bench, while I bent over him, feeling my lips twist into a feral smile.
Holding his crossed wrists easily in one hand, I smashed the heel of the other up under his chin, knocking his head against the wall with stunning force. As he slumped, I caught him again, cracking a blow across his cheek. Calmly I lowered the lax hands, and just as calmly bent his right thumb back until it broke. He came to with a howl, that doubled in volume as the left thumb was broken, then dwindled to a whimper. “Why? Why me?”
“As you’ve asked, Ingram, I shall tell you. Do you remember Deptford, Ingram? Eleanor Bull’s house? Do you boast and brag about getting away with murder that sultry, summery day?”
“M-m-marlowe? N-n-no! Dead! Dead and buried!”
“So I am often told. I think not. But you will be. You may thank Sir Thomas Walsingham that I do not kill you outright, and if I hear that you have troubled him again in anyway, I shall kill you anyway. Or if I should hear further tales of travelers molested after leaving your inn.
“You see, it was I cut Nick Skeres throat for him, Ingram,” I said, and laughed. “You should have seen his blood spouting through his fumbling, useless hands,” I continued, pausing a moment to lick my lips, and Frizer shuddered. “Do you remember when you so kindly told me what I could expect from a traitor’s death? I shall not be so refined with you, but the results will be the same. You will be begging me to die, before it’s done, scrabbling through your guts with your own two hands. Oh, not tonight, but one day. One night you will see me again, and you will know then that I have come to collect the reckoning.
“You could cheat me, of course. If you bandy the tale of this night about, you will certainly be locked up as a lunatic. I would still kill you, but it would have to be quickly done. Not that you wouldn’t beg for it, after you’d been locked up in Bedlam for a time.” I stepped back, poised in case he should attack, but the man just sat there, rigid, slack-jawed and beginning to drool. A touch at my arm whirled me around, and I almost struck her before I realized it was woman I had seen earlier.
“My lord, you best go out the back. They be waiting for you in the yard,” she said, her voice dull and colorless. She looked down at Frizer with apathetic eyes. “It’s the apoplexy; he’s had small fits before. One day, God willing, he’ll die of it.” I was surprised at the venom in her voice, until I noticed the bruises on her arms. She hastily rolled the sleeves of her shift down to cover them. Shyly, she offered me a half-smile, and I thought that at one time she must have been quite pretty. Almost without volition I drew her to me. She resisted for only a second before sliding into my embrace. I left her, dazed from the pleasure of my feeding, there on the bench beside her husband.
As I stepped from the front door of the inn, I spotted my adversaries hidden around the inn-yard. Five of them, two armed with swords, two with cudgels, and one with what appeared to be a length of stout chain. They couldn’t know that I had seen them, and I strode through the courtyard to the tumble-down shack that served as a stable. They moved then, but not as silently as they believed. Before any of them could reach me, I had drawn my sword, and stood smiling at them over the length of it. Within seconds all were bloodied and the two swordsmen were down, one with a death wound. The others fled. I laughed aloud, retrieved my horse and rode into the night towards Blackavar, well pleased with my night’s work.
I heard there was great wonder the next day in Eltham, when Mistress Frizer told how the two swordsmen had quarreled and fought each other. The survivor agreed with her tale, for to dispute it would be to admit a murderous assault upon the one-eyed stranger.
We had taken a house in Chelsey when the court had moved to Whitehall, and I attended the Queen every night. To forestall further trouble with the court bravos I challenged three of them, one after the other, to an exhibition of swordsmanship, and her majesty