There was a stolid certainty in his voice that brooked no argument. I felt a coldness forming in my bowels at the thought. It was like a lump of quicksilver, flowing and moving with me, but cold as steel and twice as heavy. This, I have come to learn, is what sheer terror feels like.
We were kept busy all that long morning, lugging defensive weaponry to the wall through the steady rain, fetching and carrying arrows, balls for the smaller guns that would be used up on the walls, and braziers and bowls. I think someone thought it would be a good idea to melt a load of oil and tip it on to the enemy, but all I can say is, if that’s what they were thinking, they were welcome to try it. Personally, I planned to be nowhere near. I’ve seen what oil can do when someone’s careless and it overheats. Rather them than me.
More men turned up through the day. It was mid-morning when I heard shouting and abuse, and turned to see that there was a party of men being marched towards us. These, I learned, were more recruits to help us defend the gate. It gave me no little pleasure to see Bill and Wat with them.
‘Don’t look so bleeding pleased,’ Bill said. He had the grumpiest expression I’d yet seen on a man’s face. I’d once seen a scent hound trying to find a trail, and failing, and his expression was rather similar to Bill’s now.
I smiled broadly. ‘Good to see you again.’
‘Piss off!’
It was late in the morning when I heard horses riding towards us, and someone from the wall overhead (I was down by the fire again just then, warming my hands around a pottery mug of spiced ale) bellowed down to open the gates.
Bill, Rob and I were nearest, and we set our hands to the great baulks of timber that blocked the way. They slid back into the walls, and we struggled with them until the apprentice and one of the grooms came and helped us. At last the gates were free, and we could haul on the iron staples and pull the gates open.
Outside was a company of five armed men, led by a portly gentleman with a statute cap on his head but armour on his breast. He had sharp blue eyes and a goatee beard with moustache. I had no idea who he was, so I picked up the apprentice’s halberd and stood barring the way with as ferocious an expression as I could manage. It was not so hard: the man was seventy if he was a day, and he didn’t look as though he would be able to move too fast.
‘Who are you?’ I challenged.
‘Sir John Gage, Lord Chamberlain and Captain of the Guard. Let me pass. I have to speak to your captain. Where is he?’
I pointed to where the captain was taking a morning ale, and Sir John and his small company rode on past, hoofs splashing in the puddles and splattering my legs, much to Bill’s delight. I watched as they dismounted, Sir John taking the cup from the captain’s hand and taking a long draught. They were engaged in a long conversation, and then Sir John rode back to the gate, the captain walking quickly behind him.
‘Jack, Rob, Bill, Wat, you will be going back with Sir John in a little while. Gather your things. I’ll collect up as many others as I can, Sir John,’ he added, ‘and have them with you at the palace as soon as I may.’
‘That is good. Make sure to have them with me as quickly as possible.’
The knight nodded to the captain, and then rode on back along the road.
On hearing all this, you can guess how I felt. The cold quicksilver had returned to my bowels all over again. I had a horrible suspicion that I was about to be sent out to march to a battle. I didn’t want to be in a fight, in Christ’s name! I’d done enough already, what with the rebels firing at me and Atwood’s men trying to kill me. ‘What is this?’
I may have sounded a little petulant, but really! I was already injured, and I’d thought coming here to Ludgate would be safer. Instead, it looked very much as if I was going to be slung out of the city and sent to assail the rebels as they approached. I was already rehearsing A Wyatt, a Wyatt! in my mind as the captain sucked his teeth.
‘It’s like this, Jack. Sir John is in charge of the queen’s safety. She’s at White Hall, which is a good place to defend, and all should be well enough, but they lack men. Sir John has asked for some. So I am sending the ones I can afford to lose. That includes you, Jack. There’ll be more to come. Don’t worry: you won’t be on your own!’
He chuckled at that, and walked away laughing, as though that was the funniest joke he had heard in a twelvemonth.
Bill spat a gobbet of yellowish phlegm into the road. ‘Bastard.’
So I was marched to White Hall.
We were three-quarters of the way there when Rob and I exchanged a glance. It was plain enough that the thought in his mind was the same as that which was occupying mine: escaping from this new duty. At one point, one of our company stepped into what he thought was a puddle, but which was almost as deep as he was tall. It took three of us to haul him out, and then Rob and I stepped away carefully, waiting for our moment to flee. Bill saw, and joined us, but there was never time. Always someone had their eyes on us. It was infuriating to be confounded in such a manner!
Why? There are few tasks quite as dangerous as being told to guard a king or queen, of course! The men coming to attack us were rebels, men who had tossed aside the yoke of their masters in order to overthrow their queen. They each knew that, if they were to fail, the life expectancy of each man was reduced to about that of a gnat. No queen would allow such turbulent fellows to live, not once they had raised their banners against her. Wyatt would have a short wait for the axe, and the rest may escape back home for a week or two, but they would all be hunted down eventually. Most would not make it home, though. They would be cut down here, in White Hall, and their bodies thrown into the Thames, if they were lucky.
All of which meant that these poor fools had no reason to surrender. They were likely to fight on to the bitter end, and they would kill all in their path, because they had nothing to lose. They were lost already. And I was to be standing in their way, with Rob on one side, Bill on the other, and an apprentice behind, with a bloated old fool with a goatee and statute cap ordering us to fight to the last drop of our blood. Yes, he’d be the bold fellow standing well behind any danger.
I didn’t want to die there.
There was no opportunity to flee. We were part of some fifty reinforcements who had been quickly scraped together, and now marched – almost in step – along the Strand. Out past the Temple Bar and up to Charing Cross, past the great houses and palaces that fronted the Thames, and thence down to White Hall itself.
Even in the heavy rain, we could see that White Hall was a massive place, but then all the houses down there were. You can see why the rich wanted more men to help defend them. For me, it was just a horrible walk. I should have enjoyed it, because every step took me away from the city, as I had planned, and since I had always enjoyed the country, it was good to be walking along and listening to the birdsong. At Charing Cross, we came to the new park of St James. It stank. The marshes here, where the Tyburn flowed, weren’t as smelly as they would be in the high summer, but there was still the all-pervading stench of rotting vegetation, even now with the freezing weather. And then there was White Hall.
White Hall? I remember the first time I heard of it. An old soldier was talking about it. He had served in King Henry VIII’s armies and helped acquire the place. Originally, it had been York Palace, back when Cardinal Wolsey owned it, but as he fell out of grace, Henry pinched it, renamed it, and started to convert it into a palace fit for a king. He bought up the swamps from Eton College at the same time, as a place where he could walk, hunt and relax, far away from the city and the troubles of ruling his kingdom. I daresay he planned on having the place drained and landscaped, the old fool. No one would be able to drain such a large area. The college must have had fits of laughter over that. I imagine they would have been trying to sell that land for years before they persuaded the gullible king to buy it.
White Hall, however, was a different matter. This was already growing into a palace to rival any. The great gatehouse itself was enough to m
ake a man pause and stare: a massive block, with a gateway twenty-five feet wide and seven high, so two carts could pass beneath it in opposite directions. It was made of flint and stone, in squares and diamonds, and there were four great circular panels with paintings of faces set within. At either side, the gate had a tall eight-sided tower, all battlemented and very fierce-looking to a man with the intention of breaking in.
They called this the King’s Gate. We soldiers called it the Cockpit Gate. As I looked up at the octagonal turret on the left, there was a sudden movement in the mullioned window, and as I glanced up, I felt my bowels turn to water.
Rob saw my look. ‘See her? That’s Queen Mary, that is,’ he said, adding gloomily, ‘She’ll watch from there while we’re all being paunched like coneys down here to protect her.’ He spat into the roadside.
However, it wasn’t the queen I was watching with such absorbed horror. It was the bishop who stood at her side: Stephen Gardiner.
THIRTY-TWO
I spent the rest of that day in a fever of anxiety, thinking up inventive methods of escaping the palace and running home to Whitstable, or perhaps finding a ship and leaving England for ever. There were rumours of new lands somewhere that the Spaniards were farming to their great advantage. Perhaps they would have space for a lone Englishman. Or I could just cross the water and go to the English port of Calais and start a new life there.
Who was I fooling? There was no likelihood of my escaping this. If I went back to the city, I would be accused of cowardice or treachery; if I were to try the other direction, I would meet with Wyatt’s men, and very likely Atwood as well. That wouldn’t bode well for my long-term future either. That supposed I wasn’t going to fall into a pothole like our poor, half-drowned colleague on the way here. The roads about the town were appalling.
I worked hard with the rest of the men, building ramparts where none had existed before, fetching and carrying baulks of timber to reinforce the gates, collecting sheaves of arrows and bow staves for the men on the walls to use, for while everyone liked the noise and display of a hand gonne or cannon, when a man needed to actually hit a target at distance, there was little better than a longbow.
I was morosely setting out wicker quivers of arrows on the parapet of the Cockpit Gate when the bishop called to me.
‘Master Jack. I am glad to see you looking so well. I trust you will remain in the best of health?’
‘My Lord Bishop,’ I said, and almost slipped from the damp wooden walkway as I jumped, startled.
‘No need to throw yourself at my feet,’ the bishop observed as I picked myself up again. ‘I seem to recall that I asked you to perform a small service for me. Yet you did not return to me with the information I require.’
‘I tried to, your honour …’
‘You can call me “my Lord”. I am no justice. Continue.’
‘The truth is, I was attacked, my Lord. A man called Atwood tried to have me killed, and he stole the message from me.’
‘Why?’
I blinked. ‘I don’t know. I don’t even know what the message said!’
‘Who is this Atwood?’
‘He was a captain in the guard at the bridge, and I fought alongside him after I had fetched the note, but then’ – inspiration struck: best to tell a version of the truth, because that way I couldn’t forget it – ‘then he disappeared with it, and I was left fighting at the gate under Sergeant Dearing, and I was badly injured. Look!’ I fumbled for the splinter, which I held up for him to see. He was most understanding, too, when I pulled aside my shirt to display the pad of linen that covered the injury. He prodded it with a reluctant finger and made me squeal.
‘I must have my physician look at that and make sure it’s a genuine wound from that splinter,’ he said.
‘And then a ball killed Atwood’s men who were with me, and one told me with his dying breath that he was ordered to kill me. All because of that note!’
‘And where is it now?’
‘Atwood took it, like I said, and he was keen to fight with the rebels. I think he took it to Wyatt.’
‘So you have failed me,’ the bishop sighed.
‘No! I did what you wanted, but I was set upon, and I’ve been injured in trying to provide you with all you needed,’ I protested.
‘But still, you failed to bring me the note, and it would seem you have allowed it to fall into the hands of the enemy.’
I was about ready to push him off the top of that tower when I heard him say that. If it wasn’t for the sentry on top of the nearer octagonal turret, I might have done so, too. This oleaginous old bastard was likely to see me slaughtered, if I wasn’t careful.
He stared at me grimly for a long time, and then shook his head. ‘I shall have to consider whether you could be of use to me in another way,’ he said musingly. ‘Else, it might be better for you to be made an example of.’
I knew what that meant: a period in the stocks or pillory at the least, locked in place so that the populace could come and hurl invective or other things at me. In villages up and down the country, a day in the pillory would mean people flinging rotten vegetables or dung at a man. I know that was the case in Whitstable. Here, about London, you would be lucky to have something so soft thrown at you. A man was more likely to have a cobble or rock chucked at him. A lot of men died from their injuries.
He shook his head as he made his way back to the door in the tower, the hypocritical old git. He left me staring out over the landscape and thinking I could possibly make it to those woods up in the far north on a hill. It shouldn’t take me long to get there, and then, well, perhaps go east to the coast.
Anything, rather than stay here and wait to be told how I was going to be tormented.
I was still standing there, longingly gazing at that far-distant wood, when I happened to glance down and saw the familiar figure of Roscard.
It really did feel as though God had something against me that day.
The encounter with the bishop had unsettled me, I confess, but seeing the man who had murdered Ann, and who had tried to have me convicted of murder as well, lent a new terror to my position.
Yes, if I could have escaped, I would have done, but the sad fact was that the gates were routinely closed and barred now, with the portcullis dropped as well. I mean, there isn’t much a man can do to escape a palace when it’s shut up against invaders. Sir John Gage was here, there and everywhere, a large pewter cup in his hand all the while as he ordered men hither and thither, a steward behind him refilling his cup at intervals. Which seemed all very sensible, but the man was in his seventies, and by mid-afternoon his temper was up. He was slurring and dribbling so much that it was well-nigh impossible to understand what he was saying, and soldiers standing and looking baffled did not improve his choleric mood. In the end, his steward poured faster, and Gage was led away, chortling to himself over something his esquire had told him. We didn’t see him again.
Which should have been a relief, except now the sergeants were in command, and under their sober eyes there was nothing I could attempt in the way of an escape.
I was in the hall late that afternoon, eating in a mess with Bill, Rob, the apprentice and a loon by the name of Cedric, when an exquisite servant in particoloured hosen appeared in the doorway and stared about him at all the soldiers slurping and burping their way through their rations for the evening. It was plainly a sight that distressed him, and he spoke to one of the servants before making his way over to me.
‘I understand you are Jack of Whitstable?’ he said.
I felt Bill’s eye on me as I nodded.
‘Come with me.’
‘What about my meal?’
‘It’s up to you, but if you don’t come now, the bishop will be most discommoded.’
That didn’t worry me. Mainly because I didn’t know what he meant, but it sounded as though I was going to be in trouble if I didn’t obey the summons, so I reluctantly gave my bowl a careful wipe with a hunk of bread, and
rose from the table to follow him.
‘Be careful,’ Rob said. ‘That arsewipe looks the sort who’d stick a man so he could steal his apple.’
I knew what he meant. As I followed him up a winding staircase, along a passageway, out into another hall, down a stair, and back along to a small door, I noticed that the messenger didn’t once look to see that I was still with him, let alone make any conversation. As far as he was concerned, I was one of the unwashed thousands who laboured so that he could enjoy a peaceful and comfortable life. Clearly, he expected me to be one of the poor, downtrodden masses who would willingly give up my life for him.
‘What’s this all about?’ I asked.
There was no answer. He opened the door and stood back. I looked from him to the doorway, wondering whether this was some sort of trick. I recalled only too well how I had stepped into Mark Thomasson’s house only to have Blount’s blade at my back. I didn’t fancy a repeat.
I had an easy solution to my doubts. Grabbing the exquisite by the shoulder, I leaned to the side. My momentum would jerk him from the wall, and then it would be a simple matter to shove him into the room. Once he was there, hopefully on his face on the floor, I would be able to saunter in after him, once I knew it was safe.
It didn’t go quite as I planned. I grasped him by the collar, but he swiftly lifted both forearms, breaking my hold. His left hand took my upper arm, his right leg was outthrust, his right hand took my below the armpit, and suddenly I was flying through the air again, through the open doorway.
There was just time to think that this was not going to end well when the floor came up and slammed the air from my lungs. My back, which was already so badly bruised from my last excursion through the air, struck the solid stone slabs with a concussion that went through my entire body, as though I had been laid across an anvil and struck with a giant’s hammer. My head crashed back, and I saw an interesting display of shining, whirling stars overhead.
Rebellion's Message Page 17
