by Robyn Young
Dancing away, Jack recovered his stance, expecting the man to come in at him again. But, instead, he snatched up the scroll case and charged off down the alley. Jack went after him. The man was moving stiffly. Jack caught him down by the Clink, near to where a drunk was slumped on some steps, singing. As he slammed the man up against a wall, he saw that he was olive-skinned, with black hair hanging in his eyes. His face was etched with pain, but still he fought, kneeing Jack in the stomach, then punching him in the side of the head, leaving his ear ringing. Jack shook the daze away, just as the man grabbed his wrist and, this time, tried to take the sword from him. They twisted and turned in the alley, neither willing to let go.
With a snarl, Jack drove him into the wall, trying to release his grip. The man crashed back into the bars of the Clink. An arm snaked out and fingers seized a fistful of his hair. He pulled his head away, hair tearing from the roots, but it distracted him, loosening his grip long enough for Jack to wrench his arm free. Gripping the hilt two-handed, he turned the blade and jabbed the disc pommel hard into the man’s gut. The man fell to his knees. Dropping the scroll case, he retched, blood bubbling between his lips.
‘Kill him! Send the bastard’s soul to hell, lad!’
Jack ignored the drunk’s slurred shouts. A few feet away, hands were clenched around the iron bars of the prison. The hiss of voices drifted from the foul-smelling dark.
Jack pointed his sword at the man’s throat. ‘Who are you?’
The man stared up at him, one arm curled protectively around his stomach.
‘Answer me, God damn you! Why did you kill my mother?’
The question was echoed in a singsong voice from within the Clink. ‘Why did you kill my mother?’ It was followed by gales of laughter.
‘We thought she knew where to find you,’ said the man through his teeth. Hearing his accent, Jack knew he was Italian. ‘She gave us nothing. But we could not let her warn you.’
‘She was innocent, you son of a bitch!’
‘She allied herself with Thomas Vaughan. As did the lawyer. As have you. For that, none of you is truly innocent.’
‘What did my father do? What was his crime?’ Jack pointed at the scroll case, lying in a puddle between them. ‘Did he steal that from you? Is that it? You killed my mother for a map?’
‘It is not the map. It is those who want it.’ The man coughed again and sank lower. Blood trickled thickly from his mouth. He reached up to wipe it away, then curled forward, teeth gritted.
Jack knew there was no way his pommel-punch was responsible. The man was afflicted by something else entirely.
‘It is what they would do if they got hold of it,’ continued the man, forcing the words out now.
‘What? What would they do?’
The man dropped forward, planting his palm on the ground to steady himself.
‘Gregory? Did you send him to find me? Was he working for you?’
The man stared up at him blankly, no sign of recognition at the name.
Jack whipped round, hearing a shout. He saw four men in the alley. They had halted and were staring at him, standing over the kneeling man, sword raised as if to execute him.
‘Summon the watch!’ cried one.
Cursing, Jack snatched up the scroll case. As he did so, the man clutched at his wrist.
‘I beg you! Do not give it to them!’
Wrenching free, Jack ran from the approaching men and the drunk’s crazed laughter.
When he reached Bankside, dripping with sweat and rain, he found Ned squatting on the dockside, clutching his shoulder. Blood oozed between his fingers. Bill was crouched beside him and the prince was lingering close by. Titan was whining unhappily, his paws on Ned’s knee.
‘Bastard stabbed me,’ Ned told him, indignant. ‘With my own bollock!’
‘Where is he?’ asked Jack, looking around.
‘He ran off once he’d stuck me. After you, I reckon.’
‘We need to go,’ Jack said, sheathing his sword and reaching to help him up.
Ned rose unsteadily, shaking his head. ‘I’ll bleed out if I don’t get this seen to.’
Bill was nodding emphatically. ‘You get that mended, Ned. I’ll take you all to Erith tomorrow. The river is wild tonight.’
‘No.’ Ned glanced at the prince. ‘You’ve got to get him out of the city, Jack.’ He forced a grin through his pain. ‘I’ll get myself to the Rose. There’s a midwife there who I dare say has stitched up many a hole.’ His grin became a grimace as he tossed Jack his sodden bag with its broken strap, rescued from the floor of the tavern. ‘I’ve taken what I need of Hugh’s money. The rest is in there. Get his lordship to Mechelen. We’ll follow when we can.’
Jack could hear shouts rising from the nearby streets. Had those men summoned the watch? With a last look at Ned, he ushered the prince towards Bill’s ferry, rocking on the inky waters. ‘We’ll take it ourselves if you won’t,’ he told Bill, stuffing the mud-spattered scroll case into the bag.
The ferryman followed, reluctant to go but unwilling to lose his vessel.
Although the waters were receding, the Thames was still high, covering most of the mooring stairs. Jack held the boat as steady as he could for Bill and Edward to climb in, then clambered in after them, stowing the bag under the seat at the prow. Edward sat at the stern, holding on tight. Bill took up the oars as Jack untied the mooring rope and pushed them out. The current took them swiftly. Jack raised a hand to Ned, who lifted his in return, before the darkness swallowed him.
London Bridge loomed ahead, the buildings crowding its great length towering above them, lanterns glowing like eyes on the gatehouses.
‘Hold on!’ shouted Bill as the boat shot towards it, rolling like a leaf in a torrent.
The river rushed through the arches with a monstrous roar, filling Jack’s ears as he clung to the sides. He could see something in one of the central arches – a splayed shadow, blocking the flow. It was a tree, he realised. They were heading straight for it. Jack yelled in warning, but Bill had already seen the danger.
He thrust an oar at Jack. ‘Help me, or we all die!’
Jack dug the oar in the water, paddling madly away from the blocked arch. The tide was strong, not willing to let them go. The river was thundering. Water skimmed off the surface in the wind, spraying them. Prince Edward had hunkered down in the bottom, arms curled over his head. Jack panted as he rowed, his tired muscles screaming.
Slowly, painfully, they fought the furious tide, edging towards another arch. All at once they were propelled through it, the boat grazing one of the massive piers before they were slingshot through into the maelstrom beyond. Water soaked them as the boat rocked wildly, but soon enough they were in calmer waters. As Jack handed the oar back to Bill, he heard the muffled crack of a gunshot. Looking towards the city, he saw men still searching the docks, but none of them noticed the little boat, speeding along in the darkness.
Sending up a prayer for his friends, Jack turned his face towards the widening river, heading for the estuary and the port of Erith.
Carlo lay in the wet, blinking as the rain struck his face. The evening sky seemed far away, a thin, broken sliver between the overhanging buildings of the alley. Someone had left their washing out in the rain, two pairs of dripping hose and a limp shirt suspended above him. He had a memory of his mother, many years ago, singing while she bathed him; heard his own gurgling laugh as she tickled him, smelled the honey in the soap lather and the scent of herbs on the warm air coming through the open shutters. He hadn’t seen her in a long time. He didn’t even know if she was still alive, living in that whitewashed house in the labyrinthine streets of Naples. These past decades his path – directed by others into fire and darkness, blood and war – had never taken him back.
The smell of smoke and rot brought him to the present. There was torch-fire burning on the edges of his vision. He tried to move, but pain shot through his side and he put his head back into the mud, panting. There were v
oices on the wind and crazed laughter rising above the drum of rain. He felt people around him, closing in. Questions asked. Was he dead? What had happened to him? For a moment, he couldn’t think why he was lying here. Then, he remembered.
Carlo groaned softly, his fingers twitching. He’d had the map in his hands. He could have been on his way to Rome, leaving this stinking city behind. His fingers floated to his chest. Where was his rosary? Gone, a voice reminded him. Broken. Was God punishing him for his failure? Removing his chance at grace? He started the sequence of Ave Marias and Paternosters, but his mind drifted without the beads to focus him. Where was Goro?
The smells of decay and the muttering voices took him down into another memory. He was descending steps into a rat-infested dungeon; the foetid bowels of a palace of horrors. One hand was pressed over his mouth and nose. The other wielded a torch that spread sickly light across the chains and blood and shit-spattered machines of torture. Goro had been the only one alive down there – or at least alive in a way that mattered. There were other living things; things that shuddered and mewled while the rats ate them. Lumps of flesh with so much missing they no longer could be looked upon as human. Only the mercy of a keen blade was left for them. Carlo hadn’t been there in that place to look for survivors. He didn’t really know why he had released the giant with half a face from his manacles. But in all the seven years since, Goro had not left his side. The man’s life had been bound to him completely, which made it strange he was not now here at his death. Had he gone after Vaughan’s son? Was there still hope?
Carlo heard a new voice, close by.
‘I’m a priest. Let me through.’
A priest! God had not forsaken him.
‘I think he’s dying, Father.’
‘I will help him.’ The words were English, but the accent wasn’t.
Carlo felt people shift around him. A face appeared, looming over him. It was an old man, hood up against the rain. His face was creased with age and scars. Carlo read many stories in it. As his eyes focused, he realised the man had only one hand. It was gripped around a gnarled stick. A gold ring glinted on one of his fingers, two serpents coiled around a winged staff. Carlo hissed as he saw it. The man was the priest he and Goro had followed with the girl. His saviour was the enemy. ‘Get away from me!’
The priest passed the stick to someone. Reaching into the folds of his cloak, he pulled out a small silver cross on a chain and drew it over his head. His hood slipped back revealing his tonsure. ‘You must make your confession.’
‘I will confess nothing to you. You are a wolf clad in the cloth of the Lord.’ The act of speech burned in Carlo’s body, but he spoke the words as fiercely as he felt them. ‘I would rather die graceless than confess my sins to a worshipper of pagan gods!’
Surprise widened the man’s eyes. After a moment, realisation hardened the creased contours of his face. He leaned closer to Carlo, blocking out the rain. ‘It was you? You killed my men?’ He kept his voice low, so only Carlo would hear it.
‘Heathens. I killed heathens.’
‘And the girl? You tortured her, yes?’
‘If you involved her in your wickedness, then her pain is on you. In this life and the next.’
‘Who did this to you?’ The priest’s gaze darted over his body and around him, clearly searching for something.
‘You’re too late,’ Carlo told him. He took some small pleasure in the admission. ‘It is gone.’
‘Who has it?’
‘God willing, my man has it now. It will go to Rome. What it shows will never be yours.’
‘Your man did not do this to you,’ said the priest sharply. ‘Tell me. Who has it?’
Carlo turned his head away. The fire in his body was fading. He felt cold now. Freezing cold. The wet was seeping into his body through his clothes. Moans and laughter and the clank of iron on iron sounded close by. Was hell opening beneath him? He reached for his rosary again, fingers crawling up his chest to his neck.
The old man, watching the movement, frowned thoughtfully. After a pause, he reached into a pouch and pulled out something small. The red bead gleamed between his fingers. Carlo recognised it at once. The rosary had been a gift from the Holy Father himself. He grasped for the bead, but the priest held it out of reach.
‘Tell me who has the map and who you are in the pay of and I will give this to you.’
Carlo’s hand fell back. ‘You are killing your mother,’ he murmured, staring at the silver cross the man held in his other hand.
‘Our mother has been dying for a long time. A disease deep within her. Now we must return to the beginning. Back to when the truth was whole.’
‘Your Gathering.’ Carlo’s tone was bitter. ‘What have you found in your seeking but evil and lies?’
‘We have found that which connects us all. Now we must build the world anew.’
Carlo closed his eyes. He was in that dungeon again. He had imagined hell many times, but no description in any book, no wrathful sermon, no vivid painting even had ever captured a sense of it as well as that place beneath the streets of Milan. He did not want to find himself there, hanging in place of the souls he had delivered with his blade, the rats feasting on his bleeding limbs while all around him things laughed and screamed.
Opening his eyes, he reached out. As his enemy bowed his head close to his ear, Carlo whispered his confession. When he was done, the priest pressed the red rosary bead into his hand. As the priest laid the silver cross on his brow, Carlo rolled the bead between his thumb and forefinger and thought the words of the Ave Maria while the old man spoke them.
‘Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee.’
Chapter 28
It was the feast of All Souls, the last day of Allhallowtide when the bells would chime once more to comfort those in purgatory. But to Sir Henry Stafford, Duke of Buckingham, the bells of Salisbury Cathedral ringing out across the town offered little consolation for his mortal soul as he was led towards the block.
The stocky figure of James Tyrell led the small procession, mostly made up of knights and squires, across the market place. It was Tyrell who had overseen his torture yesterday evening, watching impassively as he was strapped down. Buckingham had been informed that Richard himself had ordered this – that the king wanted the removal of the hand that had taken his in false fealty. Buckingham had pleaded with his captors for an audience with his cousin, but was told he had refused to see him. Tyrell and his men ignored his pleas, then his promises to give up those who had aided – indeed instigated – his rebellion, then finally his screams as the cutting had begun. He had felt every bite of the serrated saw working through the flesh of his upper arm all the way down to the bone, when he had mercifully passed out from the pain.
When he had come round, hours later, he’d found a stump where his arm had been, bandaged to stop the bleeding and keep him alive for his true fate. He had wept then, in the silence of the chamber they had locked him in, not for the agony or even the terror of the death he now knew was coming, but for the indignity of it all. He, a prince of the blood, cousin of the king and one of the most powerful men in the realm, had been mutilated by a lowly knight.
At dawn, when they had brought him a priest for the last rites, he begged again to see the king, this time delivering the names of his co-conspirators, telling the guards to get the message to Richard that his aunt, Margaret Beaufort, and her friend John Morton were at the heart of it – that they had convinced him to rise against the king, making him believe it was in the best interests of the realm. But, still, Richard did not appear.
Now, as he was led to the block, which stood on a dais outside an inn where a small crowd had gathered, Buckingham’s eyes searched for the king. But he already knew he would not be there. His absence was as much a punishment as the axe in the black-clad executioner’s hands.
The crisp stillness of the sunlit morning added to the insult, after the storms that had broken his rebellion and brought him to
this day of defeat. Failing to cross the Severn, his army slipping away around him and with no sign of Henry Tudor, Buckingham had fled north to Shropshire. In hiding, he had planned to flee the kingdom, hoping to secure the aid of his aunt, who owed him no less. But he had been betrayed by one of his own servants, a man who’d been in his service for decades and who had sold him for a thousand pounds.
As Tyrell ushered him up the steps on to the dais, Buckingham felt his bandaged arm, hidden under the heavy sleeve of his doublet, throbbing hotly. Sweat stung his eyes. His bladder was spiked with terror, but he held on as he was forced to kneel before the block. His rose-coloured doublet and hose were cut from the finest Venetian cloth. He didn’t want to stain them. As he knelt, Buckingham realised that the sign hanging outside the inn had a boar painted on it. He wondered if the fact he was dying under it was coincidence or his cousin’s attempt at humour. Either way, Richard wasn’t here to appreciate the statement as the executioner encouraged the duke to position his neck upon the pitted block.
‘It is done, my lord.’
Richard nodded, but remained silent at James Tyrell’s words. Wiping his mouth with a cloth, he sat back and gestured at the array of dishes that spanned the long table in the Bishop of Salisbury’s hall. ‘Join us.’
As Tyrell sat, Francis Lovell and Richard Ratcliffe shifting on the bench to make room for his muscular bulk, two of the king’s pages came forward to serve him, pouring wine from a silver jug and spooning slabs of venison cooked in junipers on to a plate. The low hum of conversation sounded around the table from the men present, most of them knights of the king’s household and noble allies such as Lord Zouche, a powerful landowner in Northamptonshire and brother-in-law of William Catesby, and Lord Scrope of Bolton, a battle-worn veteran of the wars between the Houses of Lancaster and York. All of them were dressed in black for All Souls, while the king was clad in robes of purple silk, trimmed with ermine.
