Keeper of the King's Secrets (16 page)

Parker knew where he was going—he had named the place of the meeting himself—but he wanted to know who the Comte was bringing with him.

If he could still function, he suspected the assassin could, too.

The doors remained open while the Comte swung himself up into the saddle. He turned his head, sharp and impatient, and another figure stepped out.

There was a stiffness to him. He did not move with the fluid grace of before, but it was the same man. The man Parker had begun to think of as his nemesis.

The man pulled himself into the saddle with less agility and more care than the Comte had taken, and the light in the groom’s hand glinted off the crossbow hanging from his belt.

The men moved off with quiet purpose, and Parker watched until they were out of the drive and disappeared down the street.

His horse was hidden down the road, with one of Harry’s lads watching it. He needed to get to it, to move on to the meeting place where Harry and Peter Jack waited for him.

After a long hour crouched down, his whole focus on the mansion, his legs cramped as he stood. He stretched them, rolling his shoulders to relieve the ache across his neck. He winced as hot darts of pain shot down his right side. He rubbed around his wound with cautious fingers, blinking back the spots floating before his eyes.

He kept forgetting he was injured.

There was a sharp crack behind him as a twig snapped in two, and he spun around. A blow slammed into him just where his fingers had been moments before. White-hot agony engulfed him and he fell, scrabbling for handholds to consciousness.

The blow came again, vicious and purposeful, and he plummeted under, welcoming the drop to oblivion.

“P
arker is missing!”

Harry burst through the back door into the kitchen, panic and fear on his face. He was gasping, hauling in breath.

Susanna’s throat closed up and she clenched the table as she stood.

Mistress Greene and Eric rose with her as Peter Jack came in behind Harry, his chest heaving.

“Tell me.”

“He was watching the Comte’s house, to know if the assassin would accompany the Comte to the meeting. We had lads stationed along the way, to see if and when the assassin peeled off. Thought he might hide and try to take a shot at Parker.”

“And?” She forced herself to sound steady and calm.

“The assassin came, but he stayed with the Comte. They are both still waiting at Queenhithe docks. Waiting for Parker.”

“He didn’t shoot Parker?” Susanna felt a sliver of hope.

Harry shook his head. “If he did, he did it at the house. But then why would they go to the meeting place? Why are they still waiting there?”

“Where could Parker have gone?” She frowned, tried to think through all the implications.

“Nowhere.” Peter Jack threw his hands wide. “He was
going to wait and see who stepped out with the Comte, and then follow behind them.”

Harry nodded. “If they got too far ahead, he could find out from my lads where the assassin had gone. Then the plan was for him to slip in behind the assassin and take him by surprise.”

“Did he do that?”

“No.” Peter Jack’s voice was hoarse. “He never even followed them. He didn’t even come for his horse.”

There was a faint ringing in her ears now. Getting louder and louder, along with the thump of her heart. “Did you go to where he was watching the Comte’s house?”

Harry nodded. His eyes slid away, and Susanna realized their panic wasn’t at Parker’s disappearance—it was at what they found where he’d been waiting. “Tell me, Harry.”

“Blood.” He whispered the word. “There was a struggle, from the markings on the ground. And there was blood.”

“They may still want you, my lady,” Eric said from beside the fire. “Maybe they waited to keep up a pretense. So they could follow Harry and Peter Jack straight back here.”

Hence it is to be remarked that, in seizing a state, the usurper ought to examine closely into all those injuries which it is necessary for him to inflict, and to do them all at one stroke so as not to have to repeat them daily; and thus by not unsettling men he will be able to reassure them, and win them to himself by benefits.

—Machiavelli
, The Prince,
chapter 8

P
arker came to hard and fast, aware of the cold, the pain, and the dark in an instant. He kept still, trying to absorb a sense of the place.

He lay on stone. The chill had seeped through his clothes, into his bones, and numbed his skin. The hardness left him feeling bruised and stiff.

He was alone. He guessed it from the air, which was stale, musty, with a strange sour-sweet odor. As he breathed it in it clung to his face, damp and freezing, invading his throat and lungs and taking up residence with bat claws.

The darkness was as solid as the stones he lay on.

A crypt, perhaps. Or a cellar. From the smell, he had a sinking feeling it was a crypt.

His shoulder throbbed and burned, and he gently felt around his wound. Felt the hard stiffness of dried blood on his sleeve and his chest, and then the sticky wetness where the wound still seeped blood.

He was shivering, and every tiny shake of his body slammed another nail into his shoulder. He sensed he’d been thrown to lie where he fell on the floor, and, like an old man, cramped and aching, he forced his feet under him and stood.

The knife was gone from his sleeve, and he slid a hand into his boot. Nothing.

His sword was also missing.

He swayed, disoriented and adrift.

He was defenseless.

And then, somewhere high above, he heard bells ringing.

“T
hey’re gone,” one of Harry’s lads called before they’d even opened the kitchen door to his wild rapping.

He tumbled into the room, looking exactly like a merchant’s page, a look cultivated to render the boy invisible. Parker had suggested the outfits and provided them, and had reaped tenfold on his investment.

“The Comte and his man?” Harry stood.

“Aye. The traffic at Queenhithe was getting thinner and thinner as the evening wore on, and they eventually gave up. I followed them back to the Comte’s house.” He sank into a chair, stretching his hands toward the fire.

Mistress Greene served him some stew. “Well, if they went home, they weren’t following anyone.”

“I need to speak to them,” Susanna said. “If they are home now, I can go straight there.”

Peter Jack stared at her. “They will kill you.”

Susanna lifted her shoulders. “If they really want to kill me, then they will. Unless I’m willing to be a prisoner in this house, they will get enough chances. And every moment we delay is another Parker is missing.”

Harry nodded, the movement slow and considering. “Why don’t I go with another note, first? Set up another meeting. Their reaction to that will tell me a lot more about whether they have Parker than they’d tell me willingly.”

Susanna rocked on her feet, undecided. “I don’t want to waste time.”

“It’s a good compromise, my lady.” Mistress Greene’s hands were clasped before her. “You don’t want to throw yourself at them in sacrifice if there is another way.”

Susanna nodded and turned to Harry. “You can approach them first, and take Peter Jack with you. I’ll come too and wait somewhere safe. That way we can proceed to the meeting if they agree, or come home.”

Harry nodded, looking relieved. “What will you say in the note?”

Susanna tapped her fingers. “Where would be a good place to meet them for a second time?”

“St. Mary Woolnoth.” Peter Jack glanced at Harry, who nodded in accord.

“That’s close enough to the Comte’s house that he will be more inclined to meet a second time, yet far enough from us that they won’t easily follow us back without being seen,” he said.

“We meet outside the church?” Susanna looked to Peter Jack and he nodded. “Then I’ll write the note.”

“What else will you say?” Harry watched her, his eyes dark and worried.

She sighed. “That Parker has gone missing, and I need to speak to them. If they have taken Parker, I won’t be telling them anything they don’t already know. If they haven’t, it should get their attention.”

“If they haven’t taken him, we have no use for them. They may still want to silence you, and be pleased someone else has taken care of Parker for them,” Harry said bluntly.

Susanna squared her shoulders. “I’m not that easy to kill.”

T
he churchyard was well kept. Susanna could see hardly at all in the darkness, but the damp grass she knelt on at the back of the building was short and lush.

Harry had offered to leave the lamp for her, but she knew they would need it, and it would look strange for them to arrive without one.

She thought of Parker, of where he could be, and of the blood Harry had found where he’d been taken. Helpless panic battered her from within, like a bird trapped in a chimney, and she sat back against the wall and hugged her knees to her chest, rocking herself for comfort.

The Comte must be responsible.

If he wasn’t … She did not know where she would start. Parker had more than his share of enemies, but he had plenty of friends, too. Including the King himself.

There was nowhere she wouldn’t go, no one she wouldn’t speak to, to find out where Parker could be.

A gate creaked on its hinges to her right, the way she had come into the yard from the front of the church, and she was glad she was sitting down in deep shadow.

Whoever entered had no light.

She held still, straining to hear where they were.

There should be noise, the sound of footsteps or a voice. The utter silence told her someone stood within the courtyard, listening just as intently as she did.

There was a quick, sharp rustle of clothing, and she felt the vibration of steps on the ground. They were moving away, walking down the yard toward the tree-lined far wall.

She stood, pressing up against the cold stone of the church, then began moving quietly toward the gate.

The church wall was comfortingly solid beneath her hands, and before she moved along the fence toward the gate, she kept still and listened again.

There was no sound at all. The wind had died, and not even the trees rustled. Her skin pricked and fear sank its teeth into her neck, forcing a shiver from her.