Chapter 13: Irish Assassins

“War is the statesman’s game, the priest’s delight, the lawyer’s jest, the hired assassin’s trade.” - Percy Bysshe Shelley

York, Great Britain. December 1071

Like every morning for the past five months, Luke started the day with a rich cup of coffee. Life was even better for Luke once he refined his coffee maker. Having coffee again made Luke a happy guy and annoyed Marion to no end because suddenly Luke had much more energy first thing in the morning. Marion couldn’t stand the smell of coffee and banned Luke from making it in their chambers. Since Alice found that she liked coffee too, she and Luke went down to his workshop every morning to fix themselves coffee and have a quickie before they went on their separate ways for the day.

They quickly came to value their time alone in the workshop since it was the only time they could be alone during the day. Alice and Luke would talk about what they had going on and bounce ideas off each other as they sipped their coffee. Many times, they would eat sausage or steak and eggs as well. Since Luke had a small supply of pepper, he would put some on their eggs before serving.

One morning, Alice took a bite and then set her fork down.

“You know, Luke, I would have loved to have seen the world you grew up in. I can’t imagine having spices from around the world in most stores or having coffee so cheap that anyone could afford it.”

“You would have hated it, Alice. Considering as much you know about medicine, you would have been only considered an amateur and not allowed to touch a patient in most cases. Being a doctor in my world meant spending eight to ten years of your life learning and more if you wanted to specialize. During those years, your life was often put on hold because of long hours or mountains of studying. I remember Becky would be studying so hard she would fall asleep at the kitchen table, and I would have to pick her up and carry her to bed. There would be days when she would spend 36 straight hours at the hospital during her residency, even though it was proven many times that working past roughly ten hours without time off to recover leads to more mistakes. When you made a mistake, you opened yourself up to being sued for wrongful death or injury, which was stressful, expensive, and demoralizing. Imagine how bad you have felt when some of your patients died. Then imagine being sued and forced to defend yourself. It was amazing that anyone would want to become a doctor.”

“Still, I would have liked to have visited, met your sister, traveled across the globe in hours, and talked with someone on the other side of the globe without leaving my house.”

“Visited maybe, but you would have hated living there.”

Luke had nothing more to say, so he reached over and kissed Alice. She smiled at him and continued eating her breakfast. They had a busy day ahead of them, and Alice doubted she would have time to eat until she got home that evening. Luke was slowly sending more of the army to Ireland to fight the coming attack while Alice had piles of tests to grade and return, besides being a doctor and running the hospital. Luke knew he wouldn’t want to do Alice’s job, while Alice knew she didn’t want to do Luke’s job.

Luke had to coordinate the activities of 45,000 men and women while preparing for a war in Ireland. In addition, it was getting to the time of year when Bard traditionally took his vacation, so Luke would have to run his business empire. His business empire had been growing rapidly every year since 1065, and he now had an interest in every part of the British economy. Luke knew exactly how well the economy was doing based on how well his various businesses performed. This also gave Marion an unparalleled view of how her country’s economy and people were doing. With this view, Marion made several adjustments to tax codes and laws that kept the economy from stalling in the last few years.

As usual, Marion got up with Gabriella, and the two went to the army base for PT. They liked to stay in shape, and doing PT with the army was an excellent way to do that. Exercising with the army also had the effect of reinforcing the army’s loyalty to Marion. They liked to stay in shape because of Luke’s health warnings regarding being overweight. He understood why people were thrilled to put on weight; that extra weight might be enough to carry them through the next famine. The problems arose when the risk of famines had been minimized. With the size of the British fishing fleet and its diversified agriculture, the threat of famines in Britain had been drastically reduced.

December stayed quiet until a few days before Christmas. Christmas was when Marion held her yearly ball, which attracted every high-ranking person in the country. This time, a storm system blew through and buried everything under a blanket of snow. Luke was thankful the precipitation fell as snow instead of ice. Snow was much easier to remove from the rail tracks as it only took a plow mounted to the front of the trains and an extra locomotive to clear the tracks.

To clear the city streets, many people were hired to shovel snow into horse-drawn carts dumped in the river downstream of the city. Since there weren’t many snowstorms like the one they had just experienced, the city had no dedicated snow removal team. Instead, they hired every person in the city to pitch in for a day to clear the snow. Employers might not have liked their employees being drafted for a day to clear snow, but it was that, or they couldn’t move their products to market.

The streets were clear by Christmas day, and the trains were on time. Through Bard, Luke emphasized the trains being on time every time. If a train was delayed, Luke insisted on investigating why and what could be done to prevent it from happening again. Due to the slow nature of communications, Luke usually allowed a plus or minus five-minute buffer for train arrival times. Train departure times were plus or minus two minutes.

Another major problem with this Christmas was kept much quieter. Gretchen’s intelligence network in Ireland had intercepted messages regarding assassins arriving in York for the Christmas Ball. Immediately, this intel set off a flurry of activity among the Household Guards and the city police force, and security was tightened. In every tavern, undercover officers listened to conversations, figuring assassins would probably associate with them. The officers were not to arrest anyone but were to observe suspected assassins.

The city taverns were not the only place where there were undercover officers. The Household Guard had undercover members among the palace workers, particularly among the cook staff. It was there that they uncovered the first of the Irish assassins.

The man they caught wasn’t even Irish but English. He had been a low-level cook who dealt with food prep. His being an assassin had nothing to do with his liking or disliking for Marion; it was all about money. The Irish paymasters had given him a small bag of gold, worth roughly a year’s wage for the man before, and promised another bag once the queen was dead.

Fortunately for Marion, the man got nervous and let slip he had acquired Odin’s helm, which Luke knew as Monkshood. The man the would-be assassin confided in was a member of the Household Guard. The guard quickly and quietly took the assassin into custody. On the assassin, the guards found Odin’s helm oil and, after a quick session of questions, got the man to confess. Since the man was a greedy coward, getting him to talk was as easy as sitting him down and explaining what would happen if he didn’t cooperate.

Since the man confessed and hadn’t killed anyone, he was allowed a chance to save his skin. If he led officials to those who hired him, he would spend the rest of his life in prison instead of choking at the end of a rope. British prisons had a reputation for being a place of hard work, feeding the prisoners regularly, and tending to be much more comfortable than contemporary prisons; not that was saying much.

After the man confessed everything, including the identity of the man who paid him, he received surprise visitors; Marion and Gabriella walked into the interrogation room. The man looked at the women and struggled to say anything. He knew who the women were and what they represented.

“I have one question; why?” asked Marion.

“Fuck you, wench! I already answered all your questions.”

Gabriella reached out, seized the back of the man’s head, and slammed his face into the tabletop, which broke his nose.

“Again, why?”

The man started laughing manically. “You should already know since you don’t pay me enough. I needed money, and the Irish were kind enough to give me the money I needed.”

Marion opened the file she brought with her, “You have no family, which doesn’t surprise me since you are a loser. Let’s see, disciplined several times for failing to follow correct food preparation procedures. According to this, all you do in your off hours is sit in a tavern and drink your pay. Yeah, I can see you really needed the money.” Marion finished with a sneer.

“Why I needed the money is of no use to you!”

“Shut up!” snapped Marion. “Enough of your lies. You were trying to kill MY family, and for that, I will make sure you spend the rest of your miserable life regretting ever coming to work in my kitchen.”

“Who cares about your dumb husband or your brats? I wanted to kill you.”

Before Gabriella could react, Marion pulled her knife and slashed the man’s throat. The cut was deep enough to sever his windpipe, jugular vein, and carotid artery. After the man slumped to the floor, Marion started shaking uncontrollably, and Gabriella had to hold her up until they could get to a chair.

“Why Gabby? Does it ever end?”

“You know why, sweetheart. You are the most tremendous force ever unleashed in European politics. You are sure to piss more than a few people off, and some of those barely classify as human.”

“But what would have happened if he succeeded? OH MY GOD, LUKE!” Marion’s cry was cut short when she passed out.

Gabriella knew Luke was safe since he was in the next room, and sure enough, he burst through the door a second later. Seeing Marion and the man she killed, Luke wordlessly picked Marion up and cradled her as he carried her back to their quarters. It was bad enough that people were trying to kill Marion, but Luke was also worried about the children as they made a much easier target.

After Marion was comfortable in bed, Luke headed to his workshop. It was time to build a much more advanced security system, starting with better locks. While Luke worked in the shop, Gabriella watched over Marion from the relative comfort of a nearby chair. From her spot, Gabby watched as Marion had one nightmare after another, and it tore her heart out that she couldn’t crawl into bed to comfort Marion, but someone had to keep watch.

The next assassin was caught a day later. This one was a professional Irish assassin who was captured at the palace front gate when he tried to smuggle a dagger in. When the guards found the dagger, the assassin turned on the guards and, due to surprise, managed to seriously wound one guard before the others took the man down.

Unlike the last assassin, this one couldn’t be broken by talking, so he had to be persuaded. Luke might not have liked the idea of torture but admitted there were times when it served a purpose. While Alice tended to the wounded guard, Gabriella worked on the latest assassin.

It only took her an hour to break the man. She found tough guys were not so tough when their manhood was nailed to a board, and more nails were threatened to be pounded through their testicles. One of the chiefs of Northern Uí Néill sent this assassin to kill Marion. However, the mission had been approved by Toirdelbach Ua Briain. Gabriella knew that when she got her hands on the man, there wouldn’t be enough left to be sent to the mines.

Christmas Eve was when the last assassin struck. Marion was sitting on Luke’s lap in their quarters, sleeping while Luke gently rubbed her back. Just as his eyes closed, the doorknob on their quarters rattled. As a force of habit, Luke glanced at a clock sitting on a nearby dresser and noticed it wasn’t time for Alice to be home while Gabby was in the library. Pollyanna was still at the army base, so Luke didn’t know who was trying to get into their quarters.

Gently as not to wake Marion, Luke stood up and laid her down on their bed before moving to the door. He stood behind the door and waited. It wasn’t long before the door opened, and Luke saw the muzzle of a gun stick through the opening. Luke wondered where the guards on the door were, but that would have to wait. Soon, a hand came through the doorway, followed by the rest of the assassin. This time, it was a woman.

Luke waited until her head was through the door before he struck. He shoved the door closed and, in doing so, knocked the assassin out when the door met her head. The noise brought Gabriella running with guns drawn. What she saw was shocking; the assassin was in the uniform of the Household Guard. What concerned Gabby more was when Luke pulled the assassin in; Gabby recognized her. She was one of the recent recruits and had been on duty guarding the door. While Gabby was tying the guard up, Luke looked out into the hallway and found the other guard with his throat cut. That answered one question.