The Assassin of Verona by Benet Brandreth

Author:Benet Brandreth [Brandreth, Benet]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Epub3
Publisher: Pegasus Books

Command into obedience: fear and niceness

Verona

‘I am told that you command while the Duke is absent,’ said Thornhill.

Oldcastle was a wretched man. Rank terror had given him a kind of feverish strength to deny the priest audience that first evening. A night of little sleep and dreams that came full of terrors had left him a hollow reed. A dawn that came without news of either Aemilia or Hemminges’ return had snapped him like one. Then, Dionisio, the servant assigned to Oldcastle’s care, had brought a message that Father Thornhill again demanded audience.

My God, what shall I do? Oldcastle moaned inwardly. What does this fellow want? Would that Hemminges were here. No doubt he’s luxuriating in his adventure with that foolish, headstrong girl hanging off his every wise word. A jaunt, a winter’s folly in the woods, while I quake and quail.

Pressed again to admit the priest, he’d strength only to demand that the hearing happen in the great hall of the palace, before witnesses.

Now, confronted by Father Thornhill’s pale eyes, the few gathered servants and even the presence of the Duke’s captain of guards seemed a slender buckler to put between him and the priest’s steel.

‘I have the Duke’s confidence,’ answered Oldcastle and prayed that his voice did not betray him. He’d not dared to take the Duke’s seat but had chosen to stand upon the dais in order to have the height advantage. Thornhill had not paused his stride on entering the hall until he stood beside Oldcastle. The priest was shorter by an inch but there was no question of whose stature was the greater.

‘You are, sir knight, an Englishman?’ asked Thornhill speaking in that language.

‘And proudly so,’ said Oldcastle.

‘As am I,’ said Father Thornhill. ‘Though I no longer call it home and I have not had cause to speak our mother tongue in many years. You still submit to Rome I trust?’

The waters in which Oldcastle was swimming suddenly teemed with dark, dangerous shapes.

‘Dare it be said otherwise,’ he huffed.

‘To the destruction of all false prophets including that Jezebel of England, Elizabeth?’ asked Father Thornhill.

‘Of course,’ said Oldcastle. ‘Why, am I not an exile of King Edward’s day?’

Thornhill nodded. The boy king, proud Henry’s sickly child, had taken his father’s perjuring of Rome and turned it from a convenient trick to a seated purpose. Many English papists had fled the fervour of his rule. Still the boy was dead some thirty years or more.

‘You did not return when Queen Mary came to the throne?’

‘My ancestors have ever loved Italy and I found I did too,’ said Oldcastle whose memories of Edward’s reign were hazy and of his sister Mary’s uneasy. ‘Besides, by then I was engaged a soldier in Italian squabbles from which I’ve made my fortune. Why I could tell you of some royal fights that I have seen and fought and won and lost, too—’

Thornhill cut across his answer. ‘Sir Nicholas, be so kind as to come with me.’

‘Why, I ...’ began Oldcastle’s reply

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