The Butcher of St Peter's: (Knights Templar 19) Read Online Free PDF

nothing. Here in his solar, he was safe from anything
     – any
one
! A man trying to get in here would have to wade through the blood of the servants and men-at-arms in his hall, then climb
     the stairs. He’d hear them from yards off; it wasn’t even as though they could expect to find everyone asleep,not at this time of night. No, if there was to be an attack, he would know of it. Even a single assassin would—
    His heart seemed to freeze in his chest. In an instant he realized what the noise must have been. He leaped to his feet, leaving
     her naked on the furs, scarcely heeding her complaints, and bounded to the chest on which lay his old sword. This he snatched
     up, and made for the door. The peg latched it and he yanked it free, sword in hand, and hurried down the heavy timber staircase.
     At the bottom was the little chamber he had made for his son, and here he stopped, panting slightly. The bed was still there,
     and on it he saw the shape of his boy. Against the chill, the lad had pulled a thick fustian blanket over his linen sheets,
     and as Reg approached more quietly, his breathing already easing, he saw that his son’s face showed as a pale disc in the
     moon’s light.
    The lad was nearly six years old, and he wore an expression of mildly pained enquiry on his sleeping face, one arm thrown
     up over his brow as though he was striking himself for a failed memory. He looked so perfect that Reg felt a pang of sadness
     to think that soon such beauty must pass. It would be no time before the boy was learning his arms, practising with bow and
     sword to the honour of his family and his king. God shield him!
    Reg was about to return upstairs when he registered what had struck him already, that the window was open and the shutter
     wide. He shouldn’t have been able to see his son in that room, not at night, not with his determination that all should be
     secure against attack.
    Turning, he glanced at the window, and his heart chilled again as he felt, rather than saw, the figure, grim, dark and menacing,
     standing at the opening. Reg gave a shrill cry, partly rage, mostly fear, and hurled his sword at the man. It missed, striking
     the wall and clattering with a ringing peal to the groundas the man slipped out through the window, and then fled over the rough patch of yard.
    Henry heard about the man’s screams the next day. Although with his terrible, twisted shoulder it was hard for him to perform
     any manual labour of the type he had once found so easy, at least his natural affinity for horses meant he could earn a living
     as a carter. He’d been lucky to acquire the wagon and pony, and fortunately he was also blessed with the natural good humour
     of a man who had suffered through his life, and was able to find amusement in almost any tale.
    That morning he had no business, and was sitting on a bench outside the tavern called the Blue Rache up near St Petroc’s,
     enjoying his early wet of a quart of middling strong ale, when he overheard two men discussing the affair. One of the men
     worked in Reginald Gylla’s household, and he appeared hugely amused by the whole incident. As, for that matter, was Henry.
    ‘He’s this big, bluff lad, the master. Well, you know him. Spit in the eye of the devil, he would usually, and not worry about
     it. Well, thing was, when I saw him after that, he was shaking so much, he could hardly pick up his sword again. Just stood
     there shouting for us to check the garden, saying there was an assassin out there or something, and holding his boy for all
     he was worth. Never seen nothing like it.’
    ‘Sounds like he’s daft.’
    ‘Huh! If you had the one son and you found a man in there …’
    ‘Or thought you had. How much’d he had to drink, eh?’
    ‘Enough,’ the first conceded. ‘But it wasn’t that. I thought he’d seen a ghost, when he said the fellow was a tall man, clad
     in black with a hood over his face and all … but it weren’t a ghost. It was