Heart of Ice (38 page)

     Where was home? He asked himself the question as he trudged along, waiting until the path was more clearly defined before he mounted; it would be folly to risk his horse putting a foot into some hidden hole in the rough ground and pulling up lame. Home  . . .

He had been born in a small town in Normandy, the product of a liaison between the daughter of a tanner and a man who had been a soldier under old Geoffrey Plantagenet, Henry II’s father, but who had lost his right hand and, no more use as a fighting man, spent the remainder of his life haunting inns, taverns, tap rooms . . . anywhere, in fact, where someone would sell – even better, buy – him a drink. He had the patter down to a fine art and the hideous stump that was the end of his right arm evoked sympathy and revulsion in equal parts; people often stood him a mug of small beer or of thin, sharp wine purely to make him cover it up again.

     This unlikely couple remained together for the duration of the woman’s pregnancy and for a further five or six years, when the foul odours of the tannery finally got the better of the one-handed soldier and he took off in the middle of the night, never to be seen in his home town again.

     Surprisingly, he took his little son with him. The boy – he had been christened Gilles – had shown a precocious intelligence and a talent for mimicry and it was quite possible that the father saw the lad as a likely source of income. A spot of entertainment, a clever little trick that amused men halfway to drunkenness and made them laugh, and the
sous
would roll in.

     Gilles soon found out how to talk himself out of trouble; in his father’s habitual haunts, not every broken man wanted female company for the fumble in the straw after the lamps were extinguished, and young Gilles grew up handsome of face and slim of body. As he entered adolescence he added fighting skills to his repertoire. He killed his first victim at the age of fourteen, a man unwise enough to corner him and hold a knife to his throat until he gave up his purse. Gilles had got his own knife unsheathed and into the man’s heart before the assailant had even finished his hoarsely whispered demands.

     His father died when he was fifteen. Not that the demise of his parent made much difference to Gilles, for by then his father had sunk deep into alcoholism and barely recognised his son except when, as he often did, he tried to touch him for money. Gilles was already planning his own future and without the burden of his father – it was strange but, for all the old man’s faults, Gilles had loved him in a way and had never managed to persuade himself to abandon him – he was now free to pursue the path he had set. He knew of a certain local lord who, engaged in a quarrel with a neighbour, was in need of mercenary soldiers to support his cause. The lord laughed at Gilles when he presented himself as a potential fighting man, for he was still slightly built and had the face of an angel. But the graceful young body was strong as steel: Gilles, undeterred, drew his sword and showed the lord what he could do with it. He was engaged on the spot.

     But Gilles did not intend to be a rank-and-file soldier all his life. The local lord was but the first step on the ladder that would win for Gilles the life he wanted and he used his position in that household ruthlessly, advancing his own cause to anyone with the slightest influence in higher circles who was prepared to listen to him. Within a year he was working for a minor duke; within five he had been engaged by a particularly aggressive bishop who needed the discreet removal of a persistent but prominent troublemaker. That murder was the first of the efficient and totally clandestine killings which were to become the trademark – although a bare handful of people knew it – of Gilles de Vaudreuil.

     The rumour of an efficient and highly professional killer spread quietly and steadily through the ranks of Norman, Angevin and Plantagenet aristocratic circles; it was quite amazing, Gilles often thought, just how many rich, ruthless and influential men with their eyes firmly set on some personal goal required the disappearance of somebody else in order to achieve their ambition. As Gilles’s experience grew, so did the fee that he demanded; such was his reputation that they always paid him what he asked. By the time he was thirty he had lodged a small fortune safely away with the Knights Templar; their discretion was as assured as his own and he knew his money was safe. One day, he told himself, one day when I grow tired of killing, I shall return to that pretty little river deep in the hills of Normandy, buy myself a modest manor and some land and live a life of ease and comfort until I die.

This present mission had come as no great surprise. When his current paymaster had sent for him, Gilles had guessed that the target victim must be one of two men, both of whom stood between this master and where he wanted to go. One target Gilles dismissed as unlikely; the man was just too famous, especially now, and the attention currently surrounding him and his entourage and following every move that he made would make it very difficult, although not out of the question, to kill him. But when Gilles’s new master asked him if he thought it possible to kill the other person, who in fact turned out to be the intended victim, Gilles had already begun to consider ways and means. ‘Oh, yes, Sire,’ he had calmly replied. ‘It is not only possible but achievable.’

     He had been hired – for a huge fee – and then he had disappeared. He had made his way to the abode of his victim, paid for one or two pieces of information, then sat patiently and simply used his eyes for a few days until he had completed his observations and his arrangements were in place. Then he had climbed a wall erroneously believed to be unscalable, crossed a stable yard as silently as a shadow and been on the very point of slipping through a doorway to the private, secret passage that led to the heart of his victim’s quarters when the unthinkable had happened. Someone had caught up with him and, barely able to speak for the pressure of Gilles’s hand at his throat, forced out the message that the mission was off.

     In the terrible rush of emotions that surged through him as the adrenalin ebbed away, one thing annoyed Gilles perhaps even more than his master’s last-minute cancellation of the job: the fact that the messenger had been able to pick up his trail and follow him right to the very door of the secret passage. When the two men were once more outside the castle walls – Gilles had been required to half-carry the messenger, who had sprained his ankle in getting over the wall – Gilles had demanded how the young man had achieved it. The fellow had said with a shy grin that, unable to find Gilles, he had instead hidden away to watch the one place where he reckoned Gilles could achieve access to the victim.

     The fact that another man seemed to possess his own abilities, which he had hitherto regarded as unique, shook Gilles de Vaudreuil to the core.

     And this unwelcome realisation was, although he had not yet fully admitted it to himself, the prime reason why his thoughts were suddenly turning more and more to that dream house in Normandy.

He had reached the town. Dismounting, he led his horse along the road that led to the sheriff’s house. The secret was out that the girl and the old man were now lodged there; Gilles had observed the sheriff fetch the old man from the tavern and, even had he missed that, the talk in the tap room had been of the pretty young ’un and the old granddaddy under protection at Sheriff’s house.

     He took to the rough ground on the left as he passed the last of the town’s dilapidated and stinking dwellings. He walked on for a quarter of a mile or so, and the sheriff’s house loomed up as a dark bulk on his right, on the other side of the track. He walked on, wraith-quiet; he had bound the metal parts of his horse’s bridle and stirrups so that the horse too moved all but silently. When he was some distance past the house, he tethered his horse to a tree, checked that his dagger, fine garrotte rope and short stabbing sword were in their accustomed places, and then crept back the way he had come.

     He saw the four men outside the sheriff’s house almost immediately. Clearly they were not used to mounting an invisible guard; two of them were actually talking to each other, albeit in whispers. Nobody could have told them, Gilles thought, that the sibilant, whispered
s
sound carried further than virtually any other on a still, cold night. He began to feel almost sorry for the sheriff if these men were the best he could find, for they were evidently bored and cold and, as Gilles watched, patiently waiting his moment, the other two moved from the side of the house and came to join the whispering pair. One of them said something, all four chuckled and then the man who had spoken drew something from under his cloak. It was a flask of some liquid – probably alcohol, which gave the temporary illusion of warmth – and Gilles observed all four men take turns at swigging from it.

     They seemed in no hurry to separate and return to their own posts; two, indeed, were now leaning comfortably against the wooden posts either side of the entrance to the courtyard. Gilles simply crept round the side of the house, keeping his distance, and climbed the courtyard wall. He dropped down inside and approached the house from the side, where it was totally unguarded. Then, in the shadows of the house, he tiptoed round to the door. The guards stood in the gateway, all four of them huddled together, but now the flask was on its third round and they had forgotten all about guard duty.

     The stab of pain hit him as he slipped the heavy blade of his short sword in the narrow gap between the door and the lintel, with the intention of easing up the latch that fastened it from the inside. So acute was the headache that for an instant he could think of nothing else. It passed as quickly as it had come; swiftly he returned to the task and soon the door gave before him. He opened it the merest crack, slipped inside and closed it again, although, thinking ahead to his escape, he lowered the latch only as far as was necessary to hold the door shut.

     It was Gilles’s misfortune that the shaft of pain had hit when it did. Had his full concentration been on the task in hand, it might have occurred to him to wonder why the heavy bolts at the top and bottom of the door had not been shot. But, on the other hand, the hall was dark – the only light was from the embers of the fire – and not every door had bolts as well as a stout latch.

     Lord, but it was cold! The dying embers gave out no heat, at least, none that he could feel, and he was shivering violently, his teeth chattering. Making himself ignore the fast-growing discomfort, he crept across the floor, feeling the icy cold of the stone penetrating the rushes that covered it. His soft boots made no sound. He could make out an archway in the opposite wall and, approaching it, he saw some steps leading upwards. He climbed them, his breath steady; he was quite calm. At the top of the short stair there was a doorway and another low arch; where, Gilles wondered, was the sheriff? Orientating himself, he recalled in which direction the front of the house was; would the largest chamber be there or at the rear? Standing stone-still, ears alert for any sound, he peered into the shadows and, after a moment, realised that a pair of boots stood outside the door to his left, the one beyond the archway.

     The boots were scuffed and stained with the mud of travel. They appeared to be quite large; surely too large for a woman? Then either the sheriff or the old man – probably both – were to be found in that direction.

     Killing two together was naturally more difficult than one alone, especially when that one was a woman. Making up his mind, Gilles quietly opened the door before him and slid into the room beyond.

     At first he thought that there must be a fire in the room, for he was assailed with a sudden surge of heat throughout his entire body. Blackness overwhelmed his sight and he was suddenly blind; he felt as if a knife had been thrust into his forehead above his left eye. Nausea rose up from the pit of his stomach; taking a deep breath, he swallowed it down.

   
Get on with it!

     By the moonlight coming through the high window he made out the dark shape of a bed, on it the outline of a body. He could smell a faint scent – lavender. Yes, that would be her, for she must surely use the plant so often that its fragrance must have penetrated all her garments. There was the suggestion of white on the pillow; a woman’s small night cap, he thought, modestly covering her fair hair. Yes, she was a neat, clean woman; just the sort to maintain her personal standards even as she slept. On a bench under the window was spread a cloak. Hers.

     Knife or garrotte? Or should he simply smother her with her pillow, as he had done the merchant in his bed in Hastings? But the merchant had been feeble with illness; she, as far as he knew, was strong, fit and healthy.

     He drew the garrotte out of its place in the pouch on his belt. Running his hands along the fine rope, he felt for the toggle of wood that he used to wind the rope tight. Yes, there it was, just as it should be.

     He crept closer to the bed.

     The heat scored through him again as if someone had doused him in boiling water. He let out a small moan as pain swelled in his joints. Was this, a part of him wondered, what it felt like to be torn limb from limb? The black shapes spread across his eyes again and suddenly he was weak, so terribly weak; his legs gave out and he sank to his knees.