The assassin king, p.1
The Assassin King, page 1
The Assassin King
Will Adams
Copyright © 2023 Will Adams
All rights reserved
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
Cover design by: Victoria Barbera
He lost all his carts, wagons, and baggage horses, together with his money, costly vessels, and everything he had a particular regard for; for the land opened in the middle of the water and caused whirlpools which sucked in everything, as well as men and horses, so that no one escaped to tell the king of the misfortune.
ROGER OF WENDOVER
PROLOGUE
Caversham, Berkshire
May 12, 1219
London to Caversham was ever a gruelling ride for a man of almost three score and ten, but it was more than usually so for St Maur today, what with the roads made quagmires by the endless spring rains and his favourite horse lame from an infected hoof. Yet this particular summons had been impossible to deny or even put off until the morrow, so he was mighty glad to see at last the familiar landmarks of his friend’s estate, and then the Manor itself emerging from the darkness.
A pair of household knights came out to challenge them. St Maur was too weary even to answer their insolence, so he and his small escort simply clopped on by, knowing that they wouldn’t dare do more than bark. A fire was blazing in a corner of the courtyard. The smell of roasting venison made his mouth water. He dismounted and threw his reins to a stable boy then strode over to the front door with such dignity as the stiffness of his joints and the chaffing of his thighs allowed.
An old crone with a livid boil on her throat answered his knock, her face and forearms reddened from standing too close to a fire. He recognised her from last time. A cousin of some kind, given her position here out of charity, yet pretending to grander status. ‘You were expected hours ago,’ she said.
‘My men need food and drink and warmth,’ he told her, handing her his wet cloak.
The great man’s son came down the staircase to greet him. ‘About time!’ he said.
‘You sent your messenger to the wrong place,’ St Maur replied wearily. ‘Am I too late?’
‘Not yet.’ The son looked strikingly like how his father had done when St Maur had first met him, out in the holy land all those many years before. He lacked his charisma, of course, not to mention his sheer size and force of personality. But that was a ludicrous standard to hold any man to. His father, quite simply, had been the giant of their age. ‘Not quite.’
‘Then take me to him.’
A dozen or so people were milling around upstairs, wringing their hands and whispering like conspirators. The son strode through them with deliberate rudeness, seeking to scatter them like carrion around a dying stag. They entered the bedchamber. It was grand, as befitted such a man, yet modestly furnished, as if in acknowledgement of the vows of poverty and chastity he’d avoided for all these decades, that he might enjoy his wealth and sire a family instead. It was pleasantly warm too, thanks to the fire smouldering in the grate and the small crowd gathered by the bed, surrounding the dying man not only with their grief but with their anxiety too. For he hadn’t merely been head of this family, he’d been its shield and sword arm too – just as he’d been shield and sword arm to this whole land these past few years. With him gone, the chaos and bloodshed would surely return. For who’d be there to stop it?
They all heard St Maur arrive, yet pretended not to, lest politeness compel them to surrender their spot. He pushed between them anyway. A shock to see his old friend beneath the heavy bedclothes, how diminished he was from even a few weeks ago. Until that very moment, he now realised, he hadn’t fully believed it. Yet those gaunt cheeks, drooping eyelids and wasting forearms were impossible to deny. England’s champion had taken his felling blow at last.
His old friend saw him arrive. He brightened and even sat up a little. ‘Out,’ he murmured to the others. ‘All of you, out.’ His voice was little more than a whisper, yet somehow it retained its old authority. They left with ill grace even so, perhaps fearing he’d slip away before they made it back in, depriving them of the legacies and benefactions they’d come for.
His wife Isabel was in no mood for their dithering, however. The Lionheart himself had given her to him as a reward for services done. She’d been a mere girl at the time, and he a hardened warrior well over twice her age, yet their marriage had proved fruitful, durable and loving. She looked heartbroken by her coming loss. She nodded at St Maur to thank him for coming then shooed everyone out ahead of her, leaving the two of them alone. Or not entirely alone, for the son remained by the fire with his head bowed, intent on listening to their conversation, perhaps even on stepping forwards should his father offer too many of his estates in exchange for his immortal soul. But the great man wasn’t yet so far gone not to notice. He fixed him with his eye. ‘You too,’ he said.
‘But father I think it best—’
‘Out.’
He waited until he was gone and the door was closed behind him, then gestured for St Maur to sit on the embroidered stool by his pillow. There were perfumed candles all around the bed, to mask the smell of his illness and decay. Their fluttery yellow light glittered off the saliva that kept gathering at the corners of his mouth, irritating his sores and threatening to spill down his cheeks. St Maur dabbed them gently dry for him with a linen cloth, knowing how his friend hated the indignities of age almost as much as he hated asking for help.
‘It’s good to see you,’ St Maur told him.
‘I had them bring me my shroud. The cloth looks as fresh as ever.’
‘Did I not tell you?’
‘Do you remember that day? The day I pledged?’
‘How could I forget?’
‘I think about it all the time. To fight for what one knows is right and holy. Why can’t all life be a crusade?’
‘All your life was a crusade.’
‘If only.’ He gave a sigh. ‘Did you bring everything we need?’
‘Of course. You’ll be a Templar within the hour.’ He hesitated, from fear of sounding too morbid, but then added: ‘I’ve set aside that place in our church for you too.’
‘I am glad. I find myself strangely fearful.’
‘Whatever for? A man like you, they’ll welcome you with trumpets.’
He nodded, but in a distracted way, as if he’d heard what he’d expected rather than needed to hear. His eyes grew glazed and distant, a lookout on the high seas seeking first glimpse of some new land. ‘But we have done such things,’ he murmured.
‘Great things.’
‘Terrible things.’
‘Necessary things,’ said St Maur, with extra emphasis, wanting to convince himself as much as anyone, for he too would be setting off on this last dread journey soon enough, and had been suffering these same qualms. ‘We saved our land. Look at it now. It heals. It prospers. That was us.’
‘Was it?’ His old friend was growing visibly tired, his breathing so laboured that he could only manage a few words at a time. ‘I have done so much. Far more than even you know. I sought to make things well. But mostly I made them ill.’
St Maur pressed his hand to give him comfort. ‘Our good Lord sees your heart, I assure you,’ he told him. ‘He knows the truth of everything.’
‘Yes,’ said the great man, turning his face to the wall. ‘That is what I fear.’
ONE
A farmhouse, the south Lincolnshire coast
The storm that had been building all afternoon and evening finally arrived in the small hours, waking Anna Warne with the fierce drum of rain against her window, the rattle of loose tiles above her head, the howl of wind and the general groaning of an exposed old house in filthy weather. She turned onto her side and tried to get back to sleep. But it was no use. Because what had really woken her was the sense that something had just gone bang, meaning that she’d left a door or a shutter open somewhere, most likely in the barn. And suddenly Uncle Dun’s ghost was at her bedside, his arms folded and his best Mount Rushmore face on. Wet equipment is rusted equipment, he’d be saying in that rock-crusher voice of his. Wet supplies are spoiled supplies.
Furious with herself, she threw back her duvet, pulled on her dressing gown and slippers, then made a circuit of the house. But everything was securely locked and bolted. The barn, then. Her heart sank, yet there was nothing for it. She fetched the big torch from the kitchen then went to the front door. She undid the top and bottom bolts then opened it carefully on its latch and looked out for a moment before closing it again. Even for this stretch of Lincolnshire coast, tonight’s storm was something special, as though the farm was being put through a vast car wash, turning the cobbled courtyard into a virtual lake, unable to drain the water as fast as it arrived.
The wind was so fierce that she was going to have to lock the door behind her, or it would blow open and the hall would flood. She went back upstairs for her keys. Her own wet weather gear was up in York, but Uncle Dun had kept his by the front door. She traded in her dressing gown and slippers for them. His waterproof coat fitted her like a tent. She tightened the hood as best she could then rolled the sleeves up a little way to free her hands. His gumboots were even worse. Sh e had to make fists of her toes and shuffle along rather than walk. But they were still better than nothing. She locked the door on the latch behind her then ducked her head and hurried over to the barn. Its double front doors were closed and padlocked so she set off on a circuit. The door by the old stone trough was properly secured, as too the double doors at its far end. But the one on its far side was indeed hanging open and swinging on the wind. No wonder she’d missed it earlier, for her uncle had kept it permanently bolted back when she’d been living here. She could only think that the police had opened it during their investigation, then had forgotten to—
A glint of torchlight at the barn’s far end. Anna froze. Every part of her, that was, save for her heart, which instantly began pumping so much adrenaline through her system that it left her feeling woozy. She turned off her own torch before she could be spotted, and only a bare moment before a tall, thin man dressed all in black and wearing a black balaclava appeared from behind the tractor, a torch in his left hand and rubbing the small of his back with his right, as if sore from stooping.
Sometime last Sunday night, Anna’s Uncle Dun had had his skull brutally split open by a mighty blow from an old axe or spade or some other similarly blunt-edged weapon that was yet to be found. His killer or killers had then dug a pit for him where he’d fallen, in the corner of a field beside the farmhouse drive, just three or four hundred yards from here. The police hadn’t yet arrested anyone, but all the talk locally and in the media was of a gang of drug traffickers widely believed to use this stretch of coast to—
The man sensed something. He raised his torch and pointed it at the open doorway, catching Anna still framed in it. His beam was powerful enough to make her blink. She put up her forearm to shield her eyes. He said something she couldn’t make out and a second man appeared, several inches shorter but twice as wide. He too was dressed all in black, and was wearing a black balaclava.
There was a moment of stillness as they all gazed at one another, then the tall man took a slow step towards her, as though she were a high-strung horse he was trying not to spook. His stealth had the opposite effect. Anna span on her heel and fled for the house, only to be so hampered by her uncle’s outsize gumboots and waterproofs that she stumbled and went sprawling before she could quite reach it, scraping her knee on the flooded cobbles, dropping her torch and keys. And, even as she scrambled to retrieve them, the taller of the two men came running around the corner of the barn, the light from his own torch glinting wickedly off the stiletto blade he was holding in his right hand.
TWO
The investigation into Dunstan Warne’s murder was being led by Detective Inspector Ben Elias of Lincolnshire Police’s Major Crimes Unit. He’d telephoned Anna himself yesterday evening to break the dreadful news. Then he himself had come to collect her from Peterborough Station that morning, when she’d headed down from York in a bereavement fug, to do whatever it was that next of kin were supposed to do in such situations.
He’d been waiting outside the newsagents, as promised, his hands wrapped around a large Starbucks coffee, drawing warmth against the autumnal chill. A touch over six foot tall and built like an athlete, though with the Zorro nose, eyebrow scars and inside-out ears of a boxer. ‘Detective Elias?’ she’d asked, walking up to him.
‘That’s me.’ He was younger than she’d expected from his voice, somewhere between thirty and thirty-five. He was wearing a long black leather trench coat over a crumpled light-grey wool suit and an open-collared white cotton shirt. His hair was cut down to a fuzz, and his eyes were a very dark brown, while his complexion and cheekbones suggested dashes of Caribbean and maybe even Asian blood.
‘Don’t bother,’ he said, when he saw her puzzling it out. ‘You’ll never guess. Grandparents from Sweden, Jamaica, Wales and the Philippines, would you believe? Should be able to form a one-man choir with a mix like that, but I open my mouth and the wildlife howls.’ He took a final swig of his coffee then tossed the empty into a bin and wiped his palm on his jacket before offering it to shake. His grip was firm, if still a little clammy from the coffee, while his scarred, misshapen fingers strengthened her sense of him as a fighter of some kind. ‘Oh, and sorry again for your loss.’
‘Thank you.’
‘And sorry for breaking the news to you so abruptly last night. Must have come as a terrible shock.’
‘Yes. It did.’
He gazed at her intently for a moment or two, then looked her up and down. Anna felt herself turning cold. She hated being stared at in this way. It was why she’d taken to cutting her own hair, and why she didn’t wear makeup anymore, and why she dressed in shapeless drab clothes bought second hand from charity shops. ‘I thought you weren’t married,’ he said, nodding at the band on her ring finger.
‘It’s to keep men away,’ she told him.
‘Does it work?’
‘Not as well as I’d like.’
He allowed himself a smile, then gestured at the black laptop bag over her shoulder. ‘That all you bring?’
‘I keep a set of everything at the farm.’
‘Come down often, do you?’
‘Not as often as I should have,’ she said, unhappy at having to explain her life to a stranger. ‘But Uncle Dun liked me to keep a presence at the farm. I liked it too. It made it feel like home.’
‘Sure,’ said Elias. ‘I can see that.’ He gazed at her a few moments longer then turned abruptly and strode out through the automatic doors, walking so briskly that she had to scamper every few paces to keep up. She found herself disliking him more and more. They reached short-term parking. He pressed his key fob. The lights of a tomato-red Nissan Leaf flashed orange. ‘Got to do our bit, right?’ he said, noticing her mild surprise, for he didn’t strike her as an obviously environmentally-conscious type. ‘Though it was the wife’s choice, to be honest. She was fierce about that stuff.’
‘Was?’ asked Anna. ‘You don’t mean…?’
‘No. Sorry. Divorce, that’s all. She got the house, the kids and the decent ride. I got a bedsit and this piece of junk.’ But then he sighed to let the bitterness go and climbed in. He waited for Anna to put on her belt then looked over his shoulder and reversed briskly out of his spot. A photo of two children was taped to his sun visor: a girl and a boy, each about five or six years old, their thumbs up and smiling a touch too brightly at the camera, as though they knew it was goodbye. Elias saw her looking and flipped the visor up. ‘So when were you last down?’ he asked, as they joined the queue at the station exit.
‘A month ago. Maybe five weeks.’
‘Stay long?’
‘Just one night.’ She hesitated again, not wanting to sound disloyal. ‘Uncle Dun liked me to visit. But he didn’t much like me to stay. He was a loner. He tended to get jittery after a day or two. So I kept my visits short, if I could.’
‘I thought you grew up with him?’
‘Not exactly.’ She took a deep breath, realising again just how brutal the next few days were going to be. ‘Mum got badly sick when I was fifteen. After it became clear how it was going to end, she had to decide what to do with me. She had lots of friends in Manchester, some with kids my own age. But Dun was family, and family is different. They hadn’t seen each other for years, but she wrote to him anyway to explain the situation and to say it was her dying wish. So he agreed to take me in, even though I was pretty much his worst nightmare. He was not a family man.’
‘Wasn’t he married once himself?’
‘To his childhood sweetheart, yes. But she died during pregnancy when she was still just nineteen. I don’t think he ever got over it. Or wanted to.’ He and Anna had often visited the local churchyard together, where his wife and unborn daughter were buried. When he’d talked about joining them there one day, he’d sounded almost wistful. ‘He had the farm, of course. It took everything he had. Until I got foisted upon him. But he did his best for me, he truly did, considering how poisonous I was.’
‘Your mum had just died.’
Tears pricked her eyes, even after all this time. ‘I know. But still. Anyway, it took us both a bit of time, but we got there in the end. We grew fond of one another.’ Then she added, realising the full truth of it for the first time: ‘I loved him.’
