Down: Trilogy Box Set (76 page)

“Where in Francia?” John demanded.

“I do not know,” the servant said, cringing.

“She might be making for Normandy,” Cromwell said. “She has an affinity for the region and knows the Duke of Normandy well. She died in Rouen, you know, and in Hell she made her return to Britannia.”

“There is also Strasbourg,” Henry said. “Do not eliminate Strasbourg from consideration.”

“Yes,” Cromwell said, “she may elect to go to Strasbourg,” Cromwell said. “She also has ancient kinship to this region and in years past, when we had alliances with Francia, she was entertained by the duke of Alsace who has a fine castle there.”

“We’ve got to leave immediately,” John said. “We’re getting our people and we’re leaving. Your majesty, I’m counting on you to keep your word and let us go.”

“I will do so,” Henry said, “though I would have you leave your physician behind to minister to my person until I am healed.”

“We all go together. I’ll have him see you before we go and leave instructions with your own physicians.”

“Very well,” the king said. “You may leave.”

“One more thing,” John said. “If we don’t catch up with her, can her barge make a channel crossing or will she need to transfer to another ship?”

“It is well capable of making full passage,” Cromwell said.

“Well our barge isn’t. We need a ship.”

“The Duke of Suffolk will accompany you downriver,” Henry said, “and he will sail with you to Francia if need be. Now take your leave so I may read my Bible.”

Cromwell had to churn his legs to keep up with John and Emily and by the time they arrived at the guest wing, he was dangerously out of breath.

Bursting through the door, John immediately saw that something was wrong. Charlie was nursing a split lip, Alice was crying, and Martin and Tony were fitfully staring out the windows.

John didn’t see Tracy. “Where is she?” he asked.

“Some men came for her,” Charlie said. “I tried to stop them. I did try but they popped me one.”

“Where did they take her?”

“To William Joyce.”

“Cromwell!” John shouted. “Take me there.”

Cromwell nodded, too breathless to speak.

“When I get back, we’re leaving,” John said.

“Did you get your niece and nephew?” Alice asked.

“The queen ran off with them,” Emily said. “We’re going after her. John, I’m coming with you.”

They hurried off, with Cromwell panting and leading the way through the labyrinthine palace.

There were guards outside Joyce’s private rooms but at the sight of the chancellor, they melted away.

John tried the door but it was locked and Cromwell had to muster enough breath to announce his presence.

The door unlatched and a shirtless Joyce opened it, but at the sight of John he tried to slam it shut. John put his weight against it and set the door slamming into Joyce’s chest, bowling him over.

John put his boot on Joyce’s neck and shouted for Tracy.

Hesitantly, Tracy emerged from another room, clutching a torn shirt to her nakedness. Emily ran to her and Tracy began wailing pitifully.

“Here, take my robe,” Cromwell said, shedding his outergarment. John saw he had a dagger on an inner belt.

Emily took the robe, put her arm around Tracy, and shut the door behind them.

“Can I have that?” John asked Cromwell.

Cromwell nodded and gave him the knife. “You may put it to good purpose, Mr. Camp. To be truthful, I never liked or trusted this man. The king favors recent arrivals, thinking it gives him certain advantages, but I could not see the merit in giving this man high office. It is now out of my hands and into yours.”

John removed his boot and Joyce stood up, rubbing his throat.

“What are you going to do?” Joyce asked.

“What do you think?”

“I bedded her. So what? That’s what men do here. Whenever and wherever they want. I’m a member of the privy council. You can’t touch me.”

John closed the distance between the two of them with one long stride and plunged Cromwell’s dagger between his third and fourth ribs just to the left of his breastbone. Heart blood welled from the chest wound. Joyce went down gasping, and lying on his back he searched John’s face, then Cromwell’s.

“Is there a rotting room around for this piece of trash?” John asked.

“As it happens, we have a particularly large one close by,” Cromwell said with a smile.

Hathaway’s brother, Harold, got very drunk on gin and kept blubbering about how he couldn’t get his head around what was happening.

“You was dead. I was at your funeral. I can take you to see your grave. It’s just down the road. I tackle the weeds from time to time. You was dead and now you’re in my lounge.”

“Don’t want to see my bloody grave,” Hathaway hissed.

The three other rovers, Talley, Youngblood, and Chambers sniggered and kept tucking into the meat sandwiches rustled up by Harold’s wife, Maisey, and passing around his last bottle of gin.

“I like the grub here,” Chambers said, mayonnaise dripping onto his shirt.

“Where’s she gone?” Youngblood asked.

“She’s upstairs,” Hathaway said. “She’s not too keen on us, that’s for damn sure. I cut the phone line so we’re all right.”

“What’s a phone line?” Chambers asked.

“Don’t worry about it.”

Talley got up and wobbled on his feet. “I’m going out back for a shit,” he announced.

“I’m going to teach you about indoor plumbing,” Hathaway said. “Prepare to be amazed.”

When he returned from his tutorial, Hathaway asked Chambers where Youngblood had gone.

“Dunno,” was the boozy reply.

Hathaway ducked into the kitchen and came back empty-handed, mumbling, “Bloody hell.”

Just then Maisey screamed.

Hathaway bounded up the stairs to find Youngblood, trousers around ankles, on top of Maisey on her bed. Youngblood was a powerful brute, nearly half-again the size of Hathaway, so Hathaway shied away from anything resembling a fair fight. He grabbed a crystal ashtray and slammed it into Youngblood’s head. The blow didn’t knock him out but it stunned him and allowed Maisey to roll off the bed onto the floor.

Crying hysterically, she began to crawl to the door but Hathaway warned her not to leave the house.

“Leave me be!” she shouted. “He tried to, well you know what.”

“I just saved you, you old cow but I won’t save you again if you try to leave. Now put some clothes on and keep your mouth shut, all right?”

Talley called up the stairs and asked what was happening and Hathaway told him to make sure that the woman didn’t try to escape. She collected some clothes from the wardrobe and stumbled across the hall to the bathroom.

Youngblood lay on his back, holding his head and spouting invectives. When he tried to sit up Hathaway clobbered him again, this time splitting the ashtray in two and opening a gash in his forehead.

Talley and Chambers climbed the stairs to have a look.

“What’ve you done to him, then?” Talley asked.

“He was raping,” Hathaway said.

“What’s the matter with that?” Chambers asked.

“Nothing if it weren’t my brother’s wife.”

“Where is she?” Talley asked.

“In the loo.”

“With the indoor shitter?”

“Yeah.”

“I don’t see the worth of it,” Talley said. “Plot of ground serves the same purpose.”

Downstairs, Talley and Chambers finished off the gin and the few cans of beer on the sideboard and began trashing the place looking for more. Harold told them to stop but then, in his drunkenness, decided to join in, rummaging through the pantry for a bottle of good whiskey that may or may not have already been consumed on his last birthday.

Hathaway shook his head and tried to figure out how to switch on the strange, flat television but he got ready for a scuffle when Youngblood came stumbling down the stairs. The big man was too woozy for a fight and seemed to forget how it was that his head got split open. The blood ran down his face and onto his clothes and Talley tossed him a sofa cushion to hold against his gash.

“Where’s Maisey?” Harold asked, returning to the lounge empty-handed.

“She’s gone to bed,” Hathaway said.

Harold grumbled, “Always the death of a party, get it? I’m unable to find one more drop of drink. What to do, what to do?”

“Is there a tavern about?” Talley asked.

“There are some excellent establishments,” Harold said, wagging a finger to make the point.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Hathaway said.

“Well I do,” Talley disagreed.

“We’ll be courting trouble,” Hathaway said.

Talley laughed. “When have we ever turned from trouble? I say we go to the tavern.”

“When’s closing time?” Hathaway asked his brother.

Harold squinted at the mantel clock. “Half eleven on a good night. It’s past last orders but the landlord’s a good bloke. He’ll serve me.”

“You’re staying here with your wife,” Hathaway said. “Got any rope?”

“In the cupboard,” Harold said helpfully. “Why?”

With Hathaway shaking his head at the insanity of showing themselves and with Youngblood still pressing a cushion to his bloody head, the four rovers shut the door, leaving Harold and Maisey behind trussed up but very much alive.

The Carpenter’s Arms was only around the corner on Sneinton Dale, a deserted commercial street. Hathaway remembered it from the old days, and while the block was studded with unfamiliar shops with unfamiliar names, at least from the outside, the pub looked much the same as he remembered.

Before crossing the threshold he asked Talley if he was sure he wanted to do this but Talley only swore and pushed on through the door.

It was a weekday and nearly closing time and the patronage was light. Three young men stood at the bar, chatting with the publican. Another two older gents sat at a table nursing the last of their pints. Another young man was dropping pound coins into a fruit machine that was banging out an inane, synthesized tune.

Everyone turned and stared at their entrance.

One of the men at the bar, a cocky lad with two full sleeves of tattoos, said to his mates, “Would you get a look at these geezers?”

“Bring us ale,” Talley barked to the landlord, finding a seat at one of the many empty tables.

The landlord had thick arms bulging from rolled-up sleeves. He looked at the four men quizzically and said, “First of all, we don’t do table service. Second, it’s customary to specify which ale you want.”

Hathaway intervened, pointing at one of the taps. “Four pints of Fullers.”

The landlord nodded and began pulling pints while the young men whispered and giggled among themselves.

“That’ll be thirteen pound, twenty,” the publican said.

“Say what?” Hathaway answered, staring at the pints incredulously. “Thirteen pounds! Have you gone mad?”

“Me? Have
you
gone mad, mate?” the landlord flung back. “What do you think beer costs?”

Hathaway drifted back to his day; in 1985 beer was about seventy pence a pint. “I don’t know, about three quid?”

All the locals were hanging on every word and the youth closest to Hathaway, emboldened by the whispered proddings of his mates, said, “Who are you, Rip Fucking Winkle come back to winge over the price of beer?”

“Was I talking to you?” Hathaway said.

“I dunno, was you?” the kid said, puffing his t-shirted chest.

Hathaway decided to ignore the provocation. He pulled the twenties out of his pocket and reluctantly peeled one off.

“Oooo, twenty quid,” the youth said. “Surprised you’ve not got a pocket of pennies.”

One kid chimed in, “Why don’t you take the change and buy yourself some clothes to replace the rags you’re wearing?”

Followed by another’s comment, “And a proper bandage for that bloke so he don’t have to use a cushion on his face.”

“Knock it off,” the landlord said, seeming to sense a nasty situation brewing. “Let ’em drink their pints in peace.” But then he apparently couldn’t resist piling on himself and said with a smirk, “Especially pints which weigh in at three pound thirty a time!”

To the sound of laughter Hathaway carried two pints back to the table and returned for the other two.

“Mister, did you know you smelled like shit?” the first kid said, finishing his own beer and putting the mug down hard on the mat.

The kid on the fruit machine came over and sniffed hard. “He does smell like shit don’t he? It’s customary to wash the pong off before coming into a public house.”

“Maybe they’re pig farmers and the smell’s permanent,” the other kid said.

Hathaway had enough. He delivered the remaining beer to the table and watched Talley and the other rovers drink them down in powerful gulps.

Hathaway turned back to the loudmouths and said, “Any of you ever killed a man? Raped a woman? Raped a child?”

“Here!” the landlord shouted. “I’ll have no talk like that in my pub.”

Hathaway turned a deaf ear to him and said, “If you have, I’ll see you in Hell.”

The carnage that ensued was swift and furious.

At the sight of Hathaway pounding a knife into a chest, Talley and the others were on their feet and swarming on the youths, stabbing bellies, slashing throats in a bloodletting befitting an abattoir. The landlord tried to flee to the lounge bar but Chambers was over the bar counter with a rather elegant vault catching the man with one knife-blow to the back and another through the thin part of the skull.

That left the two older men who remained frozen at their table, watching the events unfold as if they were on a movie screen.

When Talley approached them it became clear they were both very drunk.

“We won’t say nothing, will we?” one of them slurred.

“I know you won’t,” Talley said.

“We’ll be off now,” the other said, his voice shaking as much as his hands.

“Here’s the good thing,” Talley said, his kitchen knife dripping blood on the floor. “We’ve had proper grub and our bellies are full. So we won’t be eating you after.”

“After what?” the first man asked in terror.

Talley raised the knife. “After this.”

Ben’s mobile woke him out of a dreamless sleep. Ordinarily he muted his phone at night so as not to disturb his wife, but he wasn’t taking the chance of missing a vibration. Brahms’s Third Symphony set him reaching for the unit and his wife moaning in irritation.