Gladys weighed the scales, and must have decided Parker wouldn’t kill Gripper. “Hidin’ in back o’ the Squealin’ Pig.”
Well, well, well. Gripper had changed his hidey-hole—from a sewer to a pub that served the contents of a sewer.
Parker turned on his heel, lifting his hand in a wave of thanks. He hadn’t seen Gripper in—could it be nearly a year? He’d been busier for the King than he’d realized. And that old life was slipping away.
It hadn’t been much of a life. He hadn’t fitted in on the docks, either. He’d been from too good a family.
Parker would have smiled at the irony, but the wind had frozen his face to stone.
He ducked around the corner of the Squealing Pig and made his way up the dank alley that ran between it and a warehouse storing cured hides, by the stink of it.
The back door to the Squealing Pig was propped open with a half-brick, just enough to let out the steam and smoke from the cooking without losing too much of the heat.
Parker stepped inside, taking it all in at once. There was a clatter of dishes to the left and the vibrating twang of spoons against copper pots. He saw two girls and an old woman stirring stew and stacking bowls. Gripper wasn’t in sight, and Parker eased along the wall, as yet unseen.
There was a door off the kitchen, partly open, and as he drew closer Parker could hear the buzz of conversation from within.
Nothing like the advantage of surprise.
He gripped his blade and exploded into the room. The door bounced off the wall and slammed closed behind him.
Gripper and two other men looked up at him from a small table, eyes wide. Parker reached forward and grabbed Gripper, lifting him from his chair and snaking his arm forward so his knife came to rest on the left side of Gripper’s throat, just under his ear.
“Good day, Gripper.”
Gripper went stiff with fear. “Parker.”
“Now, why are you holed up in a tavern playing one-and-thirty when you should be on your knees in church after what you got up to today, eh?”
“I’m that sorry, Parker,” Gripper whined, glancing across to his companions, who now stood huddled against the far wall of the tiny closet.
Parker smiled. He had Gripper in an extremely difficult position.
He couldn’t apologize to Parker without losing face. But Parker’s knife was digging into the soft skin under his chin.
Parker waited to see what he would do.
“Let my friends go, at least,” Gripper said at last.
“So they can call reinforcements? I don’t think so, Gripper.” Parker applied a slight pressure to the knife.
“Ow. No. What do you want?”
“You have done some stupid things through the years, Gripper, but attacking someone under my protection on my own property?”
Gripper swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing against the sharp edge of the blade. “I had no choice.” His voice was a whisper, and Parker bent to hear him better. “Someone needed her dead, and I knew the lay o’ the land.”
“Why do they need her dead, Gripper?”
Gripper was silent, his eyes closed, his body trembling.
He wasn’t going to answer.
He’d given himself up for dead at Parker’s hand, which told Parker he’d decided he was a dead man either way, and Parker’s way would be the less painful one.
Parker pushed the thirst for revenge aside. He’d love to put the worm out of his misery, but they’d keep sending people to kill Susanna. Until he knew why, he couldn’t make it stop. And for all his vigilance, someone just might get lucky.
Gripper almost had.
He needed to get him alone. In a way that made these other two louts believe talking was the last thing on Parker’s mind.
“I’m going to kill you, Gripper,” he said, and he lifted him by the neck and swung back his knife hand to open the door.
Gripper was fighting for air, his hands clawing at Parker’s arm as they backed through the kitchen, his heels kicking uselessly against the floor as Parker pulled him along.
“Keep still, you idiot,” Parker hissed in his ear. “I’m not really going to kill you.” He hauled Gripper over the threshold and dragged him down the steps. “At least, not yet.”
9
The Chiefe Conditions and Qualities in a Courtier: No lyer.
Of the Chief Conditions and Qualityes in a Waytyng Gentylwoman: To do the exercises meete for women, comlye and with a good grace.
Gripper fought him all the way, until eventually Parker cuffed him. Hard.
Gripper had never been anything but trouble. And he’d never failed to betray Parker. Since the beginning of their association, if there was one thing Parker could count on, it was for Gripper to lie or deceive him in some way.
The first time, it had near killed him. He’d never been taken in again, although Gripper had tried.
Gripper suddenly bit down on Parker’s hand and, losing patience, losing all sense of restraint, Parker threw him into the back alley he’d chosen for his interrogation.
He heard Gripper’s head smack against the wall as he tumbled to the ground, and the groan he gave was genuine.
Good.
Parker drew his sword and gently touched the tip to the hollow of Gripper’s throat as he sat up.
Gripper shook his head, blinked, and then looked bleakly down at the sword.
“They’ll kill me, Parker. Honest. They will.” The fight went out of him.
“And I won’t?” Parker flicked the sword up to tap Gripper under the chin, forcing the man to look him in the eye, then rested the tip back at his throat.
Gripper shrugged. “If I die by your sword, it won’t hurt. They’ll do it slow and hard, call it a lesson to others or summat.”
“Gripper, you are a bastard.” Parker gritted his teeth, hating what he was about to say. “But I can make you disappear. They can think I killed you. And when I have every one of them at the gallows, you can return.”
“What’s the price?” Gripper sniffed and looked at him from under his bushy brows.
“Who are they?”
“Dunno.” Gripper gave a little shriek as Parker pierced his skin and drew blood. “I swear, I don’t know. They’re dock-hands. Got a bit going on the side. Some o’ the merchandise falls out o’ its barrel, they profit.”
“They don’t sound very organized. What do they want with you?”
“I know what’s what around here. All the good hiding places. And I can shift the stuff sometimes.”
“And this morning?”
Gripper pulled his legs up to his chest, careful to keep his neck still. “Said they’d heard I knew you. Knew where you lived an’ all.”
“So you grabbed up a knife and went off to kill a woman, just like that?”
Some of what he was feeling must have come through in his voice, because Gripper went very still.
“I thought … thought it’d be easy. I didn’t know her. And the money was … good.” He swallowed. “Then she lay there, trying to breathe, and those boys and your cook—all shouting at me. …” He shuddered, and the sword dug into his skin. Gripper whimpered.
“You must have known what I’d do.”
“Waited for you to leave, din’t I? Waited for me chance. Thought she’d be dead and you’d never know who done it.”
“Who asked you to do the job?”
“One o’ the lads back at the Pig, Rhys. But it weren’t for him. ’Twere for someone else.”
“Who?” Parker could almost taste it. He was finally getting somewhere.
“Dunno. Some cove. If he wants a job doing, he’ll sneak up on you in the dark to ask you. Always wears a hooded cloak.”
“Damn it, Gripper. Give me something!”
Gripper cringed, then Parker saw the moment a thought slid into his head, turning his expression from fearful to sly.
“I do have one thing.”
“Well?”
“He hates you, Parker. Whoever set this
up.”
“How do you know that?” Parker slowly eased the sword away from Gripper’s throat.
“The man what gave Rhys the job, he said the fee would triple if Rhys sent you to the divil as well.”
“Why did Rhys give the job to you? You could have shown him the way for a small cut.”
There was a sound behind him, and Parker turned, keeping Gripper in view.
Rhys stood blocking the way, his friend behind him. Both held knives.
“I didn’t want to be seen killing one o’ the King’s new men at his own house. No money’s worth that.” Rhys gave Parker a cold smile. “But seeing as ye obliged and put yourself in this alley, I might just try me hand at it.”
Parker weighed the odds. He was older and bigger than Rhys or his companion. But they were two against one, possibly three against one. Gripper could be counted on to wait and choose the winning side.
Rhys postured a moment, flicking his knife provocatively.
Another amateur.
Parker lifted his sword and his knife together, leaped forward, and lunged, felt the brief moment of resistance before the sword’s tip pierced Rhys’s belly. Before Rhys could even gasp, Parker’s knife came up and across, slashing his throat.
With a sickening gurgle, Rhys went down, and his companion went from grinning to white-faced. He stumbled back, a keening note coming from his throat as he stared in horror at the widening pool of blood around Rhys.
Parker forced himself to move, to give this death some meaning. He leaped over the body, grabbed Rhys’s companion, and yanked him back into the alley. The youth stepped on Rhys’s hand as he was hauled forward, and a cry wrenched from his throat, his body limp with shock, unresisting.
Parker threw him onto the cobbles next to Gripper and lifted his bloodied sword. It was enough to get their full attention.
“Unless someone tells me something useful, I’m the only one who’ll be leaving this alley alive.”
When she was this deep in a painting, time had no meaning.
Someone had put a mug of ale down for her, but even though she was thirsty, could feel a headache coming on from lack of drink, she couldn’t put aside her brush to pick it up.
She was running out of paint, and she felt the thin, spidery touches of panic that her supply would not hold out.
She wanted to capture the feel, the play of light and shadow, the atmosphere. All the finer details could be added later. Only when she was this deep in the piece, in the moment, was the reality of it at one with the picture in her mind.
The men had long ago forgotten her. Or if they did send her interested glances now and then, they were no longer embarrassed or overconscious of her. No one had tried to look over her shoulder, and for that she was grateful. She would not like to cause offense by cuffing someone.
She’d smacked Lucas in the face once, and it had ruined the picture for her. He shouted so loudly with surprise, grabbing her arms, that her concentration had been entirely broken.
He’d never looked over her shoulder again, and she smiled in remembrance of the laughs they’d had after that, comparing stories of what they’d done while deep in work.
And still, with all that, with every other thing equal, her father thought she should not sleep with Joost. While Lucas could bed half of Ghent if he had a mind to.
Parker’s face came to her and she tried to push it aside, regretting the train of her thoughts. They drew her away from the painting and she fought them, gently brushing the pale yellow of a fire’s glow onto the sturdy mugs on the table, on the cheeks of those sitting closest to the flames.
Parker was much more interesting than Joost. More dangerous, more vital. More everything. And her father was not here to stop her.
She felt a tension deep within, a coiling of nerves and excitement. With an annoyed exclamation, she stepped back from the painting.
She shrugged her shoulders, rolled her neck, and felt the muscles contract and protest. Finally, she reached for her mug and savored the feel of rising from some deep, weightless place back into the real world.
With a blink she took in the deep darkness, the dwindled number of men at the table, the bang of the door as a new patron entered the Boar’s Head.
Just how long had passed?
“Mistress Horenbout, I see you are back among us.”
Father Haden stood at her elbow, and she started in surprise. How long had he been there, watching her?
“My apologies, Father. I am poor company when I feel a work this strongly. It absorbs me.”
“May I see it?”
With a flick of panic, Susanna’s eyes went to the painting, suddenly unsure of it.
It glowed back at her.
It was the first time she’d stepped back and looked at the small painting as a whole, the first clear look she’d had.
It was good. She felt the tremor of excitement unfurl within. As strong as the sexual pull a moment before at the thought of Parker.
No wonder so many artists slept with their models.
“It is not complete, but yes.”
The priest stepped closer, squinting in the dying light to look. “Magnificent,” he murmured.
His praise sparked requests from the other men; even the landlord and his wife asked to look. Soon there was a crowd around the easel, their voices hushed as if in church.
“If I hadn’t seen yer there with me own eyes, painting it, I’d never believe ’twas a woman done it.”
The landlord meant it as praise, but suddenly exhausted, drained of all energy, Susanna was not able to summon even a weak smile at the insult.
She sat on the chair someone had drawn up for her and took another gulp of her ale. She was just lowering the mug when the door to the Boar’s Head crashed open, blowing in snow and leaves and Parker.
His cloak billowed around him in the icy breeze before the door swung shut, and every voice was still as all eyes turned to look.
He was a warrior, cloaked in darkness. Even in the weak light of the lanterns and fire, her eye picked up the blood crusted on his knuckles, the look in his eyes that said he was fighting his way back from a dark pit.
Parker had left the Boar’s Head this afternoon and, despite preferring paradise, had taken a trip to hell.
10
The Chiefe Conditions and Qualities in a Courtier: To be handesome and clenly in his apparaile.
Of the Chief Conditions and Qualityes in a Waytyng Gentylwoman: To apparaile her self so, that she seeme not fonde and fantasticall.
What happened?” Susanna asked softly the moment they entered the house. She hadn’t dared say anything on the way home from the Boar’s Head. Parker’s expression was closed. He would not answer her on a public street.
“Too much.” He took her cloak, and his fingers lingered on her shoulders. “Not enough.”
“You were attacked?” She waited for him to turn back from hanging up her cloak, then took one of his hands in hers, rubbed a thumb over the blood that splattered the back of it.
“It was more a clash. A battlefield engagement.” He withdrew his hand and clenched it as if ashamed. “They tried, but only I drew blood.”
“There was more than one?”
Parker shrugged as if it didn’t matter. “Three, if you count Gripper.”
“Who is Gripper?”
“The ruffian who attacked you in the courtyard.”
Susanna’s eyes widened. “I count him.”
“You know something of great importance, Susanna.”
She couldn’t remember when he’d stopped calling her Mistress Horenbout and begun addressing her so intimately, and she didn’t care. “I have told you everything I know.”
“That cannot be true—” He held up a hand as the protest exploded from her. “I believe you. There is something you do not realize you know.”
She cocked her head to the side as her indignation subsided. “Else why would they still be so relentless?”
She led the way to the
study and took the chair by the fire again, rubbing her hands close to the blaze. The house was strangely still. She wondered where Mistress Greene and the boys were.
“Aye. No one takes these kinds of risks without being desperate.” Parker poked at the fire, threw on another log, and eased into the chair beside her. “But the risk is controlled. There are so many layers between the brains behind this and the blunt weapons he throws at us, I have barely scratched the surface of lies and confusion.”
“Sending someone to kill me who was known to you was ill-thought.”
Parker nodded. “The person behind this didn’t employ Gripper to attack you. The man he did hire got Gripper to come in his stead.”
Susanna thought about that. “Then whoever sent Gripper will no doubt be in trouble himself now.”
Parker scrubbed a hand over his face. “Where he has gone, that is the least of his worries.”
She finally understood. “He is dead?”
“Aye.”
The thin whistle of the wind through the gap between the window and its frame and the pop of the fire as snow drifted down the chimney were the only sounds. A sense of debt to Parker for what he had done, had been forced to do to protect them all, stole over her.
Reluctant to speak, reluctant to move, weighed down by death and dread, Susanna roused herself with an effort of will. “I know you are occupied with many other things, but I would like to call on Master Harvey’s widow. She will wish to hear his last words.”
Parker stiffened. He looked at her sharply, all regrets about recent events pushed aside. She could almost see his mind spinning, as suddenly hers spun as well.
Mistress Greene’s shriek from the kitchen cut through her thoughts like a blade.
She leaped to her feet, but Parker reached the door before she’d taken two steps.
“Stay.” The command was thrown over his shoulder as he charged ahead, sword and knife in his hands.
Susanna stood frozen, looking at the empty doorway, her stomach clenching.
The silence went on forever. Each creak and groan of the wooden boards beneath her feet, each pop and sizzle from the fire, stretched out interminably.
In a Treacherous Court Page 6