“We are well matched,” said James.
Cedric nodded. “Aye, ’tis a shame I must take your life.”
Cedric attacked once more. He would wear his opponent down with brute strength while keeping a careful distance from the blade that had scratched him more times than expected. He would beat that blade hard, followed by a series of multiple disengages, so that his opponent could not be certain from which side of the line his next lunge would spring. In this way, he began driving James close to where Sir Giles was standing. Sir Giles would know what to do next. As the spectators backed away from the swinging weapons, Sir Giles moved with them, deliberately spilling his wine on the floor as he backed away. Cedric then adjusted the angle of attack so that James’ withdrawal would take him across the puddle. This caught the eye of Norfolk across the oval. Alice saw Sir Giles tip his goblet too, but his purpose did not become apparent till a few moments later when James’ fighting retreat reached the wet flagstones. The result was as intended. His back foot, the anchor to his posture and his guard, suddenly slid. James fell to one knee. Cedric immediately slashed his exposed shield arm, cutting tendons, rendering it useless. The buckler fell to the floor. Relief and spleen boiled within Sir Giles. Finish him now. Finish the whelp.
Alice screamed at the wound. That revitalized James. He parried the next thrust, sprang up and went back on the attack, trying to disregard the pain radiating from the arm now hanging by his side. He feinted low, drawing Cedric’s blade down, then cut high, landing a sweeping gash across Cedric’s forehead. The big man recoiled. Blood ran into his eyes. He could not see. He slashed at empty space as James sidestepped. He was at James’ mercy, no longer able to judge distance. But James could not kill a helpless man. He dropped the tip of his blade onto Cedric’s heart, and held it there for all to see. Cedric parried wildly, but James evaded and placed it there again. The crowd of courtiers were in suspense, waiting for the fatal thrust. This was not the expected outcome.
“Strike or forfeit!” commanded the Duke of Norfolk. The Queen would blame him if there was not a clean finish to the affair.
Instead, James turned to Sir Giles. “Fight me! Coward! Fight me!” He would not kill his uncle, merely humiliate him, force him to plead for mercy. James strode towards his uncle, extending his weapon.
Sir Giles backed away. As the tip of James’ sword homed in, Sir Giles grabbed the ten-year-old page boy standing beside him. The boy hitherto had been enthralled by the combat. Suddenly he found himself lifted up and proffered as a shield. The child screamed. James hesitated. Cedric had now wiped the blood from his eyes and was closing on James from behind.
Alice saw the danger. Her manacles did not prevent her from snatching a dagger from the scabbard of the distracted man guarding her. She lunged forward to help James, who continued to yell his challenge. The page boy squirmed in Sir Giles’ grasp and begged for release. The shameful character of Giles De Fries had now been exposed to the entire court. They would reconsider their support of such a man. Then Cedric arrived behind James, thrusting his blade into his back. Alice slammed the dagger into Cedric’s kidneys an instant too late. As blood filled James’ lung, his last image was of Alice calling his name, her face suffused with horror and grief.
CHAPTER 35
It Was the American
“James!” Alice woke with a start, gasping for breath. Alone in bed. She scanned the room for him. Then the bathroom door opened. Paul appeared, a towel round his waist.
“God be praised!” exclaimed Alice, running to hug him. “I have seen something terrible. There is treachery ahead. Trust no one, James. I beg you.” Paul found his arms instinctively folding around her. But inwardly he was dismayed. Alice would make his task all the harder. He needed Jane. Where had she gone?
***
In the Tower, guards flung the witch onto fetid straw lining the cell. As they chained her to the wall, she whispered as if to some unseen presence. “I’m not meant to be back...it was just a one-time thing, right? I did what I was meant to do…why am I back?”
The guards left hastily. As they slammed the door bolts home, Jane tried to make sense of what had happened. She had awoken on the floor of a large hall, onto which it appeared she had just been thrown. Scattered groups of people were clamoring at one another. Foul smelling men unlocked the manacles on her wrists, twisted her arms behind her back and clamped them on again. There was blood on her hands. Literally and figuratively. Jane understood from verbal abuse, accompanied by cuffs to the back of the head, that she had stabbed the greatest swordsman in England. And there he was lying a few feet away in a pool of blood with a dagger protruding from his back. Face gashed. Eyes wide open looking right at her with a fixed accusing stare. How the fuck did I do that!!! Then she recognized him as The Giant who had helped kidnap her from her flat, and had tried again at a townhouse and then on a train on the Piccadilly Line. What! Jane’s brain went into temporary meltdown.
She had seen a man standing nearby, dressed in elegant doublet and hose. The same nobleman she had seen standing by the Princess Elizabeth. He walked up to a group of courtiers, but they turned away from him. Then Jane recognized her kidnapper, Suit, dressed in priestly robes, explaining to a distinguished elderly man that the witch was already condemned to death, and that the demon inside was too dangerous to be allowed to remain in this world any longer. The witch must be burned as soon as a bonfire could be made ready. Guards had jerked Jane to her feet.
It was then that she had seen the other dead body lying on the flagstones. It was the American. No! Alice’s James.
CHAPTER 36
Locked Out
Early the next morning, Paul was weighing whether or not to take Alice with him to the U.S. Embassy. Although Alice looked perfectly presentable—more than presentable—in the new dress, Paul needed her as Jane. He pulled out bottled orange juice, cheese and crackers from the minibar, and handed them to her. She must be hungry. Perhaps she would forget her self-imposed role for a moment.
“Cheese.”
“Oh cheese!” said Alice, her eyes lighting up. She snatched the package and bit through the wrapping, trying to chew it along with the cheese. “Wait” he said, grabbing a piece of the plastic sticking out of her mouth, and slowly extracting it, leaving the cheese which she continued to chew with little grunts of enjoyment. No, he decided. Safer to go it alone.
“Alice, there’s something I have to do. I will be away a couple of hours. You must stay here.”
“Let me come with you.”
“There is too much danger. You will be safe here.”
“James, don’t leave me… I pray you.”
“I must...it is my duty.”
A knight must do his duty, she knew that. She nodded sadly.
“I will return soon. Then the danger will be gone,” he reassured.
She remained disconsolate. Then he had an idea. He took the Gideon Bible out of the bedside drawer and handed it to her.
“Here...you can read, can’t you?” Alice gave him a look, pretending offense, but was glad of The Good Book.
“I learned my letters, silly. You know that. I will pray for you, pray for us both.”
“You do that. Now, very important. Stay in this room. Do not go outside for any reason. For any reason. Understood? I will be back. I promise.”
Alice stood up, flung her arms around his neck and kissed his cheek. She was afraid to let him go, given what she could remember of the dreadful vision she had seen. Her eyes became misty as she looked into his. She was begging him to kiss her. So he did. It was meant to be a kiss of reassurance. But as their lips parted and their tongues melded, Paul felt an inexplicable glow. It was not the glow of rising lust, rather an intense fondness that lifted his spirits. It meant a great deal to Alice that this James had at last kissed her as a lover should. She broke from the kiss, took a deep breath and said, “Go now.”
It was crazy that he
was feeling like this. He had lost all perspective. He was still in control but she had somehow bewitched him. It didn’t make sense, thought Paul, as he gave her one last look from the door, but he had to keep moving forward.
The elevator he took stopped at every floor. It was a large hotel favored by package tours. A lot of people were checking out. Paul turned from the elevator into a lobby full of arriving tourists. A large group from a Japanese girls’ school was being checked in. Paul paused to scan the crowd. Lots of happy exuberant girls talking and texting amid harassed older chaperones. Then Paul froze. Ahead of him at the concierge desk was the leader of the thugs at the townhouse.
Paul had expected that they would be scanning every hotel in London. He hadn’t expected them to track him down so quickly. He had checked in as Gerhart Wolfram, using a virgin Swiss passport and credit card known only to him. He had smuggled Alice in, and had not ventured outside his room till now. How long would it take for hotel staff to put a room number to the face on the photos Nelson was showing? He had to get back to Alice. Behind him, he saw the elevator doors closing on a full load. The other elevator was ten floors up. Paul drifted unobserved to a house phone behind a pillar and dialed his room. Of course, if she picks up the phone, she’s a fake, he realized. It was not rational, he admitted, but he did not want her to be a fake. Yet now her survival might depend upon it.
Alice sat on the bed reading the Bible, starting with the book of Genesis. The world seemed to have changed greatly in the few days since she last attended Mass. God’s children had all become sorcerers, vying in feats of magic as well as feats of arms. So she thought she ought to read the Word of God again from the beginning. The lettering on the page was hard to recognize but her memory of the Bible helped her decipher the text. She had just reached the Garden of Eden, when the object beside her buzzed loudly. She leaped away, startled. The high-pitched noise kept repeating itself.
Paul scanned the lobby. Nelson’s back was still turned. Pick up, Alice, Jane, whoever, pick up.
The object kept buzzing, abrasively to Alice’s ear, as she considered what to do. She had seen James speaking to this object, but it had never made this hostile noise before. Then it stopped. Alice gingerly approached for a closer look. The object buzzed again. Alice jumped back. Slowly she backed towards the door. The object kept buzzing. Instinct told Alice that the shrill noise meant that something was wrong. She needed to warn James. He could not be far away. Perhaps he was outside.
Alice opened the door as a tall slender woman in traditional Nigerian attire passed by. “What a beautiful garment,” thought Alice. She had heard of Africans but had never before seen one. Impelled by curiosity, she stepped away from the door. She wanted to meet this woman and ask her about her faraway land. The door closed noiselessly behind her.
Paul listened to the continuous ring tone. So she didn’t know how or did not want to answer the phone? He put the handset down and moved towards a returning elevator. Halfway there, he saw Brandt and Dr. Picton enter the lobby. The doctor’s presence meant they needed Alice alive for a while longer, which heartened Paul a little. He had to get upstairs.
Nelson and Brandt had emailed Paul’s photo, supplied by Farrell, to every hotel in London. They had already gone through a dozen false hits. Then a clerk from this hotel contacted them, positive he had registered the man in the photograph sometime the day before, but with the high volume of guests couldn’t connect the man to the room number. Brandt exchanged an exasperated glance with Nelson, who was waiting none too patiently for the clerk’s memory to kick in.
Brandt’s eyes cruised the bustling lobby. A movement through the crowd caught his eye. He could not be sure if the dark-haired man in the windbreaker was their target, but he was taking no chances. “Wait here,” he growled at Picton, then headed off.
No pretense any longer of anything other than We Own You, Dr. Picton thought wretchedly. Just when he had escaped the violence of the other night by the skin of his teeth and was done with this miserable business once and for all, Nelson had summoned him to this hotel, making it quite clear that to refuse would be a fatal mistake. How long was this going to go on? Regardless of what they had paid him in the past, he had rendered his services; he was not on open call.
Brandt saw the man he was following disappear through a Staff Only door. He did not look like an employee. Brandt quickened his pace.
On the sixth floor, Alice walked down the corridor and caught up with the woman who had attracted her curiosity, Ms. Nkruma, CFO of a growing IT company.
“Are you an Ethiope?” Alice asked.
“What?” The woman stopped dead in her tracks.
“Are you an Ethiope?”
White people, she thought. “Oh, no,” Ms. Nkruma said, taken aback. “I’m from Nigeria.”
“Do you miss your village? I know I miss mine.” Alice smiled nervously “May we talk? I have a fine chamber.”
Ms. Nkruma gave Alice a long, quizzical look, then strode away, muttering pejoratives in her native Hausa about the crazy British.
Alice, saddened by the rejection, walked back to the door of her room. But there was no handle on the outer side, as there had been on the inside. Alice pushed to no avail. She was locked out.
CHAPTER 37
A Village Gull
Brandt peered round the corner into the hotel laundry. Thick bundles of washing were piled everywhere. Three laundry staff were busy loading and unloading noisy washers and dryers that lined the walls at the far end of the room. Brandt entered, flashing his security services ID. He strode past an L-shaped stack of laundry baskets, overflowing with towels. Paul had wedged himself behind them, his hiding place not meriting more than a glance by Brandt.
At the same time, Alice was wandering the maze of corridors, quite lost. All the doors looked the same. She now understood why James had told her not to leave the room, and was upset with herself for disobeying him. Yet she must find James, because something was wrong.
Paul, peering through layers of towels, saw laundry staff shaking their heads in answer to Brandt’s questions. Paul looked around. A possible avenue of escape was in the small adjacent alcove where the laundry chute disgorged sacks of washing from the upper floors. Paul lay flat, then slithered back along the wall and into the alcove. He raised the hatch, climbed into the chute and let the hatch swing shut again. Then a bag of laundry from above landed on his hunched shoulders.
Alice wandered worried. She had not meant to leave the chamber; it had shut her out. She had so much to learn. James was nowhere to be found. Rounding a corner, she saw a group of young girls laughing and joking. Their language was foreign, almost musical, as though they were singing to each other. They had pale skin, hair as black as James’, and dark eyes of unusual shape. Alice stared at them amazed. They were the most beautiful girls Alice had ever seen. She joined them unnoticed. When the door in the wall opened suddenly, the girls passed through into the small room beyond it, and Alice impulsively followed. She remembered now: this was the magic chamber that she and James had entered which could move all over the castle. It would help her find James.
The Japanese girls pressed the button for the lobby. Like the rest of their party, students from a strict private school in Osaka, they were traveling in school uniform. Because of the quality of their clothing, Alice saw their social status as higher than hers, and automatically bowed her head to them. The teenagers were amused and returned the bow, giggling. Not what Alice expected, so she bowed deeper this time. The girls giggled again and bowed once more.
“We visit London first time. Is this you first time?” asked one of the girls. Alice found her voice pleasing, even if the pronunciation of words was strange. They must be from across the sea. Perhaps they had seen her James. She would confide in them.
Brandt had searched everywhere except the laundry chute alcove, which he entered gun drawn. As he did so there was a low noise,
like a thump. He looked at the chute. Big enough for a man to hide in. His finger closed round the trigger. He reached slowly forward, placed his hand on the handle, and quickly opened the hatch. Just two bags of laundry, the top one perhaps the source of the noise he heard. As he was about to look up, a bag of bedding dropped to the bottom of the chute. Satisfied, Brandt shut the hatch and moved away to search elsewhere.
It was Paul who had dropped the bag. He had kept it with him for that purpose. He had wedged himself horizontally between the walls of the chute above the hatch, and was working his way up. Another four feet and he would reach the hatch to the next floor.
Nelson had finally made progress. It was against hotel policy to divulge guest’s information without a warrant, but the repeated use of the words “national security” proved effective. The concierge gave him the room number assigned to the man in the photograph, just as Jones and two other security agents arrived. Nelson dispatched them upstairs immediately. Then he dialed Brandt for an update. No sign yet.
Nelson turned to a sullen Dr. Picton. “Go to the far end of the lobby. Check out the function rooms. Call me if you see either of them. I will check the coffee shop and return.”
“I am not one of your staff. I am here for medical matters only,” said Picton stiffly.
“You are here for whatever I say,” was the curt response.
“You’ve no right to blame me for this.”
“Just do what I tell you immediately I tell you to do it, and everything will be fine.” Nelson gave Picton a hard look then strode away to check out the coffee shop.
Jones and the two accompanying security agents hurried into a half-full elevator and hit the button for the sixth floor. The doors closed and they ascended just as the adjacent elevator arrived, from which the Japanese teenagers emerged, followed by Alice. The girls skipped off towards the exit, giggling and waving goodbye to her. Although they knew something was lost in translation, the English girl’s story sounded so romantic to the Osaka teens. They were big fans of Most Extreme Elimination Challenge back home. Maybe her boyfriend would win the British version of the show.
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