Chapter Seventeen

 

for one is never to offer propositions or advice that we are certain will not be entertained. Discourses so much out of the road could not avail anything, nor have any effect on men whose minds were prepossessed with different sentiments.

Utopia by Thomas More (translated by H. Morley)

 

Parker almost stumbled as Jean looked back. The look that passed between them was as intense as a flash of lightning in a dark sky.

Jean had an air of calm purpose about him, and Parker reached within himself to find his own centred calm. He’d been running on panic, on fear, reacting to events. He needed to take back control.

The spy running before them, a chicken chased by foxes, could not be ripped apart until Parker learned what he knew.

Jean turned his attention back to his prey. He gathered speed as the crowds thinned away from the main way, eating into the distance between himself and the spy.

The Frenchman was running at an angle, leading them a twisting path north west. He did not go through the arch of Temple Bar but darted right, up Shire Lane towards Lincolns Inn Fields. Heading for open ground.

Parker saw Jean unclip his crossbow as he ran, and he surged after them both. If Jean caught the Frenchman in an open field, he was dead.

Shire Lane ended in a high wall with a gate, and the Frenchman at last saw his folly.

He looked back, and cried out when he noticed Parker behind Jean. He fumbled for the latch and disappeared through the opening.

Jean was walking slower now, and Parker thought he was favouring his left side, breathing heavily. There was no panic about his movements, though.

He would be only too pleased about the prospect of open ground.

Jean swung the solid wooden gate shut behind him as he went through, a petty mischief that had the smack of a taunt about it, and Parker palmed his knife before he went through the gate after him. What Jean and he would do about each other, he did not know.

They were two predators circling the same prey and they would have to deal with each other before they could claim their prize.

The last time they’d met face to face, they had fought to kill. There had been a cold menace in Jean’s eyes then, a suppressed fury—not this unhurried, smiling strangeness.

It disturbed Parker. He did not know what was going through the assassin’s mind.

On the other side of the gate was a small lane, a muddy track with a mound of grass growing down the middle. There was no sign of either man, but up ahead, between the last two houses before the fields, Parker saw another open gate.

He ran, ignoring the puddles and ruts of the ill-kept path.

There was a cry just up ahead, and Parker burst through the gate into a newly ploughed field.

The soil underfoot was thick and clotted, some sort of slick clay, and he slid, only just staying on his feet.

The French spy had not been so lucky. He was lying on his back, churning the earth around him, struggling to gain his feet. Jean approached, bow raised, one steady step at a time. He stopped a little way away and aimed, and the Frenchman thrashed about like a pike on a line.

“No.” Parker’s shout echoed strangely in the open space. He would have only one chance with Jean, and he did not waste it.

He ran, his knife ready to throw.

Jean turned, lifting his bow as he spun. As he took aim, squeezed the trigger, Parker threw himself forward. He hit the slick earth and slid, bringing his legs around and under him, one hand out to steady himself, his other arm back, knife at the ready.

A bolt shot over his head.

It made him feel better that Jean was trying to kill him. It made more sense.

He slammed into Jean, grabbing his legs. The momentum threw the assassin over backwards, but he kept hold of his bow, and Parker had to knock it from his hands.

At last—at last!—he had his knife to Jean’s throat.

Parker scrambled round and hauled Jean up, keeping the blade tight against his skin.

He looked over at the French spy. The man was watching the two of them with his mouth hanging open.

“What was your business with Wolsey?”

The man closed his mouth with a snap, and frowned. “Who are you?”

Parker felt Jean tense under him. The assassin had nothing to lose. He expected Parker to mete out death and he would try to get free.

He should slit Jean’s throat right now, end his problem, but he could not. He had taken lives before, but always in self-defence. Never calmly, with the intent to kill.

He tightened his grip on Jean. “Answer the question, or I will let Jean go. He can finish the job of killing you.”

Jean stilled at his words. Parker wondered what he made of them.

The Frenchman pulled himself to his knees. Looked between the two men.

“At a loss for words, Renard? That is unlike you.” Jean spoke with a laconic drawl, his accent thick and tart as a mouthful of French plums.

“Answer me. Now.” Parker ground the words out, hating that he could only carry out his threat as a last resort. He hoped Renard did not know that. Did not know the dynamic between Jean and himself went far deeper than Parker preventing the assassin from executing a kill. “What did Wolsey want?”

Renard said nothing, he sat still, grabbing handfuls of mud and squeezing it between his fingers.

Jean relaxed back into Parker’s hold, as if he were at his ease. “Answer, Renard.” He smiled. “Every second you talk, is a second you live, hmm?”

Renard dropped the mud, a measure of hope lighting his face. “Today, I was there . . .” He hesitated, cleared his throat. “I made him a promise that the proof we have on someone he has imprisoned will soon be in his hands.”

“And will it soon be in his hands?” Parker tuned out the birds calling to each other in the trees, the soft swish of leaves, the distant shouts and calls of Temple Bar and Fleet Street. Renard had his full concentration.

Renard shook his head. “We have nothing. We are simply buying time.”

“And who is ‘we’?”

Renard frowned at the question, and Jean laughed. “In Renard’s case, it is the Emperor Charles whose orders he follows, even though officially he is pledged to France, n’est pas?”

“Wolsey knows you’re working for the Emperor?” He felt a grudging respect for the Emperor Charles, swooping in when the French ambassador left London and bribing the remaining French spies to his side. It was a masterstroke.

Renard shook his head. “He thinks I carry word from France.”

“And why wouldn’t he? After all, you used to work for the Comte, and Wolsey thinks you still do.” Jean spoke with an edge. If he’d been holding his bow, he would have cocked the hammer.

So Jean was here to dispose of a French double-agent. Could that be the sole reason for his return? Not a personal vendetta to kill Susanna?

Parker had not wanted to say Susanna’s name. He didn’t know how Jean would react. But he had no choice now and a glimmer of hope Susanna had never been the assassin’s target. “The person you pretend to have proof of treason for, is it Mistress Horenbout?”

Jean went very still.

Renard turned his full attention to Parker, his eyes pleading. “Kill Jean, slit his throat, and I will tell you everything you want to know. Everything.”

“You will tell me everything right now, or Jean and I will fight over who has the pleasure of killing you.”

Renard flinched. “It is Susanna Horenbout. We had to stop her passing a message her brother gave her to the English queen. The Emperor needs more time before the English King learns of his new plans.”

“How did you know about Horenbout’s message?”

“All I know is Lucas Horenbout has some connection to the Emperor. He sent a note to the Emperor’s man in Ghent, telling him about the letter he’d been ordered to courier to his sister, just before he got on the ship to England.” Renard’s voice was matter-of-fact, and Parker had to close his eyes and breathe deeply. “He was supposed to arrive in London and come straight to us. We would have told him not to hand the message over, to keep it quiet, but he didn’t. We missed him at the appointed place, and he went to his sister’s before we could stop him.”

“That bolt through the window, that was you?”

Renard went white, as if he suddenly understood who he was talking to. “Not me, I’m no good with a bow. Jules did it. But yes, we tried to kill both the Horenbouts first. It was nothing personal, you understand, we simply had to keep the message from getting out.”

“And when you couldn’t kill her, you stopped her another way, by telling Wolsey you could prove she was a traitor. And tried to kill her brother again.”

Renard lifted his gaze to Parker’s face, and his eyes went wide. He nodded, a jerky movement. He would not look at Jean and Parker wondered what he saw in the assassin’s face that was even more frightening than in his own.

“How long had you planned to string Wolsey along with your non-existent proof?”

Renard lifted his shoulders and kept them up, in a hunched pose. “Indefinitely. Until it’s too late. He thinks French agents intercepted Lucas Horenbout, and stole the message from him.”

“And if Wolsey gets impatient, and decides to torture it out of her, rather than wait for your ‘proof’?”

Jean made a sound, like a growl, and Parker thought for a moment he should plunge the knife into his throat. Since Renard had admitted to trying to kill Susanna, to having her locked away, the assassin had been still and focused as a snake about to strike.

There was no other conclusion than he really was here to kill her and wanted no one else to cheat him to his prize. Renard must be a mere triviality, a small clean-up of the French king’s affairs he was doing on the side.

Renard was shaking his head. “We told Wolsey not to torture her. We told him to wait for the proof. For her to go under questioning—it is the last thing we wanted.”

“How unfortunate for you, and for Mistress Horenbout, the Cardinal does what he pleases, and certainly does not take advice from the French spies he confers with.” He had to clamp his teeth together to stop the howl that threatened to rip from his throat.

“Imperial spies.” Jean made the correction softly.

“It doesn’t matter whose side he takes, who Wolsey thinks he speaks for. The Cardinal has tried to torture my lady from the moment he laid hands on her.” A half-open jaw of fear held him by the neck, sharp teeth pricking him—like a dog carries its kill from the lake—at the thought of what Wolsey might be trying, even now.

“And has he succeeded?” Jean spoke in a voice that came from far away. Some icy plain where there was no shelter, nothing but relentless cold.

“To my knowledge, not yet.”

Renard lifted his hands, caked with mud, like some strange earth offering. “What will you do with me?”

“Who directs you?”

Parker sensed Jean was eager to learn this, too. The assassin was a statue beneath his hands. Hard, cold and still.

“Louis de Praet, the former Imperial ambassador to England.” Renard looked away. “He is no longer in the country. Wolsey had him arrested for treason in February and sent home soon after. I haven’t had time to receive orders from him—my letters on Horenbout missing a meeting with us and our decision to kill him and his sister to keep them quiet won’t even have reached de Praet yet. I had to act as I thought best.”

“And the new Imperial ambassador?”

Renard sneered. “Jehan de le Sauch? He is a merchant. He is Imperial ambassador by default, because there was no one else to take the job when de Praet was expelled.”

“And tell me, how many of you are there? Did Jan Heyman help you and your friend Jules attack Lucas Horenbout?”

“I don’t know who Jan Heyman is. Jules and I knocked Horenbout out. Would have killed him but for some boys who raised a fuss.” Renard looked away, and something in the shifty way his eyes darted to the side spoke of a lie, or only a partial truth. But time was running out. He could feel Jean bracing beneath his hands, feel his muscles bunching for a sudden move.

He must either kill Jean or let him go, and he cursed himself for his indecision. Why was it so hard to pull the knife across and end it?

Renard moved, diving away towards the gate they’d come through.

Parker watched, helpless, as he slipped and slid away. He must either let Jean go, and suffer the consequences, or see Renard go free.

A stick came from nowhere, whipped up by Jean from the mud. Even as it struck him on the side of the head, Parker cursed himself for his inattention. Renard had taken too much of his focus.

He fell, slicing the knife with a vicious movement. Jean jerked back and the knife bit into flesh, but only deep enough to score a red, oozing welt across the assassin throat.

The Frenchman rolled towards his bow.

Parker scrambled to his knees and stood, but Jean was on his feet already, running to the trees, out of range of Parker’s knife.

When he reached the first trunk, he turned and lifted the bow coolly to his shoulder and Parker braced for the bolt.

It sang out, with the familiar whistle, and Renard gave a scream as he went down, face first, the bolt sticking out of his neck. He flopped in the mud like a fish in a drying pond, and went still.

“You are lucky, Englishman, that was my last bolt. And I had a contract for his life.” Jean stepped between the trees and lifted a hand to his head in salute. Then he vanished.

Parker watched the shadows of the wood for long minutes, then turned to Renard’s body. The spy had taken his untold secrets with him and Parker would have to uncover them the hard way.

A chill rose up from the red earth, clammy, like the arms of death. He shivered.

Jean still seemed relentlessly determined to kill Susanna.

For the first time, Parker felt a sense of relief she was safe behind the impregnable walls of the Tower. Even so, he should have killed the bastard while he had the chance.

He wouldn’t make that mistake again.