The Devil's Piper

by Sarah Rayne

Because once they ajudged him near to death, they would revive him with vinegar-soaked sponges and young sour wine. And then they would set light to the funeral pyre at his feet.

  Ahasuerus the renegade High Priest, the scholar and the lover and the poet, would die in screaming torment while the sun set behind the cross.

  He would burn alive.

  ‘He’ll burn alive,’ said Nicolas, facing Martin in the low-ceilinged room of the Rose and Crown tavern in Fetter Lane. The room was crowded, thick with the greasy scents of food and human sweat and with the sourness of spilled wine and ale.

  When the message had come to Martin’s lodgings that a friend awaited him in the tavern, he had not been unduly alarmed. It was not unlikely that his own Father Abbot had sent someone after him, or that one of the enquiries he had set afoot in the teeming City about Rodger Cheke and his arrival from Ireland, had returned bearing fruit.

  He had thanked the street urchin who had brought the message, given the boy a coin, and made his way to Fetter Lane, threading his way through the streets. He had thought he was growing comfortable with Martin O’Neill, landed Irish gentleman, but as he entered the Rose and Crown, he felt suddenly vulnerable, and he saw that one or two people looked questioningly in his direction. He was relieved when the slenderly built, dark-eyed man came up to him and led him to a table in the corner. A goblet of malmsey was placed at his hand, and Nicolas, introducing himself brusquely, said without preamble, ‘I know who you are, Brother Martin, and I know why you are here.’

  ‘What—’

  ‘There is no time for lengthy explanations, and if there were, this would not be the place for them.’ Nicolas lifted his own wine, and for a moment the golden glow spilled upwards, giving his eyes a curious cat-like quality. Martin blinked.

  Nicolas sent a covert glance about him, and then said very softly, ‘The one you are here to find is inside the Tower.’

  ‘How do you know what I am here to find? What is all this?’

  ‘I know because I am on the edges of everything,’ said Nicolas. ‘Particularly I am on the edges of the Court. I listen and I look and no one realises it, because no one pays much attention to a minstrel. I am a vagabond, you understand, a gypsy; I am outside of the intrigues and the spiders’ webs that are spun at such places, and so I hear many things that were never meant to be heard.’ A sudden smile softened his face, and Martin thought: after all, he’s remarkably good-looking, and after all, he’s much younger than I first thought. Or is he?

  ‘Also,’ said Nicolas, speaking rapidly and softly, ‘I know the story of that one you seek.’

  That one . . .

  ‘How?’ said Martin tersely. ‘How do you know it?’

  ‘It is a legend handed down in my family. I know of the vow the people of your Brotherhood make to guard Ahasuerus, and I know that you are pledged to forfeit your life to that end if necessary.’ He drank deeply of the wine again. ‘How strongly would you honour that pledge, Martin?’

  Martin was not precisely thrown off balance, but he was certainly disconcerted by this strange creature who spoke in soft, lilting cadences and who had the most extraordinary eyes Martin had ever seen. The suspicion that someone might be setting a trap or playing an elaborate hoax flickered on his mind, but he could think of no reason why anyone should do such a thing. If anyone had discovered that Martin O’Neill was really Brother Martin, surely he would simply be taken prisoner without these complicated manoeuvres?

  And so he said, ‘I take the vow to guard Ahasuerus very seriously.’

  ‘You would honour it even unto death if necessary?’

  Martin paused, but again he could see no reason not to be truthful, and so he said, ‘Yes.’

  ‘Very well. It should not be necessary, but there is a chance that if things go wrong one of us may not live. Listen, there is a plan.’

  He spoke for a moment, and Martin, listening carefully, thought: this is a very astute gentleman. Do I believe him about Ahasuerus being in the Tower? I think I do. And his plan is very simple, simple enough to work. Would I die for Ahasuerus? I would die for Christ, certainly. A tiny traitorous voice said: yes, but would you burn, Brother Martin? Would you endure hanging, drawing and quartering? Half-strangled, and then cut down to have your bowels gouged out? And then your head severed? He shivered and reached for the wine again.

  Nicolas, watching him, said, ‘Well? You agree?’

  Martin set down the empty goblet. ‘I agree,’ he said slowly. ‘But I should like to understand your part in all this.’ He waited, his eyes on Nicolas, and now it was no longer a richly clad, Irish landowner, the bastard connection of the roistering O’Neills, but the real Martin. The austere, implacable sub-Prior who had been prepared to deceive Thomas Cromwell, and who had come unhesitatingly out of seclusion to honour a long-ago pledge. ‘Who are you?’ he said sharply. ‘Where do you come from?’

  Nicolas studied him for a moment, and then said very gently, ‘Your founder was in Cremona five hundred years ago. And so was mine.’ He regarded Martin with a glint of amusement, and Martin, staring at him, thought: Ahasuerus’s son. He’s Ahasuerus’s son. Not literally, of course, five hundred years separate him from that first waking. That first waking . . . Ahasuerus walking through the old walled city, sprinkling the ancient music about him, luring away the plague rats, and seducing Isabella Amati into the bargain, if our records speak the truth. Nicolas is the descendant of those two. Is it possible? I don’t believe it, because I don’t dare believe it. Aloud, he said, ‘Even if it is true, why should you risk your life?’

  ‘Oh, for many reasons,’ said Nicolas, and now it was the flippant, touch-me-not tone of the wanderer, the true gypsy who cared for no man.

  ‘But let us say that it is a little because there is a lady caught up in this particular spider’s web, and that lady has red hair.

  ‘And,’ Nicolas continued smoothly, ‘like my ancestor, I have something of a weakness for red hair. Will you have more wine? No? Then I think we should leave now.’

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Guarding the water entrance of the Tower was a nasty, cold kind of job of a night. The four guards on duty took it in turns to go in to the gate-house for a bit of a warm by the gate-keeper’s fire and a nip of mulled wine with a dash of ginger. It kept out the chill a treat, mulled wine, and the gate-keeper wasn’t ungenerous in his portions, either!

  Not that you dared be drunk on duty. You never knew when you might be called on to challenge an intruder: some nasty plot hatched by Papists or Spaniards, there was not a lot to choose between the two, or some sneaky rescue attempt by somebody’s mother or sister or daughter. There was a saying about the female of the species being deadlier than the male, said the guards, quaffing their warm spicy wine with pleasure, and it was remarkable what ladies desperate to rescue their husbands or fathers or brothers would do. And while it was a mite cold and draughty just inside St Thomas’s Tower, not to say eerie what with the Thames lapping against the walls, better people than Tower guards had pumped their manhood dry up against a stone wall! they said, nudging each other. They swapped stories and told how you could satisfy yourself and have your hose re-buttoned between one sentry change and the next and no one the wiser. It did not get the stupid women inside the Tower, of course, but they did not need to be told that until afterwards. And on a cold night there was nothing better to warm your cock robin than to get it between a pair of firm plump thighs.

  They finished the gate-keeper’s mulled wine, wiped their mouths with the backs of their hands, and flipped a coin to see who should take the next two-hour turn at the gate. A filthy, wet evening it was, just the kind of weather when you’d expect plotters to come rowing stealthily down the river, armed with ridiculous stories about bringing food and warm blankets for the prisoners.

  The two who came rowing along the river entrance did not have a story about food and blankets, but the guard who had lost the coin-tossing was wary. Some tale about being here on the orders of Sir Rod
ger Cheke and the Bishop of Winchester it was, and orders to shrive the soul of the prisoner brought in two nights ago.

  ‘Shrive?’ said the guard suspiciously. He walked along the narrow ledge, holding up his horn lantern, his footsteps echoing hollowly. As he drew alongside the small row-boat, the wavering light from the stub of tallow inside the lantern fell across the water. ‘Priests, are you?’ said the guard, peering down.

  ‘Priests?’ said the cool voice from the boat. The guard noticed that it was tinged with Irish and that there was a faintly mocking quality to it. ‘Now that’s a nasty, old-fashioned word to be using, and us here to save a man’s soul before he meets his maker. You’ll know of the burning at noon tomorrow? Yes, of course you will.’

  ‘Of course I know about it,’ said the guard, who knew no such thing, but was not going to admit it. ‘Burning him at noon they are,’ he said firmly.

  ‘Then,’ said Martin, ‘you’ll have had the orders from the Lieutenant of the Tower to take us to the man’s cell.’ Despite the dankness in here, sweat was sliding between his shoulder blades, but he heard with relief that his voice still held the cool note of authority. ‘Raise the portcullis and be sharp about it now,’ he said. ‘What? No orders? I shall have something to say about that to Sir William tomorrow, yes, and the Bishop! Hold that lantern up till I see your face, man – ah, yes. And your name?’

  The guard was alert – of course he was – to all the ploys and all the deceptions, and he was certainly not going to allow this unknown pair through the portcullis without he had first made a few enquiries. He bade them wait here and betook himself off to the gate-house because if anyone was going to take the responsibility for letting a pair of strangers in through Traitors’ Gate, it was not going to be him!

  Sir William Kingston, Lieutenant of the Tower, woken abruptly from his bed, listened with furrowed brow to the tale brought to him of a priest apparently sent by Rodger Cheke and the Bishop of Winchester to hear the confession of the mysterious man placed in his care two nights earlier. He sighed as he clambered out of bed, because he foresaw an awkward decision.

  There were always awkward decisions when you had in your charge gentlemen who had made enemies at Court, but knowing what was expected of you before you were told about it, did not get any easier with practice.

  ‘The thing is,’ said Sir William to his lady, who was sitting up in bed, beet-red with annoyance and her nightcap awry, ‘the thing is, if His Majesty was wanting to be rid of this foreigner discreetly, he’d choose just this way, d’ye see? A respectable priest, purporting to have come to hear the prisoner’s confession, and then a drop of poison slipped into the water jug, or a dagger slipped between his ribs, I dare say there isn’t much to choose between the two. And I shouldn’t want to ruin any plot that might come from the King, he wouldn’t be best pleased, what do you think?’

  What Lady Kingston thought was that any plot so obscure that even the people supposed to perpetrate it did not know about it, was doomed to failure from the outset. She also pointed out, a bit tartly, that discretion and Henry Tudor’s name were not two things that occurred to you in the same breath, and that at this stage of his reign the King was not very likely to bother about being circumspect. If he wanted to remove somebody who was likely to be an embarrassment or a nuisance he would simply order beheading or hanging, or, if he was feeling especially peevish, burning.

  ‘Let the two men in and double the guard,’ said Lady Kingston, and having delivered herself of this pithy judgement, re-tied her nightcap and composed herself for sleep again. If you were to properly fulfil your duties as the wife of the Tower Lieutenant, squeamishness in your nature was not something you could afford.

  Sir William, not precisely squeamish but anxious to be loyal to his King and conscientious in his work, conferred with his head guard again and could not see the harm in allowing the young Irish priest in to hear the prisoner’s confession. As his lady had said, the guard outside the cell could be doubled or even tripled for the night, and the priest and his companion could be searched before and after the event because it would not be the first time that knives and daggers or poison had been smuggled into cells.

  Sir William was having none of any rescue nonsense. If the King had decreed that the prisoner should burn on the morrow, then burn he would!

  Martin looked with horror at the winding stone corridors, each one seeming to branch off into half a dozen others, each one lit at sparse intervals by flaring wall torches which showed up the moisture running down the walls and the sickly, green phosphorescence that clung everywhere. How many people were imprisoned in here? How many poor ordinary creatures had been flung into one of these miserable cells and locked away in the dark, and forgotten? All for offending the King, or for serving God in a different way to that ordered by Henry VIII? Sick dread churned the pit of his stomach. How close am I to being thrown into one of those dungeons myself?

  As they went past the low doors with pointed Norman archways over them, there was the most overpowering stench of human despair and human excrement and human terror Martin had ever encountered and his throat closed with nausea.

  The guards were leading them farther in and with every step they were going deeper into the most appalling danger. This was the Tower of London, the grim prison of legend, the place where people were torn into bloody tatters on the rack. This was the ancient fortress built by William the Conqueror’s bishop-architect: the great, sprawling, blood-soaked world within a world, where there were underground dungeons and torture chambers, and where there were little enclosed courtyards where butchered remains could be discreetly buried and charred bones quietly interred. Martin, feeling the huge, sombre prison close about him, had never felt so completely shut away from God. At his side, Nicolas padded silently along, apparently unnoticing – or maybe uncaring – of the stifling atmosphere. Once or twice he turned his head, and Martin saw his eyes catch the light. Like a cat’s. He thought: I suppose it’s all right to trust him. I suppose he isn’t leading me into a trap.

  There were five guards with them: two leading the way and carrying lanterns and three more bringing up the rear, and Martin saw how watchful they were and how swords hung ready at their sides. They would never trick these men. Panic replaced the fear.

  The cell was at the farthest end of a narrow, dank passage, and the tallest guard was forced to duck his head as they went under a low arch. Martin shivered. No natural daylight would penetrate down here, even on the sunniest of summer’s afternoons. The cell is the last one, he thought, trying to get his bearings. The farthest, deepest dungeon . . . And inside it is Ahasuerus.

  Beyond the end cell was a blind, blank wall. Was the river on the other side of that wall? It was a chilling thought. A single torch burned outside the cell, and the leading guard stood under it, fumbling with a huge iron ring of keys. As he reached down to unlock the door, there was the screech of hinges unused and unoiled, rasping on Martin’s already-raw nerve-endings.

  But he was already pushing wide the thick, oaken door, seeing how the greasy light showed up the wretched cell with the wisps of straw on the floor and the deal table with the water pitcher and a pannikin of coarse meal. Behind the door was a narrow pallet bed and seated on the bed . . .

  It was important not to show any emotion. Martin waited until the guards closed the door on them and then said very softly, ‘I am Brother Martin, and I am come to rescue you.’ And then, as the figure on the bed stared, uncomprehending, he heard Nicolas’s cool voice behind him, speaking in soft, smooth Latin, and he remembered with a thrill that Ahasuerus came from a world that had probably never encountered English speech.

  Ahasuerus seemed to understand Nicolas. He reached for a thick, dark cloak and Martin had time to see that he was younger than he had been expecting – what had he been expecting, anyway? – and he had time to note Ahasuerus’s startling, luminous beauty.

  As Nicolas began to strip off his clothing, Martin felt his heart pounding, but wi
th exhilaration this time, because they were going to do it, they were going to succeed. Escape from the impregnable fortress. Simply by exchanging places. Two men had gone in and presently, two men would go out. And by and by Nicolas would call for the guards, and tell them the agreed story about being set on, being knocked out and left in the dungeon. Martin’s heart was pounding with fear and anticipation and dread.

  Along the passage, filling it with the light of burning torches and the sound of running feet, came Rodger Cheke, Sir William Kingston, and a dozen of the Tower guards. The cell door was flung open with such force that it crashed against the stone wall and the guards fell on Martin, knocking him to the floor.

  Sick blackness closed about him and he knew no more.

  The thin disguise that was to have fooled the Court and had certainly fooled the Tower guards, was no disguise in William Kingston’s inner sanctum with Sir Rodger Cheke at the Lieutenant’s side. Martin eyed Cheke in disgust and then looked away.

  Rodger Cheke, in fact, was congratulating himself on the way things had turned out. It would have been uncharitable to exult over the wholly unexpected capture of the cold arrogant monk who had tried to make a fool of him at Curran Glen, and since the Chekes were not, as a rule, uncharitable, he did not do so. But in the eyes of the King and his Commissioners it must appear that Sir Rodger had adroitly handled an awkward business very neatly indeed. Rodger Cheke thought he might be pardoned for feeling – not smug, a nasty word – but a trifle complacent.

  Sir William Kingston, arranging his papers preparatory to writing down whatever statement they could wring from this young Irish monk, recognised the steady light in the Martin’s eyes and sighed inwardly. Heretics and martyrs and fanatics: no matter the name you put to them, once they had given you that look you knew what the end was going to be. And say what you would: the torturing of a human creature was a nasty business.

  But he knew his duty; he had questioned more men – and an occasional woman – suspected of treason and heresy than he could remember, and he had encountered varying degrees of fear and obstinacy and courage. But this stony-faced Irish monk made him uncomfortable. Brother Martin showed not the smallest trace of fear; he eyed his interlocutors arrogantly, and he refused, absolutely and completely, to tell them anything about Ahasuerus.