They decided it was enough of a reason to enter, ready for battle. Elias asked her to stay at the church with Father Benedict, but she wouldn’t hear of it. He didn’t argue too long for he knew her and he loved this part of her. “Stay close to me then, Lily.”
She agreed to that and entered the house quietly, blades drawn.
She knew the layout of the house better than Elias, so she led him to the different rooms.
When they came upon the large room where Norman held meetings with appointed officials—who were mostly dead, they heard a man’s voice through the closed doors. Elias held his ear to the cool wood.
“When the hell will he be back?” one male voice complained.
“I do not know, James,” said another. “Do I look like his nursemaid?”
“We have not figured out yet what you look like, Gilbert,” said another male voice. More laughter rang out.
“Do any of us look like nursemaids?” James roared. “I did not join the bishop’s forces to look after children!”
He’d heard enough. Elias pulled back his leg and then kicked the doors in.
The room was quite large, more like a hall, with a long, wooden table and wooden chairs set around it. There was an enormous hearth with a blazing fire for warmth and more chairs, these cushioned, spread about the room.
Charlie and little Eddie sat in one of them. Charlie was doing his best to keep the babe from crying. Norman and his wife and daughters were there as well. Terrified but quiet.
Lily counted five men sitting around the table. They all bolted to their feet when the door cracked and split. She grabbed one knife by the handle and flung it at one of them. The blade settled nicely into his belly. It wasn’t likely enough to kill him but Elias leaped onto the table and hacked at the man’s throat, finishing him. He killed three more, while Lily threw her knife at the last man and hit him in the chest. He went down quickly, proving she’d hit him in the heart.
She ran to the children while Elias checked behind more doors and curtains.
They were alone.
Lily thanked God that the children were unharmed. According to Norman, these men had been waiting for someone to arrive, keeping little Eddie alive until he got there.
“He is the Bishop of Oxford, Louis Edmundson’s child,” Lily explained to the others.
Elias vowed to kill the bishop and the man the soldiers had been waiting for. But who was he? Charlie had only heard a name. Parrock.
They weren’t going to sit around and wait for him to show up. They had to go now! They raced for Eleanor’s house and gathered Annabelle and Terrick and his mother. Then they stopped at Alan’s and after that, Estrid’s. Nine of them were gone. Fourteen were left, not including Brother Simon and Elias. Either way, they beat the odds. Reports had come in to Norman about how sixty percent, possibly more of the people in London were dead. Lily wanted to weep for every one of them, but now was not the time. Now it was time to move. Where would they go?
Elias was leading them back to the church. One by one, he made certain everyone entered. He directed them to the basement with Father Benedict, then he shut the door and stayed above stairs with Lily, Alan, and Norman. Lily filled the others in on what they knew. The bishop wanted his son, little Eddie, dead. While many kings fathered illegitimate children, most bishops did not.
“We will protect him with our lives,” Alan swore.
“Let us hope it doesna come to that,” Elias said.
He stationed them near a window on every side to look out for any movement. There shouldn’t be any, for no one else was left.
Lily stared out of a window on the west wall. Elias covered the south. It was closest to her but still far enough away that they could not speak without shouting.
What kind of monster was this Parrock that he could do the bidding of another even when asked to kill a child? Oh, she hoped Elias got his hands on that one. She wondered how they had found her and suffered the horrible notion that Bertram hadn’t died after all—again. No. She had seen all the blood. He had been bleeding out on the floor.
But what if he hadn’t died?
She turned, wanting to go to Elias for reassurance. Her one hope remained that Charlie and Norman hadn’t heard mention of Bertram, nor had they seen him. Then how had Parrock’s men found little Eddie?
The rush of horses’ hooves outside her window snatched her breath clean out of her body. It was them! How many? They passed her window! She jumped up and ran to the next window in their path. It was the one Norman was guarding. She looked out. Three riders. She ran to Elias with Norman behind her.
He was already on his way to them. “Three. There are three of them,” she told her husband. He nodded and they all ran to Alan’s window to look out at Norman’s house.
The three men dismounted slowly, cautiously. One of them called out. No one answered. That was because his men were dead.
“They are goin’ to start searchin’ the cottages,” Elias told them. “Then they will come here. I want ye all to go down—”