Blades of Valor (14 page)

Thomas bowed his head. “Please forgive me, Sir William. I had not expected this. It would have only taken a moment to prepare this, but now …”

Lord Baldwin laughed. “But now I will know the ingredients. I have no reason to remain among you.”

Lord Baldwin tightened his grasp on Katherine and nicked her throat. Two drops of blood trickled downward.

“Finish your task, Thomas,” Lord Baldwin snarled. “Do not delay.”

Within minutes, Thomas had completed the mixing of ingredients.

“Pour it back into the wineskin.”

Thomas did so.

“Excellent.” Lord Baldwin thought for several seconds. “My choice would be that you die by the sword. My sword. But once I release Katherine, I cannot be sure of the results of battle. Not against two.”

He thought for several more seconds. “Thomas, take the leather strips with which you bound me on the road from Jericho and tie William’s hands behind his back.”

The task seemed to last several minutes.

“Now, Thomas,” Lord Baldwin said, “take the remaining leather strips, place them in your hands behind your back, and walk backward until you reach Katherine. She will bind your hands. At the slightest movement of threat from you, her throat will be cut.”

The new task took slightly longer, for Katherine could not move quickly with the knife biting her neck. When she had finished, Lord Baldwin reached forward and slid Thomas’s sword from his sheath.

“Again, excellent,” Lord Baldwin said. He pushed Thomas forward with a rude kick. “Securely bound, I can kill you at my leisure.”

“No,” Katherine said.

“No?” Lord Baldwin asked. He released Katherine and stepped back, sword at the ready. “You make demands on me?”

“An offer,” Katherine replied. “Their lives for my assistance.”

Lord Baldwin snorted. “Your assistance?”

“As you travel,” Katherine said, “it will be valuable to have a companion. I hardly dare kill you, not when you have the countering potion.”

Lord Baldwin examined her and smiled. “A beautiful traveling companion. I like it.” He stopped stroking his chin. “And if I refuse your offer and kill them, but take you anyway?”

“I will fight you to my death,” Katherine promised.

Lord Baldwin began to stroke his chin again.

“I will accept,” he said. “But only because it gives me greater pleasure to think of these two facing a slow death from poison. For who is there to release them once you and I depart?”

Rowan mopped Lord Baldwin’s face with a dampened cloth. “He poisoned you! Give me your sword, and I’ll pin him to a tree!”

Lord Baldwin groaned, leaning against a wall in the alley. Isabelle had looked away discreetly while Lord Baldwin had heaved his stomach’s contents onto the dusty ground. Rowan held Lord Baldwin’s shoulders and murmured comfort.

“Perhaps,” Baldwin said with a weak grin, “I should teach you how to use it first?”

Rowan turned to Isabelle. “Honor must be sought. Thomas nearly killed a Knight Templar!”

“
Former
Knight Templar,” Baldwin groaned. “When will you understand that France has outlawed the Templars? To speak of it publicly puts my life in danger, you delusional—” He abandoned his insult, cut short by a violent dry heave.

“I will never deny my father’s heritage,” Rowan said. “When a man puts his own life ahead of truth and honesty, he—”

“I don’t need another lecture,” Baldwin groaned. “I need to return to the life that I had in St. Jean d’Acre. Treasure hidden in the Holy Land …”

“No,” Rowan said. He pulled Baldwin’s sword from the sheath. It was so heavy that the boy nearly lost his balance as he waved it around. Isabelle had to step smartly to avoid a lopsided and accidental swing.

Rowan pointed the broadsword high, the tip dancing dizzy circles above the boy’s head. “We continue the fight until Thomas is brought to justice and Lady Isabelle has what is rightfully hers!”

“Of course, of course,” Baldwin muttered. “But now, perhaps, is time to ask for assistance.”

“Assistance?” Isabelle echoed.

“Mamelukes,” Baldwin said. “I do have a few connections in Jerusalem, you know. And the city is so big. Without their help, we will have no chance of pursuit.”

As Isabelle pondered this, Baldwin continued.

“The Mamelukes are the greatest fighters this world knows. They brought the Crusaders to their knees and sent them back to Europe. Thomas and his friends will not escape.”

Twenty-Seven

W
ell, my friend,” Sir William said in the silence that followed the departure of Lord Baldwin and Katherine, “death is not a pleasant prospect at any time. Yet I shall seek consolation in knowing you and I share the same fight.”

Thomas sighed. “The actions of Lord Baldwin prove that we do share the same fight. I am baffled, however. The assassins of St. Jean d’Acre. They traveled with you to Nazareth …”

“Please forgive me,” Sir William said. “I hired those men to pose as assassins. It was the only way to determine if you were truly on our side. I cannot imagine the depth of betrayal you must have felt to see us in their company.”

For a moment the men sat in silence. Then Sir William asked in casual tones, “How long before we die?”

Thomas smiled at the knight. “Ask that question of God. Only He knows the time of a man’s passing.”

Sir William did not return the smile. “A poor jest, Thomas. God did not make me drink poison.”

“Nor did I,” Thomas replied. “And it is difficult to resist the temptation to threaten you with death to learn my father’s name.”

“Merely
threaten
me with death? But the poison we drank! The nightly convulsions!”

“You may recall the predicament I faced in Jericho. Were you and Katherine Immortals? Or was it Lord Baldwin? One side claimed to be my father, yet met with you in secret. The other side—you—had threatened me with assassins, yet had also been pursued in England by Druids. I knew I had to find a way for the Druid to be revealed.”

“Yes, yes,” Sir William said between grunts as he, too, tested his bonds.

“I devised a test,” Thomas said, “knowing that any Druid would gladly abandon one of us to die. As you can see, my logic has proven to be correct. For Lord Baldwin took the first opportunity given him. It was not stupidity, as he so quickly assumed, that led me to announce I had returned from the market. Rather, it was bait. Bait, I might add, upon which he pounced.”

Sir William shook his head. “He could easily have killed us.”

“I was desperate,” Thomas replied. “And had he raised the sword, I would have announced that he still needed us alive.”

“My head spins, Thomas. What could he need from us? He has Hawkwood’s letter and book. He has the parchment maps to the caves. He has the countering potion.”

Thomas smiled. “There was no poison. With each evening meal you ingested a small amount of the juice squeezed from an insane root. Only enough to upset our stomachs for ten minutes. The convulsions would have stopped whether or not you received the countering potion, which, of course, was no countering potion, but merely sweetened wine and water.”

“You ate the same food we did,” Sir William argued. “And
we
prepared it.”

Thomas winked at the knight. “Who was to deliver the plates for each meal? All except mine were smeared with tiny drops of poison.”

The knight laughed. “Well done!” Then Sir William caught his breath. “But you said we held something of importance that would have stayed Lord Baldwin’s sword from our throats.”

“The map to the caves,” Thomas said. “Knowing I wanted the Druid to take my bait, do you think I would also give him the map?”

Another laugh from Sir William. “The parchment he took is useless?”

Thomas nodded. He waited until Sir William finished laughing. “There is more,” Thomas said.

Sir William echoed, “More?”

“Yes. I expect we will be free in minutes.”

“Impossible. I have given thought to our release and know it will be difficult. Glad as I am we won’t die from poison, it will take hours while I use my teeth on the knots of your bonds.”

“That was the method I thought we must use. But since Katherine departed with Lord Baldwin, our task will be much less difficult.”

“Less?” Sir William strained against his bonds. “I am forced to disagree. Once we free ourselves, we must begin immediate pursuit to rescue Katherine.”

Thomas began to whistle the tune of a childhood rhyme.

“What is it?” Sir William demanded. “What other knowledge have you kept from me?”

Thomas continued to whistle.

“Thomas!”

“My father’s identity?”

“I have sworn the secret.”

Thomas resumed whistling.

“If my hands were free …” Sir William threatened.

“If they were free …” A new voice came through the doorway.

“Katherine!” Sir William blurted.

She stepped through the curtain of the doorway. She smiled at Sir William, but only for a moment, for her gaze turned almost immediately to Thomas. He stared back, hardly daring to let his face show the joy that consumed him.

Without breaking her gaze, she stepped forward and leaned over, as if to cut the bonds on Thomas’s wrists with the small knife in her hand.

“Thank you, Thomas,” she whispered. She kissed him lightly on the tip of his nose.

Thomas could only grin like a dancing fool. When he found his voice, he asked, “Where did Lord Baldwin fall?”

“Thomas!” Sir William’s voice was a begging groan. “What has transpired?”

Katherine picked up the knife and, still on her knees, began to saw at the bonds around Thomas’s wrist.

“I can explain,” she said. “Lord Baldwin drank the countering potion as we began to find our donkeys. Before he could offer it to me, he fell backward, holding his stomach in agony.”

“Yes, Sir William,” Thomas finished for her. “My final weapon. I brought back from the market, not the ingredients for a countering potion, but instead a vile poison.”

“Your test, then, could hardly have worked more perfectly.”

Before Thomas could modestly agree, Katherine interrupted. “Not so,” she said to the knight, “for when Lord Baldwin fell to the poison, he rolled in such agony that he drew the attention of many passersby.”

Thomas and Sir William frowned.

“Among those passersby were Mameluke soldiers,” Katherine said. “They now search the city for us.”

Twenty-Eight

I
t did not seem real, the stillness of the morning air and the pastel contrasts of crowded and ancient stone buildings against olive-green and brown mountains, all framed by a pale-blue sky. It did not seem real, the background babble of the streets beneath the gentle warmth of the sun. And it did not seem real, to be walking—slowly and calmly—among the people on the streets while soldiers hunted this quarter of Jerusalem from house to house, soldiers determined to capture and crucify them.

Thomas wondered briefly if the pounding of his heart might give him and the two others away.

Crucifixion.

Could any death be more horrible for them? A wooden pole would first be placed into the ground, and a crosspiece fixed near the top to form a cross. Then, if they were fortunate, their arms would be roped to the crosspiece, not nailed. Thomas knew—should the Mameluke soldiers in pursuit choose to be merciful—that he and the two others with him would then quickly die of suffocation, because the weight of their bodies would shut off their air passages. But should it be deemed that their agony be prolonged upon the crosses, the soldiers would nail their arms and feet into the wood, thus providing support for the body and making suffocation impossible. Death would occur agonizingly slowly, from shock or dehydration or exhaustion.

Shouts of soldiers broke above the murmur of the streets as they swept from house to house.
How far behind the soldiers? And how far ahead the gates?

Thomas dared not lift his head to estimate their progress. His gray-blue eyes and fair skin would be too obvious to any onlookers, for it had been over a hundred years since Crusader knights had held the Holy City. Now Mameluke conquerors ruled, and Thomas needed to keep his face hidden by the cloth that was draped over his head and neck as protection against the sun.

The other two, Katherine and Sir William, walked in wide separation and far in front. To remain in a group of three would instantly give their presence away to any sharp-eyed soldier.

More shouts and angry arguments as new houses were searched.

For a moment, Thomas let his mind wander as he imagined what a rabbit might feel, crouched and barely hidden among the grass with a hawk circling overhead. Any sudden movement would draw the hawk’s attention, just as surely as anything but a pretended calm now would draw soldiers. Yet Thomas could understand why a rabbit might bolt under the strain of waiting beneath a hawk, even knowing that to bolt meant certain death. It took great effort to force himself to walk when every nerve shrieked at him to run.

The stakes were enormous.

A terrible death through crucifixion mattered little in comparison to the scrolled map Katherine held in her travel pouch. He and the knight were to fight to the death should they be discovered. And she was to escape while they fought. For without the scroll, a much greater battle—thousands of miles away—would be lost with cold certainty.