Keeper of the King's Secrets (21 page)

The priest watched the door, took a hesitant step toward
it … then walked forward with more assurance, opened the door, and stepped through.

It swung closed silently.

Susanna stared at the plain, uncarved wood while the monks sang a verse of the liturgy, the sound soaring and swirling up to the high ceiling.

She left the shadows, crossed to the door, and put a hand against it. Then she turned the handle and stepped through.

T
he stream of sound, the harmony of the chorus, cut off abruptly as she closed the door. She paused on the top step, listening. If the priest had heard the few seconds of increased noise from the church, he might come back to see who had opened the door.

Then again, perhaps he would not.

He’d been standing near the door when Harry and Peter Jack had come upon him, and he had wasted no time following. He could be as false a priest as she was.

Perhaps his talk of Wolsey’s men was to scare them off.

The moments ticked by. She’d waited long enough on the landing, and there was no one coming up.

Before she could move down the ill-lit stairs, though, she heard the rustle of fabric brushing against rough stone.

Someone waited just below, on the turn in the staircase.

She stopped breathing, her gaze pinned to the point where anyone climbing the stairs would appear.

Another rustle.

A quick, impatient sound.

And then the sound of footsteps, running lightly down the stairs. Not up.

Wanting to sag against the door in relief, Susanna forced her feet to run down at the same pace, masking the sound of her running with his.

The stairs twisted three times before they ended in a small chamber, stone cold and damp. A lit passage off the room ran roughly south, in the direction of Newgate Prison. Another ran southwest toward the Fleet, but it wasn’t lit.

She heard the faint ring of footsteps down the dark tunnel and plunged in after them.

The tunnel swallowed her with one gulp of its shadowed mouth. It consumed her, coated her with obsidian, the color so pure, she wondered what she would do with it if she ever found a pigment this beautifully black.

But there was something amiss. She slowed, frowning, and then stood in the dark, a pulse throbbing at her throat, trying to make sense of it.

She obeyed an impulse to start moving silently backward.

She could track the time she was losing with this compulsion by the drip, drip, drip of water from the ceiling. She timed each step backward with the noise, to make her footsteps even harder to hear.

And then she understood what her senses had been trying to tell her. The footsteps in front of her had stopped, far too long ago. She did not know when.

She’d felt a faint breeze coming down the Newgate tunnel,
chill and unpleasant, with a whiff of night soil about it. But in this dark passageway, no air had stirred at all; it was stale and musty.

Perhaps not a tunnel, then, but a passageway to a cavern, and a neat little trap.

She stumbled, scraping her hand on the rough stone to keep from falling. Harry and Peter Jack could be ahead. Most likely were.

She stopped her backward retreat and listened until her ears buzzed, her eyes creating lights dancing before her in the dark.

At last she heard the sound of someone breathing through their nose. The tiny hairs on her nape and arms rose, and she couldn’t suppress the shudder that ran through her.

Someone was ahead, listening, like her. Or waiting for her to stumble into them.

She took a silent step sideways across the passageway, then another, so she was up against the right side rather than the left.

She began to move backward again, feeling the floor for loose rubble before she put her foot down. She found she didn’t have the courage to turn her back on whoever was waiting for her.

She heard a soft curse and tensed, standing as still as she could, pressed up hard against the tunnel wall.

The unknown person moved toward her down the tunnel, walking faster than she would have dared in the dark.

She sank down on her haunches, curling herself up as tight as she could. The air moved as he passed her and she thought he was swinging his arms, trying to catch hold of her.

She heard him grunt as he tripped on the uneven floor.
Before he turned the corner she stood and followed him, her hands trembling against the rough stone. She got as close behind him as she dared.

Light bloomed at the tunnel entrance, flickering from the single sconce in the chamber beyond. She could see the man in silhouette, broad at the shoulder, something familiar in the angle of his head.

She needed a place to hide where she could see which way he went, and she began looking for recesses in the wall or a deep shadow to crouch in.

They were almost at the mouth of the tunnel, the flickering light illuminating her various options. She would have to make a choice quickly—

“Ha.” He spun, running at her, his arm coming up under her chin as he threw her against the passage wall, pressing down on her throat, cutting off her scream. Her hands scratched at his arm and she kicked out as she hung suspended, choking. She looked him in the face and shock jolted through her.

Jean.

“You.” Jean’s eyes widened, the light showing his astonishment. He stepped back and her feet hit the ground and she stumbled, bent over, hands to her knees, coughing and whooping as she drew in a breath.

“I am impressed, madame. You have managed to do far more by yourself than I would have thought.” He spoke in French, very softly. “But do not let yourself be caught dressed as a monk. You will find even murder is more forgivable than that.”

“What are you doing here?” She breathed it out on a whisper
of sound, still bent double. Her throat hurt even from that small effort. It was as if something were lodged in it, and she forced back the instinct to retch.

“As you were not convinced of the value of my services, I thought to find your Parker for you anyway. It is always good to negotiate from a position of strength, no?”

“Or you are down here checking on your prisoner?” She had to swallow twice to get the words out and winced as she rubbed a hand over her throat.

“Enough.” He grabbed her shoulder, his fingers like a vise. He shook her with only one hand, and she remembered Parker had wounded him. “I will not tell you again that this is not my doing.” The pain made her want to cringe away, but she looked him straight in the eye.

“My God, I have never met a more difficult woman.” For a second his grip intensified, and if he hadn’t needed her, she knew he would have struck her. At last he dropped his hand and took a deep breath.

She moved her shoulder, trying to ease it. The wound on his left shoulder would be a good place to hit him if she needed to later.

“My spies have been following two men who work for the Cardinal. Last night they brought a large bundle between them into this church, and we thought it might be your man.”

“Are they here now?” She suddenly remembered what the monk had said above.

Jean shook his head. “I would not be so stupid as to come down with them here.”

Susanna shrugged. “The monk who followed my boys down said they were.”

Jean froze, then shook his head. “He wanted to put your servants off, perhaps? Make them think it too dangerous?”

Susanna had thought the same, and nodded.

“We are not the only ones who are spying on Wolsey.” Jean sheathed a knife in his boot, and Susanna realized she was lucky her throat was not slit. “There is someone else. I was hiding in the Newgate tunnel when your two boys came down. I nearly confronted them, but then the other spy came after them. Someone I don’t know.”

“Where did they go?”

“Down this passage.” Jean jerked his head the way they had just come. “To a dead end. They were sizing each other up when I reached them. I realized there was nothing there and began back. But then I heard you in the passage with me, and we had our game of cat and mouse.”

“There is another passage.” Susanna did not know when she decided he was telling the truth, but if he was the one who had taken Parker, he knew about the secret tunnel anyway. “A tunnel that comes out inside Fleet Prison.”

Jean stepped away from her, his head to the side. Considering.

“There was something …” He walked to the tunnel entrance, close to the wall, and looked out into the chamber. When he was sure it was empty, he stepped into the room.

Susanna followed and waited for him as he turned slowly, considering every angle.

“There.” He spoke to himself, so softly. Susanna took a step closer to him. She followed his gaze and saw there was a small door in the side of the stairs. It looked like a small storage cupboard.

Jean tried the handle, inching it down. It gave, but did not open.

Locked.

He moved his left arm and cursed, his face white. He’d forgotten he was wounded, just as Parker kept forgetting. He lifted the bag slung across his chest off him and held it out for her.

She opened the bag and he searched through it, one-handed, and drew out a dull metal instrument. He inserted it into the lock and began to work it.

She could see sweat on his upper lip and brow, though the air seemed colder. The sconce lighting flickered and thinned, and she feared it would go out and sink them into darkness.

Jean shivered, and she wondered if he was getting a fever with his injury.

There was a sound from the dark tunnel, the clatter of feet and the bouncing echo of angry voices.

Jean’s hand shook, and for the first time since she’d met him, he seemed nervous, rattled.

“It’s Harry and Peter Jack, most likely. They can help us.”

“And whoever is with them? Do you want them to know of this passageway, too?” His words were harsh and low, his eyes flicking to the tunnel as his hand moved and twisted the metal in the lock.

Susanna heard a click, but when Jean tried the handle again, it did not budge.

He lost his patience and rattled the pick, then took a deep breath and moved it again, carefully. There was another click, and then another.

The voices were getting louder, harsher. At least Harry and Peter Jack were safe, and arguing, by the sound of things.

They were coming around the corner.

“Get that light,” Jean hissed, and Susanna ran and lifted it off the wall just as he opened the door.

She sprinted across the chamber, monk’s robes flying around her, and followed Jean inside. As she stepped through he closed the door, and the boys and their adversary burst into the chamber.

“Where’s the light?”

It was Harry, and she could hear the edge of exhaustion in his voice.

“Someone has taken it. Most likely down the Newgate tunnel.” It was the man from earlier.

Their footsteps thumped on the stairs as they went up, and then there was silence.

“And now?” Susanna lifted the torch and saw a tunnel stretching out before them.

“Now we look for your Parker.” Jean lifted a hand to his shoulder. “I have much to discuss with him.”

I compare her to one of those raging rivers, which when in flood overflows the plains, sweeping away trees and buildings, bearing away the soil from place to place; everything flies before it, all yield to its violence, without being able in any way to withstand it.

—Machiavelli
, The Prince,
chapter 25

S
usanna did not trust Jean and she didn’t like him, but she was glad he was with her. She wouldn’t have found the tunnel, and she wouldn’t have liked walking down it on her own.

It should put her in his debt—but he had tried to kill her once, and had murdered Jens. She felt no obligation to him.

He had been too quick for her earlier in the tunnel, and she hadn’t had a chance to get to her knife, but now she was glad she had not shown it.

It would be a good surprise for later, if she needed it.

She rubbed her throat again, fighting the urge to cough. Neither of them made a sound, and Susanna thought she heard a noise ahead. A rhythmic banging.

Jean tapped her shoulder, and she looked at him to find his finger on his lips.