anything that happened would be noticed at once, the perpetrators seen and remembered.
Maybe that's how his pursuers thought about it, as well. His disappearance would be an event in this godforsaken place. His lord and master would be informed as soon as ever. His missive stillborn, as it were. And maybe that's how they wanted it.
They closed in.
* * *
"Has a companion of ours just ridden up, master?" They knew he had.
The aleman gave them a sharp look. "He might have."
"Wanting to get his head down for an hour or so, I shouldn't wonder. We noticed his horse in your yard. He rides like the devil. We have a message for him, but it's taken us a hell of a ride to catch up with him." Squat, mongrel-featured, his local accent making him acceptable, and he gave what passed for a smile to add to it.
The alemaster nodded. "He's bested you, all right. He's taken t' chamber up aloft." He thumbed the air above his head. "Nobody else in this day. The weather. Who's travelling in this but for thieves and gentlemen such as yourselves?" He lifted an eyebrow. A big man. Veteran of the Scottish wars. A cleaver on the trestle in front of him. He could afford to say what he liked.
"We'll go and disturb him from his slumber, beggin' your leave." The man nudged his companion.
Unchecked, the two went out.
The alemaster was suddenly uneasy. He glanced at his companion, a Saxon blonde, breasts jutting out of her shift the way he liked, and frowned. "What do you say, Mary dove?"
"Oh, let them be. They're covered in muck. They must have been on the road for hours. It's nowt to do with us. They can only be heading for Whitby, and what's there?"
He shook his head. Priests and fish merchants came and went. His regulars were shepherds. When the fair was on at Corpus Christi, it was different.
"Go up and see if you can hear owt."
Flouncing, but wary of disobeying in case he decided he could do without her, she climbed the wooden stairs and hovered outside the door. Came only the murmur of men's voices from within. Then a little silence. An exclamation following. Nothing much. When she heard footsteps crossing the floor, she hurriedly slipped back down the stairs, and the two men only caught up with her when she was at the bottom.
The shorter of the two gave her a lingering leer and his glance came to rest on her breasts with such intensity, it seemed he would never look away. "Time for a quick one, mistress?" he asked, his eyes never lifting. He moved closer. She could smell his breath.
"What's your will, master?"
He squeezed one of the swollen globes and sighed, then pressed himself against her, so she could feel the doorframe digging into her back and the links of his chain-mail hauberk crushing her breasts.
"You'd best ask"-she nodded towards the aleman-"and settle it with him."
He stepped back. "We'll eat first. Our friend does not want to be disturbed until morning. He gives you this." He held up a silver coin. "Later," he told her as she reached for it. "Don't be greedy."
Affronted by the man, she turned to the alemaster, but he pretended not to have heard and instead continued to pour the two guests long stoups of ale from a flagon, then chivvied her into going out back to bring bread and pottage for them.
* * *
When they left, the alemaster lifted Mary's skirt and gave a groan as he entered her and began to pound her against the counter. When he finished, he wiped himself on a cloth and said, "I thought those bastards would never leave. I didn't like them."
"They went back the way they came," she pointed out. "It must have been an important message to bring them all this way out." She rearranged her kirtle.
A few customers came in. The day progressed. The night. Morning came.
There was no sound from the guest chamber, and Mary went to stand outside the door to listen to the silence. When it continued and curiosity got the better of her, she pushed open the door and poked her head round.
Slanted light across a bed from between half-closed shutters. Three cloak hooks on the wall. His cloak where he had flung it. Stale straw underfoot. And the guest still in bed.
A cover was pulled up to his shoulders and he lay facedown, one arm trailing to the floor.
Above the ale room's clatter and stink, the air was fetid with the stench of butcher's blood.
She had the silver coin safe in the cleft between her breasts. The alemaster had laughed at her. "Think it's safe there, doxy?" He had proved it wasn't but, later, had given it back with interest.
Nothing to lose, she went over to the bed. "Master, it's morning now. He'll be docking another day's silver for your extra use of his chamber if you don't stir yourself."
The man did not move. Neither was there the rise and fall of breath of someone asleep. When she put out a hand to shake him, she felt the chill of dead flesh under her fingers. She screamed, long and loud.
When she found herself somehow at the bottom of the stairs, the aleman gawped. "What's up, dove? Your face is as white as a nun's thighs."
Copyright © 2015 by Cassandra Clark
