by Peter Tonkin
‘Explain,’ invited Tom, leading the way through to the first of the well-armed balconies.
‘I had thought nothing of it, for I have never met the Lady Margaret until now...but...Since time immemorial it has been the right of the Outrams to take a little easement from the smugglers hereabout – for use of the cellarage and such; and Quin has been sending letters to his contacts here and in Flanders on his own behalf and that of the Outrams for thirty years and more. So when he started sending letters from Lady Margaret, he thought no more about it. He told me so. It was secret amusement between the pair of us that she had fallen so swiftly in with family ways. But nothing has ever come for her – a note or two of reply, perhaps, now I think of it, but never any lavender or lace or silk or such as might be expected. And now I know a little of her face to face, I cannot believe she would do such a thing as trade with smugglers. And...’
‘And the letters were never in her writing, were they?’ asked Tom thoughtfully. ‘They were in her secretary’s hand – and no one thought anything strange about that. You are right, Master Danforth, this has been easy enough for an evil, secret and cunning man. You have all made it so easy for the pair of them. Let us not make it quite so easy for their confederates, shall we? These doors are solid and the steps up to them narrow on the inside. Do they lock as well as bolt from both sides?’
‘They do, master. The keys are kept on the insides and the locks were put in at the old King’s direction, so each level needs a new key.’
‘Well, let us open the first here and remove the key. So. Now let us lock the door and close the bolts. They’ll be lucky to come through that. Now this trap-door. I see it also bolts. Now this level is isolated. And up we go to the next. Do these ladders lift off? I see they do as well. This is very good indeed. With luck and care we can isolate all the guns from the castle keep until the Spaniards find a way to break down every door, level after level from the inside, one after another. That should slow them – and, indeed, should allow an intrepid band such as we to face them off upon the roof to some effect, in the hope of Poley’s arrival with the dawn.’
‘With the dawn and a regiment of horse,’ added Ben feelingly.
‘Only until they get their hands on Lady Margaret,’ warned Ugo. ‘We’d have to come down for her.’
‘Then it is doubly in our interest to get to her first, is it not?’ answered Tom with absolute command.
Level by level they worked their way upwards, opening the doors to retrieve the keys, then locking and bolting them from the outside; locking down the trap-doors that opened into the dead ends of the passageways; lifting the ladders out of their brackets behind them and tossing them over the cliff. ‘We need only keep the topmost,’ said Tom; ‘then with a little cunning we can get down again if we need to. But tell me, Master Martin – and truly, for it is of no little moment – does Master St Just have any truck with smugglers?’
‘No, sir. For a sailor he is most law-abiding and proper. I think even Drake would have traded with the men from Flanders before Master Ulysses would. Or the woman from Scilly.’
‘Is she an important smuggler, this Scillonian woman, then? For she is in the hands of a fearful man.’
‘In our local waters she is something of a pirate queen – like that Irish woman that lately won her freedom from the Queen for running a pirate fleet across the Western Approaches. But what information she could give I cannot tell.’
‘Of the movements of Spanish galleys out of the ports of Spanish Flanders and Catholic France, no doubt; and able to tell of this night’s comings and goings – did he not have her securely under lock and key!’
They actually saw their first Spanish guards when they looked down into the armoury. Tom had warned them of the likelihood of this, though any of the others could have calculated the probability with but a moment’s thought. It was a squad of four grim-looking tercio men, well trained and professional – professional but clearly desperate for money, for their uniforms were as patched and shredded as their armour was bright and burnished in the candle-light. They had already rearmed themselves from the best of the weaponry around them and were standing on easy guard, looking every bit as lean, hard, hungry and deadly-dangerous as they actually were.
As quietly as mice, Tom and his men went grimly on about their business, balancing the danger of alerting these men to their presence against the equal danger of leaving them an easy route to follow in their rear. On the next balcony up, with the ladder sticking out over the low wall beside the culverins, they gave the greatest heave that they could manage to send it far away from the cliff-edge to tumble silently into the night. Tom lingered for a moment, watching the ladder fall end over end into the Channel. Away to his left suddenly, out towards Penlee Point, he saw the flash of a white skiff’s sail catching the moonlight as it swelled under the gentle sou’westerly wind. Then, with his heart in his mouth on the sudden, he turned to look into the Lady Margaret’s private chamber.
The four of them were in there, but at first it was difficult to recognize Lady Margaret. In the inverted tradition of the Feast of Fools, she was dressed as a kitchen maid in little more than a slattern’s shift, the golden glory of her hair bound up beneath a dirty kerchief; and yet she still stood straight and tall, her hand firmly on Hal’s shoulder as he stood protectively in front of her. Gawdy and Rowley stood shoulder to shoulder filling the doorway, looking in at the pair of them with frowning concentration, their eyes catching the light of fire and candles to glint and shimmer with the same silvery chill as the Spanish soldiers’ armour.
‘My only regret,’ said Gawdy suddenly, his voice unexpectedly loud in the breathless hush that the four secret watchers had brought with them, ‘is that I won’t be able to hear you scream as you burn. I heard my father scream as he died. My mother was there, with me within her, and she says how I kicked at the sound; and I can hear it still, you know – whenever I sleep. That’s why I sleep so little. That’s why I could spend my nights in watching you, more closely and more closely still, and readying my plans for tonight.’
‘You are mad, Percy,’ said Hal with quiet dignity. ‘But still I shall see you quartered for this treason – hanged and drawn and quartered.’
‘Oh I think not, Hal. For you see I shall be in Cadiz, living a life of rich and unimaginable indulgence with the good doctor here, and you will be in Essex House – if you are allowed to live.’
‘Raise your voice, brat, and it’ll be the worse for you,’ hissed Dr Rowley in a bitter, sneering tone Tom had never heard him use before. ‘There’s none to hear you but Spanish soldiers and they’d likely as not enjoy the use of both of you before handing you back to us. They owe us a debt it’ll be hard to pay with all their promised wealth and ease, no matter how bright our futures will be at King Philip’s court; a fine repayment for the indulgence shown by My Lord of Essex and others to the renegades of Spain.’
Tom crossed to the trap-door that opened on to the corridor where Agnes Danforth had died and Ugo lifted the trap as Rowley must have done to let the murderous Gawdy fall on her. Tom hesitated for an instant, then reached out his hand to Ugo. ‘The Toledo,’ he whispered, sliding out the deadly steel reach of his Solingen blade as he spoke. An instant later, a rapier in each hand, he was gone to save the Lady and her lad.
Ben strode across to follow him but Ugo stayed him silently. ‘He’ll be better alone,’ the Dutchman breathed. ‘Get out your dag and watch his back through the grille as earlier. The Lady may not call for help, but these two will, and the door down into this chamber here is the only one we cannot get through unless someone has the speed and wit to unbolt it for us.’
Tom landed like a cat, lightly and silently. The solidity of walls and floor aided him as surely as it had helped Agnes Danforth’s murderer. Still, he crouched on landing, mouth wide, gasping in air in great soundless gulps. Then he straightened and began to creep forward. He was as well aware as any of them that stealth and surprise were his best weapons
for, although he was confident of taking Gawdy and Rowley hand to hand, they were as likely to be carrying guns as swords and, in the face of his reputation, as likely to raise the alarm as to fight like the men they were patently not. The four tercio guards downstairs would finish him off in an instant – for they all had guns as well, and were not likely to stand on form or deal with him honourably.
For this, for them, was war.
One door opened inwards to the right at the very head of the stairs. It stood ajar now, showing the width of Lady Margaret’s private changing-room – made up still as a bedroom for young Hal. At the far end of it the inner door opened into her bedchamber, and the doorway was empty now. Tom gritted his teeth and stepped in over the threshold.
Such was Tom’s concentration on his silent movements that he hardly registered the sneering, one-sided conversation from the next room at all. The words themselves were of little moment to him – and indeed, might well be a dangerous distraction; but the simple sound the men were making allowed him to locate them in the chamber although he was not yet able to see them. Like a favourite stage set from one of Will Shakespeare’s plays, he brought the scene he had watched from the high grille back into his mind – and immediately saw another possible problem. He could still creep up behind the men if their backs were to the door, but the moment he came close to it, Lady Margaret or Hal would see him, and their faces would betray him. All hope of surprise would be lost unless he could rely on their quick thinking in this most terrible of extremities. He really began to hope that Lady Margaret had been so badly frightened she would unhesitatingly abet the two deaths that were her only hope of life. It would be a close call for a woman such as she was.
Then Hal gave a chilling sort of sobbing cry and Tom was spurred into action at once. He ran in through the inner doorway, throwing all his thoughts and calculations to the wind. He kicked the door itself wide as he entered, hoping to hit one of his enemies at least, but no such luck. The four of them were over by the bed. Each of the men held one slight figure, wrestling with silent fury in his arms. ‘Hold!’ spat Tom in a vicious undertone, and both men swung towards him, stricken by their discovery. With a strangled cry Dr Rowley threw Hal on to the bed and ripped his sword out of its sheath. The action was automatic and unexpected; but, never one to look gift-horses in the mouth, Tom threw himself forward. Rowley was on his left, between Tom and the low-banked fire, and so he engaged at once with Ben’s Toledo blade. The Doctor had an unexpectedly firm wrist and a confident, showy style. Tom remembered what James Hammond down at Elfinstone had said about the time the Doctor and St Just spent together in the evenings: clearly there had been more than abstruse calculation and obscure speculation going on; but the pupil had all of his master’s faults and few of his strengths other than overconfidence. As he would have done with St Just, had he not been so blessedly charitable, Tom slid the falchion’s blade away with a flick of his own, hurling himself unstoppably along the line of his attack into the most absolute lunge of his life so far. Rowley had an instant to try and pull his edge back in against the steely strength of Tom’s left wrist, but he never stood a chance and he would have died there and then had not Gawdy shot Tom in the shoulder.
The ball from Gawdy’s dag took Tom at the very point of the left shoulder, tearing through the muscles right at the top of his arm, which was tensed for the killing stroke. It simply hurled him back across the room, so that the point of Ben’s rapier ripped open Rowley’s belly instead of running him cleanly through the spine. Stunned by the shock of the massive wound, Rowley fell backwards, clutching at himself and folding over, as though winded by his dreadful wound. One tottering step further, and he fell backwards into the blazing fire.
Tom hit the wall and bounced. His shoulder was numb and Ben’s dripping blade hung uselessly in his insensible fingers; but Tom was used to shock and pain. He remained on his feet and swung back instantly with his own Solingen blade held high, pointing exactly where his steely gaze was directed – at Percy Gawdy and Lady Margaret. So it was he stepped safely past the hearth just before Rowley, clothes ablaze, rolled out on to the floor behind him and began to throw himself about the floor, trying to put himself out. Feeling a little as though he were flying, Tom stepped forward once again. Gawdy was standing before him, tall and straight and confident. He held Lady Margaret tightly against him with his burned and branded hand clutching her silent throat and the second barrel of a vicious little double-barrelled dag hard against her head.
Because of his years of association with Ugo, Tom recognized the weapon for what it was. The weapon itself, of course, he recognized from Water Lane and Winchester. For, unlike most such weapons, the barrels were over and under instead of side by side. It had two firing mechanisms and two triggers, and instead of side by side, they were placed one behind the other. Gawdy’s finger was resting on the second trigger, right at the rear, only a quarter of an inch in front of the weapon’s solid grip. Logic and a wisp of smoke dictated that it was the ball from the first barrel that had just gone through Tom’s shoulder, and that suggested that the weapon was well primed and would fire again the instant that finger moved the trigger far enough back. Tom tried not to look at Lady Margaret or the madman who was holding her. He tried to look only at that finger. Almost on another plane of concentration, he was trying to look through the finger to the gap between the trigger and the grip.
But Margaret forestalled him. She simply willed his eyes to hers. Almost distracted, he glanced at her. And she was speaking; her lips were moving. In utter silence, but with all the force of the loudest screams she mouthed: KILL HIM!
Tom’s instant of distraction, the movement of the jaw against his forearm, made Gawdy glance down as well, away from Tom and the tip of his deadly blade.
‘HA!’ Tom shouted in pain as he threw himself forward. Such was the shocking, unexpected velocity of the action that not even this guttural sound gave Gawdy the extra speed he needed to thwart the impossible blow. With the accuracy only total mastery allied with constant practice can bring, Tom sent the point of his rapier past the unflinching orb of the Lady’s right eye; past the soft white hollow of her temple, and through the ringlets of her golden tresses as they escaped from the kerchief; along the uppermost, delicate curl of her ear; in through Gawdy’s tensing trigger-finger; through the fat little muscle beneath the bone, severing it before it could tense any further; in behind the trigger itself, wedging it immovably into place; on through the pit of the gasping throat behind it; on through the choking larynx and out through the vertebrae behind, severing his spinal cord as it went as cleanly as a headsman’s axe. The gun wedged on the thickness of the blade then and smashed back into Gawdy’s throat with the full weight of Tom’s powerful frame behind it. Dead already, Gawdy flew backwards almost as powerfully as Tom had done when the dag-ball hit him. Lady Margaret spun sideways out of his grasp and staggered backwards, only her iron will keeping her erect.
‘My Lady!’ called a voice from on high with a reassuringly Dutch accent, ‘unlock the door and come up before the Spaniards come.’
Gawdy landed on the bed where Tom’s jutting blade wedged, and Tom managed to control his wild lunge just before the bending blade snapped.
Lady Margaret, quick-thinking even in these extremes, paused only to pull him erect and see his sword safely reclaimed before she ran to unlock the door. Hal ran to the door by her side. Tom jerked his sword-blade free and turned. Rowley was lying still now, clearly as dead as his mad associate, and still ablaze. Tom hardly had time to draw a shuddering breath before the bedding caught fire too. There were no hangings, but the fire still spread with disorientating speed. Tom swung back, yelling again with the pain as his torn shoulder moved. The door was open and Hal had gone up. Lady Margaret stood silently waiting for him.
He took a step towards her. ‘Go on!’ he called, but his words were lost in a great explosion of sound. More smoke came billowing into the room from the high grille and Tom turned back, utterly
disorientated, to see the bodies of four Spanish guards lying strewn across the changing-room.
From behind them, a wild figure stepped out, body all shreds and patches and head an almost formless, faceless mask. ‘Good,’ hissed St Just. ‘That’s saved ne sone work.’
Thirty: I Love You
It was fortunate that St Just joined them then, for they needed all his wiry strength to help them with Tom. Tom could walk swiftly enough, though his legs were weakening at the knees with shock. He could manage stairs, given a little time; but, especially with his wounded shoulder, ladders were more of a problem. And they did not have time to linger: the noise and mayhem they had caused were guaranteed to bring all the Spanish soldiers not immediately involved in holding the hostages. St Just emphasized this with his answer to Tom’s first question: ‘How did you find us?’
‘Like the tercio men, I followed my ears and my nose. You were fortunate with your gun battery up in that grille.’
‘Every dag and pistol we have in one blast and they all fired true,’ said Ugo, quite awed himself. ‘Eight of them, for mine were both double-barrelled. Amazing.’
‘Effective, at least. Four down. A couple of hundred to go.’
‘That many!’ said Tom, surprised. ‘Out of two galleys!’
‘These are hard men,’ answered St Just. ‘No galley slaves for them. They rowed themselves in. And they’ll row themselves out again, with half the gentry hereabouts as hostages and the castle that fired first on the Armada a blazing ruin, like as not.’
‘That’ll be a good trick,’ said Tom. ‘Most of it’s built of stone.’
Not the central section of the keep,’ said St Just. ‘Except for the roof, there are wooden beams and floorboards there. It’s lucky you set fire to Lady Margaret’s bed. Even Hal’s would have set the roof and the floor ablaze.’
‘That’ll be an interesting experience,’ said Tom explosively as they heaved him up into the next gallery and pulled the ladder up behind him. ‘Up on the roof with the whole place ablaze beneath us, we’ll be like a set of griddle-cakes cooking.’
