Perhaps it was his disheveled, half-dressed, undoubtedly wild-looking state that prevented the guard on duty from questioning him overmuch. The tired young soldier made a brief protest that he could not permit Alex to see the prisoner without Pembroke’s permission, but when Alex told him that he would be the one to wake the earl on a fool’s errand—Alex was one of Pembroke’s chief lieutenants and the man put in charge of finding the spy, after all—the guard quickly saw the wisdom of opening the door.

Ducking through the low stone doorway, Alex entered the small guardroom. The smell of piss and excrement—probably from the wooden bucket in the corner—struck him first. But he was relieved to see that although small, cold, and basic in the extreme, the temporary prison wasn’t too bad. It was a hell of a lot better than the pit prison. Alex should know, he’d spent a few nights there when he’d left the Guard and escorted Rosalin Clifford back to her brother Robert, who was the Governor of Berwick at the time.

The noise of the door had caused the occupant to stir. The monk turned from his curled-up position on the plaid-covered pile of straw and glanced over in Alex’s direction as he entered. Though the lamp Alex had placed on the single table in the room didn’t offer much light, he was relieved to see that the monk didn’t have a face full of bruises and a nose pointing in the wrong direction.

The thin churchman with tonsured head clutched the blanket around himself tighter and scooted back toward the wall. He was younger than Alex expected—probably no more than twenty—and had the kind of face that was neither plain nor attractive, but was unremarkable, which no doubt helped his role as a courier. He didn’t stick out.

Realizing that he was frightening him, Alex schooled some of the fury from his face. Seeing a stool tucked under the table, he pulled it out and sat, hoping that by getting down lower it would make him seem less threatening.

It seemed to work, as the young monk’s expression changed from frightened to wary. “What do you want? I’ve told them everything I know.”

Alex didn’t think he had, but he knew that confrontation and threats weren’t the way to proceed. “I need your help.”

The evenly voiced plea surprised the monk enough for him to sit up. Still, he eyed Alex as if he were a snake coiled and ready to strike. “What kind of help?”

“The woman you are trying to protect is in danger.”

If he hadn’t been looking for it, Alex might not have seen it. But there was a telltale flicker of shock in the monk’s eye.