Alexander leaned against the door jamb, feeling rather smug. After the months he took to follow this man, he had every right to feel victorious.
“Do you recognize me?” he asked. “I thought you might. There is no way you could have avoided me as much as you did without knowing me on sight.”
Alasdair sighed heavily as he blinked, trying to clear his vision. “An leanabh,” he said. “Ye are The Follower. Ye’ve been following me since I left Italia.”
Alexander nodded, feeling some sense of satisfaction now that they had acknowledged each other. Not that he had any doubt, but the truth was that he’d followed Alasdair around for so long he felt as if he were seeing an old friend.
“I have,” he said. “Do you know why I have been following you?”
Alasdair shrugged. “Someone put ye up to it, I imagine,” he said. “Who paid ye? Was it Abramo? Or Idiamo? I can only guess it would be one of those two, shadows of the Holy Father and suspicious of all who come near him. Well? Which bastard was it?”
Alexander wasn’t going to tell him who had paid him, so he simply shrugged his shoulders. “Does it matter?” he said. “I was paid to hunt you down and kill you, but you proved quite a challenge. I will congratulate you for evading me until now. I did not know that a Scotsman could be so clever.”
Alasdair smiled thinly. “There’s much ye dinna know about a Scotsman,” he said. “Now that ye know who I am, tell me yer name.”
“De Sherrington.”
That made Alasdair peer more closely at him, this time in surprise. “De Sherrington,” he repeated. “God’s Bones, itisye. I dinna recognize ye without the hair on yer face and yer clothes on. The last I saw ye, ’twas during a summer feast at the Lateran Palace. ’Twas as hot as Hades, as I recall, and ye had women in yer arms. Yer part of theSassenachcontingent that the Holy Father invited tae the Lateran Palace.”
“I am.”
“I heard that ye and yer friends are called theCavalieri de Boia. The Executioner Knights.” He suddenly grinned. “I was more clever than a bunch of Sassenachs. Admit it.”
Alexander smirked. “For a time, mayhap,” he said. “But I have you now.”
“Do ye intend tae kill me?”
“I’ve not yet decided. You are a very interesting man and it would be a shame to kill one so clever. In fact, I am very curious about you.”
“Why?”
Alexander shrugged. “You are a double agent,” he said. “I find that fascinating. And, by the way, the messenger you sent north to Scotland while you were in Berwick shall not make it to the king. He’s dead.”
Some of the smile faded from Alasdair’s face. “I see,” he said, rather calmly. “A pity.”
“He would not tell me the message he carried. Mayhap you will.”
Alasdair sighed heavily and scratched at his bushy head. “I hardly remember it,” he said. “It seems like it was so long ago.”
“Did you send him with word of the Holy Father’s directive to kill King John?”
Much to Alasdair’s credit, he didn’t overly react to the question, but that was the training in him. Years and years of training, of spying and lying, had given him excellent control over his moods and emotions. He continued scratching his head, casually, glancing up at the enormous English knight.
“I wouldna know, lad.”
“I think you do.” Alexander came away from the door jamb, wandering into the chamber. “In fact, I know you do. I have it on good authority that you delivered a message to the Mother Abbess of St. Blitha and instructed her to kill the king when he comes to the abbey for St. Blitha’s feast day. Did you think youwere the only double agent around? Think again, Douglas. There is a mole at St. Blitha and we know everything you told them. You may as well confess the truth.”
Alasdair sighed again and dropped his hand. “Ye seem tae already know it,” he said. “What more could I say that ye dunna already know?”
“You can tell me that this is the message you carried all the way from the Lateran Palace,” he said. “Douglas, think of it this way– you carried a message from the Holy Father and I was paid to kill you, presumably before you delivered it. Someone at the Lateran Palace didn’t want that message to make it to St. Blitha. Someone there either hates the Holy Father enough, or loves King John enough, that they did not want you to succeed.”
Alasdair had been in the game a long time, enough to know that defeat was sometimes part of that game. He simply shook his head.
“Someone will succeed,” he said, a grin returning to his pale lips as he looked up at Alexander. “The hatred against John… it goes deeper than ye know, de Sherrington. ’Tis not only the Holy Father who wants yer king dead.”
Alexander thought about that for a moment before an idea occurred to him. His eyebrows lifted. “Of course,” he muttered. “I should have guessed. The Scottish king is in on the plot, also. That is why you were sending a message north to him.”
Alasdair lifted his hand in a way that was both vague and confirming at the same time. “Then ye know if ye stop the nuns at St. Blitha, someone else will come forward,” he said. “They always do. Ye canna cut all of the threads of the spider’s web. Where one is snipped away, others remain strong.”
