Adrian Read online

  Adrian could not register any smells from the offering through his clogged nostrils, but he saw a speck of white morsel moving, wiggling within the mottled mass of gray.

  Maggots.

  He focused his eyes instead upon the soft-looking leather boots of the accompanying soldiers that crossed the floor beneath voluminous robes.

  “Stay where you are, infidel,” the general called out to Constantine from where he still stood near Adrian’s form. The soldiers quickly deposited similar metal vessels on the floor at what looked to be the very limits of Constantine’s restraints. But Adrian could see a wide piece of the unleavened bread popular in this part of the world, and what was perhaps a leg of meat.

  When the soldiers retreated, Constantine stepped toward the food, only barely able to drag it into his reach with the toe of one boot. The dish of water trembled wildly in his hands as he picked it up and brought it to his mouth.

  The Saracen’s evil countenance came into Adrian’s view again, and he used one hand to push the low-rimmed bowl of rotting matter closer to Adrian’s face. “Here is your meal, infidel. Go on—eat it.”

  Adrian closed his eyes against the sight of the wriggling mass.

  “You must have nourishment,” the voice in the darkness cajoled. “To build your strength.”

  “Don’t eat it, Adrian,” Constantine called out, his anger clear in his deep voice. “Why do you give an injured man rotting foodstuffs? Have you not done enough to him that you still seek to poison him?”

  “Go on,” the Saracen encouraged from beyond Adrian’s eyelids. “If you do not eat, I will take away your friend’s food as well.”

  Adrian continued to lie very still while Constantine engaged the soldier. “Take it then, for I will not eat good food while my friend is offered that which swine would refuse.”

  Adrian felt a painful rush of air over his skin and the Saracen’s voice was directed toward the back of the cell. “Is that so? How honorable of you. Thank you for illuminating my mistake; however, this business does not concern you. It is between myself and your friend, who killed my son.”

  Adrian’s eyes opened then, and he saw brown hands snatch the dish of water from Constantine’s hands while another set whisked away the bowl of untouched food from the cell floor. His vision moved jerkily upward to see the Saracen general removing the short, beaded whip from his belt.

  The man Adrian had slain at Chastellet had been the general’s son?

  “Will you eat, infidel?” he asked pleasantly, but now Adrian recognized the hatred burning in the man’s dark eyes.

  Constantine commanded, “No, Adrian. Don’t.”

  Adrian stared at the whip, remembering its cutting song.

  “Very well,” the Saracen said lightly. “You leave me no choice.”

  In the next moment, a whistle of air preceded a clicking slap, and Adrian heard Constantine’s cry escaping through clenched teeth even as he tried to contain it.

  Adrian closed his eyes. Perhaps if they thought him unconscious again . . .

  But only a beat of time passed before the whip’s whistle and slap sounded again in the close air of the cell. Then again. And now Constantine could not withhold his shouts.

  Adrian remembered the bite of the beads as they sank beneath his skin, the ripping as they retreated.

  Again the whip sounded, and again Constantine screamed.

  Adrian opened his eyes and saw Chastellet’s general crouched against the rear wall of the cell, his forearms raised to protect his face. Adrian tried to call out for the Saracen to stop as he raised his arm again, but his throat would not work. The whip fell with a gasp, and Constantine’s scream pierced Adrian’s ears.

  Drawing strength from an unknown source, Adrian inched his face toward the congealing mass spilled over the side of the dish before him. The scrape of the metal bowl on the sandstone floor sounded like the sharpening of a blade. He peeled his lips apart, feeling the sting of the skin as it was pulled away. For a moment he wondered that he hadn’t already bitten off his tongue, for he felt nothing emerge when he willed himself to sample the rotten offering before him. But then he tasted its sour perfume, felt the liveness of the mass in his mouth, around his lips.

  “Adrian, no,” Constantine pleaded in a breaking voice. “It will be as poison!”

  But the whip fell no more, and the Saracen’s boots came into close relief as the man moved over Adrian once again and crouched down.

  “Again, you surprise me, infidel,” the man said, obviously pleased as he watched Adrian struggle to swallow.

  Adrian gagged as the mush pushed against the sides of his throat. He fought against the urge to vomit while he held the Saracen’s gaze.

  “Sorry,” he slurred, his voice emerging thick and garbled, unable to open his jaws wide enough to form the words properly. “Your . . . son.”

  The dark man blinked and his brow creased as he seemed to consider what Adrian had said. Then his eyes narrowed and he leaned forward on his haunches and spat in Adrian’s face.

  “Eat it,” he commanded in his own raspy whisper and then shoved the dish toward Adrian’s face again so that the rim bounced off his nose and upper lip. “All of it. I want to watch you.”

  Adrian was thankful the Saracen was between him and Constantine so that his friend was not forced to watch the grisly meal. He hoped the dark man’s chuckling laughter was loud enough to mask the retching noises coming from Adrian’s body.

  By the time the dish was empty, Adrian knew his mind had been broken, for he was praying for a dark angel to deliver him from the hell he had finally accepted was very real indeed.

  Chapter 1

  February 1181

  Melk, Austria

  The sudden rapping on his chamber door caused Adrian to flinch. He looked immediately to the small man hunched over his lower abdomen, but Song had already raised his hands away with his typical quick grace and sat back on his heels. The faint, rhythmic pain in Adrian’s body faded with the Chinese man’s retreat, but irritation at being interrupted caused his temples to pound.

  The rapping sounded again, and then an accented voice called through the thick wood of the door. “Ad—Brother Adrian?” the voice corrected, and Adrian could see in his mind the Spaniard rolling his eyes at the enforced title. “It is I, Brother Valentine.”

  Adrian raised himself up from the mattress on his elbows and scowled toward the door. “What do you want, Valentine?”

  “There is a—” Valentine Alesander broke off, and his next words were muffled, as if he pressed his face close to the seam of door and stone wall. “Actually, I would prefer no to have this conversation in the corridor.”

  “I’m busy. I shall see you at supper.” Adrian lay back down and motioned toward Song to resume his task. The Chinese monk leaned over Adrian’s hips.

  The chamber door rattled against the bolt, causing Song to once more calmly retreat and Adrian to sigh without quite the same easy acceptance.

  “Victor sent me,” Valentine said pointedly from the corridor. “Why do you have a lock on your door? No one else has a lock on their door.”

  Adrian ignored the question but gained one elbow to look toward the small, serene man whose eyes fixed upon Adrian’s naked torso. “I’m sorry. Can you finish?”

  Song nodded his smooth head once.

  Adrian turned his face toward the door. “I’ll be a moment.”

  “It is no trouble. I will wait.”

  Adrian collapsed back onto the bed and raised his forearm to lay it across his eyes. He felt the coolness of the sides of Song’s palms against his skin, the faint vibrations of the monk’s ministrations in the muscles of his abdomen.

  He barely noticed when it was over. The mattress shifted slightly as the spare man backed down from the bed, rolling the tools of his secret and forbidden trade into a small bamboo mat. Adrian rose and swung his legs over the side of the bed, looking down at his nakedness, then raised his eyes to Song.

  The Chinese bow
ed and then swept a downward-facing palm through the air.

  “No more?” Adrian asked, looking down again. He felt hot prickles behind his eyes as he surveyed his raw and bleeding skin. But he needn’t have asked because the proof was before him.

  Song had fulfilled his promise.

  When he looked up, the silent monk was walking toward the door. Adrian stood and attended the lacings of his chausses. “You must allow me to repay you,” he said, tucking in the ties and then reaching for his undershirt.

  Song paused with a half turn and shook his head. No.

  Adrian swept his shirt over his head. “I insist,” he said as he emerged through the neck hole. “Perhaps some herb, or . . . coin? What do you have need of?”

  Adrian expected only continued silence from the Chinese man, and so he was surprised when Song seemed to consider the offer Adrian had put forth. He raised his face to regard Adrian directly, and the tilt of his dark, sparkling eyes gave him an elfin look.

  “You must live to fulfill your purpose,” he said, his voice as low as a whisper but with no hint of breathiness. “It is only my duty to give you the protection of the old ones. The honor of it is payment enough.” He bowed again before reaching for the door.

  Adrian might have been touched by the quiet man’s concern had it not shamed him to admit that he needed Song’s ignorant charms to protect him against scars that were terrifyingly real—both physically and mentally.

  He held the door open while Song gave Valentine his own small bow and then moved past him down the corridor on silent, sandaled feet. Adrian ignored the Spaniard’s raised eyebrows as he turned back into the barren cell to retrieve his long brown habit from a peg in the wall. It was the only bit of decoration in the stone chamber.

  “Why shouldn’t I have a lock on my door?” Adrian asked instead. “You have a lock on your door.”

  “I do,” Valentine acquiesced. “But I also have a secret wife in an abbey full of monks.” His ever-present smirk deepened as he tossed a glance out the door and into the corridor where Song had disappeared. “Perhaps I am no the only one to have a secret, yes? Song is very petite. Although I always imagined you with someone less”—he rolled one hand in the air as if searching for the right word—“bald.”

  Adrian pulled his head through the habit and then turned to reach for his cincture. He drew up the yards of brown wool around his hips, securing it carefully below his tender skin. “You have a message?” he prompted, not willing in that moment to engage the Spaniard in repartee.

  “Victor has called a meeting,” Valentine said, his eyes catching on the squares of blood-smeared linen left on Adrian’s thin mattress. “There has been some word. Adrian, are you injured?”

  “No. Perhaps your wife’s inquiries have seen early success.”

  “Hmm,” Valentine murmured, his gaze still studying the bloody scraps of cloth. “Then what is—”

  “When and where?” Adrian asked.

  Valentine at last dragged his face toward Adrian’s. “Now, of course. I do no need to tell you where.”

  Thankfully, the Spaniard’s inquisition ceased once he and Adrian were in the corridor. It was not the first time Adrian had been grateful for Melk’s enforced silence, and he utilized the time it took to maneuver through the abbey’s corridors on the way to the library to form a hypothesis about the news Victor would impart.

  Valentine’s wife, Mary Beckham, had sent a score of identical letters chronicling the facts of her husband’s and his friends’ entrapment to the most powerful contacts in the English and Christian Holy Land rule. The missives were to gain their destinations by a circuitous route, first traveling to Vienna to be handed off to Father Victor’s trusted compatriots and then scattering across the map as letters contained within letters, visiting tens of burgs and switching bearers countless times before reaching the hands each were intended for. Adrian wondered, though, that they could be receiving good news in such a short span of time. The messages had only left Melk two months earlier.

  He fidgeted with his cincture, which had ridden up and was now rubbing against his skin. Valentine’s keen eyes caught the movement, and Adrian could tell that his curiosity was straining at its lead once more. Fortunately, they were just passing the wide stone archway that housed the set of shallow steps leading to the abbey’s lower levels, and some beast from below chose that moment to send a bloodcurdling scream ricocheting up the stone passage.

  The men exchanged glances but of course said nothing, and Valentine’s interest in Adrian’s discomfort was effectively interrupted.

  They neared the entry hall of the abbey, and after glancing around to be certain there were no witnesses, Valentine took the lead and stepped up onto a stone pedestal where a ten-foot-tall statue of St. Michael seemed to be keeping watch over the guardhouse beyond the gate. The Spaniard slipped into the dark arch of what appeared to be no more than a shallow inset behind the statue, but the depression was only an illusion; the stones were actually set back nearly two feet from the surrounding arch, and in truth it was this hidden opening that the archangel protected.

  Although Adrian estimated the statue to weigh several tons; one man laying his weight to a certain wind-tossed fold at the rear of Michael’s heavenly garment would cause the angel to tilt backward, his wide wings effectively sealing off the secret entrance to the even more secret chamber above.

  Adrian quickly followed Valentine into the tight-winding stone staircase, which widened after the first turn just enough to accommodate the width of a man. But the stones still brushed both Adrian’s shoulders with every step, and the feeling of imprisonment made his already inflamed skin crawl. There was no light source, so that by the time Adrian had taken ten steps, he and Valentine were ascending in pitch blackness. It was only for a pair of moments though, and then Adrian heard Valentine’s huff of breath as he pushed at the door at the pinnacle of the stairs.

  The stone slab moved soundlessly, and as Adrian passed into the secret library and slowly swung the massive entry shut, he marveled as always at the ingenious hinge on which it hung. Removing one small iron pin would cause the entire slab to settle fully into the deep groove in the floor, wedging into the invisibly tapered stone jamb, where it could never again be opened.

  Trapping humanity’s knowledge—and its noble but unfortunate savior—inside for an unknown eternity.

  A quick glance around the room affirmed that all were gathered at the table that dominated the secret library. Valentine took his usual seat nearest the door, next to the huge blond Norseman. Roman, once Adrian’s stone master at Chastellet, sat turning a smooth obelisk of granite in his fingers. Roman shared his side of the table with Melk’s abbot, Victor, who studied his folded hands. Constantine sat opposite Valentine, with his back toward the one window of the library. His wide shoulders were hunched as his forearms braced him on the table, his head hanging.

  It had become his common stance since just before the first snowfall, when he’d learned that his wife and son had been murdered. As if he could barely muster the strength to remain upright under his burden of grief, the once formidable general of Chastellet appeared beaten.

  None of the men looked up at Adrian and Valentine’s arrival, although Roman did give Valentine a sideways glance that, had Adrian been in a more generous mood, he might have taken the time to interpret. But as it was, with being interrupted and still experiencing a good deal of discomfort from Song’s labors, the only things Adrian was interested in were his separate chair next to the window beyond Constantine and the decanter atop the nearby side table. He seized the second and lowered himself carefully into the first, picking up the cup he’d left on the stone sill that morning and filling it with rich red wine.

  He had drunk half the wine and still the library was stuffed with its muffled silence. It was unusual for the old abbot to summon the men during the light of day—they typically only came together after the evening prayers had faded away with the incense and the other monks were ab
ed. Obviously something of import had occurred, but Adrian was not in a hurry to hear whatever it was. The library was his haven, and unused as he was to sharing it, he was content enough to let the quiet stand.

  He moved his cup to his left hand and picked up the manuscript of philosophy he’d laid on the sill earlier, his place between the vellum pages marked by one of Lou’s cast-off tail feathers. It then crossed Adrian’s mind that he’d not seen the hunting falcon upon entering the library, and he deduced that Roman had been summoned in such a hurried fashion that he’d been forced to leave Lou behind in the mews.

  This realization caused Adrian to raise his eyebrows for a moment, but then he rested the book on his thighs and grasped the hard rib of the feather, using it as a lever to find where he’d left off. He’d read halfway down the page of minuscule text, painstakingly translating the Greek characters, when Victor at last spoke.

  “I had a visitor today,” the abbot began in his usual quiet voice, although his tone was even more subdued and measured than usual. “In the red confessional.”

  Adrian’s eyes came to pause over the word μυστιó.

  Mystikó.

  Secret.

  A visitor to the red confessional could mean only one thing: Someone had come to Melk bearing one of Chastellet’s gold coins, which Father Victor had distributed to confessors the world over. If anyone’s sins or problems could be traced back to the massacre at Jacob’s Ford, and the framing of the four men now in hiding at Melk, they would be directed to the abbey on the Danube.

  The red confessional was the place where Mary Beckham had come seeking help, and she had led Valentine directly to the betrayer of Chastellet—and the accuser of the four—Glayer Felsteppe.