part0027

Dan had halted Andrew’s advance south. Riding through the night, they had finally caught up with them. Andrew had been on his feet in a moment, delighted that the Master and Jack were free. Dan and Froggy, with their mission complete and too tired to argue, gave Andrew the directions to find Richard. He insisted on riding alone to bring Richard and Jack back to where the men were billeted and waiting. Within the hour, he was on a horse and headed back north following the directions Dan and Froggy had given him.

Andrew’s journey north was longer than he had thought it would be. He had expected to meet them as they travelled south, but as he closed in on the inn where Dan had left his Master, he began to worry that he’d missed them. Surely they would not still be here?

“He felt he was to blame. When we escaped, he brought their judgement to bear on himself. You’ve known him since he was a lad, can you not help?” Jack practically pleaded.

“Those blessed souls’ deaths would weigh on anyone. First Mat and then those poor people in the village. I don’t know what I could say that would ease his conscience,” Andrew said, his arms flung wide and expression of helplessness on his face.

“Well, you could try telling him it wasn’t his fault,” Jack said pointedly. “He’ll listen to you. He won’t even hear my words.”

“He feels a great guilt for what he did to you as well. That I feel is something else his conscience is wrestling with.”

“I’ve forgiven him,” Jack said quickly. “I’ve told him, but he seems not to listen.”

“He feels that these events are his fault and that is what is weighing upon him. I am not sure my mere words could…”

Jack cut him off. “And you think it is his fault as well. Mat’s death, the explosion?”

“I didn’t say that,” Andrew replied hastily, then added, “You are right, I can try. Please let me try.”

Jack nodded and stepped back so Andrew could mount the steps to the room above where Richard, ashen and still, lay alone on his bed.

Lizbet watched the conversation with alarm between Jack and Andrew. She was sure Andrew had not seen her, and as he disappeared up towards Richard’s room she ran on unsteady legs, grabbing Jack’s arm.

“Where’s he gone?” Lizbet jerked Jack’s arm painfully.

“Jesus, woman, will you let go? He’s gone to talk to Richard…”

“Are you mad?” Lizbet didn’t wait for a reply. Pushing past Jack, she took the stairs two at a time.

Andrew pressed the door open slowly and stared at the room within. He made no effort to bring himself down to the level of the prone man, but remained standing above him. Richard’s eyes were closed, his head turned to one side, the sharp cheekbones standing out even more in the harsh dark shadows cast by the light from the candle.

“Can you hear me?” Andrew was rewarded by a stirring from the man on the bed. “Good. Jack has bid me counsel you. I would rather not, but he is beside himself and feels he cannot help you anymore. I am not sure that I can either.” Andrew let the silence lengthen before he spoke again. “What you have done is an affront to God. There are no amends you can make on earth that can heal the wrongs you have committed. To take the lives of first Mat and then the villagers is a sin you will have to bear and I cannot give you hope you could ever be absolved of it. Jack told me you tried to take your life. That would have been right, a sin, but one given the gravity of your crime that would have been just.”

A moment later a knife appeared in Andrew’s hand, fierce and serrated. He twisted it before his eyes, and then changed his gaze to meet that of the man laid on the bed.

“I shall leave you this. If you let your conscience guide the blade, then perhaps you will do a better job a second time.” Richard’s hands lay limp on the cover, and reaching down, Andrew pressed the knife into his hold. “I give you the means to find some salvation for your soul. ”

Through cracked and dried lips, Richard said one word. “Kells.”

Andrew’s brows furrowed and then when Richard repeated the name of Lizbet’s Alaunt, he laughed out loud. “Oh, so maybe you have a little too much understanding.” Andrew snatched the knife back from Richard’s hand, the blade tearing a ragged cut in his palm as he extracted it. “Maybe you need a little help. You are such a fool!” Andrew started smiling as he saw realisation settle on the other man’s face. “You’ve finally fitted the pieces of the puzzle together, have you?”

“The explosion in the church?” Richard said. “All of it was you?”

“Your whore of a sister caught me in your room and I forced Scranton’s horse into hers. Unfortunately, that useless bastard, Jack, fished her out.” Andrew sounded quite annoyed. “I switched the guns as well. Getting round the lock wasn’t hard, and levering the cart down the hill to Mat was fairly easy. Stripping the flesh from Jack’s back wasn’t necessary, and neither was killing the dog, but God I wanted to make you suffer and it did.”

“And the pheasants?” Richard asked.

“Yes, that didn’t quite work properly. I didn’t think you’d manage to get him out of there alive. I thought it more likely they’d hang him or cut his hands off,” Andrew said matter of factly.

“You didn’t need to get rid of Jack though, did you?”

“I might have driven a wedge between you, but that bitch of your sister never quite believed me and she’d fed Jack just enough for him to doubt me. So I sent him to beg for your release knowing full well they’d not let him back out again, and especially not after I sent them a message that it was he who had brought the powder to the village in the first place.”

“I have just one question for you? Who is Christian Carter?” Andrew asked, his eyes fastened on Richard’s face; the reaction from the man on the bed was answer enough – Andrew knew immediately Carter was the key he needed.

Richard pushed himself up on one elbow but Andrew’s palm in his chest shoved him back hard onto the bed.

“Are you not going to ask me why?”

Richard’s grey eyes met Andrew’s dark brown ones. “Go on then. Why?”

“Because of you, Seymour fell. If you had left them well alone that day, he would have taken her, made the bitch his whore and saddled a brat on her. Elizabeth would have been his next wife. But no, you have to get involved. Elizabeth was placed out of reach and Seymour pegged his hopes instead on Edward, and we both know how wrong that went. If you had left Seymour well alone, he would not have tried to abduct the King and I would have had a place, a future, and a bloody good life!” Andrew’s temper flared. “Within just over a year it was finished. Seymour threw everything he had away, and I was left with no choice but to flee. All because you wanted to save that bitch’s honour.”

If Richard felt shock, it didn’t register on his face .

A moment later Andrew’s hand clamped across Richard’s face, blocking the air from his nose and mouth.

The woman listening at the door was alarmed enough by the sounds of the pewter wine flagon being thrust to the floor by Richard’s out flung arm to press the door open.

Andrew spun his head around as soon as he heard the door. “He’s delirious. I cannot make him stay in bed. He made to take my knife from me and turn it on himself again. I’ll restrain him. Get Jack! Go, woman, go!”

The door closed with a bang and Andrew turned his attention back to the man on the bed. “Let’s do this quickly, shall we?” In a moment he had the pillow ripped from under Richard’s head and rammed it over his face.

He didn’t, however, get the chance to apply any pressure.

Lizbet had slammed the door but remained inside the room. The chair that she swung at his head impacted just beneath his temple and sent him into a heap at the side of the bed.

“Mary Mother and all the Saints!” wailed Lizbet, still holding the chair.

Lizbet ran screaming to the corridor, Jack’s name on her lips. In the same moment that Jack mounted the stairs, Lizbet felt a hand planted violently on her back. She lost her footing and was propelled forward, falling headlong, screaming, down half a flight before her fall was halted by Jack coming up them. Past them both, almost unnoticed, went Andrew .

Jack extricated himself from under Lizbet but not before the pair of them had slithered painfully down another half a dozen of the steep wooden steps. Lizbet was shouting in his ear, but her words made little sense. He had heard her shouting for him before they had collided on the stairs. He had a sense of Andrew passing them, but could not even guess at what had happened. He had only one goal in mind, to make it to his brother’s room.

The door stood open, and when he rounded the frame, the room he saw was in disarray. The table next to the bed lay on its side, the earthenware jug had broken and the wine, acrid, was spreading across the boards. His brother lay on the floor in a tangle of sheets, breathing heavily.

“Jesus! Richard, what’s happened?”

“He tried to kill him!” It was Lizbet at the open door, her voice shrill.

“Andrew?” Jack’s blue eyes bored into his brother’s. “You tried to kill him?”

Richard still breathing heavily was shaking his head.

“No, you fool! Andrew tried to kill him.” Lizbet pushed Jack out of the way and, kneeling, offered her shoulder as support for Richard to help him sit back on the edge of the bed.

Jack, shaking his head, took two steps back from the pair. “What’s going on?” Jack had his hands pressed hard to his temples.

“It seems I have been Cicero’s fool,” a quiet voice said from the bed.

Jack, hearing Richard speak, turned upon him. “Christ! What have you done? ”

“Nothing it seems,” came the reply, and then. “For God’s sake, help me get up!”

Richard was trying to stand and it was Lizbet who offered a supporting arm.

“Andrew, he’ll head straight back to the men?” Lizbet said.

“No one is going anywhere. Lizbet, pass my clothes.”

Lizbet just looked at him in disbelief.

Realising he was going to get no help, Richard took two unsteady steps towards the table where his shirt and doublet lay neatly folded. On the third step he felt his knees buckle, the fourth his senses swam and the fifth he never made, plummeting instead to a heap on the floor in the centre of the room, surrounded by Lizbet and Jack.