Silken Threads (48 page)

“God’s bones,” Hugh muttered as he watched
her leave the church.
Absolute reality
was finding yourself
eyeball to eyeball with an infidel warrior screaming battle
cries–and knowing that either his razor-edged
kilij
or your
own sword would be sheathed in flesh before your next breath had
filled your lungs.

Universals...nominalism...metaphysic.
Words within words within words.

Hugh crept out of the church behind the last
few stragglers. Just listening to such blather made his head thud.
As harsh and brutal as his soldier’s life had been, he thanked the
saints he’d been spared the mewling, platitude-spouting life of a
cleric.

Hugh stepped out onto Shidyerd Street, lined
on either side with thatch-roofed shops and houses that sagged over
the narrow dirt road, all but obliterating the meager moonlight
that managed to penetrate the blanket of clouds overhead. The night
air prickled with damp; it would rain this evening. He headed
south, his predatory gaze fixed on the lady Phillipa and her
companions.

He must get her alone. And soon, before it
started raining.

At the corner, she turned left onto High
Street, the main thoroughfare of the walled city of Oxford, waving
good-bye to her friends, who went to the right. Hugh followed her
at a discreet distance, keeping to the shadows to avoid being seen.
Soft yellow lantern light spilled through the occasional window
shutter; the only other source of illumination was that of a full
moon shrouded by gathering clouds.

It struck him as odd to see this highborn
girl roaming the city streets without an escort after dark. Only
whores larked about on their own at this hour. Was it intellectual
arrogance that gave Phillipa de Paris her illusion of
invulnerability, or merely the lack of common sense so prevalent
among women of her station?

She turned right at a corner, disappearing
from sight. Hugh waited impatiently as a flock of scholars in
disheveled cappas lurched past, braying with laughter. They weren’t
among those who’d attended the lecture at St. Mary’s; they were
coming from the wrong direction, and they reeked of ale.

When at last they had their backs to him,
Hugh sprinted across the street, pausing to peer around the corner
down which Lady Phillipa had turned. It was a cramped, winding
lane, dark as hell save for the occasional dimly lit window.

Hugh made his way swiftly but stealthily
down the lane—until at last he spied her, entering what appeared to
be a small shop still open for business—one of Oxford’s many
booksellers, judging by the wooden sign above the door, which read
“Alfred de Lenne,
Venditor Librorum
.”

Hugh approached the shop cautiously to peer
through its half-open window shutters. Dozens of wood-bound volumes
were secured by chains to the massive reading tables crammed into
the small space. The more valuable texts, most bound in deerskin or
embroidered linen, were displayed in two iron cages against the
back wall.

Despite the late hour, the proprietor, a
scowling, jowly fellow whose great belly stretched the green wool
of his tunic, was enjoying a brisk business. Five or six young
scholars and an older man, all in cappas, leafed through the
tethered books by the light of overhead lanterns, pondering which
ones to rent for copying. Lady Phillipa, her back to Hugh, was
perusing the volumes in one of the cages.

The portly bookseller approached her, his
key ring jangling on his belt. “Evenin’, Lady Phillipa.”

She nodded in his direction. “Master
Alfred.”

“Anything in particular you’d like to see,
milady?”

“That one.” She pointed to a small volume
covered in red-dyed deerskin. “The
Rhetorica ad
Herennium
.”

Master Alfred chose a key and twisted it in
the lock. As he swung the cage open, Phillipa abruptly turned
around, facing the front window—and Hugh.

He ducked out of sight, swearing under his
breath. Damn, but it was a tiresome business, skulking about this
way. He’d been trained to stand and fight, not slink through the
shadows like a cat sniffing out a mouse. His instructions, however,
had been explicit; he was to execute his mission with the utmost
secrecy, lest the wrong people become privy to it.

Hugh allowed some moments to pass before he
chanced another wary glance into the shop. The customers still
flipped through the chained books; the bookseller was returning the
little red volume to its place in the cage.

But where was Phillipa?

Bloody hell.

Slamming the door open, Hugh strode into the
bookshop. Heads turned. The proprietor paused in the act of
relocking the cage to look him up and down, his scowl
deepening.

“Where did she go?” Hugh demanded, his swift
assessment of the little shop revealing two ways out, aside from
the front door—a corner ladder to the floor above and a door in the
rear wall, between the cages.

“See here...” Master Alfred blocked the back
door with his considerable bulk. “What would you be wantin’ with
the lady?”

Idiot,
Hugh scolded himself. Not one
minute ago, he’d been reflecting on the need for discretion, yet
he’d bulled in here with the unthinking zeal of the soldier he’d
once been, instantly rousing suspicion. The men in this shop might
have little in the way of fighting skills; still, there were half a
dozen of them and but one of him. If they wanted to detain him
while the lady Phillipa got away, they could probably manage
it.

Hugh would do well to remember that his
livelihood these days depended more on cunning than brawn—cunning
and a facility for fabrication, never a particular talent of his.
“The lady, she...dropped something as she was leaving St. Mary’s
just now. I only wanted to return it to her.”

“What did she drop, then?” demanded the
bookseller, clearly dubious.

Hugh slid his leather satchel off his
shoulder, thumped it on the nearest table and withdrew from it the
sealed document that he carried tucked among his clothes and gear.
“‘Tis a letter, I reckon. Something’s written on the outside.” He
frowned at the name inked on the folded sheet of parchment, as if
he were incapable of deciphering it.

The older man, whom Hugh took to be a
teacher, came closer to peer at the letter. “It’s addressed to Lady
Phillipa de Paris,” he told the proprietor. “He’s telling the
truth. Let him go.”

Master Alfred stepped aside with a grumpy
sigh. “If you say so, magister.”

Snatching up his satchel, Hugh muscled the
stout bookseller aside, opened the door and stepped out into a
common rear croft shared by the surrounding buildings, from which
the only outlet was a narrow gap between two stone townhouses that
faced the next street over. Clutching the letter in one hand and
his satchel in the other, he strode swiftly down this alley, and
was almost to the end of it when he paused, niggled
by...something...a presence, a sense that he was not alone. He’d
seen no one, heard nothing, yet he couldn’t shake the impression
that someone was lurking in the dark, watching him pass.

Turning, he looked back in the direction
from which he had come. What had it been? A whisper of movement? An
exhaled breath? The heat of another body?

“Who’s there?” Was it her? Or perhaps some
night crawling cutpurse. Hugh tucked the letter under his belt and
looped his satchel over his shoulder to free his hands. “Show
yourself.”

Silence.

There’s no one there. ‘Tis but a chimera,
a fancy of the damp night air
.

Still...
His hand poised over the
hilt of his
jambiya,
Hugh retraced his steps back up the
alley, taking it slowly this time, peering this way and that into
the darkness. He came upon a little alcove in the stone wall to the
right and ducked into it, finding a wooden door; he jiggled its
brass handle, but it was locked.

Stepping out of the niche, he saw something
flutter in the shadows at the very edge of his vision. It was a
hooded figure, slight and feminine, darting out of another recessed
doorway further up.
It’s her
. Her footfalls receded swiftly
as she sprinted away.

Hugh overtook her in three swift strides,
seized her by the shoulders, spun her around. Her hood flew
off.

“Get back!” Steel flashed in her hand. “Keep
your hands where I can see them. Raise them in the air!”

“By the Rood, is that a dagger?” He
chuckled. “You’re a plucky little thing, I’ll give you that.”

“Get your hands up!” she commanded, with
only the faintest hint of a tremor to belie her bravado. “I won’t
hesitate to use this.”

“You do realize you’ll have to go for the
throat if you mean to do me any real harm with that thing.” He took
a lazy step toward her.

She took two awkward steps back to keep him
at arm’s length.
“Do it!”
An admirable display of ferocity,
even if it was born of desperation. Knowing he could easily
overtake her if she ran, she was forced to stand her ground, but
what now? He almost felt sorry for her.

Almost.

Hugh rubbed his jaw as he leaned indolently
against the stone wall to his right, uncorked his wineskin and took
a swallow. “It takes a fair measure of strength to plunge a dagger
into a man’s chest, or even his belly. Especially if you’ve got to
get through something like this.” He patted his heavy leathern
tunic. “A wee thing like you, well...meaning no disrespect, my
lady, but I don’t quite think you’re up to—”

“Hold your tongue and get your hands in the
air!” She circled around to face him, just as he’d hoped. This was
too easy.

“Now, a throat, on the other hand, can be
opened up with surprising ease. A child could do it, provided he
knew what he was doing.” Hugh recorked the wineskin with care, so
it wouldn’t leak; he hated it when they leaked. “The trick is in
placing the knife just so.”

Unsheathing his
jambiya
in a blur, he
lunged forward, forcing her to stagger backward. She hitched in a
breath when she felt cold stone against her back, gasped “No!” when
he brought the edge of the broad, curved, keenly-honed blade a
hair’s-breadth from her throat and held it there, arm outstretched.
Her eyes grew huge as she gazed upon the lethal shimmer of steel in
the darkness.

She met his gaze, motionless and alert, her
own weapon quivering in her hand. Slowly she raised the aim of the
dagger from his chest to his throat—a futile adjustment, inasmuch
as it still missed contact with him by several inches. She
was
plucky, but not long on common sense, to have let
herself fall into his hands like this. Now she would discover what
came of such lack of foresight.

“I take it you’re something of a novice at
back-alley knife fights,” Hugh said dryly. “Note the difference in
the lengths of our arms. You could slash at me for hours without
causing so much as a scratch, whereas I, simply by applying a bit
of pressure and drawing the blade across, like so...”

He whipped the
jambiya
across her
neck, purposefully but taking care not to cut her. Most men, when
subject to this little demonstration of superior force, screamed
and dropped their weapons. Lady Phillipa de Paris merely closed her
eyes; her grip on the dagger never wavered.

“Is it silver you want?” she asked in a low,
strained voice. Opening her eyes, she reached beneath her mantle
with her free hand. “I have—”

“I don’t want your silver.”

Her eyes, when she looked up at him, put him
in mind of some small, clever creature that’s found itself cornered
by something much larger and more powerful—yet loath to surrender
to its fate, as others might, it persists in sorting frantically
through its options. In the creature’s wide-eyed stare, one can see
not just fear, but the machinations of its busy little brain.

“What do you want,” she asked, “if not
money?”

Hugh allowed himself a smile. “Why does any
man hold a woman at knife point in an alley at night?”

“I have powerful connections,” she said
quickly. “My father, he’s a great baron in Normandy. If you harm
me, he’ll see that you’re hunted down and killed.”

It was true that Lady Phillipa’s father, Gui
de Beauvais, was a baron of great influence and renown—although it
was also true that he had sired Phillipa and her twin sister Ada on
a Paris dressmaker rather than his lady wife. Nevertheless, from
all accounts, he had lavished as much affection on Phillipa and Ada
as on his legitimate offspring, even if he’d felt obliged to keep
them tucked safely away in Paris, their existence unknown to his
family in Beauvais. He most assuredly
would
have had his
daughter’s molester hunted down and exterminated...had he not died
of old age some four years ago.

Interesting. Lady Phillipa looked Hugh
straight in the eye as she spoke of Lord Gui seeking his revenge.
It would seem she was a good deal more untroubled than he by
bald-faced lying.

“It won’t be a pleasant death,” she
continued desperately. “My father’s men will make you suffer before
you—”

“You’re trying to puzzle a way out of this
predicament,” Hugh observed, grudgingly impressed with her
coolheadedness. “You’d have done better to have avoided it in the
first place. Any sensible person who was being
followed—particularly a woman alone at night—would have steered
well clear of her pursuer, not lurked in a secluded alley he was
bound to pass through. ‘Twas some inept attempt to shake me loose,
I gather.”

She lifted her chin, indignation flaring in
her eyes. “I was going to follow you, see where you went, then
report you to the sheriff’s man so he could—”

With a bark of incredulous laughter, Hugh
said, “You meant to follow
me
? Woman, you have no earthly
idea who you’re dealing with. You’re a fool to have played this
little game, and any harm that comes to you is harm you’ve brought
down on your own head.”