Coke heard Pitman shouting in the room behind the men. ‘Clear away!’ The thief-taker would be there promptly, he was sure. So he need only delay these gentlemen for a short time. Yet if he hoped to do it with conversation he was immediately disappointed when the first man, has face hidden by a scarf, slashed the cutlass across his chest and the youth charged at him.
Coke stepped fast back, avoiding the swung steel, then brought his sword hard across to guide the rapier past his side, the body following and aided in its acceleration by the foot the captain stuck out. The youth yelped and crashed onto the slick roof tiles. But the last, biggest man now lunged hard for Coke’s chest and he was only just able to get his own sword back to parry the thrust, taking it over his shoulder. This brought the man close enough for Coke to see, even in the poor light, the fury in the green eyes. Fury, but little fear.
The gaze held but a moment before Coke shoved the steel hard away, dropped his wrist, and tried to pop the pommel of his sword between those furious eyes. But the man had seen it, raised his other hand and caught the pommel – though the force of the blow banged his knuckles into his face. His fingers fastened, he tried to wrench the sword from the captain’s hand, but Coke jerked it hard back, using the movement to retire two steps, just in time to duck the cutlass the scarfed man swung at him a second time. However, Coke’s retreat had taken him close to the sprawled youth who reached and grabbed his legs. Swaying, Coke swung his sword in a great circle to fend off the other attackers while he fought for balance – a fight he lost, tumbling down even as the elder man lunged again, the fall saving him.
Coke freed a leg, kicked the son hard in his chest, rolling to the side to dodge, yet again, the scarfed man’s cutlass. As it smashed onto the tiles beside him, he swept his rapier across, forcing both the standing men back, kicking his legs hard, heels scrabbling on the roof, propelling him away from the men who looked as if they were going to come again…and then didn’t.
‘Hold there!’ yelled Pitman, his great boots reducing the window frame to further splinters. He pushed one leg and half his big body through, his pistol leading. With one glance at him and another to the rising captain, the three conspirators ran as one for the roof edge and hurled themselves over it.
Pitman was beside him in a moment. ‘Are you hurt?’
‘Only my pride.’
Pitman offered an arm and hauled Coke up. ‘An unusual guard, Captain, sitting on your arse,’ he said. ‘Learn it in France?’
‘Are we after them?’
‘We are – for that’s two-thirds of our bounty escaping.’
‘Fast then – I’ve house payments to make.’
The two men leapt the small parapet between roofs just as their quarry’s coat-tails disappeared over the next one. Coke and Pitman followed fast, dropping to the cobbles. The pace of hunter and prey was evenly matched as they splashed through the garbage-choked kennels of the ill-lit alleys, weaving westwards.
Pitman began to labour. ‘ ’Tis my armour,’ he gasped at Coke’s querying glance. ‘Not meant for running.’
‘Can you slip it off?’
‘Too troublesome,’ Pitman grunted. ‘Come! Last gasp or lose ’em.’ And with that, the bigger man sped up.
They drew close enough to hear the heaving breaths of the men ahead. This alley was narrowing, darkening, the jutties overhead nearly joined into a single roof. But then, around another bend, the way ahead lightened, for the alley’s end gave onto an open space, and a vast structure ahead.
‘The cathedral!’ wheezed Coke. ‘Do they seek sanctuary?’
‘They’ll find none,’ came the grunted reply. Taking the lead, for two men could not clear the entrance together, Pitman burst out into St Paul’s churchyard, the captain a pace behind him.
There was enough of a moon to turn the biggest building in the city into a hulk of shadows and gloom. Scaffolding was everywhere, propping up walls that had long leaned precipitously outwards, allowing for sailcloth and wood tiles to block vast sections of the holed and sagging roof. While two of the pursued ran straight for the wooden struts at the church’s eastern end, the third turned right, speeding up, heading north to Blow Bladder Street and the cramped alleys beyond.
‘Yours,’ said Pitman, nodding after the man.
‘And leave you two? Nay!’
They’d paused. The men ahead had started to mount the scaffolding. ‘I’ll have ’em,’ said Pitman, patting his chest. ‘I’ve two primed pistols here, and I am certain they have discharged both theirs. Drag your man back here, if you can.’
In matters of pursuit, the highwayman had decided to defer to the thief-taker. With a nod, he obeyed.
Pitman reached the base of the eastern wall in a dozen strides, just as the men above him slipped through a gap of crumbled masonry. He grunted. A climb in armour did not appeal. He looked through the wooden poles, noted a small door like a sally port in the bastion of a castle. He slipped into the scaffolding, reached for the door’s handle. It gave way easily to his twist and opened silently outwards. He stepped inside.
He stood just inside the doorway, allowing his eyes to become accustomed to the gloom. There was some light within the great hall; lanterns burned at a few points, a little moonlight came through such of the stained-glass windows that had not been shrouded in sailcloth for their protection. He did not know the cathedral well – he was a man of the dissident meeting house not the great churches of state. But he had been there during Cromwell’s Commonwealth, when soldiers more radical than he had desecrated a building they saw as verging on popery. They’d stabled horses in the chapels and played ninepins in the nave.
From what he could see – and the view of most of the church was obscured by the great screen that separated this space behind the altar and the choir beyond – St Paul’s was not in a much better state under the king than it had been in Cromwell’s day. Wooden poles rose above him, with platforms at various levels, propping up walls that bowed out. The altar step was there, but the altar was not – as any services held within were now confined, he knew, to the chapel below, at the level of the crypt, St Faith’s, a parish church within a cathedral.
He waited, mastering his breath. And then he heard a whisper, a young man’s voice, and his older companion cutting him short with a harsh, ‘Shtt!’ The scaffolding creaked above him. The men were descending. But unless they knew of the sally port, there was only one way for them to leave the church and that was at its western end, through its main doors.
Passing through the rood screen, into the choir, Pitman found a place for ambush: the tomb of some ancient prelate, his form atop it, stone hands clasped over his belly in piety. He slipped into its shadows, stumbling a little at the rear of the sarcophagus where his feet encountered some pieces of masonry fallen from it. Then he heard again the creak of wood, and boots dropping onto flagstones. He drew both his pistols and several deep breaths.
The men came into the choir. They hesitated for a moment at the gap in the rood screen, then strode swiftly forward. A few moments would bring them level with the tomb. Regretting the necessity of the sound, Pitman full cocked both his guns.
A voice came hard upon the sound. ‘What make you here? Murder, what ho!’
Pitman swivelled around fast – to find a man, with the collar of a priest, rising from one of the choir stalls close by, where darkness had concealed him. ‘Quiet, sir –’ Pitman began.
There was a rush of footsteps. ‘Hold!’ Pitman cried, swinging back his guns.
Too late. They were close and had drawn their weapons. Pitman raised one pistol. But the youth knocked it aside, and the elder lunged.
The blade’s thrust came low. The breastplate deflected the point from his guts – but guided it into Pitman’s thigh.
He cried out, stumbled backwards, stepping onto the piles of broken stones. Wobbled upon them, trying to twist around and keep his pistols levelled at his enemies; he fell. There was a crack, bringing searing pain to his already wounded
, twisted leg. Yet Pitman managed to raise one pistol and fire, aiming he knew not where.
He hit neither man – but the explosion echoed hugely in the vaulted chamber. Shouts came, and the man who’d startled him stepped up. As Pitman raised the second pistol, the priest grabbed his arm. ‘This is the house of God! Thieves! Murderers! Ho!’ he roared. From further down the nave came more shouts, along with the sound of running feet. Pitman jerked his pistol free. ‘Stop,’ he cried, trying to struggle up, causing agony by his movement. But if his quarry heard they did not heed him, sprinting towards the approaching torches, crying out to make way.
Pitman fell back heavily, laid the pistols down beside him and reached to his leg. His fingers came away sticky. ‘Help me,’ he whispered, holding the blood up to the priest who bent over him now, before the darkness came.
—
Coke walked back into the cathedral yard, shaking his head. He had lost his man in the twisting alleys. To some tavern perhaps, or the sanctuary of one of his fellow Saints. He could only hope that Pitman had done better, and that their purses would yet be filled.
He came in through the west doors, pausing to lean against them and take still more deep breaths. It’s a younger man’s game, he thought. Ten years ago I’d have caught the rogue.
There was only gloom around the entrance; but further down the great nave, near its eastern end, he saw a circle of lights. A murmuring came to him and he smiled. No doubt Pitman was there, standing over the shackled villains, holding forth on how God’s providence had manifested in his life again, delivering the realm’s enemies into his hands. He likes an audience, Coke thought, speeding up. Don’t want to miss the sermon.
A crowd was gathered, but not around Pitman – at least that was Coke’s first thought – his friend would tower over everyone there. But then, as he pushed through, he saw the thief-taker – propped up against a choir stall, his face in the lamplight chalky white.
Coke was at his side in a moment. ‘What is it, man? You are hurt?’
‘I am.’ Pitman groaned.
Coke looked down. His friend had a grey rag shoved against his thigh. Even in the dim lamplight, the deeper stains were obvious. ‘Bullet or blade?’ he asked.
‘Blade.’
‘May I see?’
A faint smile came to Pitman’s lips. ‘I do not think your battlefield skills will serve me here, Captain. And do you not faint at the sight of blood?’
‘It’s more guts I have a problem with. You are not –’
‘Bowel pierced? Nay. But there’s a lot of blood and I do not dare remove the bandage for fear of issuing more.’ A spasm of pain came and he gripped Coke’s arm. ‘Get me home, for mercy’s sake. Get me to Bettina.’
—
Three hundred paces away, three men sat in the ruins of a different church.
‘This was once the liberty of St Martin’s Le Grand,’ said Simeon Critchollow, patting a tumbled, ivy-covered stone. ‘If we’d fled here in the reign of Good Queen Bess, we might have cried sanctuary within its bounds and defied our enemies.’
‘I doubt that would have stopped the thief-taker,’ muttered Captain Blood.
‘But a blade did, Father,’ said his son. ‘You stabbed that bastard good.’
‘Good enough to kill him, think you?’ asked Simeon.
‘Mayhap.’
‘If it is so, you have done our cause great service. This Pitman has been a mighty enemy of the Saints before this night and would be again.’
‘And who was the other? The one we fought on the roof and who pursued you?’
‘His name is Captain Coke. He was a knight of the road. Now he catches them. And he fornicates with –’ He paused, licking his lips. This was not the time to discuss again how these three had thwarted the Lord’s great work before. ‘– a veritable whore of Babylon. An actress, Sarah Chalker.’
‘Chalker. Coke. Pitman. All bear the mark of the Beast, that’s for sure.’ Blood tapped his hat. ‘And they are also marked in the book of my head. I will punish them if I can.’
‘Oh, do not fear for that.’ Simeon put out a hand and the younger Blood pulled him up. ‘I have a plan afoot will bring these enemies low. Even as soon as tomorrow.’
‘Assassination?’ asked the younger Blood.
Before his father could reply, Simeon did. ‘Nay, not killing,’ he said, ‘not yet.’ Then he smiled. ‘Something far better than that.’
9
A WEDDING
There was a ghost in the church.
Sarah did not turn to seek it out. Felt it only, a presence behind her. It could be…anyone. Her mother, who’d had the second sight far stronger than she did, always said that marriages and funerals brought the spirits out – and not just the unquiet dead. Conjured from the graves beyond the church’s doors or from the richer tombs within, some worthy burgher whose charity had so benefited the parish would return to gaze with satisfaction upon his works. Or his relic would sit again in her reserved pew to lady it over all others.
This feeling was not like that. She feared that she had brought this spirit with her. It nearly made her look, the thought of him – John Chalker. But the image that came was not as she’d last seen him – in a coffin, a barely recognisable mass of wounds and blood – but as she’d seen him when he’d been the man standing before her at the altar rail. He’d played so many ghosts in performances they’d done together, why would he not show up to be in this one?
Sarah closed her eyes, and swayed. Immediately she felt the captain’s hand upon her arm, steadying her, as he’d had to do all morning. She’d woken feeling nauseous again, the first time in a fortnight. She’d eaten nothing that she had not voided straightway. She looked up at William now, took more steadiness from his eyes, his grey eyes that oft held a remembered sadness, yet now were filled only with love. A love returned, so different from the one she’d had for John, whom she’d known from childhood, a brother from the foul streets of St Giles. They’d risen above them together, all the way to the playhouse, and married on a whim.
William’s look, his arm, centred her. Face forward, she commanded herself. Listen to the words.
‘I require and charge you both,’ continued the priest, ‘that as ye will answer at the dreadful day of judgment when the secrets of all hearts shall be disclosed, that if either of you know any impediment, why ye may not be lawfully joined together in matrimony, ye do now confess it.’
Was a ghost an impediment? Should she declare him? Oh God, let me not laugh! The line between her laughter and her tears was as thin as a St Giles leper these days.
The priest spoke on. It was time for questions, for commitments, for words that she could speak, in reply to William’s, delivered so fervently, when he took her as his wife.
‘I will,’ he declared.
‘I will,’ she replied.
Their love had banished all shades. She was ready now, feeling stronger by the moment.
Until the priest asked the next question, ‘Who giveth this Woman to be married to this Man?’ and she remembered that it was not only the dead that walked. Sometimes the living did too, away from their bodies.
It was meant to be Pitman who gave her away. But he was home and delirious with a fever from an infected wound and a badly broken leg. He could not come – and she did not want to see him there. For her mother had told her that the imminently dead would come to say goodbye to those they loved.
It was a relief then that it was Thomas Betterton who stepped up now – though his face showed that he knew, by the lateness of his casting, that he was undoubtedly an understudy. ‘I do,’ he said, taking his place at Sarah’s right. He put his hand under Sarah’s other elbow, and made a small gesture of moving her towards the priest.
It was the time for lines again and her captain spoke boldly. ‘I, William Coke, take thee, Sarah Chalker, to my wedded wife, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish
, till death us do part, according to God’s holy ordinance; and thereto I plight thee my troth.’
Sarah took his hand, said her not entirely similar words. Then the priest called for the ring.
It was brought on a yell. There was no question as to how alive the ring-bearer was. All attempts to smooth down Dickon’s hair had failed and thick clumps of it stood up on his head like wheat sheaves in a field. They had purchased him new shirt, doublet, breeches and stockings. All had been in alignment when they’d entered St Clement’s; all were now askew. Meanwhile the nuts that he consumed in quantities that would have fed herds were evident in the bits of shell on his lips. ‘Here it is, C-cap’n,’ he cried, brandishing the gold band aloft. ‘As shiny as that one we took off the Marchioness of Guildford –’
‘Thanks, boy,’ interrupted Coke loudly, taking the ring, as sniggers came from the pews. He placed it on Sarah’s finger, repeated the words. ‘With this ring I thee wed, with my body I thee worship, and with all my worldly goods I thee endow: In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy…Ghost.’
She could not help it. The word took her away from all the other words. She said her lines, though it was mainly the vicar now, intoning prayers, citing scripture, urging her to obedience, to the reverence of the man who gripped her again as she swayed.
She was certain who was behind her now. But she waited until the last pronouncements were made, until the chapel erupted in cheers, before she turned to confront him. She understood. She was to see him for this last time. And bid him farewell forever.
And yet it was not her murdered husband. Not the dead who walked there but the living. Dressed as he’d been when she’d seen him upon the stage three weeks before.
It was the man she’d just married. William Coke, who stood in finery beside her, shaking hands – who also stood in rags, dripping water, staring at her. He nodded once before turning and walking through the shut door.
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