The Traitor's Blade by Kevin Sands (fiction books to read .TXT) 📕

the door of the parlor where we’d been this morning, two men with halberds standing guard. Sally hadn’t been with us, so she didn’t understand what this meant. Tom did. He turned pale.

One of the guards knocked on the door as we approached. A moment later, Lord Ashcombe opened it. He glared at the three of us, then pointed to Tom and Sally.

“You. Sit.”

They did.

He pointed to me.

“You. In here.”

I handed Bridget to Sally. Sally’s expression said, Sorry this is happening. Tom’s said, This is all your fault.

CHAPTER

36

HIS MAJESTY AWAITED ME IN the parlor. Like this morning, he had a glass of wine in his hand, though there were only half as many spaniels in the room. Three of them ran up to me, tails wagging. One of them was Barbara, looking at me again with hopeful eyes. Given Lord Ashcombe’s expression, I didn’t dare pet her.

To my surprise, Walsingham, the spymaster, was also there, in the same chair in which I’d sat this morning. He watched me without acknowledgment, expression unreadable.

Charles looked both exasperated and amused. “Here’s trouble,” he said. “Odd’s fish, Christopher, you have the most remarkable ability to end up where you shouldn’t.”

I noticed I wasn’t invited to sit this time. Lord Ashcombe loomed over me. “Explain yourself.”

I still didn’t really understand what I’d done wrong. “My lord?”

“What were you doing in the Berkshire House cellar?”

“We were… uh… looking for a rat.”

“A rat?”

The king laughed. “Oh, this I have to hear.”

I told them everything. About solving the puzzle with Walsingham this morning, then finding the second riddle in the Banqueting House. I explained how that had led us to Saint Paul’s, and how I’d been attacked. I gave Lord Ashcombe the assassin’s dagger, then showed them all the final letter, and what we thought it meant: that the king was to be poisoned at tomorrow night’s party with arsenic, which had already been mixed with the powdered sugar. Probably.

They all exchanged silent glances.

“Where is this sugar now?” Lord Ashcombe said.

“Tom has it, outside, my lord.”

“So what was the rat for?”

Before I could answer, the spymaster spoke, in his soft, quiet voice. “To test if the sugar is poisoned.”

He stood and went to the door. Opening it, he spoke to one of the waiting servants, who brought the sacks in from Tom. The spaniels sniffed around him.

“The dogs, sire,” Walsingham said.

Charles understood. If one of them licked poisoned sugar… He ordered the guards to usher the spaniels out. The servant placed the sacks on the table and, after a quiet word from Walsingham, left.

“You don’t expect me to eat it, I hope?” the king said.

“A rat is coming,” the spymaster said.

I decided to chance asking. “M—” I caught myself just before saying Master. “My lord?”

Walsingham raised an eyebrow.

“Did we do something wrong? I don’t understand why everyone is so cross.”

“I’m not cross,” he said.

Lord Ashcombe snorted.

“Tell me,” the spymaster said, “what you think happened.”

“Well… we stumbled—totally by accident,” I emphasized, “on that secret passage. I’m assuming there’s something in there we weren’t supposed to see. Or even know about. Behind the iron door with all the locks.”

The king drained his glass of wine. “I’m so glad you’re on my side,” he said wryly. “Go on, tell him.”

“The passage is an escape tunnel,” Lord Ashcombe said. “It exits into a grove in Saint James’s Park. It was built during the Civil Wars, in case the house ever came under siege. Several of the homes around here have them, including the palace. As for the vault…”

He looked to the king for approval. Charles finished the sentence himself. “It’s a secret treasury. There’s quite a bit of jewelry in there at the moment, some forty thousand pounds’ worth.”

I glanced over at the spymaster. He said nothing, and his expression remained as blank as ever. But I was sure he was thinking the same thing I was.

They have guards going in and out of the cellar all day long. The guards know. The servants almost certainly know, too. So how secret can this vault be?

It probably wasn’t my place to say anything, but I did anyway. “With respect, sire… if we found it, couldn’t anyone?”

Walsingham nodded at me, barely a shift of the head. He approved. Before the others could respond, he said, “Who is sending you these letters?”

The change of subject caught me off guard, confused me for a moment. I wondered if that was his intention.

The Templars, I thought. I almost said it. But this was a secret I’d promised to keep. I had to lie. Sort of.

“I don’t know,” I said. Which wasn’t, technically, a lie. I didn’t know. I just believed.

“Who do you think?” Walsingham said.

His voice remained quiet, even as he pressed me. He knows, I thought. He already knows.

And then I thought: What if he’s a Templar?

Egerton’s confession had claimed the Templars kept agents of their own close to the king. It was hard to get closer than spymaster. Unless you considered…

No. Couldn’t be.

I glanced over at Lord Ashcombe. He, too, waited for my response.

My mind was running away with theories. I had to answer the question. I couldn’t tell the literal truth this time, so I settled for half of it.

“Whoever’s sending the letters,” I said carefully, “knows far too much about the king’s enemies to be an outsider. He must have infiltrated their group. A loyalist, maybe?”

Walsingham’s gaze was inscrutable. He’s going to keep pressing me, I thought.

To my surprise, he didn’t. Instead, he asked me something else.

CHAPTER

37

“WHO, THEN,” WALSINGHAM SAID, “ARE His Majesty’s enemies?”

I let out a breath. This I could answer. “I think they’re Covenanters.”

The king scowled at the name. He looked to his spymaster, whose eyes lingered on me a moment more.

“I agree,” Walsingham said.

“Let them scheme,” Charles spat, all humor gone. “I will never fulfill that oath. I’ll burn Scotland to the ground before I submit.”

“The Covenanters are aware of that. Which is why they are coming for