The Deception of Consequences

by Barbara Gaskell Denvil

  “What a pleasure it is,” murmured Richard, “to be involved in crime and subterfuge in the middle of the night, instead of tediously respectable practices, the spite of court, and the endlessly repetitious threats of kings.”

  Jemima gulped. She whispered, “I’m sorry,” and wondered what to say next.

  But Thomas laughed. “You think he’s being sarcastic? Not at all. He means it. The conspiracies of our great nobility are just what he avoids every day of his life. Come on now,” Thomas snorted, “We’d best get undercover, and we’ll enjoy it all the more by averting attack and staying alive.”

  “Not at all.” Richard lifted the torch into the wind. “We must first be seen by Alfred, and appear innocently unprepared. It is our assailants who must walk into ambush, not us, Tom, my dear innocent friend. But Jemima,” and he turned, “you, my love, will stay very, very safely out of sight.”

  The flare of flaming gold hissed and dimmed, then rose higher as the wind turned. The fine sting of chilly drizzle slipped between the branches. Thomas turned in a hurry and his torch blinked out. “We want to be attacked?”

  “Oh, the doubts of the unprepared,” Richard sighed. He held out his arm, relighting Thomas’s torch from his own. “Alfred should be here in moments, unless waylaid. We’ll have time to warn him. Immediately unsheathe your sword and use the flames as a weapon in your left hand. Hoping to catch us by surprise, these fools will run straight from the shadows swords out once Alfred arrives. Be prepared.”

  First a muffled patter and then a soft drumming rhythm, the rain strengthened. Richard forcibly pushed Jemima deeper amongst the trees, but looked back, alert. There was the squelch and thump of running footsteps from beyond the copse. Richard stood wide legged, his sword unsheathed and the torch high in his other hand. The flame dithered in the rain. He called, “Alfred? Is that you?”

  “Me. What else?” the voice echoed back from the shadows. “And it’s bloody raining.”

  Thomas stepped forwards and grabbed him, spinning him around, whispering, “You’re being followed, you fool. Quiet now. Free your sword and say nothing.”

  Alfred found himself pulled back against Richard’s side. “Hush. Be ready.” Then, much louder, “Well, friend Alf, we need to start the search for Thripp’s treasure. Let’s walk back down to the river.”

  With a puzzled gulp, Alfred moved back, dutifully grabbed at his sword, and stared at Jemima’s silhouette amongst the trees. He muttered, “What’s she doing here?” and then, in answer to Thomas’s scowl, kept quiet. There were only moments before the shadows elongated through the sheen of rain. Neither footsteps nor the steam of breath in the cold alerted them, but the shadows could not be disguised.

  “Now,” whispered Richard.

  Ned and Bill, creeping from tree to tree shelter, hearing the word like an alarm through the darkness, whirled around. They faced three men, two raging scarlet and blinding torches, and three swords raised, wet steel reflecting the flames.

  Both torches flickered and spat. Thomas threw his into Ned’s open mouth, and the heat blistered his lips as he screeched. The torch fell, fizzling out in puddles, but another came behind it. Bill stumbled, flames in his eyes, and at his back a sword thrust low to his groin. He spluttered and fell immediately. As he tumbled, the blade of his knife caught Alfred’s ear, slicing and piercing. Alfred yelled out as Bill died, shuddering and crying as his head hit ice and the rain was the last thing he saw.

  Alfred hurried back, grabbing at the side of his face. Ned had disappeared. Thomas and Richard turned, striding in amongst the shadows, peering through the darkness. The rain was now a silver sleet, snow-cold and as unyielding as steel. Thomas called out, “Where is the bugger? And how’s Alf?”

  “Alf’s bloody dying,” Alfred complained, voice hoarse, and sat on a fallen log, peering through the streaming waters and poking at the bleeding gash down his head and cheek. “Go find the bugger as did it to me.”

  “That one’s dead,” Thomas told him. “Where’s the other.?”

  In the pause, with the rain pouring and little to be seen, a strange voice called, “Here, with your woman. So drop your metal or she dies first.”

  “Shit,” said Thomas under his breath, one step forwards, sword still in hand.

  Both torches extinguished in the sleet, the darkness swallowed all sight. Feet through undergrowth and the sounds of the rain covered panting breath. Richard had not answered and finally Ned called again. “You all dead, you bastards? Then your whore’s about to join you in the grave.”

  Thomas turned, staring, then dropped his sword into the puddles at his feet. “Jemima,” he called, tremulous, “are you alright? Has that creature hurt you?” There was no answer from anyone and the thrum of rain drowned out movement. Alfred coughed, swallowing blood, but no one else spoke. Finally Thomas called again. “For pity’s sake, Richard, Jemima, where the devil – ?”

  The thud of a falling body was sudden, and then, inexplicably, laughter. And Richard’s voice, “Oh, well done, my love. A brilliant stroke.”

  Bewildered, Thomas yelled, “What now?”

  And Richard appeared through the rain like a wild thing, his sword still in his hand, and his other arm around Jemima. She was flustered, hood askew, but smiling. Richard grinned at Thomas. “I crept back to come up behind the wretch and kill him before he could hurt our courageous Mistress Thripp. But she beat me to it. Hit her captor over the head with a log. Knocked him out. He’s back there in the mud.”

  “You didn’t kill him?” Alfred wheezed.

  Jemima sighed, snuggled close with Richard’s protective arm around her. “When I heard the attack, I grabbed up a broken tree branch from the ground and hid it under my cloak. When that horrid man grabbed me, I waited until he was calling out to you and not paying much attention to me. I didn’t know Richard was creeping up from behind.”

  “You must have hit him hard.” Thomas was grinning too, appreciative. “But he’ll come back at us, or run away and alert others.”

  “No he bloody won’t,” Alfred’s voice came at a small distance. “I just stuck me knife in his throat, the bugger. Teach them bastards to come where they ain’t got no business. Staine’s men? Well, they’ll carry no tales back to that bugger now.”

  “So we move, and cut this nonsense short,” Richard said at once. “It’s pouring rain and we’ve a job to do. No more delays. But do any of us have the slightest idea where this wretched chest of money is hiding?”

  Thomas moved back between the trees, leading the three horses out into the small clearing. “If the danger’s passed. I can escort Jemima back to the hostelry. Or, if you’ve a mind to it, we can do this another night when it’s lighter, dryer, and jemima can be warm in bed.”

  She glared through the sleet. “I’m soaked and I’m tired and I nearly got killed. And you still think I’m a baby who needs protecting?”

  “Yes,” said Thomas. “How many of us need to catch cold just to find a box of coins?”

  Alfred sat back down again in the wet with a sniff. “Reckon all of us. What does we know so far as to where this chest is?”

  “The River Dour. Under water. Three and three and three.” Richard sighed, wiping the sluice of rain from his hair, dried his blade on his cape’s lining and resheathed it, and gazed down at Alfred. “What’s your contribution, then?”

  “What the captain told me,” Alfred answered, “don’t make a mighty load o’ sense neither. But what he told Gerard and Sam, we can’t know.”

  “And you?” Thomas was shivering.

  “Start with the rising sun, the captains says.” Alfred shook the rain from his hair. “And do like a gull does, when the fishing boats come in.”

  Thomas sighed. “Your esteemed Papa, Jemima, is a damned nuisance. Couldn’t he just have explained the obvious hiding place?”

  “Starting from the rising sun means starting from the east,” said Richard, “which must mean Dover. And head west, which is exactly where we are. The R
iver Dour is three paces away from where we stand.”

  “Three paces,” murmured Thomas. “And three more and three more again.”

  “It’s an estuary,” said Jemima. “So there’s streams coming off streams. Starting from Dover – take third waterway we pass. Follow it down until it divides and take the third division. Then follow that until it divides too.”

  Richard nodded. “Perfectly possible. Except easier in summer with the river bed clear and running smooth instead of lost in swamp and covered in ice. But,” and he turned to Jemima, “I think your explanation, since we miss part of the riddle, seems probable and we can see where such a trudge leads us. We start by going east, or we can count nothing. Jemima, my love, on horseback. And Alfred, since he is wounded.”

  “Not too much of a distance,” sighed Thomas.

  “”It will be less,” Richard nodded, “if you, my friend, take the other horse alone, and head back to Dover. Then start counting. You will meet us half way and take us to the relevant stream.”

  “Now that’s a bloody good idea,” said Thomas quickly. “Me on horseback while you’re stuck in the mud, sounds good to me. I shall be back as soon as counting streams in the dark makes the slightest sense at all.”

  Chapter Thirty-One

  The stars were blinking in hesitant awakening, like eyes opening after long sleep. The rich black shone like velvet. The clouds were clearing. The rain had stopped.

  Splintering, the ice broke in thick fragmented slices, each a dagger of thick glass. Some held the strings of old weed, a trapped beetle or the pebbles from the bed, others were clear as the moon itself. The men used their swords, their knives, and broken branches gathered from the banks. Twig by twig, the stream gave up its secrets.

  Richard and Thomas tramped the banks and kept working downstream, peering through the darkness, shadow, murk, water, ice and sludge. They were almost back where they had started. It was only a few steps from where the bodies of Lord Staines’ two men still lay, deep in mud. Ned was twisted in the sticky mess of his own blood, his skull cracked, now sheltered by a bent tree trunk and hidden in shadow. Bill lay close, prone on his face, the hump of his back soaked in rain and muck.

  Alfred, still shivering and unsteady, sat beside Jemima, who was staring down into the frozen water.

  “I can see something.”

  “It’s a submerged log.”

  “And hollow.” Richard struck again with the flat blade of his sword. The ice cracked into shards, deep cut and glossy with water and the chalky bed beneath. “I have an idea,” he said softly, “that what we seek will be hidden inside. This log would have been only partially hidden before the freeze. The ideal place, perhaps, for secrets.” He kicked, his boot hard against the side of the log so that it floated suddenly free. He bent, catching its freezing bark. Along its length it was decorated with ice studs, like the king’s doublets shining with diamonds. “Catch it,” he commanded Thomas, “we’ve tramped our three times three and as best as we can, this must be it.”

  Jemima jumped up and, ankle deep in the freezing water, hurried beside them. “It is, look.”

  Beyond the flicker of ice, something else gleamed. Inside the hollow cavern within the old broken trunk, the glint of brass caught the starlight.

  Thomas hauled, Richard bent and clasped the hollowed edges, and Jemima stooped, water splashing into her eyes. The log’s remains and its cascading water and ice was tipped onto the bank where it rolled until caught on other fallen twigs, and then wallowed in mud. Richard tipped it up and the wooden chest slid from its hole and landed heavy on the wet grass. Jemima clapped her hands.

  “Not as small as I’d expected,” noted Thomas.

  It was not a small chest. It was a great oak bulk of a box, strapped in brass and weighted with a double lock. Long immersion and the winter freeze had not damaged it. It sat on the bank like a toad, bright eyes but solid in old warty brown hide.

  “Well then,” said Thomas. “We are geniuses after all.”

  “We’re damned lucky,” smiled Richard.

  “We done it,” yelled Alfred, jumping up without the trembling knees he had been complaining of, and poked at the chest. “Bloody nigh slaughtered, attacked by them bastards from the city, clues half given and half lost, and yet we did it all the same. Luck? Too true. But genius is true too, I reckon.”

  “I pronounce us geniuses,” Jemima said, resisting the urge to dance.

  “Shame we ain’t got no key,” added Alfred.

  Richard started to speak, then appeared to have changed his mind, and said nothing. With both hands he lifted the chest.

  “Heavy?” enquired Thomas.

  “Exceedingly so.” Richard hauled the chest over to the shadows of the trees where the horses were once again tethered, and dropped it there. “A great weight for a light hunting mare, I believe. We need a sumpter. Or a cart.”

  “I suppose,” said Alfred at last, aware that everyone was watching him, “I could go back to the hostelry and get sommint what would do.”

  “In the middle of the night? I doubt it,” Richard said. “The stables will be closed and the grooms asleep. I suggest we use the reins of one of the horses as straps, tie the chest tight, and fasten it to another of our mounts. It can then be dragged. Jemima rides, but the rest of us must walk. It is not so far.”

  The winter dawn came late. It was still pitch when they tramped back to The White Rabbit, shuttered and sheltered and still sleeping. The first shuffle of the scullery boy was heard from the kitchen recess where he slept among the pots and pans and the ashes of the previous evening’s fire. The owls had gone to roost but the crows were waking with a sniff and half a blink beneath their wings. A little black rat raced from the bushes across the pathway, scuttling into deeper darkness on the other side, and the huge golden eyes of a fox peeped from the leafy hedge. So night lurched into sleep and morning shuffled off its dreams and prepared for the hardship of another day.

  Richard, voice very low, gave orders. So Thomas took the three horses around to the stable block, kicking on the doors of the stalls to wake the boy. A horse snorted, another neighed. “What?” exclaimed the boy groom, and rubbed his eyes, opening the doors to the stalls.

  Alfred and Richard carried the chest between them. Walking through the kitchens where the fire was now being lit across the great stone hearth, they bustled up the stairs to the main bedchamber. Jemima followed, half skip, her hood flung back and a smile of satisfaction to greet the first pink swell of light above the horizon between the far trees.

  It was done. They dropped the chest with a thud on the floorboards, which creaked with complaint. It sat there, squat and dark.

  Richard regarded it. He turned to Jemima, who now stood in the doorway. “I shall send your father a triumphant message of victorious recovery,” Richard smiled at her. “But I do not think, whatever the temptation, that I intend returning just yet to home, hearth, or king.”

  She had definitely not been thinking of the king. “But we have no key,” Jemima whispered, hurrying in and closing the door quickly behind her. ‘Unless we can open it, we can’t be sure of anything.”

  “How many money chests does you expect to be hid in one little river?” demanded Alfred. “Tis the right one, no doubt. And it ain’t bloody empty neither, it’s too bloody heavy. Lest it’s just full o’water.” He rubbed his nose. “The captin will be keeping the key safe hisself, no doubt of it. Wouldn’t trust any of us with the full message! So would keep the key well hid in his bloody codpiece.”

  Jemima frowned. “There could be more than one chest. Or it could be full of stones. Papa is quite capable of setting up false trails and dropping off other boxes to confuse any thieves.”

  “Exactly,” Richard replied, taking her small gloved hand. “It is always possible, since we never heard all of your father’s infernal clues, that there were not three rivers but instead three money chests. I also feel a certain disinclination to return to tedium just yet. His majesty, del
ightful companion that he is, will be furious at my absence and my silence over the Christmas season when I was indeed summoned to court. Your parcel of step-mothers awaits us at my home, and my own step-father will be hovering on the doorstep, awhile Papa Thripp will be hoping for your return to his side.” Richard paused, smiling. “I do not feel in the slightest inclined to please the whims of any of them.”

  Alfred grinned. The blood was frozen into dark icicles down his cheek and neck. “I knowed it. You reckon on sending me all the bloody freezing way back to the Strand with a message fer the captain. Then I’ll be riding all the bloody way back here to let you know what he said.” He was still grinning, ignoring both injury and discomfort. “Well, reckon that’s one good way to get rid o’me.”

  “How astute,” Richard nodded. “That’s precisely the plan I had in mind. I, meanwhile, will entertain your captain’s daughter. Dear Thomas may stay or leave at will.”

  “Stay,” said Thomas, marching in with a thump and slamming the door shut behind him. “The horses are stabled. I want my breakfast and a boy to light the fire. And I want to sleep for a week.”

  “Though I reckon tis a shame not to know how much is in that there chest first,” Alfred protested.

  “Perhaps your jolly captain will give you the key to bring with you when you return,” suggested Thomas, striding to the window alcove and taking down the old planked shutters. A slanting lilac streak of dawn slipped in past the shadows.

  “Oh yeah,” Alfred snorted. “Like that’ll happen. But reckon I can come back with a couple o’ horses and a cart with an oilcloth cover. And a big thankyou from Master Thripp.”

  “Which is all we shall need,” Thomas said, “as long as we aren’t already dead of the frost.”

  Jemima had said almost nothing. This was the men’s bedchamber, so she avoided the large dark bed within its hanging curtains, and sat on a tiny stool beside the empty hearth. Richard looked down at her suddenly. “Unless, my love, you are eager to return and see your father for yourself.”