The Virgin's War (Tudor Legacy #3)(14)

Without speaking, they gathered up the knives and returned to the stable yard that included the arms stores and blacksmith’s space.

Murray did not come out to greet them, which was slightly strange. Despite his rough manner, the man was devoted to Felix LeClerc. The door to the armory was open. Kit stepped inside and froze.

He heard Felix on his heels, and keeping his voice light and steady, asked, “Felix, will you go get Stephen for me?”

The boy might be young and troubled, but he was quick. He melted away, and Kit hoped Stephen was smart enough to keep him from returning. Just in case, Kit stayed where he was in the door, to prevent the boy from seeing the body of Duncan Murray, faceup on the ground with a sword pinned through his heart.

—

When Felix ran into the study and told Stephen that Kit wished to see him, there was something in the brittle tone of voice that caught Stephen’s ear. He rose straightaway from the letter he’d been finishing to Maisie and said, “What is it?”

The boy’s face was pale beneath his shock of dark brown hair. “I don’t know. Only he wouldn’t let me pass into the armory.”

In the field, one was accustomed to making rapid decisions. In this case, Stephen decided that leaving Felix alone in the house—feeling unwanted and useless—would do greater harm than whatever nastiness Kit had discovered. “Show me,” he said, and was rewarded with a slight easing of Felix’s tension.

When they entered the stable yard, Kit looked round from where he stood in the armory entry and even from across that distance, Stephen knew his brother meant to object to Felix’s presence. He shook his head slightly, and it was enough. If the brothers had learned anything in the last two years, it was how to communicate with one another.

“Kit?” he asked as he crossed the yard, as calmly as though he were requesting a report from a junior officer.

With only the briefest hesitation, Kit said, “Duncan Murray is dead.”

There was no need to specify it was unnatural—Kit would hardly be guarding the doorway if the man had had a fit or heart attack. “Let me see,” Stephen ordered.

Kit stepped back to let Stephen pass, but kept Felix outside with him. Stephen squatted next to Murray’s big body and touched the old man’s forehead in respect.

Besides the short sword driven into his chest—one Stephen recognized as belonging to the Blanclair armory—Murray also had a bloody wound a little higher up. It was the kind of wound an arrow made, when pierced into flesh and then ripped free.

“Shot from cover first?” Stephen mused barely loud enough to hear himself. “And when Duncan dropped, the sword to finish the job. But why?”

Why, indeed, kill a man past the years of the kinds of passionate grudges that made men murder? Besides, those were usually committed in haste, and messily. This had been deliberate. Planned. Professional.

Stephen pulled the sword free, noting that the blood flowed sluggishly. He must have been killed just after Kit and Felix left with the knives. He squatted back down, hands searching for anything on or around Murray that might leave a clue. Surprisingly, there was a paper. Half shoved into his jerkin, it had only faint stains on the right edge where his heart’s blood had met it. If Duncan had been carrying it before he was shot, it would have been much bloodier.

Stephen had to carry it to the open doorway for the fast-dying winter’s light. An anonymous seal closed off the folded paper. And there, in the bottom left corner, something drawn in ink…

“Shit,” Stephen pronounced clearly.

“What?” Kit asked.

He turned the back of the letter to his brother and pointed. It took Kit a minute to understand. “Is that—”

“A nightingale.”

Their eyes met and decisions leaped from mind to mind. “Inside,” Stephen said abruptly. “Now.”

Felix protested. “What about Duncan? We’re not just going to leave him there?”

“I will explain inside. Go with Kit.” And, when Felix once more opened his mouth, Stephen again said sharply, “Now.”

At some point Stephen had acquired his father’s gift for infusing commands into single syllables. Kit and Felix vanished; his brother, Stephen was glad to see, with a hand on the dagger at his belt.

Stephen drew his own dagger and pulled a sword from the armory walls. Thus doubly armed, he drew a deep breath and set out to search.

Twilight was fast deepening, and both logic and Stephen’s trained senses told him that whoever had been here had already faded away. He made a quick circuit of the inner walls, but to little purpose. Blanclair was not meant to be a defensive keep. It was a manor house. There were any of a dozen places an assassin could have crept into the grounds. And with most of the household as well as the men-at-arms away, the killer had risked little today.

Especially if he had been watching the house long enough to know how empty it was.

Stephen rounded the chateau walls once, then came in through the kitchen door and barred it behind him. The cook and scullery maid eyed him in surprise. “It’s all right,” he told them reassuringly. “Just closing things up early. You’ve no need to go outside again tonight?”

The cook knew better than to believe his assurances, but she simply answered, “No, my lord. We’ve all we need here.”

“Good.”