Heresy (48 page)

“Sir?” he murmured, but I pushed roughly past him into the stable yard.

“I need my horse, son, this very instant. The one brought in last Friday, the grey—I am Doctor Bruno, of the royal party.”

The boy’s eyes widened further and he bit his lip.

“I am not supposed to let anyone take the horses out when Master Clayton is not here, sir. And he is a very fine horse.”

“He is. From the queen’s own stables. But I swear I am not stealing him. Now, bring him, will you?”

“I will be beaten, sir,” he said, pleadingly. I could not blame him for his caution; quite apart from the hour, I could not have looked less like a royal visitor with my bruised face and bleeding throat. I hated having to resort to this, but once again I lifted the knife from my belt and let him have a brief glimpse of it. The poor child looked around as if someone might come to his assistance.

“Please,” I added, in a gentler tone, as if this might improve the situation.

He hesitated for a moment, then appeared to decide that the prospective beating was the better option.

“It will take a few minutes to saddle him.”

“Then don’t. A harness only—but hurry, please, I do not have time to lose.”

I wheeled around again to the door, thinking I heard footsteps, but there was only the shifting of the horses’ hooves in their stalls. But my fear had communicated to the boy; he gave a silent nod and hastened off to fit the horse’s halter. I stood, hopping from foot to foot and biting my lip as I watched the gate to the yard, careless of the pains in my hand, shoulders, throat, and now my back and head after my tussle with Slythurst; all that mattered was that I should not be detained. I hoped I had done the right thing in trusting Cobbett, but knew he was right; even if I rode to Christ Church myself, I would not be able to see Sidney at this time of night and could only leave my precious package with the porter there, while Slythurst would have alerted the constable and the watchmen that a thief had escaped from Lincoln and I would never get through the city gates. I could only pray that Slythurst did not intercept the papers before Cobbett’s messenger managed to despatch them.

The boy appeared, anxiously leading my horse by his elaborate velvet harness, its brass trappings jingling loudly in the still air; the horse seemed sluggish and less than pleased to have been disturbed in the dark. I led him to a mounting block in the middle of the yard, then scrambled onto his back. He did a little dance of surprise and snorted in protest, but I held the reins firmly and he submitted. The boy held the gate open, and I kicked my heels into the horse’s flanks and wheeled him around, turning him to the left, in the opposite direction to Lincoln College.

At the other end, Cheney Lane opened onto the North Street, and the faint pallor gradually staining the skyline to my left guided me eastward.
Now I could just see enough to make out the covered stalls of the Corn-market ahead, and I urged the horse into a trot, though he seemed reluctant to quicken his pace, the miry ground slippery under his hooves. At the Car-fax crossroads I urged him left onto the High Street and presently saw the east gate ahead, where we had entered the city amid such pomp only five days earlier, its small barbican guarding the road out to London. The light of a lantern flickered in the ramparts of the tower and I knew that everything depended on my passing the watchmen here without being detained. Slythurst would have roused the college servants by now, and whoever had been sent in pursuit of me could not be far behind.

As I pulled the horse to a standstill a man in city livery brandishing a pikestaff stepped out from the gatehouse.

“Who goes there?” he barked, levelling it at me and taking a step forward. The horse whinnied in alarm.

“Royal messenger,” I panted. “I carry an urgent message from Sir Philip Sidney.”

“A shilling to pass before first light.”

“I do not have a shilling. My orders are to take a message to the Privy Council in London without delay.” I drew myself up on the horse, hoping that an authoritative manner would distract from my appearance. “And if this message does not get through, the Earl of Leicester will have your balls nailed to this gate as a warning, I swear it.”

I glanced again over my shoulder, certain I could hear noises from farther up the High Street. The watchman hesitated for a moment, then laboriously began to unbolt and heave open the solid wooden gate while I reined the horse in tightly; he could sense my impatience and tension and was growing restless.

As I crossed the city boundary there came a distinct shout from behind me of “Hie! Stop that rider!”

I kicked my heels into the horse’s flanks and urged him into a canter. Though the ground was still soft beneath his hooves, the road was at least
wider, this being the main highway out to London, and the darkness was thinning a little, the stars growing paler as dawn light edged the eastern horizon toward which I rode. Wind caught the horse’s mane as he obligingly thundered through the ruts of cartwheels and potholes, just as it stung my own eyes and nose as I crouched low over his neck, trying to keep my grip without a saddle, occasionally glancing behind me to see if anyone was following. He was a fast horse, and soon it seemed that we had covered enough distance to make it extremely difficult for anyone to catch us. Now that I could breathe again, I found room for doubts about the sense of my plan. It had seemed obvious, when I was talking to Humphrey, that I would find the missing pieces of the puzzle at Hazeley Court, but now that I was out of the city with no real idea of how to find the place, I wondered if I had only made a wild guess that would come to nothing, while the drama played itself out to the last by another route altogether.

I had ridden for perhaps half an hour, the sky growing lighter all the time and the birdsong more insistent with it, while a damp mist rose from the hedgerows, obscuring the distant fields. The scent of wet earth rose in my nostrils. There was no sign of any settlement and I began to grow fearful that I had made a terrible mistake; not only might I fail to find Thomas and Sophia before it was too late, but now I could not turn back. If Jenkes or Slythurst had pursued me from the city and caught up with me on this forsaken road, there would be no one to come to my aid.

I rounded a corner in the road between hedgerows, our pace now slowed to a steady trot, when the horse almost stumbled over a flock of sheep being driven in the direction of Oxford by an old man with a misshapen crook in his hand.

“Sir, could you tell me where I might find the manor house of Hazeley Court? Am I on the right road?” I called.

The drover looked up, suspicious. “What you say?”

I took a deep breath and repeated my question, in the clearest English I could manage.

He pointed back in the direction he had come. “Another half mile or so—you’ll see two large oaks on the left and between them a cart track. Follow that to the manor house. What business have you there?” he asked, eyeing me curiously.

“Official business,” I said, since this had served me well before.

“They are all papists there, you know,” he muttered, as my horse picked his way between the sheep. I thanked him for the warning and, as soon as we were free of the flock, kicked the horse to pick up his pace. My back and legs were aching brutally now and the reins were chafing at my burned hand, but I was heartened to learn that the house was nearby. Perhaps there I would find the answers I was looking for.

T
he cart track sloped gently downhill and eventually widened into a long carriage drive approaching the front of the great manor house. From the crest of the hill, through the thin mist that hung above the trees, all shadowed in the grey light, I glimpsed tall red-brick chimneys, turrets, and crenellations. The house was surrounded by woodland on three sides, a steep and densely wooded slope rising behind it. Under cover of the trees it would be possible to approach very near to the manor itself, but gaining access would be another matter. For now I could only go forward. Against his better judgment, I nudged the horse off the cart track and into the woodland, where I dismounted in a clearing and fastened his harness to a low-hanging branch, so that he could at least reach his head down to the grass underfoot. Patting him soundly and reassuring him that I would be back soon, I crept away as silently as I could, down the slope toward the grounds of Hazeley Court.

At the edge of the woodland where it opened out into lawn, I crouched
in the shadows of the trees and gazed across at the building opposite. The mist was thinner here and I had a clear view of the house in the half-light. It had evidently been built to withstand assault, though its fortifications seemed part of its character, elegant rather than forbidding. It had been built in a square formation around a central courtyard, the entrance guarded by a magnificent turreted gatehouse of two octagonal towers at least a hundred feet high, twice the height of the walls and topped with battlements. All these splendidly decorative fortifications had not saved their owner from prison, I reflected. If the Crown was short of revenues, then to seize the houses and lands of Catholic families who resisted the religious edicts must seem an easy source of profit. If missionary priests should be found within these walls, all this estate would be forfeit and this beautiful house given to whichever of the queen’s favourites proved most deserving on the given day—fortunes snatched away and parcelled out to others whose loyalty needed to be bought, under cover of defending the faith. I shivered and pulled the cloak tighter around me. I was risking my life here, I knew, and who would profit from it, if I was right? Would I? Would Walsingham? Some other courtier whose advancement depended on the fall of the people within those handsome walls? But I was now convinced that Sophia was in there, and that the people she was trusting to help her were the very people who would do her the most harm.

A chill had arrived with the dawn and I realised my legs were still trembling from the bareback ride. I eased myself back to standing, stretched my aching limbs, and crouched again by the thick trunk of an old oak. The façade was adorned with elaborate carved window bays, though the windows on the sides I could see were all shrouded in darkness. There would be no getting through that gatehouse; a manor house this size would be well staffed with servants even if the master was in prison, and the front of the house was too exposed. My best hope, I decided, was to keep to the edge of the woodland and make my way around to the rear where I might find a postern or servants’ entrance that would be easier to breach. I fingered
Humphrey’s old kitchen knife at my belt, reflecting that a judicious use of it might be my best hope of persuading the servants to answer my questions.

Still bent low, I began to stalk along the fringe of the trees, watching the house closely for any sign of movement or light in the windows, when suddenly I heard a twig snap behind me. I wheeled around, drawing the knife, but could see no movement in the depths of the wood, the trunks and undergrowth still shrouded in bluish mist. My breath quickened, gathering in small clouds around my face as I moved sideways, trying to keep my head turned in the direction from which the noise had come. The need to keep my own movements as silent as possible seemed less urgent than the need to move quickly; I strained to hear any further sounds beyond the crackling of sticks and leaves under my own feet, but though I heard nothing, I had the distinct sense that I was not alone in the wood.

At that moment I caught the soft crunch of a horse’s hooves over gravel and paused in the shadow of a thick oak to peer out. Below me, a small high-sided cart pulled by a hunched pony was making its way up the carriage drive toward the gatehouse tower, a man perched at the front bent over the reins. I watched as it rounded the side of the house, when suddenly a hooded figure broke from the cover of the trees, tearing across the sloping lawn toward the little cart, now on the point of disappearing around the back of the house. I moved as fast as I could through the trees, trying to keep them both in sight, careless of my own cover; as the figure in the cloak reached the cart, he hurled himself at the unsuspecting driver, pulling him from his seat and wrestling him to the ground. The pony, which looked as if it would struggle to reach the end of the carriage drive again, barely registered the activity, its head sagging. I charged out of the trees and ran toward them, my legs still protesting, and reached them just as I saw the man in the cloak, who had one hand clamped over the other’s mouth and was kneeling on one of his arms, pull out a blade.

I threw myself at him, knocking him sideways and gripping the hand
that held the blade; with a cry of fury, the hooded figure turned to me and I saw, with a stab of shock, that it was Thomas Allen. His face also froze in an expression of bewilderment.

“You?”
he said. “But—”

The fallen driver tried to back away from the scrummage; he was perhaps in his fifties, plump-faced and plainly terrified, shaking his head and whimpering while he implored me with bulging eyes.

“Who is this?” I whispered urgently to Thomas. “Why do you fly at him with a knife?”

He frowned at me; I glanced at his hand where I still had him hard by the wrist and realised that it was not a knife he held after all, but an open razor.

“He is come for Sophia,” Thomas said, through gritted teeth. “He is charged with helping her escape. But she must not go with him—it is a trap.”

“Then she is here?” I looked from Thomas to the driver, feeling a great wash of mingled relief and fear; if I had guessed that correctly, then the danger was not over.

The fellow nodded, looking from one to the other of us, his eyes terrorstruck.

“Wait—I know this man,” Thomas said, gripping his razor again and peering closely at the terrified driver. “He serves the Napper household. He cannot be allowed to return—he will raise the alarm.”

The man spluttered and shook his head more violently. I drew Humphrey Pritchard’s old kitchen knife from my belt and held it up to his face.