Martyr's Fire (13 page)

Still, Katherine fumbled for words. “I’ve brought this for the … the former earl,” she said, extending the wrapped food as proof that Hawkwood had insisted she carry. “To repay a kindness he once did my father.”

Would Waleran believe her? Katherine bowed her head in a humbleness she hoped hid her flush of fear. In the brief pause as she waited, her heart pounded a dozen times.

How can I warn Thomas? If I leave now, they will suspect me!

The prisoner finally spoke to the guard. “Help this pretty creature. I need no escort. And time presses me.”

It is Waleran who orders the guard!

The guard grunted agreement and began to unlock the adjacent door.

Katherine let her pent breath escape slowly as Waleran brushed past her and began to descend the stairs, without a doubt on his way to inform Michael, the new Earl of York, that Thomas was near. She willed herself to move forward slowly, despite the sudden extreme urgency.

The guard blocked her movement. Her heart leaped into her throat. But then the guard held out a grimy hand, and she understood. She had
forgotten the bribe. With concealed relief, she placed a coin into his palm. He bowed mockingly and made room for her to enter the prison cell.

Before the door had latched firmly behind her, she started in a rushed whisper.

“My good lord,” she began, “there is—”

The former Earl of York no doubt understood why she halted her words.

He touched his face lightly with exploring fingertips of his left hand. “The penalty of losing an earldom. It appears much more terrible than it is,” he told her. “There are days I do not feel any pain, and without a reflection …” The earl shrugged.

This was not the proud warrior who had stood beside Thomas in battle against the Scots. This was not the confident man of royalty who had later decreed that Thomas surrender himself and Magnus. Gone was the trimmed red-blond hair that spoke of Vikings among his ancestors. His face was still broad but no longer remarkably smooth. The blue eyes that matched the sky just before dusk were now dimmed. And gone was the posture of a man at ease with himself and the world he commanded.

Instead, his face was crisscrossed with half-healed razor cuts, so that it appeared a giant eagle had raked him repeatedly with merciless talons. His right shoulder hung limp at an awkward angle, popped loose from its socket. And his feet were still in splints, wrapped with bandages mottled gray and red from filth and long-dried blood.

“Please, my dear, smile,” he encouraged her. “It would be a small gift well received.”

Katherine did so, hesitantly.

He waved her to speak. “You had something to impart, and it seemed with great speed.”

Katherine nodded. She did not yet know if she could trust her voice.
She swallowed a few times, then spoke, softly, afraid that her voice would carry to perhaps another prisoner spy.

“Your visitor, Thomas,” she said.

The earl leaned forward with a suddenness that made him wince in pain. “You knew the monk’s assistant was Thomas of Magnus?”

“Yes, m’lord. Do you see him as an ally still?”

“Yes, of course. I am in this prison because my son betrayed me. And it was my son who fooled me into trying to take Magnus from Thomas. It is a truth that has no comfort in its coldness.”

“Then help me,” Katherine said, “for I fear those who now hold York will soon learn that Thomas visited you here.”

“Impossible,” the earl said. “I would not betray Thomas.”

Katherine pointed to a vent in the wall. “Impossible that your voices might carry to the prisoner beside you?”

“Hardly,” the earl snorted. “My conversations with him have kept me from losing all sanity here. Yet, even if he eavesdropped, there is nothing he can do.”

“Unless he were a spy named Waleran.” Katherine explained those days with Thomas in the dungeon beneath Magnus.

The earl clenched his fists. “The prisoner across the wall was one of them? A Druid?”

Katherine replied softly. “Then I need not explain the Druid circle of conspiracy?”

The earl shook his head. “No. Nor the darkness they have placed upon my family for generations. You know of the Druids too? What madness is this?”

Katherine nodded at his first question and shrugged at his second. She wanted to ask the questions, instead, to learn what Thomas intended, but she dared not press the earl too quickly.

He shuddered. “Druids. We have always been at their mercy.”

He touched a bare finger. “As I told Thomas, I shall tell you. Almost word for word. There was a ring in our family, passed from father to eldest son, the future Earl of York. With it were these instructions: acknowledge the power of those behind the symbol or suffer horrible death. Five generations ago, the Earl of York refused to listen to a messenger—one whose own ring fit into the symbol engraved upon the family ring. Within weeks, worms began to consume his still-living body. No doctor could cure him. Even a witch was summoned. To no avail. They say his deathbed screams echoed throughout the castle for a week. His son—my great-great-grandfather—then became the new Earl of York. When he outgrew his advisors, he took great care in acknowledging the ring that had been passed to him.”

This was the family curse Hawkwood meant!

The earl focused his eyes on the floor. “It only meant responding to a favor asked. A command given. Rarely more than one in an earl’s lifetime. Sometimes none. My great-grandfather did not receive a single request. Twenty years ago my father … my father stood aside while Magnus fell, despite allegiance and protection promised. He let the new conquerors reign.”

He stopped suddenly and darted a sharp look at Katherine. “This is strange, your sudden appearance. You are not one of them?”

She shook her head. “The Druids have already imprisoned you. Why would I be here if I were one of them?”

The earl gaped in sudden comprehension. “These Priests of the Holy Grail are … are … Druids …?”

“And Thomas, I pray, is not,” Katherine replied.

The earl shook his head weakly. “First, Thomas with his rash promises. And now you. I feel so old.”

“Rash promises?”

“He offered my kingdom back,” the earl said.

“What did Thomas ask of you in return?” Katherine asked quickly. “How will he attempt this? Where goes he next?”

The earl stared strangely at Katherine. “It dawns upon me that you are privy to much, yet are a stranger. Why should you have more of my trust? Why should I believe the story of a spy in the cell next door? Perhaps you are here to prevent Thomas from succeeding. After all, only a Druid could know what you do.”

The earl gained more strength as his thoughts became more certain. “Only a Druid watcher placed at the gates would have known of Thomas’s arrival so soon.”

Time—too little time remained. Yet could Katherine betray a secret that had been kept from outsiders for centuries?

She thought of Thomas, of the heads spiked outside this very prison. Even now as she spoke in this dank cell, did Thomas walk unknowingly to his doom? Katherine made her decision.

“Few know of the Druids and the evil they pursue,” she whispered. “None know there are those who seek to counter them.”

The earl’s eyes widened. “Another circle?”

Anguish ripped through Katherine for even hinting at that. Since birth, she had been trained to keep what secrets she knew and had only been permitted to grasp the edges of the truth. It was a secret so precious that not even she knew of much more than the existence of the Immortals, only that she was one of them and had been given much of their teachings.

The earl repeated himself, almost impatiently. “Another circle?”

How could she bring herself to go beyond that hint and betray even more? But there was Thomas. If he were not a Druid but, as she hoped, one like her, mere observation was no longer enough. Thomas now needed help.

Finally, Katherine forced herself to nod. “Yes. Another circle.”

Those words hung while she waited until she could remain silent no longer. “Please, Thomas is in danger.”

The earl seemed to read the pain in her eyes and spoke. “I gave Thomas my ring,” he said, unconsciously twisting his now-bare finger. “He was to offer it at the castle keep as a method to gain an immediate audience with the man who now holds York for the Priests of the Holy Grail. The new Earl of York. My son, Michael.”

“That is insane!” Katherine blurted. “For what reason would he seek audience with the enemy?”

The earl’s reply stunned her.

“Thomas intends to escape York with a hostage to ransom.”

The sunlight blinded Katherine after the dimness of the prison, and she almost stumbled in her rush to rejoin Hawkwood.

For a moment, she felt panic. Her eyes had adjusted, yet she could not see him in the crowd. Then the familiar black cape appeared as he stepped from a nearby doorway.

His face, always difficult to read, was no different as he approached. Yet Katherine knew he was troubled. Instead of waiting for her information with calmly folded arms, he was reaching out to grasp her shoulders and search her face.

“It is not good,” Katherine answered his questioning eyes. “Thomas, it seems, seeks his own death.”

She explained quickly.

Later, she would tell Hawkwood what she had had to reveal to the Earl of York to get her news.

“We have little choice but to follow, watch, and pray,” Hawkwood said. “Too much happens too soon.”

He did not elaborate but turned to march down the street that led to the castle of York.

Katherine remained close behind. Although she did not cast a final look backward, she could not escape the feeling that her every step was watched by the sightless eyes of the heads of the men who had dared rebel against the Priests of the Holy Grail.

They reached the outer courtyard of the castle burdened with a sack of flour that Hawkwood had hurriedly purchased as they had passed by market stalls.

Wolfhounds lazed in the dirt. Servants scurried determined paths through the steady flow of noblemen and ladies who paraded in and out of the entrance with the assured arrogance that money and title provide. Squires stood in conversation with knights casually alert and leaning against stone benches. Other, more humbly dressed squires held the reins of the horses of their masters.

Of Thomas or of Waleran, there was no sign. Within seconds, however, Katherine noticed Thomas’s now-familiar stallion tethered to the trunk of a sapling growing in the shadows of the far corner of the court. Tending the horse was the same boy Thomas had hired near the town gate.

She tugged on Hawkwood’s arm and whispered, “Thomas is already inside. Do we follow?”

He shook his head no and kept his voice low. “If he succeeds, he must come this way. If not, we will bribe servants to tell us the story of his failure and make our plans in accordance.”

“How can he hope to succeed?” Katherine asked.

“That is my question also,” Hawkwood said softly. He motioned with his head for Katherine to stay at his side and then walked to the boy who tended Thomas’s horse.

“The monk’s assistant,” Hawkwood said to the boy. “Has he promised to return soon?”

“ ’E made a jest,” the boy replied. “ ’E said soon, or not a’ all.”

Katherine shivered. It seemed so futile, this direct attack of a single person. What could Thomas accomplish without an army?

“We have business to complete,” Hawkwood continued as he pointed
at the sack of flour that Katherine held. “Yet if he trusted you with his horse, he most surely will trust you with his purchase that we now deliver.”

The boy shrugged.

“Find an empty saddlebag,” Hawkwood instructed Katherine. “We shall leave it there as he requested.”

Katherine complied, as puzzled now as when Hawkwood had bought the flour. When she finished, Hawkwood moved beside her to inspect.

“Keep the boy’s attention,” he said quietly into her ear.

Before Katherine could think of anything to say or do, Hawkwood rejoined her and they strolled to another portion of the court. Little attention fell upon them. The noblemen and ladies, Katherine noted, were much too full of themselves and their gossip to look beyond at mere townspeople.