Defiant Unto Death by David Gilman Page B

being alone and punished for every wrong step.’
    Blackstone left his squire to continue his duties and took away his own doubts about his son and his inability to be a good father.
    Simon Bucy, the man who wanted to deprive Henry Blackstone of his father, pondered the fate of France and the vital role he could play in saving her. From his magnificent urban estate close to the Abbey of Saint-Germain-des-Prés he gazed from the window of his mansion across the gardens towards the Royal Palace. So much turmoil had been endured by the people of this great city. It was only a few years ago that half its population, some fifty thousand, lay in wretched death on its streets. The great paved streets that led through the city suburbs to the countryside had seen no royal procession but bore witness to the crippled rhythm of cartwheels as they lumbered, stacked with the dead, towards the communal graves. But now Paris was alive with street traders and commerce, and must never fall into the hands of the barbaric English soldiers. Let Edward increase his foothold in Gascony for now if he must, but those who secretly supported him, and who could hand the keys of this great city to his King’s enemies, must be stopped. He had to find a way to cut the root of the Norman lords’ power, to disinherit them of the strength they possessed. There could be no sudden violence inflicted upon them; instead they must be drawn in, snared and dispatched. But how to destroy the man who could rise up in their support, bringing hundreds of the men who garrisoned his towns? What was his weakness that could be exploited? If Thomas Blackstone stayed entrenched at his home in Normandy, as the King’s spies informed Bucy, then little could be done to draw him out.
    A servant’s footsteps scuffed the floor. Bucy gestured the man forward and took the folded note from the silver tray that was offered. The ink-smudged paper showed a decent hand from a poorly sharpened quill, but it had been written in haste. Bucy had sent word to the one Norman lord who might answer the question that preyed on his mind. The traitor could not be seen visiting Bucy’s residence; instead a messenger would rendezvous with him and unsigned notes would pass between them. No seal or mark to reveal the writer.
    Honour and fealty, or a quest for wealth, could take a man across the world to fight an enemy he never knew. But what kept such a man at home? He needed to find the means to geld the scarred Englishman. He tore open the note.
    Bucy swept down the cloisters of the abbey church of Saint-Magloire that stood north of the city. Messengers had gone before him to keep the monks out of sight. This secret meeting needed no witnesses and the church had been endowed with enough money for the prior to know when absence was required. Two of Bucy’s guards stood at the great doors that led to the vaulted darkness of the church. As he stepped across their threshold they closed behind him, their sullen echo reverberating across the flagstones. A cloaked figure stepped out from the shadows, his tabard hidden; the hood of his ermine-lined cloak covering his face. Bucy glanced left and right, a matter of habit to ensure there were no other witnesses to the meeting, that no monk lay prostrate in the near darkness, humbling himself before God. He knew it was unnecessary, because his guards had already swept through the side altars and pressed beyond the massive pillars to explore the shadows by torchlight. Only the traitor stood waiting.
    Bucy strode towards the altar and the candlelit figure of the suffering Christ. There was little humility within Simon Bucy – he was a political survivor – but he bent his knee. The Norman lord who was to betray his friends settled onto a bench. Bucy rose and approached him. He pulled his own cloak tighter around himself, the chill damp of the chapel penetrating his old bones, although he felt a gratifying sense of warmth at being