by Robyn Young
‘The girl? Has she spoken?’
Goro shook his head. ‘I still think she’s a mute.’
‘I’ve told you – if she can scream she can talk.’
‘Then she doesn’t understand.’
‘By now she should be talking, even if in a language you do not know. If you make her, that is.’ Carlo inched his way up the bed, gasping with the effort. Goro moved in to help prop him on the pillows. ‘I remembered something, just before the butcher arrived. Something from the fight.’ His brow pinched as he sought to recall the memory. ‘The man I fought. He said, Where is the girl? Where is Amelot? I think that is her name.’
‘Amelot,’ repeated Goro, trying it out in his mouth.
‘She was in that house for a reason. I think she was with our attackers. If Vaughan’s son went there, directed by the lawyer, she may have seen him or spoken to him. She may know where he is now. Better still, she may know something of the map.’
‘I could go back to the house. Search it again?’
‘No. We’ve got all we can from that place.’ Carlo nodded to the chest in the corner that was filled with the weapons and other items Goro had salvaged from their dead comrades and the men they’d killed.
‘There’s a tunnel, as I said. I can get in and out.’
‘It’s too dangerous. If the bodies are discovered the hue and cry will be raised and the city watch will be on the hunt. I can’t risk losing you too, Goro. Try harder with the girl. Do whatever you can to make her talk.’ Carlo’s gaze drifted to the letter with the large seal attached. ‘We all have our orders.’
‘I will.’ Goro paused at the door. ‘I won’t let you down, Carlo.’
Carlo’s smile was tight. ‘You never have.’
Goro made his way along the passage of the lodgings the Bishop of London had granted them for the duration of their stay. They’d been given three small rooms for the seven of them, but now they were only two. While Carlo had been tormented by the loss of his men, Goro found it more agreeable. Carlo was his world and he didn’t like to share. Reaching the door at the end, he unhooked the key from his belt and turned it in the lock. He entered the shuttered chamber and closed the door, bolting it behind him. Two horsehair mattresses were stacked against one wall. Vanni and Piero’s belongings had been tossed into a corner, leaving the rest of the small room bare, except for the girl.
She was huddled against the whitewashed wall, naked but for her soiled hose, the ropes he had bound her wrists with stretching to loop over a beam above her. Like a puppet, he thought again. He had made the puppet twist and scream. How to make it talk? As he stepped towards her, the girl pressed her thin arms over her breasts, turning her head to the wall. During one of his first interrogations, Goro had ripped off the tunic the better to get at flesh and that was when he discovered that the boy – with the crop of hair and wire-lean body – was actually a girl. Her breasts, however, were of no interest to him. Fleshy outside things held no fascination; only things inside, under the surface. Like the scars on her back. Goro crouched in the half-light, his eye tracing again the marks that carved her skin. The scars streaked the bony length of her spine, whip-licked her ribs and sliced her shoulder blades, pinks and whites for older, shallow cuts, scarlet for the deeper ones that would never fade. So many. A masterpiece of pain. More intimate and devastating in the moments it captured than anything that could be conjured by the painters in Florence and Rome.
When he had first seen them, tearing off her tunic while she screamed into his hand, Goro had been stunned to silence. For a moment, his own plans for torture abandoned, he had held her face, wet with tears of terror, in his hands, searching for signs of recognition. Had the same master worked on them both? But she was much younger than him and he knew that their horrors had happened in a different time and place. That day, his interrogation forgotten, he had sat on the floor and slowly, calmly, removed his mask. The girl, crouched against the wall, had stared at him in silence, until her breaths evened out and he knew that she, too, saw kindred. They had sat opposite one another, each looking into the other’s hell, until the cathedral bells had rung for vespers, shaking the room with their thunder.
But he had his orders. Forcing his eyes from her scarred back, Goro approached. He could see the ropes at her wrists were frayed where she had tried to chew her way through them. He shook his head. ‘Amelot.’
She went rigid at the sound of her name, her large tawny eyes flooding with new fear. A whimper escaped her lips. At last, he was getting somewhere.
Chapter 21
On the storm winds of autumn a change was blowing in across the south of England. Rumour spread far and wide of the two princes in the Tower murdered at their uncle’s hand. Men spoke of regicide, pounded fists on tables and recalled oaths once made to a dead king. A call was sounded for insurrection. Trickling out from the Duke of Buckingham’s lands in Wales it began as little more than a timid stream, but as it flowed east to Exeter and Newbury, through Salisbury and into Sussex and Kent, it became a torrent. Rise up, the call demanded; rise up against the usurper. Rise up against the child killer.
Some of those seduced by rebellion’s strident song were men who had lost lands and titles, held by fathers and grandfathers, to Richard’s northern followers. Others, loyal to the memory of King Edward, were enraged by the image of his sons smothered in their beds by a man of their own blood. But all of them knew that in seeking to topple one king they must raise another and with the growing belief that the princes were gone they sought about for one they might crown in Richard’s stead. The answer wasn’t long in coming.
Soon, a new rumour was spreading: that Henry Tudor was to return to England to join the rebellion at the head of a fleet supplied by Duke Francis of Brittany. People spoke of a marriage between Tudor and Elizabeth of York, King Edward’s eldest daughter and sister of the princes. Alone, Henry Tudor’s claim was fragile, as flimsy as the parchment of the Letters Patent that had been scored with his family’s exclusion from the throne. But united with Yorkist blood the last heir of Lancaster was strengthened. Together, might the two houses that for years had bloodied English soil with their warring mount a challenge against the man who had wounded them both?
All across the south-east men met in the secrecy of manors and barns, orchards and woods. Messengers rode in haste, battling late September’s gales, delivering plans to those in neighbouring counties, giving muster dates and points. The men of Kent, Sussex and Surrey would take London and liberate the queen-dowager and her daughters, while the Duke of Buckingham would march east with the men of Brecon and unite with the rebels of Salisbury and Newbury. These forces would then be joined by Tudor, sailing into Plymouth Sound with Edward Woodville and a Breton army of five thousand men. In readiness, weapons were gathered and stockpiled, hidden in cellars and haylofts. Squires cleaned rust from armour and whetted blades that hadn’t tasted blood in a decade or more.
King Richard, on his way back from York on his progress, was not oblivious to the distant rumbles of rebellion. Spies sent south early in the autumn brought back word of pockets of unrest and fingered certain people who wished the king ill. In response, Richard ordered treason commissions established in the southern counties to root out the ringleaders of any possible sedition. Royalist troops patrolled the capital and men were hauled from their homes for interrogation. Some were threatened or bribed to give up their leaders, while others were clapped in irons. The tension was thick and palpable, like a storm that refused to break, charging the air and bruising the horizon with the promise of destruction.
Amid it all, Jack remained ensconced in the dank cellar of the Ferryman’s Arms, where the walls wept water at high tide and rats listened in on the plans he made with Hugh Pyke and Ned Draper. He ventured out only rarely, once to get supplies and twice, with Hugh, to meet Robert Stillington in the tree-shaded secrecy of Paris Garden. The bishop was agitated, his eyes twitching nervously about as he spoke of the wider plot they now found themselves
bound up in: tiny parts in a great machine of insurrection rolling to life across the south. Despite the bishop’s apprehension, Jack sensed the excitement in him, Stillington keen to paint himself the master of the coming war – the man who had brought Margaret Beaufort and Buckingham together; two sparks that had set flame to the kingdom.
It was through Stillington that Jack learned the deaths of the princes were mere rumour, designed to turn men against King Richard. His relief, however, had been short-lived when Stillington raised Margaret Beaufort’s concern at their planned rescue, the countess reputedly believing it would be better for the boys to remain in the Tower until Richard was defeated by her nephew and her son. For an interminable fortnight Jack had seen his one real hope for answers about his father slipping through his fingers. But, then, Elizabeth Woodville got word to the countess through her physician, insisting her sons be rescued lest they come to real harm during the rebellion and that Vaughan’s men be entrusted with the task. Margaret Beaufort had backed down, offering to do whatever she could to aid the attempt. And so the plot was set.
After weeks of planning, everything was almost ready. Supplies had been gathered, Ned had returned from Shoreditch with the answer they needed, weapons had been collected and Hugh’s call to arms had been answered. The men of Vaughan’s old household had arrived over the past week. First the brothers, Adam and David Foxley, both more wiry and grizzled than Jack remembered, each with matching long-faded brands on their foreheads: F for felon. Then, on a windblown evening in early October, when white horses rode the dark Thames and the shutters of the Bankside stews rattled in the gusts, came Valentine Holt.
After several days shut away together going through the plan, arguing over the details and grating on one another’s nerves, the atmosphere had become, in Ned’s words, hotter than a monk in a whorehouse, and he had suggested they leave the cellar. Hugh needed some convincing, but Ned’s insistence had won him over and, telling them of a large alehouse off Billingsgate where they had dancing dwarves and a bowling alley, he led them out into the late afternoon.
As they walked the twisting streets of Southwark, a chill wind snatching at their clothes and blowing dust into their eyes, Jack noticed people gave their motley company a wide berth. Glancing round at his companions he understood why. There was Hugh, the hood of his cloak whipped aside by the wind, revealing his sword-savaged face, his stare unfriendly and full of suspicion. Close behind came the Foxley brothers, their characters already marked on their foreheads, two sets of keen blue eyes raking the crowds, perhaps for opportunity. Bringing up the rear was Valentine Holt, a squat bull of a man, his face peppered with powder burns and a menacing twist of a smile in his mouth. Even Ned, with his jovial grin and his little dog trotting at his heels, was built like a war machine with fists that could break a man’s face. It was fortunate, Jack thought, that they had secured a guise under which to enter the Tower, else the guards on the walls would more as like shoot them before they reached the gates.
It was strange to be out after weeks in isolation. Jack felt both hemmed in and terribly exposed. Since leaving the tavern, he’d checked several times that they weren’t being followed. Now, as they neared London Bridge, he continued to scan passers-by, wary of dark-skinned men and searching for masks. He had kept Gilbert’s troubling revelation to himself, not wanting anything to distract Hugh and the others from the plan, but the questions surrounding those men and the deaths of his mother and Arnold continued to torment him, setting a fuse to his temper that burned shorter each day.
Moving across the bridge, under the watchful gaze of scores of guards and the spiked and rotted reminders of the last rescue attempt – surrounded by fresh notices promising ugly death to rebels and traitors – the six men entered Billingsgate, Ned leading the way to the White Bear. Stepping into the alehouse, they found themselves in a hot soup of unwashed bodies, smells of sweat, damp clothing, fresh-brewed ale and wood-smoke forming a pungent fug over the packed room. Ned made straight for an area near the back where drink was being served from barrels by three women.
Following through the crush, Jack saw a stage had been set up in one corner, made out of boards placed over upended barrels. There was a curtain strung up obscuring part of it. The stage was empty at present, groups of men and a few women leaning up against it as they shouted and guzzled their way through conversations. Beyond the barrels where the alewives served their drink, the room extended down a long passageway with a cracked tiled floor. Men were rolling balls that looked to Jack like cannon shot down the alley to where a jack had been tossed. Others had gathered in behind to watch and bet.
‘Ale or cider?’
Jack looked round at Ned’s shout. ‘Ale.’
Ned yelled his order with a wink for the serving girl and handed her the coins. Passing the tankards out to his companions, he nodded towards the stage. ‘Let’s get ourselves a view.’ He waded through the fretful sea of bodies, Titan scurrying after him, pausing to growl at a couple of huge bristle-backed hounds lounging under a table.
Jack, turning to follow his companions, found himself faced by a brawny-looking man with jug-ears and thick wet lips crooked in a smirk.
‘We don’t get your sort in here.’
Jack realised the man’s eyes were on his blue silk doublet, only partly concealed by the woollen cloak Hugh had lent him. A quick glance around at the coarse tunics and stained aprons, the wooden clogs and patched hose, told him he stood out like a gem in a muddy puddle. Ignoring the remark, he pushed his way past and joined his comrades by the stage. ‘Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea,’ he said to Ned, setting his ale on the stage and adjusting his cloak to cover his silks.
‘If we’re going to hell, I’m not going there sober.’ Ned raised his drink and his voice to the others. ‘Here’s to not losing our heads!’
‘Amen,’ growled David Foxley, clashing his tankard against Ned’s and then his brother’s.
Hugh shook his head, unsmiling at their humour.
‘So we’re set?’ questioned Jack, leaning in to Ned. ‘You trust George to keep his word? He will do this, yes?’
Ned laughed wryly. ‘I told you, Jack. No more talk tonight.’ Pushing from the stage, he paused to scoop up Titan, then made for two women perched on a barrel, their dresses pulled in tight and low to expose the swell of their breasts. The women cooed over the wriggling dog while Ned chatted to them.
‘All those years making his bed, cleaning his sword. Burying his shit. Must’ve stung like a blade, eh?’
Jack turned to see Valentine Holt watching him, his dark eyes gleaming over the rim of his tankard. ‘What?’
‘I’m trying to reckon what it is you’re doing here.’ The gunner’s voice rasped in his throat, grating like sand in the bottom of a barrel. ‘Why you’d risk your neck for a dead knight who treated you as his servant, never his son?’
Jack’s jaw tightened. He wished to God Hugh hadn’t told Valentine his true relationship to Vaughan. ‘The same reason you would, I suppose. For gold and glory.’
Valentine gave a low laugh at his caustic tone. ‘No, no. We’ – he gestured to Hugh and the Foxley brothers, talking among themselves – ‘we was bound to Sir Thomas, body and blood. Each of us owes him our lives, in our own ways. When Hugh Pyke said I was to repay that debt, I came.’ He pressed his tankard to his heart. ‘My master is gone, but my oath lives on.’ He cocked his head. ‘But you, James Wynter, you wasn’t battle born to him. You was blood born. Our lives he valued – set coins to. Yours he denied.’
‘I told you – it’s Jack now.’
Valentine smiled as he took a drink. ‘Keep your secrets then.’ The gunner’s smile faded. ‘But just know if you don’t plan on watching our backs you’d better keep an eye open on your own.’ Turning away, he struck up a conversation with Hugh, leaving Jack standing alone against the stage, the room around him seething with drunken laughter and the rumble of bowls down the cracked tiles of the alley.
Jack felt the
tension coil tighter inside him. As he drained his ale, he tried to tell himself that he understood Valentine’s mistrust. Hugh might have divulged the fact he was Thomas Vaughan’s son, but Jack had sworn the man to silence over the map and his hope that Prince Edward might know more about his father, enough to unearth some of his secrets. To Valentine and the Foxleys, his place in this mission was unclear. They had fought for Vaughan when he was still at his mother’s breast. They had history with his father he knew little of. For all his training and the dream of what he might one day become in their company, he had only ever been a page to these men of steel.
Still, Valentine’s remarks burned in him, reminding him not only that he wasn’t really one of them, but that his plans were no longer his own. With the call for rebellion growing across the south it felt as though his private hope for answers had scattered on the wind like a thousand seeds. Could he keep sight of that hope through the tangled forest of other men’s intentions now springing up around him?
The curtain strung up across the makeshift stage switched aside and three men appeared, clutching drums and pipes. The scattered whistles at their appearance turned into rough applause as they struck up a lively tune and the alehouse’s crowd turned to notice them.
‘I found a cure for your troubles, my friend!’
Jack looked round at the shout in his ear to see Ned had returned with the two women in tow.
One of them sidled up with a smile and threaded her arm through his. ‘He’s handsome,’ she hollered at Ned over the music, not taking her eyes off Jack.
Cheers erupted as six little men came dancing out on to the stage, each wielding a stick, strung with ribbons and bells. After lining up in two rows, the dwarves launched into a lively jig, occasionally leaping towards one another and thwacking their sticks together in time to the music.
Jack heard the woman beside him giggle and felt her hand tracing up his arm, running over his muscles. From a distance she’d seemed pretty, but up close he could see an angry rash of pimples on her chest. Dirt was ground deep in the creases of her neck and he could smell the grease in her hair. He looked into his tankard. It was empty. He wasn’t nearly drunk enough.
