by Peter Tonkin
Lady Margaret nodded once and was in motion. Tom sprang to her side as she swept from the room. Agnes Danforth followed swiftly enough behind them, shielding the candle with her hand. Down a corridor they went, out into the main hall at the foot of the stair to the upper levels where Martin the Chamberlain sat in a hooded chair beneath a standard candelabrum boasting half a dozen steady flames. He sprang up as they approached and detached the largest of the candles, stepping up on to the lowest step of the staircase; but Lady Margaret stopped. Her eyes sought his and closed for an instant; her hands closed together as though in prayer.
‘Take us to the chapel,’ ordered Tom in the face of their confusion. ‘My Lady wishes to join in the midnight services.’ Without batting an eyelid, Martin Danforth returned the candle to the candelabrum and lifted the whole off the floor. Then, holding it almost theatrically high, he swept across the hall and out before them with his sister Agnes, thin-lipped, behind and his mistress behind the pair of them, leaving Tom to close the great door once they were all through.
Martin and Agnes Danforth led them out through the main door, down the imposing outer staircase and into the great courtyard. The huge edifice of the castle hulked behind them, seeming to push them away with its black and absolute bulk; but the great courtyard was so substantial that there was room enough for them to feel easy – especially as the moon was high and filling, the sky was clear and all the stars were out. Though spring, it remained balmy and almost summer in heat. All down the balustrades the flambards still burned – though low and guttering now – for it was easier to let them burn out. Through the gateway – open, with the portcullis up – the main approach was also still illuminated, stretching away along the cliff-edge above Whitsand Bay.
Agnes and Martin led the pair of them across the courtyard – though this was just service and courtesy, for it was clear enough where the chapel was. The little building nestled close against the inner wall, but tall and independent, with its steeple high and clear, though dwarfed a little by the battlements above. Dedicated to St Michael, it had been built here by the Conqueror’s men, before the castle itself was ever dreamed of. The lights within it glimmered like fallen stars and, beside the flambards and under the moonlight, made Martin Danforth’s gesture with the candelabrum quite unnecessary. This was a situation which, like the matter of the coach earlier, became compounded by misfortune. For, on the bottom step, he tripped. Perhaps his formal cross-gartering had come loose. In an instant he was reeling and the whole metal column of the candelabrum went spinning away to clatter across the courtyard like the crack of doom. Both Tom and Lady Margaret hurried to help him. They pulled him to his feet, tidied away the nearest candles and left him and his sister gathering the other precious white-wax columns and putting them back into their battered places. Then the pair of them crossed to the chapel door.
While Margaret hesitated on the doorstep, pulling up her lace shawl into a suitable headdress, Tom looked into the little church. Agnes had been mistaken, he thought. There was no one here except the priest kneeling silently at his devotions. Then he turned back to find Margaret waiting for him, hand raised. Down upon his forearm it came, resting there as naturally as it had rested on her master of horse’s at Buckfast, seeming to burn through the thick black velvet like a brand into his flesh, even so.
As this was the private chapel of a rich and powerful family, there was provision of private pews at the front for their use, and Tom led Lady Margaret there, then stood, and sat and knelt at her side. Once in a while he glanced sideways at her, but she never took her eyes off the plain altar. Open in worship or closed in prayer, her eyes never stopped a gentle weeping as, he suspected shrewdly, she prayed for the souls of the good men killed in her service so far; and, he thought, after the sight of her rage against Danforth and Quin, she was probably also praying for the thorough damnation of whoever had caused their deaths. But his mind soon drifted away from speculation into other, darker reaches of its own. The power of her proximity was a powerful distraction from all thought. All too swiftly he found himself tempted into simple sensuality, listening to the steady whisper of her breathing, how it varied as she mouthed her silent responses. The warmth of her was transmitted over the cooling air to the back of his hand, to his arm, to the length of his leg. The scent of her filled his nose, a mysterious, nameless perfume, compound of some essence of her skin, sweet breath, and other, more personal odours. Only the sanctity of the moment, the holiness of the place and Tom’s own iron self-control restrained his imagination from straying any further; and he prayed as he had never prayed before.
There was no interminable sermon tonight – and fortunately, for it would have presented Tom’s mind with almost irresistible idleness and licence; but it was still nearly two in the morning when they softly thanked the Reverend Joses Wainscott and made their way back up to the back of the chapel where Agnes and Martin waited, dozing on their feet. This time Martin was a little more conservative – and a lot more careful – with his provision of light. Across the courtyard and up the steps they went, through the main doors, to hesitate while Martin closed them and locked them tight at last. Then on up the stairway to the first landing, where their guides separated. Following Martin up and to the right hand, Tom nevertheless strained over his shoulder to see Agnes’s light – and Margaret’s shadow – for as long as possible. For as soon as things were quiet, he and Ben would be off again, looking to stand guard on the Countess and the Baron as they slept.
The room Martin led him to was lost in a maze of corridors and staircases that made up this part of the castle; but Tom had suspected that it would be, for even if the strange behaviour he had seen so far was motivated by overawed affection for their mistress, logic dictated they would wish to lodge such interlopers as himself well away from her. And were their motives darker, their desire to be rid of him would be all the greater. However, though he did not know Cotehel, he knew many another castle like it, he thought. No sooner had Martin lit him to his door and shown him into the shadowed chamber lit by a single taper that seemed to tremble under the stentorian snores of its second occupant than he was planning how to return and explore.
The first thing he did, using the very last spark from the dying taper, was to light the wick of the great white candle he had stolen while helping Martin after he had fallen on the steps. He had slid it into the wide top of his boot, which he now removed, together with its fellow. Then, in stockinged feet and silent as a ghost, he crossed the shaking bed and shook Ben like a bear with a salmon until his apprentice came choking awake.
‘Ben!’ he spat. ‘Stir yourself; we must away at once.’
For a man in such a deep sleep, the lad awoke bright-eyed and sharp-witted. ‘I’m with ye, master. D’ye know where the Lady and the Baron sleep?’
‘On the far side of the castle.’
‘Now there’s a surprise.’
‘Irony. A classical tone, I assume.’ ‘Sarcasm, as well you know. Ciceronian in its effect, however.’
‘I think an ironist such as yourself should play Lucifer, while I carry the iron of a different stamp.’
‘A pleasing play on words, master. I will carry the candle, then; and you shall wield your steel.’
Tom suited the action to the word and slithered out his blade. ‘Kick off your shoes that we may tip-toe,’ he ordered. ‘Open the door as silently as death. Then let us be about it.’
The darkness was absolute, but the candle burned still and clear, shedding ample light to guide them through the maze that Tom had taken such pains to remember. The ancient flooring was all stone, so it was easy to move in near absolute silence. They were slow and careful, however, both too well aware that the brightness that guided them would also betray them swiftly enough to any prying eyes.
Down the last set of steps they came to the upper landing, where Agnes had led Margaret away left and Martin had taken Tom to the right. Tom slowed them to their careful and most silent progress here, for the entra
nce hall was large. Galleries and passages – as well as stairways – led into it and out. There was no telling what eyes might be watching their star-bright progress ill-intentioned and unsuspected. For, after his greeting at Buckfast, his handling of the Countess’s person and his entertainment subsequently, tongues would be wagging. A midnight visit to her chamber – no matter how necessary and well-intentioned – would be the undoing of her reputation if told by the wrong tongue – or recounted into the wrong ear. What work might the Earl of Essex, for instance, make of it in private gossip with Her Majesty. Enough to make her forget her irritation over his own marriage. Even that would be worth the risk to him.
Tom, though, sat squarely on the horns of the most terrible dilemma. For even a reputation stained and tattered would be preferable to a murdered Countess; or – and this was the deepest and darkest of his fears, one suited to the black watches in such a place as this – the Lady Margaret ravished once again, so that those malicious tongues in her enemies’ employ might whisper, But you see she must enjoy it. To have accepted it as a girl and again as a woman...
‘Straight on,’ he hissed to Ben.
This side of the castle keep was much simpler in design than the one that housed them, thought Tom. Larger chambers made shorter passages. Public rooms filled entire floors – a great hall, a long gallery, a library and map-room; and in the very heart of the place, most unexpectedly, an armoury.
‘A map-room I can understand,’ Tom hissed to the awed Ben. ‘Travel is the foundation of their fortune, after all. But there must be enough swords and armour, guns and spears here for an army. Can you see any powder?’
‘No, master.’
‘Thank God for that. Or the reduction of the Outram line to dust and ashes could be swiftly and completely achieved for certain, could it not?’
‘That was probably a powder store I observed beside the church on the way in,’ said Ben.
‘You saw it too, did you? Well done.’
Such a man as Tom, even on such a vital mission as this, could hardly resist the call of an armoury. In he tip-toed, therefore, his eyes on the swords particularly. His movement caught Ben off guard and the light-bringer was slow to follow, therefore. The light went out of the room as the candle went behind Tom’s back and for a moment he found himself in absolute darkness.
No. Not absolute.
His tired mind, distracted from its mission already, was distracted again. For right at the far end of the Stygian chamber there was a square of brightness high up on the wall: brightness laced, filigreed, with sinuous lines of shadow. Tom walked towards it, keeping his eyes fixed upon it even when Ben came into the room behind him with the candle. In the shadowy brightness of that one tiny flame it was just possible to see that, high on the wall, reaching right across the room was what looked like an internal window. Indeed, thought Tom suddenly, there should truly be windows in all of these rooms, for unless his sense of direction had been utterly confused, all the rooms on this side should be looking away southward over the star-spangled, moon-bright reaches of the Channel.
These thoughts took him to the end wall, hung with heavy tapestries like all the walls in the public rooms; but at the right-hand side, the tapestry was in a state of slight but constant motion. He lifted it and there was a door beneath it, let into the solid-looking wall.
‘Have you seen the like of this?’ he hissed to Ben.
‘I’ve heard tell,’ answered the bricklayer, taking the corner of the heavy cloth as Tom knelt to the door’s ancient lock. ‘‘Twould not be such a wonder in daylight,’ he said, ‘For the inner window, barred or not, must let in some light. But aye, ‘tis a double wall. I wonder what’s behind it...’
‘Cannon,’ said Tom, working now with his dagger. ‘This is the place where King Henry’s builders added new defences to the old castle and put in the cannon and culverins that fired the first shot at the Armada, and famously so. ‘Tis the only explanation for such a strange design.’ At the last word, he opened the door, which swung back flat against the wall into a little lobby at the bottom of a flight of steps.
Ben followed him into the stairwell, careful of his candle; but he need hardly have bothered, for the stairwell was bright – and short. No sooner had they stepped up than their heads were above the floor level above; and it was as Tom had said: behind the wall of the armoury was a kind of balcony, strongly built and stone-floored, walled on the outer side but with two gaping embrasures in which sat a pair of long cannon, pointing southward across the restless waters near three hundred feet below.
On the left side of the place was the foot of a ladder leading upwards and on the right, a square hole in the floor containing the head of a ladder leading down. The open-sided chamber was tidy, well supplied with shot and coiled ropes. Pikes stood beside the cannon, ready to vary their field of fire. Barrels of match sat ready; rams and swabs beside them.
‘But still no powder,’ whispered Tom. When he received no answer, he turned to find Ben peeping through the grille behind, which looked over the shadowed well of the armoury, behind and below them now.
With no further hesitation, Tom led Ben up the ladder on to the next gun platform. Here, even in the moon-brightness, it was possible to see that the inner grille was glimmering with golden light. Silently but curtly, Tom gestured Ben to wait at the ladder’s head and he crossed on silent tip-toe to check the platform. The flooring looked solid enough stone except for a wooden trap in the corner by the foot of one ladder; solid stone wall at the back, except for the opening. He sank down on one knee, holding his breath and straining to see. It was Lady Margaret’s chamber, never a doubt of it. For there was an uncanopied bed, untenanted to boot, and a fire banked low in the grate. A candle stood on a paper-strewn table and a door into the next room stood ajar. The bedchamber was much smaller than the armoury below, the larger areas of the old castle walled and partitioned as they had been in Elfinstone. If he strained, he could hear a whisper of low voices; but no sooner had he recognized young Hal talking to his silent mother than the Lady herself returned. Even in the shadows the glory of her undressed hair seemed to shine. She wore a golden undressing-robe, its stiff material open to reveal a simple sleeping-shift beneath. With unconscious grace, even as she came in through the door, she pulled the robe off and cast it over the foot of the bed. The thin stuff of her simple shift seemed to cling to every womanly curve of her as she moved; and in that fatal instant before Tom could tear his eyes away, she crossed in front of the fire and there, imprinted in his eyes, as indelibly as the brand on Gawdy’s thumb, was the picture of her form perfectly presented, as though stark naked, as the firelight shone through the linen.
Tom tore his eyes away and turned to find Ben gesturing at him silently but fiercely. Tom rose and crossed to his friend’s side.
‘What?’ he spat.
‘Look!’
Tom strained his eyes again, blinking the lingering vision of Lady Margaret away. The sea crawled away towards France like a great swathe of creased grey silk, stirring under a breeze. Above it, falling from the height of Heaven down to the restless wrinkles, fell the stars. The moon was setting behind the castle, so its brightness was diminishing. In from the Western Approaches a milky skim of high, high cloud was spreading across the heavens, making the stars all pale and ghostly.
So that it was easy to see what Ben was talking about: down below in the distant waters lay the black shape of a ship. It was big and broad with high castles fore and aft, like the pictures Tom had seen of the ill-fated Armada galleons. Its sails were furled and its masts nodding gently as though it sat at anchor.
Someone on its high forecastle was signalling: a bright dot of light, clearer and more insistent than any star, was blinking in their direction.
Twenty-one: Secrets
Tom and Ben glanced at each other, sharing the same thought with the same look. If there was a signal, then there was someone being signalled to. Tom leaped on to the ladder and began to swarm up it with all
the speed he could manage, pausing only as his head came past floor level to look around. The next level was empty, and so was the one above that.
Tom came out on to the top level, still only half-aware of the layout of the castle through whose secret labyrinths he was climbing. Such was his tension, excitement and tiredness that he paused, glanced and continued without allowing the information from his eyes time to register on his mind. So it was that he leaped out on to the very battlements themselves. There were no crenellations, merely a hole with an open trap-door beside a short-barrelled culverin. The culverin stood on the very edge of the place, its stubby barrel jutting over a sheer stone precipice. That stone-built cliff joined a rough rock cliff over one hundred feet below and then fell more than two hundred feet more to the breakers whose whispering roar was lost in the buffeting of the wind. Suddenly dizzied by the closeness of such an awesome depth, Tom staggered over to the solidity of the gun itself as Ben threw himself upwards as well.
Disorientated though he was, Tom was looking around. They were alone – and again, fortunately so, for any enemy with an ounce of fortitude could have pitched the pair of them to their doom in the next few seconds, he thought grimly. Then Ben joined him clinging to the cannon as though the weight and solidity of the thing were all that would save them from being blown like gossamer over the edge.
The plain roof of the great keep stretched inwards from the vertiginous chasm apparently featurelessly, like a square, monolithic pinnacle atop some legendary mountain. The flagstones of which it was made were set smooth and square and reached in series inwards from the absolute angle of the edge as though Euclid or Pythagoras had laid them out. The moon, shining exactly across the place, as though they stood level with its declining crescent, showed hardly any irregularities before, away on the inner side, an absolute black line defined the other edge square-cut.
