A Crowning Mercy

by Bernard Cornwell

  Toby moved between the two sheds, working quickly, though taking care to make little noise as he thrust bundles of unravelled rope and wood shavings into the space beneath the great timber stack. The space had been made by putting the bottom layer of timber on blocks to keep the wood from dampness, and it was there he planned his major fire. The rope strands, used for caulking, were dry. He glanced constantly at the small, lit window, but no one looked out.

  When he was satisfied with the preparation, he picked up two long strakes, ready curved to become the ribs of a boat, and took them to the stone hutch that kept the pitch fire safe at night. He thrust them into the coals, feeling the wood grate on the lumps. An immense heat radiated from the glowing coals. The strakes caught immediately, the wood burning bright, and he drew them out. He carried them to the timber stack, the flames licking back toward his hands, the sudden light in the yard making him nervous. Yet no one shouted as he moved, nor as he knelt and pushed the two strakes deep into the tangle of rope and wood-shavings.

  Perversely, for a few seconds, it seemed as if the flames would die. They burned low, threatening to flicker away, and then he saw the first strands of rope catch, curl and flare into yellow flame. Then the shavings caught. Suddenly there was a spread of flame and Toby backed away.

  The moment had not quite come. He did not know how long it would take the fire to catch, but he could not wait here in fear. He lit two more strakes, putting one in a pile of shavings beneath a half-completed boat, the other beneath the rack of curved strakes, and then, afraid of being seen in the growing illumination, he went back to the shadows by the wharf.

  The flames were lurid in the boat shed, licking up the boat on its trestles. Surely someone would see! He waited, apprehensive, knowing the enormity of his act. The first fire, in the timber stack, seemed dim. He wondered if it had gone out.

  Deep in the great timber stack was a draft, coming in at the base, then funnelling up to stack’s top at the roof of the shed. Unseen to Toby, the flames were being sucked into the natural chimney caused by the stack’s construction. He was biting his lip, wondering whether he should recross the yard and feed the dim fire, when suddenly there was an explosion of flame, sparks and smoke. The stack had caught.

  It caught spectacularly, the fire spreading through the interior by the chimney. One moment Toby could see a dull glow at the base, the next the whole roof of the shed was burning, there was a roar of flame, and Scammell’s yard was lit like daylight. Sparks whirled crazily upward, flames illuminating the base of the plume of smoke that rose above the city. Already there were shouts from the street: “Fire!”

  The blaze was roaring, feeding itself, spreading across the shed’s roof and dropping burning fragments into the yard. Toby looked to his right and saw Scammell’s face, appalled, at the window. He gripped the handle of his sword. The moment was coming!

  Fists battered on the yard gate, voices shouted. The noise was huge now with the sound of flames and of panic, and Toby looked left to see the boat-shed tangled in fire. Scammell’s business was gone, destroyed.

  The watch raised the alarm. The church bell started tolling. All across the city people would look from their windows wondering if the fire would spread. Whole towns had been destroyed by fires that started as tiny, insignificant flames.

  Timbers crashed in the stack, spreading the blaze to adjoining stacks, and then more light, feeble by comparison, was thrown into the yard. Scammell stood in his candle-lit doorway, his mouth slack, eyes staring at the churning red-gray smoke that billowed over his yard. He ran to the gates, shouting incomprehensibly and began to lift the bar to let the watch in. The heat was fearsome.

  Toby was watching the window. He could see the big man, his round, broken-nosed face frightening, staring at the flames. He still held Campion, one hand in her hair, forcing her head down. He turned and said something to the others in the room.

  There were shouts at the gate; the watch bellowed orders; Scammell threw leather buckets at them as though pails of water might put out the furnace-like intensity of the fire. Now was Toby’s moment. He ran, jumped the three steps into Scammell’s house and began to shout: “Fire! Out! Out!”

  The priest was in the hall, a clinking bag of bottles in one hand, another bottle held to his lips. Toby cannoned into him, knocked him down, and then was in the candlelit room. “Fire! Out! Out!”

  “We hear you!” the big man shouted at Toby. “Go on, lad! We’re coming!” He was dragging Campion by one arm.

  Toby ignored him. He seized Campion’s other arm and went on shouting as though he was an excited watchman. “Hurry! Out!” He pulled Campion away from the man, trying to prise her loose.

  “Leave her!”

  Thomas Grimmett’s shout seemed to wake Campion up. To Toby’s eyes she had appeared dazed, almost half asleep, and her bonnet had come off in her struggles leaving her hair falling gold over her slapped, reddened face. Now she looked at her rescuer and recognition dawned. “Toby!” She jerked away from Grimmett, clung to Toby, and the huge man bellowed in surprise. He heard her use the name, realized Toby was not of the watch and letting Campion go, he barred the door with his body and rasped his sword from its scabbard.

  “Toby!”

  “Stand back!” Toby drew his own sword, feeling the movement clumsy compared to the big man’s ease. He had never fought for his life, he had never killed, and the elation of the rescue was evaporating in the face of the other man’s evident confidence.

  Grimmett half smiled. “You came for her, did you? You’re not going to have her, lad. She’s mine.” His sword suddenly lunged, a streak of silver light in the red glare of the fire, and Toby parried, trying to remember his fencing lessons, and felt a surge of relief as the blades rang, scraped, and Toby disengaged stepping back. Grimmett followed fast, threatening again. Again Toby parried and felt the fear rise in him. The big man was good, far better than Toby, and Toby tried to force the fear down by attacking. He tried to loop his sword beneath the other’s guard, thought for a moment that he had succeeded, that he had tempted the other blade wide and that his own was poised at the big man’s belly, but then he saw the sword coming fast at his head and ducked clumsily. His assailant laughed.

  “You’ll have to do better than that, son.”

  Goodwife was screaming. Campion ran for the door, left unguarded by Grimmett’s advance and the huge man stepped backward to block her, but she changed direction. She leaped at Grimmett, teeth bared, hands clawing, and managed to catch his hair in her fingers. She screamed at him, her fingers hooked in filthy hair, pulling his head down. He shouted at Goodwife to get her off, swore, but Campion hung on and Toby jumped toward his enemy at the same time. He raised his sword, forgetting his teacher’s constant adage that the point will always beat the edge, and hacked the blade down and sideways as if it were a pruning hook and his enemy a tangle of brambles.

  Grimmett raised his own sword, but Campion was pulling at him, kicking and obstructing him, and Grimmett knew his parry would be too late. He bellowed in rage.

  Toby had never killed. He had never known this killing rage, and he watched, almost detached as, in the light of the candles and the fire’s glow, his blade hit Grimmett’s bent neck.

  Despite Campion, it seemed as if the head came upright as Toby’s blade pierced tendon and muscle. Campion let go, and Grimmett came upright. He forced himself against the sword and Toby sawed the blade toward him. The big man’s eyes shut. Toby staggered backward, the blade free, and there was blood everywhere.

  Grimmett fell slowly to his knees. His sword clattered on the floor and his hands came up, as if he wanted to pray, clawing at his own face and neck. Toby watched as his enemy fell forward, slumped like a sack of oats on the floor. Toby had killed for the first time and killed for love.

  Goodwife screamed. She was standing in the doorway, staring at Toby. Campion stared too, her hands clutched in front of her mouth, and then she looked up at Toby. Suddenly he seemed to become aware ag
ain of the noise, of the fire, of the heat that was making the room unbearable. “Come on!”

  Goodwife cringed aside as Toby led Campion into the hall. The priest was in the corner, rescuing fallen bottles, sucking a second bottle dry. The heat through the open door was searing, the light brilliant.

  “Come on!” Toby pulled Campion into the flame-light, his excitement overcoming the shock of his first kill, his vision of the bubbling throat and the astonished, shocked, fading eyes.

  Scammell saw Campion come into the yard. He grabbed the captain of the watch. “Stop them!”

  “This way!” Toby turned, holding Campion’s wrist, and whirled her round in the yard, blue cloak flying outward. “Come on!” They ran, hand in hand, toward the wharf, to the small boat Toby remembered drawn up on the mud.

  “Stop them!” Scammell’s first shout had been involuntary, startled from him by the sight of Campion with a strange man, but now the watch took up the shout. There was nothing they could do to save Scammell’s yard, even his neighbors’ property was doomed, but the shout convinced them that they had found the culprits. The shout was picked up, men started running, and the cries were for vengeance.

  Toby and Campion jumped on to the mud. Campion fell forward into the stinking slime and Toby whirled his blood-stained sword and chopped down on the rope that tied the small boat. “Push!”

  Campion slipped in the mud again and Toby tossed his blade into the boat and heaved at it. His boots were inches deep in muck, the boat was firmly anchored in the mud, but his country breeding had given him strength and he felt the boat’s keel release itself from the slimy suction and then slide down toward the lapping water.

  “Push!”

  “I’m trying!” Campion was laughing now, an inane laugh of relief and excitement. The flames lit the mud easily, throwing great wavering streaks of light on to the river. Timbers crashed behind them, sparks cascaded into the air, and Campion, black with mud, shook with laughter as she pushed at the boat.

  “Stop!” The captain of the watch was on the wharf now, but the boat’s stern was in the water and Toby ran it with huge strength clean into the river. He turned, picked Campion up and threw her unceremoniously into the boat. “Go to the back!” He pushed again, wading deep into the water.

  “Stop! In the name of the King!” The watch captain, in his excitement, forgot the rebellion. He dragged a long-barrelled pistol from this belt. “Stop!”

  Toby was half in the boat now, draped over its stern, and he kicked hard with his feet. Suddenly the current plucked at them, turned the boat, and Toby hauled himself over the side.

  The watch captain swore, knowing the range was long, but ignored Scammell’s frantic shouts, raised the pistol, and aimed at Toby. He could see easily, thanks to the fire, his stubby foresight settled on Toby’s spine and he pulled the trigger.

  Toby heard the bang, had a glimpse of the tiny explosion in the pan and the gout of red flame at the muzzle, and then the pistol ball smacked into the center thwart, gouged a splinter and ricocheted up toward the bridge.

  “Toby!”

  “I’m not hurt. Sit still!”

  The boat was picking up speed, circling toward the dangerous rapids where the river was compressed by the bridge’s narrow arches. If the boat became caught in one of the miniature weirs it would be whirled down the white chute and destroyed. Toby fumbled with the oars, forced himself to be calm, and fitted them into the tholes that gave them leverage. Pistols banged and stabbed flame from the wharf, but the small boat was in shadow now. He leaned into his stroke, turned the boat, and headed upstream and away from the city bank. It was hard work, the oars bent at each stroke, but they were clear now, going into the darkness across the river.

  “Toby?”

  He grinned at her. Her face was a mask of mud, white-eyed where she had wiped it.

  “You remember me?”

  “He married me, Toby!”

  “Do I call you Mrs. Scammell?”

  “Toby!” He was not sure whether she was crying or laughing.

  They were pulling past the fire now, on the far bank, and Toby glanced over and saw the heart of the flames that fed the great plume of smoke. The firelight was reflected on houses, steeples and towers, even on the great, stone tower of St. Paul’s Cathedral itself.

  Toby looked back at Campion. “Hello, Campion.”

  A huge crash sounded from over the river as the sheds finally collapsed. Campion looked in awe at the blaze, then at Toby. “Toby.”

  Scammell was shouting at a waterman, ordering him inshore so he could pursue his bride, but Campion and Toby were safe now. Toby paused for a second or two, leaned forward, and touched her mud-smeared hand.

  “Everything will be all right. Mrs. Swan’s waiting for us in the Paris Garden. We’re going to Lazen.”

  “Lazen?” She shook her head. “But your mother?”

  “Don’t worry about her!” He began to laugh. He could be executed for this night’s work, and they still had to escape from the patrols about London. They would have a few hours’ start over their pursuers. “We’re going to Lazen! We’re going home!”

  She seemed to be sobbing, but then Toby realized it was laughter. They were free.

  Twelve

  The best way to approach Lazen Castle was from the north, across the humped hills that were grazed by Lazen sheep, dipping into the shallow valleys where willow and alder grew beside Lazen streams, and over the final crest that revealed the Lazen valley with the castle at its center.

  It was on this road that Toby brought Campion and Mrs. Swan in the first week of September. Mildred Swan had insisted on making the whole journey, caught up in the excitement of the escape. “There’s no saying what you two will get up to if there isn’t an older body with you,” she had declared, though Campion suspected that Mrs. Swan simply enjoyed travelling. Mrs. Swan had taken the truth of Campion’s predicament well, abandoning her long-held worries about the supposedly ill mother with good grace. “I suppose you couldn’t trust anyone, dear, and you’re quite right.”

  The first two days had been the worst, escaping the tendrils of the London garrison, going west on minor tracks. Closer to Oxford their progress became faster. Toby had been given a Royalist passport, recognized by the first patrol that found them, and in Oxford Campion and Mrs. Swan took once more to a stage wagon going west. Toby bought a horse, using Campion’s money, and now, six days later, they stood and looked at Lazen from the north.

  Mrs. Swan sniffed. “Not quite like Hampton Court is it, Mister Toby.”

  “Not exactly, Mrs. Swan.” Toby smiled. Mildred Swan was a Londoner and nothing could match anything in London for her. She had been invited to stay on with them at Lazen, but had trenchantly refused. She would travel gladly, but only so that she could return, her prejudices confirmed, to Bull Inn Court.

  From Campion’s view there were still signs that Lazen Castle had once been just that: a castle. To her left were the remains of a massive keep, square built on a small rise in the valley and used now, Toby said, as a storage place for Lazen’s farms. Closer to Campion, and straddling the road just a hundred yards from the foot of the hill, was the old gatehouse, now quite separate from the main house but still habitable. An empty flagstaff awaited Sir George’s return. There was a moat, too, that most proper decoration of a castle, but it now covered only the approaches from the south and west and, in truth, the water looked more like an ornamental lake than an instrument of defense.

  Most of the ancient castle had disappeared. A brief length of battlemented wall joined the keep to the main house, but its chief purpose now was to provide support for the espaliered fruit trees in the kitchen garden. Another length of wall guarded the eastern approach, joining the keep to the huge stable-yard and sheltering the smithy, brewhouse, and a score of other buildings from the winter winds. The rest of the castle had gone, its stones used in the making of new buildings. Those buildings were beautiful.

  Campion was in awe. She l
istened to Toby describing the castle, but the size of the place, its comfortable grandeur, reminded her that Lady Margaret Lazender waited within. She feared the confrontation and she knew, despite Toby’s protestations to the opposite, that he was by no means confident that his mother would welcome her.

  Closest to the gatehouse, some seventy yards further south, was the Old House, built in the reign of Elizabeth and, despite its name, still less than a hundred years old. It was stone built, though its west front, that looked across formal gardens to the moat, had been faced with mock half-timber cladding. Its windows were high and wide, quite unsuited for defense, but marvellous for spilling evening light into the great hall.

  Joined to the house, and so attached that the two buildings formed a large “L,” was the New House. This, Toby said, had been completed just ten years before and was his mother’s pride. It faced south, was stone-built throughout, and Toby spoke of an interior that was splendid with marble and plasterwork, tiles and polished oak. He pointed, as they went slowly down the slope, to the new kitchens, inconveniently distant from the great hall when Lady Margaret decided to entertain the county, and he spoke with pride of the new bedrooms, each room separate, that had replaced the old ones which had been arranged like a corridor, each room leading to the next, and in which curtained beds had been a necessity of modesty. The bedrooms shared the upper floor of the New House with the long gallery, the throne room of Lady Margaret, and it was toward the gallery that Toby led them.

  They made slow progress. At the gatehouse a child erupted from a doorway and shouted a welcome to Toby, offering to take his horse, and the child’s shout brought more servants and retainers to see the cause of the commotion. Campion and Mrs. Swan, walking, hung back as servitors and footmen, maids and cooks, the families who served Lazen came to greet him. They doffed hats, skimped bows or curtseys, and then stretched out to touch his hand and give what news they had. Mrs. Swan shook her head. “God knows how they feed all these mouths, dear.”