The Firebrand (42 page)

“We cannot open the crypt,” he finally answered. Adrianne stared at him with disbelief.

“The Archbishop of Glasgow’s blessing and presence would be needed.” Colin Campbell agreed solemnly. “‘Twill probably take a week to arrange it, I would think.”

“Then a week ‘twill be,” Wyntoun said, frowning as he squeezed Adrianne’s hand. “After all the time we’ve waited, though, a week is nothing.”

***

The irony of it all was just too delicious.

The haughty Blade of Barra and the omnipotent Colin Campbell had both failed. Plain and simple. They had failed.

These two filthy Highlanders, with arrogance and condescension, had lorded their power over everyone for years. Well, now they were both ruined.

Benedict felt a chuckle rise up in his chest, but the sound of laughter never emanated from his throat. He smiled fiercely into the face of the priest before him.

Sir Peter Wrothsey barked out a laugh. “The saint’s tomb!” he said again. “The fools think the treasure is hidden in Mungo’s tomb.”

Benedict sat down by the hearth and focused on the glowing embers. Finally, after all this time. It was almost within his grasp. “And you are certain of the other symbol?”

The priest nodded confidently. “The thick line curling around the pointed hook.”

“A snake!” Benedict hissed. “A black adder.”

“Aye, ‘tis the Blacader Aisle.” Sir Peter said. “The fools overlooked the obvious. The hook is a shepherd’s crook…a bishop’s crosier. The other symbols identify the cathedral, but the pointed end of the crosier indicates the location of the treasure. I am certain of it!”

The monk’s gnarled fingers entwined with excitement. “Archbishop Blacader built an extension to the transept about thirty years ago. Just about when Edmund Percy was moving the treasure north!”

“‘Tis there. Waiting for you to save it, just as you saved it thirty years ago.”

Benedict smiled at Wrothsey. “You’ve done well, my brother. Archbishop Cranmer will be pleased to hear of your efforts on our behalf. You will be well rewarded for this.”

The priest clutched the cross at his belt and nodded his head in acknowledgment. “The time is running short, though. On Friday they’ll have Saint Mungo’s tomb open. And when they don’t find the treasure, they’ll be looking again at the symbols on the map.”

“If not before. But we’ll not wait that long. By this time tomorrow, I’ll have my hands on the blessed Tiberius.” Benedict’s gaze was drawn toward the door, where the voice of a complaining Nichola Percy could be heard from a barred chamber down the corridor.

“And what are you going to do with her?” Sir Peter asked.

“Together we will bring her back to England and allow the Archbishop of Canterbury to present her to the king.” An evil grin slowly spread over Benedict’s face. “But why should we go to all that trouble? Perhaps we should just take her head.”

Wrothsey’s knuckles were white around the cross at his belt. “Her head?”

“Think of what a nuisance she would be to travel with. The king wants her head, and that we will provide.” Benedict’s eyes glowed with satisfaction at his ingenuity. “I am leaving for Glasgow now. You, my warrior priest, shall kill the traitorous wench and bring her head in a satchel. Take the Lanark road north toward Glasgow. I’ll meet you on the road when I am finished at the cathedral.”

“Very well, Benedict. We will meet on the Lanark road, then.”

The monk stood up and limped toward the door. He turned and looked at the priest.

‘Twill be magnificent, Sir Peter. I will present the Treasure of Tiberius. You will offer the head of the king’s most hated enemy. ‘Twill be sublime, I tell you. Glorious! This will be our triumphant moment!”

An hour before dusk, a fog descended, thick and gray as a monk’s cowl, upon the city. Shortly before midnight, the heavy mists enveloped the silent men crossing the Clyde, hiding them and dulling the sound of the boatmen’s oars. East of Bridgegate, where the English cannons had battered down the walls twenty years earlier, the silent men slipped into Glasgow.

A dozen men in all, they moved through the sleeping town. Skirting the market cross, they moved northward, stealthily climbing the long hill toward the darkened cathedral. Armed and well paid, they were mercenaries prepared to kill for Christendom’s most precious treasure.

By a side entry all but one dispersed. In no time at all the men had taken up their assigned positions. In an alcove of a door. Behind the grove of trees. By the ancient wooden bridge that crossed the ditch.

Benedict waited until they were gone, and then he alone stepped into the Glasgow Cathedral. This moment he would share with no one.

Once inside, the monk moved quickly. He knew the way. Even at this hour, the cathedral was lit by dozens of candles, though without the daylight coming through the great stained glass windows, it was dark and cold. Above him, arches created a cavelike feeling. He stopped only once as the sensation of being in a crypt or a catacomb passed through him. Benedict frowned fiercely and looked about him, his hand clutching the dagger at his waist. The cathedral was empty. Pressing on, the lone figure reached the Blacader Aisle in a matter of moments.

To anyone else, the graceful white arches of the Blacader Aisle might had been a distraction. But for Benedict, a treasure of another kind had enthralled him. He took a torch from a sconce on the wall and lit it from a candle.

The monk stood in the middle of the aisle, looking above him at the colorfully painted, carved stone bosses forming a line along the uppermost point of the arches. From what he could see, there was no hiding place above him. But then his searching gaze lit on a large, gold plate that decorated the front of a marble altar. Above the altar a statue of the Virgin Mary stood in an alcove. She had been depicted wearing a blue veil with gold fringe.

“Of course! ‘Tis here…here!” His voice echoed off the stone walls, coming back at him. “You are mine…mine!”

Benedict limped to the altar and knelt before the gold plate. His hands trembled as he touched the insignia of a black adder curled around a bishop’s crosier. He smiled. The long end of the shepherd’s crook was pointed like a quill.

And the point of the quill lay on an open book!

The monk sneered upward at the statue above the altar. “Thirty years wasted...wasted...”

Impatiently, he pulled at the gold panel. Laying the torch on the stone floor, he used his dagger to pry the heavy plate free. That was all it took. The plate slid straight outward on iron pins. He dropped it behind him on the floor, the crash reverberating through the cathedral.

Benedict held up the torch, and he saw it. There, in an open space behind the plate. His eyes glittered as he looked on it…the object of his desire. The end of his search. It was his now!

He reached out for the charred, wooden casket.

****

A steady rain was falling when Benedict slipped out of the side door of the cathedral with the casket tucked beneath his arm.

The kirk yard was silent as death. Tendrils of mist curled around the dark objects before him—the low wall, the grove of trees, a stone crypt by the wall.

Holding the torch in one hand, he whispered into the night. Silence was his only answer. He moved along the perimeter of the stone walls, where he knew at least two of his men had been posted. They were not there.

They had to be here. They would not leave him. He had paid them, true. But he had promised them more…much more. Uneasiness gnawed at the monk. Benedict could feel his heart hammering in his chest, but he ignored it and continued on toward the bridge across the ditch. There were more men in the graveyard on the hill beyond. He tightened his hold on the wooden casket as he crossed the bridge. As he climbed the narrow path, the sound of his own footsteps was all that he could hear.

A moment later, a sharp cry cut through the night, stopping the monk dead in his tracks. It sounded like a cry of a woman. The shriek of a woman in pain. Of a woman dying.

Dogs barked in the distance, but there was no other cry. In the fog, it was difficult to judge where the sound had come from. The monk could not be sure if it had come from ahead of him or from behind.

This time, he called out loudly for his men. Silence was his answer.

Adjusting the casket under his arm, Benedict turned and charged back down the hill. There were more men waiting for him with the boatman at the Clyde. Men trained to kill, waiting to serve him.

He just had to get there.

He saw the dark shape on the path too late, stumbling over it and kicking it ahead of him as he fell. The casket landed with a dull thud, and the torch lay flickering on the frozen ground beside the path. Whatever he had fallen over had not been there a moment before.

Panic-stricken, he crawled on his knees through the fog, reaching for his treasure. Instead, his hands touched a cloth bundle. It was a bag containing the object that had tripped him. He moved closer, peering at it. Not a bag. A tartan…tied about something heavy. He pushed it and it rolled slightly into the light of the torch. Strands of dark hair stuck out of the tied opening.

“Nichola!” he whispered, rising to his feet and stepping back. “Dead.”

He looked around wildly. Up the hill, the dim shapes of gravestones. Though he could not see it, in front of him lay the bridge. There was no sign of Sir Peter Wrothsey or anyone else. The monk’s legs suddenly felt like lead, and his hands trembled as he bent to pick up the casket that was lying on the path. He straightened up and listened again for a sound.

Benedict despised the fear that gripped his stomach, but he could not shake it off. The fog that had hidden him before now seemed like a shroud. A shroud for him alone. Forcing himself to step forward, he cursed himself.

“Sir Peter!” he called out. “Where the devil are…?”

The words withered in his throat as the figure of Nichola Percy suddenly appeared before him. Like an avenging angel on the Judgment Day, she came out of the mist. Panic gripped him, and he gaped at the accusing form. Dead or alive, spirit or human…it didn’t matter. Nichola Percy stood before him, blocking his path. Benedict could not move his feet. He could not speak a word. The sound of his ragged breathing was the only noise. Neither broke the silence for a seemingly endless moment. And then she spoke.

“This is the end, Benedict.”

He shook his head, forcing himself to think clearly.

“Nay, Nichola. You are not real! You are a spirit. You cannot hurt me.” She was a trick of his mind, he told himself, but he could not will his feet to move forward. “Begone, you vile, accursed wretch!”

“One should never molest the mother when she has her babies in the nest.”

Echoes of his own words came back to him. He shuddered uncontrollably. He had spoken those very words to Sir Arthur Courtenay.

“Through all the years of my marriage—through all the years bringing up my family—you lived among us. You were one of us, and still you lied to us. You sold your soul to the devil, and you betrayed us. For what, Benedict?” Her finger extended accusingly toward the charred box. “For
this
?”

He hugged the wooden casket to his chest. “‘Tis mine. Mine…as ‘twas supposed to be so many years ago. Edmund started this. He shouldn’t have stopped me that night. I started that fire in the monastery. I walked through the flames and saved it. I had the Tiberius in my hand, but he took it away.”

“He gave you glory in place of it. He made you a hero. He saw that you were accepted as an honored member of his brotherhood.”

“I hated him for that, too. I hated them all. Wealthy, privileged knights of a degenerate order. You think I needed them? I scorned them. Compared to my own lineage, they were all base, lowborn curs.”

“Edmund gave you a chance to be part of something good and virtuous.”

“He took away my chance for power. He shattered all of my plans.” Benedict’s voice shook as anger steeled his will again. “I had to destroy him after that. I waited and planned. I would destroy him, destroy his family, destroy everything that was important to him.”

The weight of the casket in his arms brought him courage. He held it. It was his now. The treasure was his, quickening the spirit that had been dead for years.

“Edmund had no chance against me. I knew all his secrets. I was privy to all his activities. I cultivated my friends. I waited for my chance. When the time was right, when my ally Thomas Cranmer became Archbishop of Canterbury, I struck!

“Aye, Nichola! ‘Twas I who brought ruin on your house. ‘Twas I who brought the king’s Lieutenant, Sir Arthur Courtenay, to your door. ‘Twas I who harried you and your brood of sluts all across England and Scotland.” He stepped closer to her. “‘Twas I, Nichola, who arranged for your noble husband to die like a dog in the Tower. ‘Twas I.”

“This is the end, Benedict,” she said again quietly.

“Aye, the end for you. The end for all who oppose me. With this I shall have all that I desire. With this relic—more precious than the Holy Grail itself—I shall have my rightful place. Inside of a month, I shall be Archbishop of Yorkshire. Inside of a year, when King Henry takes Rome, I shall be Pope!”

“You are mad,” she whispered.

“Do not confuse ambition with madness, spirit.”

“Only a madman would stand and converse with a spirit, Benedict.” The younger woman’s voice came out of the mist, and the monk drew back at the sight of Adrianne stepping up behind her mother.

“You!” he rasped, his fingers closing around his dagger.

He drew back another step as Wyntoun MacLean moved out of the mist to stand by his wife.

Others appeared as well—Sir Henry Exton with his warriors behind him, and even Benedict’s “ally,” Sir Peter Wrothsey. The monk cursed his bones with all the fervor he could muster. He spat on the ground and looked about him defiantly.

“‘Tis mine, now,” the monk whispered fiercely. “Mine.”

Wyntoun’s voice cut through the graveyard. “‘Tis not yours. It belongs to all. To all humanity.”

“You cannot take it from me.” Benedict backed up another step. The torch lay at his feet. His gaze darted to the side. He turned around. On every side, the grim faces of warriors gazed back at him. He was surrounded.