by Robyn Young
For Carlo, however, even their shuffling pace was a struggle to match. Over the last week in the barber surgeon’s care, his veins pricked to release thin streams of blood into jars that the surgeon had studied along with his urine, swirled, smelled and tasted as if fine wine, his fever had slowly subsided, along with the livid redness of the wound in his side. Three days ago he had, at last, been able to rise from his bed, bandaged up tight beneath his black robes, but the pain was still acute and walking any distance left him light-headed and breathless, sweat rising cold on his skin.
In the girl’s flight from their lodgings in St Paul’s, Carlo, sagged in fresh agony against the door of a bookseller’s in Paternoster Row, had been forced to send Goro after her without him. They had almost lost her then. Goro, expecting her to try to leave by the door when she slipped her loosened bonds, had left it unlocked. Carlo had worried she might realise what they were up to, but knowing the girl was sick and would give them nothing at all if she died, he had agreed to Goro’s plan. But while her unexpected rooftop scrabble might have shielded them from suspicion it had taken them both by surprise.
Only by blind luck had Goro kept her in sight, a column of soldiers marching down Cheapside blocking her way in those vital first moments. The risk had paid off. Having tracked the girl to the vintner’s, Goro had returned to help Carlo to the comfort of a tavern on Bishopsgate that looked out over St Helen’s. There they had settled to watch and wait, Goro maintaining a ceaseless vigil at the window. The next morning, their patience had been rewarded.
Where the sick girl and the old man were going, Carlo had no idea, nor if they would offer him any more leads in his hunt, but he was out of options. His mission had so far been a complete failure and this painful trudge through London’s rain-dashed streets was the last hope he had of salvaging anything of it. The girl may have given them nothing but screams, but Carlo felt sure she knew something. The house on Birchin Lane was the lock – the point of connection to their enemies and to Vaughan and his bastard son – and the girl was the only key left now to turn in it. He would not return to Rome empty-handed. There was too much at stake.
At the bottom of Gracechurch Street, the reek of the flooded Thames rose to greet them. The river was high and brown, raging through the arches of London Bridge. The thunder of it was loud in their ears as they crossed, finding brief respite from the wind and rain in the shelter of the buildings that spanned it. There were large concentrations of guards lingering around the gatehouses, watchful, tense. Carlo had seen the same apprehension in the faces of many of London’s citizens. All of them were poised, waiting to see if war was coming. People spoke of the days of Jack Cade, the Kentish rebel who brought fire and blood to the streets of the capital thirty years earlier. Royal proclamations denounced the rebels and named the Duke of Buckingham the vilest traitor of them all.
Once through the southern gateway they slowed their pace further, keeping a good distance from the girl and the old man as the crowds thinned. The man had one arm wrapped tight around the girl’s shoulder now. She seemed to be struggling. In Southwark, they found themselves in a drowned land. The Thames had flooded the marshy banks and in places had risen up over the jetties to lap against the walls of buildings that lined the waterfront. The wheels of mills raced round in the churning currents. There were things caught in the tide: branches of trees torn off by the storms, barrels and crates washed from warehouses, eel baskets ripped from their moorings. The narrow alleyways of Southwark became conduits, taking the river deep into the borough and filling up cellars.
People waded through the streets, women hitching their sodden skirts. Inside the Clink, the squalid darkness was filled with the hack of graveyard coughs. Past the prison, where hands reached out with pleas for food and mercy, Carlo had to pause for breath. The wound in his side throbbed like fire, while the icy water seeping through his boots chilled him to the bone. Goro waded back to him, his one eye narrowed with concern, but Carlo pushed away his helping hand. ‘Keep going,’ he said, through gritted teeth. ‘We can’t lose them in this warren.’
Up ahead, the alleys opened on to the banks where a long row of ramshackle taverns and stews flanked the river. Here, men were busy hauling bags of sand from carts and stacking them up against doorways in an effort to hold back the encroaching river. Beyond the carts, outside one of the taverns, Carlo saw a large wagon with high, painted sides and enormous wheels. Two muscular horses were harnessed to it. A group of people, mostly children, had gathered around it. Approaching, Carlo saw the wagon had writing on one side.
The Marvellous Shoreditch Players
The girl and the old man halted a short distance away. Gesturing Goro out of their sight, behind one of the carts, Carlo watched as the girl pointed to the crowd around the wagon. He frowned in the same direction, his eyes taking in the knot of curious children, a little white dog running excitedly between their legs and several men carrying bags from the tavern that they were stowing inside the wagon. He saw the old man lean down and say something to the girl, who raised her finger again. Carlo felt frustrated. Why had she brought her companion here? What was she showing him?
Suddenly, the girl collapsed. The man tried to catch her, but she slipped from his grasp. As he crouched awkwardly beside her, trying to lift her head from the mud, his hood blew back and Carlo saw his tonsure. The old man was a priest. As he struggled to raise her, Carlo saw too that he only had one arm. At the priest’s frantic calls, two men dropped their sandbags and moved to help. One lifted the limp girl easily. The old man said something, his face full of concern.
‘The hospital, Father, it’s not far,’ Carlo heard one of the men say in response. ‘St Thomas’s. They’ll take care of her there.’
As the unconscious girl was carried away from the river, the priest at her side, Carlo returned to Goro. ‘Stay here,’ he ordered. ‘They came for a reason. See if you can find out what. I’ll follow them to St Thomas’s.’
Before Goro could respond, Carlo limped away. With one hand clutched to his side, the panicked calls of men trying to hold back the river ringing in his ears, he followed the priest and the lifeless girl into Southwark’s alleys, wading through the rising waters.
Jack glanced round, hearing a shout of alarm. Some distance away, outside the Cross Keys, he saw an old man bent over a small figure sprawled in the mud. As he watched, a couple of people moved in to help, blocking his view.
‘Hugh wants to know if you’ve got everything? We’re about set.’
Jack turned at the voice to see Adam Foxley behind him. The man’s hair, shot through with grey and tied in a tail at the nape of his muscle-corded neck, was dripping with rainwater. In answer, Jack patted his side where his father’s sword was strapped beneath his cloak.
Adam grinned, showing sharp yellow teeth. ‘Like days of old.’ He grasped Jack’s shoulder in a vice-like grip. ‘Except you’re one of us now, Wynter.’ His smile faded, his intense blue eyes scanning the rain-dark sky. ‘All Hallows’ Eve. Sir Thomas’s spirit will ride with us tonight.’
Jack said nothing, but his heart beat faster. At dusk, church bells all across the kingdom would sound their first peals. Over the next three days of Allhallowtide they would ring each day to comfort the souls in purgatory. Maybe, by the time they were done ringing, he would know whether his father deserved his prayers.
As Adam moved off to help his brother load another pack of supplies into the wagon, Jack swung his bag over his shoulder. Inside, among the few things he owned, was the map in its stiff leather case. He’d saved it from the cellar two nights earlier when the river began trickling through the walls. Now, the water was almost up to the trapdoor, a swirling tide of darkness carrying barrels and the bodies of drowned rats. Hugh had packed up the last of his belongings that morning, selling a collection of tarnished tankards and stools to a neighbouring innkeeper and giving a barrel of salted meat he’d found in his store to his friend Bill, the ferryman. None of them was planning on returning. No
t until the storm they were about to unleash had passed and King Edward sat upon England’s throne.
‘Wynter.’
Jack looked round at the rasping voice to see Valentine Holt emerge from the tavern. The man had a small barrel wedged under one muscular arm. In his other hand he held a sack.
‘Take this.’
Jack’s jaw tightened at the gruff command, but he took the sack from Holt. It was heavy. He heard a few things knock against one another inside.
‘Careful,’ Valentine warned, pausing to loop a long length of fuse around his wrist. The end was glowing red.
‘What’s in here?’ Jack asked, looking inside the sack. He saw a belt with maybe a dozen small flasks attached to it and several clay pots from the top of which protruded much shorter lengths of fuse. The flasks he recognised. Gunners called them apostles. The pots he’d not seen before, but he could hazard a guess they were filled with the same substance. Black powder. He could smell the faint hint of it, like rotten eggs in the damp air. ‘Christ,’ he murmured. ‘We’re not laying siege to the place.’
‘You was wanting a distraction.’ Valentine chuckled at his expression. ‘Don’t fret, Master Jack.’ He swung his fuse slowly in the air. ‘Just a little devil’s powder to help keep their eyes on our show and off of you.’ He patted the barrel. ‘The rest is mine. If we’re heading for Brittany I’ll not leave it here.’
Ned shouted from the wagon. ‘George says we need to leave. If the wagon gets stuck we’re done for!’
Jack was turning to follow Valentine when he caught sight of a figure a short distance away. It was a large man in a grey cloak, standing stationary while all around him people moved: men lugging sandbags to doorways, whores in their yellow hoods helping to toss buckets of water out of flooded chambers. The man was staring in his direction. Half his face was covered with a white mask.
A face as white as bone. Death it was, I tell you.
Jack felt a jolt of shock go through him. Dropping the sack, he was off and running. The man, seeing him coming for him, turned and plunged into the crowd.
Ignoring Valentine’s shout, Jack reached for the hilt of his sword as he ran. His heart hammered in his chest. Was this the man who killed his mother? Swerving out of the way of a line of men passing sandbags between them, dodging a cart and a knot of people staring worriedly at the river, he followed the fleeing man into the streets around Winchester Palace. His boots splashed water up his hose and his bag bounced wildly on his back. People cried out in alarm and anger as he knocked past them.
Ahead, three youths wheeling barrows full of logs came towards him, moving fast and purposeful. Jack threw himself against the wall to avoid being run down. When they had passed and he pushed himself on, he realised he had come to a crossroads. Alleys led off in all directions. There was no sign of the man in the mask.
Chapter 25
The wagon jolted over the uneven road, wheels slipping in the mud, causing things to rattle and slide around in the dressing compartment below. The men inside, seated on the boards, lurched with the motion. The arched wooden door in the back, which gave side access to the stage during performances, was open, but the afternoon was dark under the cover of low racing clouds and as they’d set off from Bankside, followed briefly by a gaggle of children, Ned had lit a lantern. It swung from the roof of the wagon, throwing copper light across the men’s faces and up the sides of the painted wooden trees of Robin Hood’s forest lair.
The players were silent, staring at Vaughan’s men. The Foxley brothers blithely ignored them, busy priming their crossbows, the tillers of which were covered with staghorn as pale as ivory, carved with stars and crosses. Adam had told Jack the weapons had been a gift from Thomas Vaughan for their service in France. Jack watched them working together in that effortless manner he had observed in other siblings. Even when wordless they seemed to speak a language that was all their own. He thought of his half-blood brother and sister out there somewhere, wondering what wounds Vaughan’s death had opened in their lives. But the question echoed out into nothing.
Hugh met the players’ hostility with his own, as did Valentine, the slow-burning fuse coiled like a snake around his wrist. Holt’s arquebus lay beside him. The gun’s iron barrel was polished to a dark shine, although the thick wooden stock was scarred and pitted. Jack remembered him at Barnet, swinging the still smoking weapon into the face of one of Warwick’s soldiers. Two words were carved along the length of the stock: God’s Messenger.
Every so often, George peered in at them all through the open hatch that led up to the driver’s seat. Gone was the early enthusiasm with which the playwright had agreed to help them, eager for the prestige and the payment this performance would bring him. Now, the reality of the task ahead had sunk in and he just seemed nervous and agitated. ‘Make sure you keep quiet on stage,’ he told Hugh, Jack and the others. ‘Just follow the lead of my men during the fight scenes and all will be well.’ After giving Ned a meaningful look, reminding him they were his responsibility, George told the driver to urge the horses on.
As the wagon pitched forward, Ned, struggling into his costume, almost fell out of the back. Righting himself with a curse, he pulled the voluminous black robe down over his undershirt. Jack watched the two leather belts that criss-crossed his torso disappear beneath the folds. None of the players had asked Ned about the strange addition to his costume. They were all too preoccupied with the scarred and menacing strangers they’d been forced to accept into their company for the day. As Ned tugged on the tonsure Charity had made for him – a bald piece of hide for the crown of his head, trimmed around the edges with mismatched bits of old fur for hair – Titan barked in alarm. Jack fought back a laugh at the sight of him peering out through Friar Tuck’s fur fringe. The urge vanished quickly, sobered by the prospect of what they were lurching towards.
Beneath his own costume – the green tunic, hose and feathered cap of one of Robin Hood’s merry men – he could feel the bunch of material Charity had secured earlier to the small of his back by a belt. There too, swaddled and hidden, was the rondel dagger Hugh had lent him. His father’s sword and the bag containing the map were below in Charity’s wardrobe, along with the rest of their weapons. The seamstress, who sat huddled between the scrawny youth dressed as Maid Marion and the sullen Hood, was the only one of the troupe – other than George – who had been told their true purpose this All Hallows’ Eve. The others had no idea that their company was now part of a greater, far more dangerous act. No idea their parts as green-clad outlaws were about to become real. If all went according to plan they should never need to know.
Jack hoped Ned was right to trust Charity. The man had told him George had been a stalwart supporter of King Edward, but the seamstress was an unknown quantity. He noticed Ned flash her a smile as he sat himself down. Her face, pinched with worry in the lantern-light, softened.
Jack looked away, his thoughts filling with Grace. It was over a fortnight since she had come to him. The bruises from his fight at the White Bear had faded, but the memory of her body warm against his still lingered. Later that day, when they had said goodbye on Bankside, he pledged to come to her in Lewes when his business in London was done. But Grace had smiled and laid a cool hand against his cheek, her eyes full of knowing, telling him she didn’t need a promise he couldn’t keep.
His mind, restless, jumped to the man he had lost in Southwark’s alleys. When he returned to the wagon, soaked and breathless, Hugh had demanded to know why he’d run off. Jack had been saved from coming up with an excuse by George’s anxious insistence that they leave immediately, before the flood waters rose any higher. Sitting here now, he tried to clear his head and focus on the mission at hand, but the masked man tugged at his mind, tormenting him.
He thought of the little house he had grown up in, burned to a patch of blackened earth and ashes, thought of his mother, taken from him with violence and flames, for reasons he did not fully understand. More than anything, he wanted th
ose responsible in his hands. At his mercy. The knowledge he might well be rolling further and further away from the hope of an answer to her death, and, perhaps, his chance at vengeance, twisted inside him, an almost physical pain.
As they crossed London Bridge, forced to move slowly through the crowds and wait their turn at the gatehouse to the city, the river roared beneath them. The rain seemed to be easing, pattering rather than drumming on the roof of the wagon, but the Thames was the highest Jack had ever seen and the sound of it rushing through the narrow arches of the bridge was more like a weir than a river. He thought of the vessel that would be waiting for them beyond that torrent, a short distance downriver at Lion Quay. God willing, they would be on that fast tide by vespers. As they passed beneath the stone gatehouse, he saw Hugh cross himself. Jack wondered if it was a prayer for them, or for his comrades whose skulls still lined the route.
At the end of the bridge, the wagon shifted awkwardly to the right, the hooves of the horses clopping wetly on stone. The smell of rotting fish from the nearby wharf at Billingsgate soured the air. As St Magnus the Martyr filled the view behind them, Jack saw the stained-glass windows were lit brightly from within by the glow of many candles. Soul lights. Churches everywhere would be filled with them this evening; a comfort to the departed and a warning to any wrathful spirits abroad this night, when the veil between this world and the next was thinnest.
