by Eric Flint
Sharon turned to look at the door again, wondering if she should summon a few more Hibernians. Damn it, woman: what are you thinking? Calling away some of the pope’s protection just because you found a busted lock and decided you can’t stop being Nancy Drew?
But Finan’s voice continued low and serious. “Something else, ma’am. Dogs don’t go on so about rats, not unless they’ve gotten at a babby in a crib, or the like. They’ll growl and scratch, but not this howling and such.” He turned to the landlord. “When did they first start natterin’?”
“A day ago, maybe two. I can’t really remember. They whined and fussed but not much more. Then, this morning! Mon dieu, they went mad.”
Finan turned to Sharon. “To my way of thinking, ma’am, that’s a savage sudden change.”
Sharon nodded. She looked at the walls around her, aware that the basement of the convent was mere feet away. And as she did so, she recalled the last time she and Ruy had spoken about it, just two nights before. As if from a half-forgotten dream, she heard Ruy’s voice recounting that part of his conversation with the prioress in which she revealed that the Carmelites had searched their own cellars for secret passages or the equivalent…
“Do you think the search was, well, sufficiently detailed?” Sharon had asked.
“Admirably thorough, from the sound of it,” Ruy had answered. “They searched all sides of the lower levels, excepting the one that they know abuts on an adjoining cellar in the only building that is built up against their own.”
An adjoining cellar…
Sharon stood back from the door, gestured to Finan. “Open it.”
“Ambassador, I can’t. The lock—”
“I mean bust it in. Get a hammer or—something. We need to get in there. Now.”
Finan looked up the stairs, then handed his lantern to Sharon. He unslung his rifle, glanced at the stock, then laid it gently against the broken lock. “Stand back.”
Sharon did.
The little Irishman swung the rifle back gently and then rammed it viciously forward against the lock. A strained cracking sound accompanied the impact. Finan checked the stock of his gun, the lock, then stepped back. He raised his leg and kicked forward, the sole of his boot hitting about two inches to the side of the lock.
With a squeal, the door swung back and slammed into the wall. The dogs, atypically unbothered by all the loud human smashing and bashing, were inside as fast as had they been shot from twin cannons. No longer barking, they growled and chased about in the dark room beyond, exciting a sound of panicked skittering in response.
Sharon raised the lantern higher.
Rats ran in chaotic swarms, streaming away from a leaning heap in the far right-hand corner. They flowed toward apertures in the rough stone that framed the rest of the interior on all sides except for the rear wall. That, a haphazard aggregate of ancient-looking brick, apparently offered the rats no hope of escape.
Sharon, kicking at the slower rats, strode directly to the heap in the far corner as the dogs finished chasing the last of the rodents back into whatever invisible crevices they had disappeared. The two scruffy warriors, despite their short legs and lap-dog appearance, now resorted to trotting about the peripheries of the room, ruffs up and muzzles down, sniffing. They were still searching for a scent, even though the prey seemed to have disappeared. Not entirely unlike me, Sharon reflected as she kneeled down and gazed at the heap.
Which was, to be more precise, a much ravaged corpse. Judging from the long gray locks and frayed ends of the much-gnawed clothing, it was the body of an older male of very modest means.
She heard Finan’s feet stop just behind her. “So this is what they were after.”
Sharon glanced around, saw traces of lime leading away from the corpse, saw a light dusting of it on what was left of his clothes. “Yes. And I think I know who this is…or was.”
Finan was silent, then breathed: “The mute stonemason.”
Sharon nodded, looking at the square shapes under tarps positioned along the walls on either side. “Let’s take a look at what else was left here. And be careful.”
Finan snorted, a sound which eloquently expressed that he had already decided to be very careful indeed. Using the barrel of his Winchester, he started lifting the tarps off the angular objects beneath them: crates.
Sharon examined the body carefully, saw the hint of stains on either side of the neck and tracked them back to the almost surgically severed carotid and jugular. Meaning, from the precision and lack of either deep puncture or long slash, the wounds had been inflicted shortly after the stonemason was either dead or unconscious. The resulting exsanguination would have ensured that he’d never regain consciousness. She stood, feeling a chill run up her arms. The corpse smell was weak, but the sense of a professional execution was overwhelming. And that recalled other professional murders she had seen recently, conducted by an elusive left-handed killer.
Which meant, by all appearances, that this was his lair.
Chapter 37
Finan stepped closer to the rat-savaged tarp he had pushed back; he grunted restlessly. “Ambassador—”
Sharon moved to his side and stared down at what lay revealed in the first, large box. “Rations.”
Finan nodded. “And the rats got at them just recently. The crumbs and the cheese are still moist.”
Sharon studied the tarp more carefully. There was a faint gray-white dusting on it. “The tarp was either sprinkled with quicklime, or stored under bags of it.”
Finan stared, then nodded. “So someone removed it and the rats came for a tuck-in. Well, another one: looks like they got to the stonemason sometime earlier.”
Sharon nodded. “Seems so. What else did you find?”
“Quite a few shallow crates, Ambassador. I was just about to open them.”
Sharon looked at them. “Could they be trapped?”
Finan shrugged. “Might be, but I doubt it. The lids are loose. But just to be safe—” He stood to the side, slipped his rifle’s muzzle under the nearest lid, lifted. It flipped off without any effort or incident. They stared.
“Mother o’ God!” Finan whispered finally.
Sharon could only nod as her assistant and bodyguard started popping the tops of the other boxes. Revolvers that were copies of his own Hockenjoss & Klott. Double-barreled sawed-off shotguns that were down-time clones of up-timer weapons. Short, heavy swords. A box of what were obviously Grantville-influenced grenades. Buff coats and light helmets. Burgundian colors and gear, from the most commonly used boots to baldrics. And finally, a sizeable petard that could probably bring down the whole flophouse, and maybe a good part of the priory, besides.
Finan leaned in quickly, yanked the petard’s fuse, staved in the side; powder spilled out.
Sharon watched the surety of his actions. “You’ve worked with explosives before.”
Finan nodded as he defused the grenades, but was careful not to damage them. “I got my start soldiering for Colonel Preston in Spanish Flanders.”
“So you were one of the Wild Geese, originally?”
“From the time I had whiskers, ma’am. Maybe before.”
“Then why don’t you know any of the ones assigned to Colonel O’Neill?”
Finan’s smile was sardonic. “Because I’m half Anglo-Irish. That’s why I grew up to serve with Preston, who’s the same. Besides, he’s the business when it comes to forts and sieges and the like. And you can guess the promise he saw in meself.”
Sharon glanced at the modest distance from the bottom of Finan’s boots to the top of his helmet. “Tunnels?”
Finan nodded. “Mining. Countermining. And the nastiest fighting you’ve ever seen, in half lit tunnels always trying to fold in on your head. When the pistol fire got thick, it smelled just like hell in there. Pretty much looked like it, too.”
“Is that why you left and joined the Hibernian Mercenary Battalion?”
“Aye, although it was just a company then. No more
killin’ and dyin’ in tunnels. And better pay to boot. Besides, they needed a genuine Hibernian in their bliddy outfit.”
Sharon nodded as she paced the room, observing other details. The most noticeable were the rodent-tattered remains of six sleeping rolls. So whoever had been here planned to use this room either as a refuge after an attack—unlikely, since a simple citywide search of all basements would have uncovered it—or as a staging area before an attack. Which meant—
Again, Finan interrupted her train of thought. “Ambassador, you’ll want to catch an eyeful of this.”
She swerved toward where he was standing next to the brick wall at the rear of the cellar, glanced where he was pointing: several piles of brick dust on the floor. Then his finger rose, drifted along what became the rough outline of a doorway upon the bricks. “They were drilling here, ma’am. You can see through to t’other side in a few places. One good push, and this part of the wall falls outward, into the priory’s basement.”
Sharon frowned. “But where are the tools?”
Finan shook his head. “You don’t need big tools for a job like this one, Ambassador. My guess is, if we peered close among the guns in the crates, we’d find the tools right enough: small hand drills, files, and the like.” He nodded a professional appraisal at the wall. “Whoever did this knew what he was doing. Probably cut a small hole first so he’d see if any light shone through. That way, he’d know when he had a potential audience on t’other side and couldn’t work safely. But if the hole showed all dark and quiet over in the priory’s cellar, then he could get to business, so long as he didn’t make much noise. And the small tools used to undermine the brick here? If he went slowly, he’d have made less sound than the scurrying rats.”
Sharon nodded, but was already walking back toward the splintered door, putting the pieces of the cellar’s puzzle together. She stuck her head under the worm-eaten lintel and called up to the morose landlord. “Who had access to this cellar?”
The fellow looked up. “The man who rented it from me. How he knew I had it was a surprise to—”
“How long ago did he rent it from you?”
“A month ago. He paid it in full, up front. Which is strange; he did not look like a man of means.”
“What did he look like?”
“He looked…” The man’s voice tapered off; and he scratched his head. “I can only say that he looked average, Your Excellency. His hair was brown, he was of medium height and build. His dress was what one might see on a fairly well-to-do tradesman, or perhaps the lesser garments of a member of the gentry.”
“So, neither rich nor poor.”
“Precisely, madame.”
Sharon nodded slowly: average indeed. In a world full of people who took pains to signal or exaggerate their social rank, this man did the opposite. Which sounded like it was not chance, but a carefully crafted intent. “Was there anything at all notable about him?”
The landlord frowned. “I do not think—yes! He had one odd requirement: that he be given all the keys. When I gave him the two I had, he asked for a third. Which I did not have. He was not satisfied I had given him all the keys until I went to the expense—which I had to prove to him—of having a third key made. Which, to tell the truth, never did work very well.”
Sharon discovered her breath was coming more quickly. “Anything else?”
“Er…his eyes were light brown, what my aunt called hazel. And he moved—well, it is hard to describe. He did not move much, and never hastily, but when he did, there was a certain grace about him. As if he might be a dancer.”
Sharon nodded and gestured for the man to go back up to the top of the stairs. “Don’t go anywhere. I think we’ll wish to talk further to you. If not me, then someone else.”
“Oh, madame, please no! I promise you: the rats have never been here before this—”
“I don’t care about the rats,” Sharon snapped. “No one will even mention them. You’re safe.”
The landlord beamed: his teeth, although yellowed, shone in the dim light. “Ambassador, I am eternally in your debt. I cannot begin to—”
But Sharon turned away and reentered the cellar, pushing what was left of the door closed against the landlord’s torrent of protestations of undying gratitude and service. As she walked slowly back to where Finan was inspecting the contents of the crates more closely, she finally had the silence to fit the puzzle pieces together.
So: before Besançon became overcrowded and overbooked, some man had approached the landlord to rent his basement. He had not even quibbled over the price, evidently. His only condition was that he had sole access to it, which he had confirmed by forcing the landlord to spend to have another key made. Not because the renter wanted a third key, but because he knew that landlords would rather part with their last key to a room than pay good money to have another one made. And so, given the tight-fisted nature of the owner’s class, the renter was as sure as he could be that he did, indeed, have all the keys for the cellar.
And looking at what he stored in the cellar, and had done there, it was clear enough why he had taken that extraordinary step of insisting upon sole access. It was also clear why he had wanted to rent by the month: because it would be unclear when, precisely, his need of the room would become crucial. Which is to say, when the time would be opportune to attack the pope.
Sharon frowned. But something was still missing. Judging from what was stored in the cellar, this room and the necessary equipment had been here for days, maybe weeks. They had been in readiness, yet they still had not attacked. Why?
And then there was also the matter of numbers. Only six bedrolls were here, and the number of firearms suggested a similar number of attackers were to have hidden here. But, given the obvious security around Urban, how could anyone have thought that such numbers would be sufficient to—?
Sharon stopped, felt her breath catch in mid-exhale. This room, these attackers: they weren’t the primary attack force. They couldn’t be. Not only were their numbers insufficient, even with the Burgundian disguises: they were poised to enter the wrong building. The pope never entered the priory. Or at least, he hadn’t. But the attackers clearly believed that at some point Urban would enter the priory. Nothing else made sense.
Sharon nodded to herself, seeing the inevitable begin to unfold before her. Clearly, they knew about the secret passage from the palace; that’s why they could know that Urban had access to the priory at all. Which, in turn, meant that the leader of the assassins had known or suspected that Ruy and Owen meant to use that tunnel as an emergency escape route from the palace. That’s why he had sought out the mute stonemason, who had no doubt confirmed the tunnel’s existence before he died.
Sharon turned slowly, taking in the cellar and its contents once again. So, the leader of the assassins would not have devoted so much effort to securing this room and preparing it unless he was certain that another group would mount an attack upon the palace. And that explained why he had sought out the guild foreman Parsifal Funker; not only to find the mute stonemason, but to confirm, just as Ruy and Owen had, that there were no other subterranean ways in or out of the palace or the priory. In short, if Urban secretly fled the palace, they knew he could only flee to one place. And they prepared accordingly.
And, of course, Funker’s interrogation had led the assassin leader to the mute stonemason, who had obviously known of the weakness of the brick wall separating this cellar from the priory’s basement. And that was the beauty of it: it wasn’t a secret passage or a buried chamber that might show up on some map somewhere. It was simply a wall that he had noted—or maybe himself had strategically weakened—which could be used to pass unobserved and unexpected into the priory.
She looked toward Finan. “They didn’t mean to start the attack from here.”
Finan cocked his head. “No? Well, they meant to end it here, sure enough.” He pointed into one of the crates. “Naphtha or something like it. And since they don’t need the petard fo
r breaching, they must’ve meant it to collapse the place.”
Sharon frowned. “But why?”
Finan shrugged. “Until the rubble was dug and sorted, who’d ever be sure they weren’t killed by their own bombs, trying to escape? Harder to keep searching for a man when, with every passing day, most of your searchers secretly doubt that he’s still alive.”
Sharon repressed the shudder at the implicit willingness to destroy a flophouse full of innocent people—and perhaps no small number of Carmelite nuns—just to sow panic and uncertainty. And of course, that disaster would have diverted would-be searchers into emergency roles as rescuers and firefighters. Then again, given what she’d seen of war in this century, and the killing that her father had known both in Viet Nam and the south side of Chicago, Sharon Nichols told herself firmly that she simply had no reason to be surprised or shocked at all. Ruthlessness was a timeless human trait. Small wonder that an assassin would be its epitome.
Finan wasn’t done, however. He held up one of the sawed-off shotguns. “I suspect you didn’t notice this.”
Sharon frowned. “Sure I did. Shotguns. Just like some of the ones that came back with us.”
Finan shook his head. “No, ma’am. Sorry to correct you, but not ‘just’ like. This is exactly like that. It’s one of ours—well, yours.”
Sharon’s skin suddenly felt very cold and tight. “What do you mean, one of ours? You mean they’re up-time guns?”
“Just this one, Ambassador. All the others are copies. But this one went missing when the Wrecking Crew lost poor Felix.”
Sharon felt her stomach plunge and fought against the kind of jitters she felt when she saw a particularly convincing horror film. “It can’t be.”
Finan simply held the weapon out to her. She saw the maker’s mark—Remington—and the comparative fineness of the metal: thinner and yet so much stronger than the steel used in the copies. She saw crudely engraved initials, notches on the stock. “How can you be sure this is Felix’s gun?”
