Page 2 of Silent Knight: Alexander

“Then why don’t you do so already?”

“How so?”

“Make something of yourself and stop being so . . . so dependent on me.”

“Dependent?” That took Alex by surprise. He never knew his father thought of him in this manner. He’d fought at Crandell’s side his entire life and killed more men than he could count. He thought of them as a team. To hear his father say this cut him to the bone.

“I only turned mercenary because I was banished from Framlingham,” the man said in a raspy voice, struggling to breathe. “I should have been condemned to death. But Lady Summer . . . and her husband saved me.” Crandell started coughing and wheezing.

Alex hurried over and handed him the ale. “Drink this, Father.”

Crandell’s hand shot out, and he knocked the cup to the ground. His eyes became glassy. “I’m not your father, dammit,” he said in not more than a whisper. It was taking all his energy just to speak. “Don’t you understand? Your father was the evil Baron Mowbray. And your mother is the baroness . . . Lady Summer. She thinks you are dead!” He took a deep breath and released it, speaking louder as he relayed his story. His face turned pale and he looked gaunt. “I should have told her, but I stayed silent. I was greedy and wanted . . . a son.” He did something next that Alex had never seen him do in his entire life. The big, strong man he had idolized since childhood, cried.

“Father, don’t cry,” he said, rubbing his hand over the man’s back. Crandell was talking nonsense. Alex realized it was near the end now. Their last trip to the Holy Lands had been too much for Crandell since he was getting up in years.

“Summer needs to know,” Crandell said in a weak voice. “You need to go to Framlingham and tell her . . . that you are Peter . . . the son that died. The boy I buried. The baby I . . . stole.”

“Save your strength and do not talk,” commanded Alex, feeling unsettled to hear his father speaking this way. Undoubtedly, it was naught but nonsense. None of it could possibly hold any truth.

“God’s eyes, what do I have to do to convince you?” spat Crandell. “Instead of burying you –” he took a second and wet his lips, moving his jaw a little before he continued, “beneath the rose bush . . . like I told your mother I did . . . I gave you to a servant. I paid her never to tell the truth. When she died right after I was banished . . . I raised you by myself.”

“That’s enough, Father. Now please, let’s get you back to bed.” Alex reached out to help him, but his father grabbed hold of his hand. The man’s golden signet ring dug into Alex’s fingers.

“Nay! You need to promise me.” He struggled to breathe. Alex could hear a gurgling sound coming from the man’s lungs. “Go to . . . Framlingham. Dig up the grave if you have to. The box is empty, I tell you.” His hand slid off of Alex’s.

Alex needed to calm his father. It did him no good to get so worked up. He hesitated before he answered, and then let out a sigh. “All right, Father. If that will give you peace of mind, I’ll make the promise. We’ll go to Framlingham as soon as you are feeling up to making the trip.”

“Nay.” Crandell wheezed, trying to catch his breath. Any tidbit of color left now drained from his face. The disease in his lungs made every breath sound as if the man were drowning.

Alex choked up, trying to hold back his emotions. His father had shed tears. Now, Alex felt as if he would do the same for the first time in his life. He didn’t want his father to die. They only had each other. He needed his father – Crandell was right. Alex depended on him. With Alex’s bad leg, no one would want to hire him even if he were skilled with a blade. Without his father by his side, he didn’t have a chance.

“You go, Son. I am . . . banned,” Crandell whispered. His fingers snaked out and rested atop Alex’s hand. The feeling of his cold, dry skin felt like death had already entered the man’s body. “Tell Summer not to hate you . . . for what I did . . . Peter. It is not . . . your . . . fault.”

“I’m Alex, Father. I’m not this Peter that you think I am.” He got up and went back to pour another cup of ale.

“Roses. Summer loved roses,” Crandell mumbled from the table in a soft voice.

“Yes, summer is the time when roses bloom,” mumbled Alex, only half-listening to his father’s nonsensical chatter. “It is now winter and we are in the midst of a storm. There are no flowers, Father.”

“Nay, I mean Lady Summer, you fool! I don’t deserve to live . . . because of what . . . I’ve done.”

“Of course, you do. Everyone deserves to live.” Alex headed back with the cup of ale clutched in his hand.

“Your father didn’t deserve to live. He was . . . murdered. And rightly so.”

“Murdered?” Alex stopped in his tracks. He couldn’t have heard the man correctly. To even think of killing a noble was preposterous. “Who murdered the baron?”

“I should never have stolen Summer’s baby,” mumbled his father. “I will go to hell for that. Especially after what she did . . . for me.”

“What did she do?” Alex asked curiously.

“I . . . loved her, Peter. Like . . . like a daughter.”

“I don’t understand this at all. Why would you steal a baby? And why would someone murder the baron?” This was all starting to sound too real. Perhaps his father wasn’t delirious after all. Even an addled man couldn’t make up a crazy story like this.

“It’s up to you now . . . to make things right . . . Peter.”

“Aye, Father,” he answered, hearing his voice as if he were someone else.

The cup slipped from Alex’s fingers and hit the rushes at his feet. For some reason, being called Peter suddenly felt right. It was almost as if it really were his name. “Father,” he said, his heart beating wildly in his chest. If what he’d just heard was true, then his father was not the dying man before him. Nay, his father was the late Baron Mowbray – a noble. And the man at the table whom he thought to be his father was really only a cutthroat killer and a thief.

“Nay, I can’t make things right,” said Alex shaking his head. He did not want to be part of this horrible lie. “I can’t do it.”

“You . . . p-promised . . . P-Peter,” was the last thing Crandell ever said. His haunting, hollow, open eyes stared up at Alex from his dead body. It made Alex feel as if Crandell would be watching him, expecting him to keep his promise, even in death.

“Father!” Alex shook the man, not wanting him to die. He wasn’t going to let the man leave this secret at his doorstep. He loved Crandell. His heart broke to see him go. But he also hated what he just heard. Crandell was the only father, or relative Alex had ever known. He didn’t even know this Lady Summer or anything about the late Baron Mowbray.

Nay, it couldn’t be true. Crandell had raised him and been at his side his entire life. He had to be Alex’s father. This man had always treated him as if he were a son who had two good legs. Never once had he made Alex feel incompetent because of his disability. But now, being all alone made Alex feel uncomfortable and very incompetent, indeed.

“Father, wake up!” Alex shook him once again. Crandell’s hand fell from the table, swinging at his side. The thick, gold band he wore with the monogram of an M for Masterson carved into it, winked in the last flames flickering in the hearth. Crandell never sold the ring during their travels, even though they could have used the money from it on more than one occasion. Instead, he had always told him that the ring was special and that Alex would inherit it someday.

Was Alex really nobility? He pondered the thought. And was his mother Lady Summer, the Baroness of Framlingham? If so, how could he just show up and drop this at her doorstep? All the weight of the world was on Alex’s shoulders now. The last thing he wanted was to spend his Christmas finding out that everything in his life was a lie!

“Merry Christmas,” he mumbled, sinking atop a chair, covering his face with his hands. He would be alone now for the first time ever, and probably for the rest of his life. No man was going to betroth his daughter to a man who was lame. Could he possibly be the boy who died and, somehow, miraculously came back to life? Nothing made any sense.

He let out a sigh and looked at the dead man collapsed atop the table, wondering how he was going to bury him. With one twisted leg, it was hard enough for Alex to walk, let alone carry a man who outweighed him. And how was he going to dig a hole in the frozen ground?

“You have no choice but to pick yourself up by the bootstraps, Peter Mowbray,” he said, testing the name on his tongue. Damn, why didn’t it sound or feel as foreign as he’d hoped it would? Pushing up out of the chair, he knew what he had to do. “You died and managed to come back to life, so burying a dead man in the middle of winter should be an easy task.” It wouldn’t really be easy or pleasant but, then again, going to Framlingham and telling Lady Summer that he was her dead son was going to be the hardest thing he’d ever do in his life!