The Point of Death (11 page)

Which,
as it turned out, was a mistake. They had only made it as far as the Little Rose when the three card-sharps from last night reappeared, armed with clubs and looking for revenge. The first Tom knew of it was when the fluid circle of men and women fighting to avoid approaching too close was replaced by a solid wall, three pairs of shoulders wide. He looked up and recognised at once the three frowning faces looking at him. 'Stay back, Poley,' he said quietly. Then, seeing the reflexive movement of his companion's hand, he added, 'Remember, wet guns don't work.'

Then
the three thugs were upon him. They were all wielding long clubs and were clearly expert in their use. Tom's rapier kept them at bay at first as he pulled his long dagger out of his belt, but they were determined men, a practised team, all of whom had felt the whip's hot kiss as they dyed the jerk and cared nothing for a little pain.

They
spread out, effectively blocking the Bankside, trapping Tom in the middle of the thoroughfare and holding Poley between Tom and the water. The intelligencer began to fall back and distracted Tom for an instant as he vanished. Tom frowned, doubting that he would see the whole of Morton's correspondence now. He'd be lucky to see Poley, come to that, once he let him out of his sight. Tom too began to fall back, trying to keep Poley in the corner of his vision. To no avail. When his fair weather friend was gone, Tom turned to give all his attention to his enemies.

And
none too soon. The first club stroke came high from his left. He stabbed in under it, moving like lightning, and felt his point pierce a thigh before the blow sang past his shoulder. Immediately he sliced right as though the blade had an edge, tearing the point out of one column of flesh and stabbing upwards at a second as his knee kissed the Bankside earth and his dagger stabbed wide at the third assailant. Two clubs crashed together where his head had been and he threw himself upwards and forward, tearing the muscles of his chest to bring dagger and rapier together into the face of his central attacker. Too close to use the blade as Capo Ferro had taught him, he used the knuckle guard as his father had taught him, smashing his assailant's nose, turning his head and exposing his neck to the thirteen inches of razor dagger.

But
just at that moment, the thug on his right swung his club in a powerful roundhouse blow. Tom ducked. The heavy wood thundered just above his head and swung over his opponent's head as well, taking as it did so, the upright blade of his sword. Any other sword would have spun out of his grip, but this rapier had a handle that fitted right over his hand, like a glove. As well as the wire-bound haft, it had solid hooks, like triggers, for his thumb and forefinger. It was impossible to knock the sword out of his grip. The pommel jumped back into his face. The knuckle guard smashed into his opponent's nose again. Tom hissed as the shock of the blow shot like lightening up his right forearm. That shock turned the dagger, however, so that it sliced into shoulder rather than throat.

Tom
threw himself forward and sideways to his left, using that instant of purchase of steel in flesh on which to hang his turn. The third bully had been quiet during the last part of the mêlée. He would be up to something now, Tom calculated fiercely, hoping some feeling would come back into his numb right hand while he worked with the dagger in his left. He was. Tom jerked his dagger free and leaned in under a downward blow, stabbing at a slight but solid midriff. The blade sank home into an old-fashioned codpiece at the same moment that the club landed square across his shoulders. The weight of the blow tore him down and his dagger tore at an angle across into the top of a thigh. Hot blood squirted into his face, adding to the overwhelming storm of sensations that would have incapacitated a lesser man. His right hand spasmed and burned. Pins and needles stabbed from right wrist to elbow. The weight of the club across his back drove the air out of him and all but shattered his spine between his shoulder blades. The roadway hit his knee again, jarring him to the hip. Once again he used the knee and the dagger as steady points against which to turn and he threw himself to the right even as the wounded man fell screaming back into the river. The way he did so all but twisted Tom's dagger out of his grip and snapped the blade near halfway down its length.

Tom's
right arm was an agony, but it lost little of its cunning, driving the length of his rapier straight into the hip of the second attacker who had exposed himself over confidently by raising his club with both hands. Half the blade slid through the muscles and tendons of the hip joint, the point flashing out into the light behind his buttock. The man screamed and froze. At that instant the central attacker, the big man who was not from Chiddingstone, brought down his club in turn. It hit the blade immediately in front of Tom's knuckle guard and snapped it at once - though at some considerable cost to his companion's hip.

Tom
fell now, on to his right knee as well. As though at prayer he tore his two hands together and thrust the two blades, broken as they were, into his opponent's groin. The action, desperate enough, was sufficient to make the man jump back and so the last blow of the battle, which would have killed Tom where he knelt as truly as the headsman's axe, missed the crown of his head where it had been aimed, and kissed the temple instead, whispering past his collarbone as he slumped forward into the mud and blood the very moment that Poley arrived with the Watch.

When
he came round he was one huge ache, he was slumped in a chair, stinking out an office in the outer area of the Clink Prison. As he came to, he had no idea exactly where he was but he soon began to work things out when he saw the uniform of the man Poley was talking to. Behind the huddled pair of them was a grille beyond which he could see down into the arched cloisters of the prison with its sad company of tightly chained prisoners.

Their
conversation stopped when Poley saw Tom's eyelids flicker, and the intelligencer crossed to his young associate. The other man rose and stood looking down through the grille into the dark, hellish circles of his private hell. 'Are you all right?' Poley asked.

'My
body is afire,' croaked Tom, 'but I can feel nothing major amiss.'

'They're
heating the water at the Elephant. There's an Italian woman there says bathing will ease your hurts and quell the stench.'

'Yes.'

Tom's eyes remained fixed on the second man. He wore the badges of the Bishop's Bailiff, and no one else in Southwark was likely to have an office the like of this. But there was something about him that disturbed Tom deeply. Something he could not quite put his finger on.

Until
the Bishop's Bailiff turned, and his face came into the light.

'Hello,
young Tom,' said the Bishop's Bailiff, his voice familiar with a West Country, Winchester burr.

'Hello,
old Law,' said Tom.

Chapter Fourteen - Dead Man -8 Messages

A bath in London was a rarity. Not so down here in 'the Stews', named for its bathing facilities - and the sexual and medicinal uses to which they could be put. But even down here a private bath was unheard of. The bath at the Elephant was a barrel, a big one, the better part of four feet deep. It was filled from a big copper close by and topped up with water from the cooking fire within. It emptied down a sluice through a solid, brick foundation out into the garden where the boy sang to the amorous couples.

There
was a stool at one side of the huge barrel, a three-legged affair made of wood which kept trying to float out from under Tom as he sat up to his waist in the scalding water. There was another bobbing opposite should his mistress care to join him, but Constanza had contented herself by adding perfume, medicinal herbs, leaves of her own precious basil and some violets. Then she had spoilt the aromatic effect by pouring in a quart of white vinegar. Now she was busily scrubbing his neck and shoulders with the cleanest rags she could find, gently bemoaning every bruise, scar and contusion on his body, not least the clear clean wound on his arm from yesterday. A clean linen sheet lay folded, ready to receive him when he pulled himself out, but at least one more cauldron of precious water was heating over the Elephant's big cooking fire to be poured over his head before that happy release.

Poley
sat in the corner, by the window through which the boy's pure voice came in. He was fidgeting restlessly. This might have been because Tom and Talbot Law were wasting time on social chit-chat rather than the more pressing matters in hand. Or it might have been because he was due in the steaming barrel next.

'So,'
Talbot Law concluded, 'Bess still runs the Nag's Head beside the Bishop's palace in Winchester. But I got bored with tapstering and was glad enough when an alternative career appeared. It was the cage out back that got me into this line of work.' He glanced out of the bathhouse door. Beside the solid lean-to with its tub, stood another one. Like most taverns, the Elephant kept a cage out back with sets of irons to hold drunks, cheats, roughs and those who failed to pay for their food, drink or entertainment. 'It was fortune, really. As an old soldier I got a reputation for running a good house with a strong cage and so when the Bishop needed people held until his court could sit, he came to me. And before I knew what had happened ...' he shrugged, showing his bailiff's badges. 'I'm only quartered at the Clink these days, mind. My gaol is the Borough Counter, for I've an arrangement with the Borough Watch. My men do their work and they let me use their gaol. Mine at the Clink is full of papist spies and whatnot. Hardly room for a good honest felon at all. Borough Counter used to be a church. It's good and solid - and a better house it is than Wood Street or Poultry. But they are City. Borough is mine as the Clink is the Bishop's. But in borough or liberty, I am the law.'

'There
are twelve good gaols in London,' snapped Poley.

'Fourteen
counting the Tower and the Bridewell,' interrupted Law.

'Are
we to discuss the dubious merits of each before we proceed to our business?'

'Ah,
yes,' said Law silkily. 'Your business, Master Poley. Your business with me is that you have reported a brawl and guided my watchkeepers. I have taken one man in attack on another and there may be a case toward. I may need to hold you a witness to this assault should a warrant be sworn. Would you prefer Masters Commons, Knights Ward or the Hole?'

Poley
rose, shaking with rage. 'You have no hold on me, Sir Bailiff. You get none of my garnish for any of your services. I serve the Council. I am the Lord Chamberlain's man in this matter.'

Law
looked at Tom and Tom nodded. 'Both of us,' he confirmed. 'On Lord Hunsdon's own direction.'

'We
are carrying his writ,' added the enraged Poley. 'Lord Hunsdon's licence for our action and authority, written in his own hand.'

'Are
we?' asked Tom, surprised.

Talbot
Law laughed. 'See, Tom? You could have killed all three of them rather than leaving me with two wounded vagrants to find and one loudly calling assault on you from my holding cell at the counter.'

'Sit
down, Master Poley. Talbot was speaking in jest. He has no thought to gaol us. Nor any cause. It was the three coneycatchers - ' he turned to Constanza - 'after some revenge for the trick we play'd them last night.'

'Oh,
Tom,' she said softly. 'I little thought your help would have been offered at such a price.' She ran her hands across the great purple welt lying athwart his shoulder blades. He hissed.

'
'Tis not my bones, Bella, but my blade I grieve for.'

'You
have the hilts,' snapped Poley again. 'Blades are easy to come by.'

'For
you, mayhap,' said Tom. 'But I'd be lucky to have the chance or the money to afford another such as my Ferrara blade. But you are right, Master Poley. We need to move on as swiftly as we may. There are matters here running deep and dark. We need to see what Master Morton has written. We need to hope he has left us some clue as to where his missing contact might be. And some hint as to the reason for his terror and his sense of swiftly nearing death.'

'God's
life,' spat Poley. 'Can you hold no curb upon your tongue? These matters are not for the common ear, man.'

'Master
Poley,' said Tom, running out of patience and heaving himself up out of the tub. 'It is your secrecy that has caused much of your trouble in this. We will move faster with a little help. The people whose help we need are here assembled, out at my school and up at the Rose,
valedicet
Ugo Stell and Will Shakespeare. These men need to know what we know and then they will aid us. And at their lips the secret will be sealed, unless we are talking among ourselves.'

'Or
unless,' spat Poley, 'they are talking to Rackmaster Topcliffe or his cohorts. The more that know the secret, the more may betray it. This is the law of intelligencing and you break it only at the greatest peril.' As he spoke, Poley was pulling off his clothes. His haste to get into the bath and, like Tom, to have his apparel sponged and dried, arose not only from the relentlessly worsening stink but from the brutal realisation that he dared not open Morton's wallet or any of its contents if there was any risk of him defacing the vital contents with a rancid drip or smear. For once, cleanliness must come before intelligence. In the meantime, as he stripped, Poley went through with Tom at last the details of Morton's death and the present whereabouts of his body.

No
sooner had Poley eased his long and none too youthful shanks into the water than a girl arrived from the cooking fire and Will Shakespeare arrived from the Rose. The one was laden with a cauldron of boiling water and the other agog with the news from Bankside about Tom's near death at the hands of three club-men. Neither was particularly welcome. 'Hell's teeth,' groaned Master Poley, fighting to position the bobbing stool beneath his lean arse. 'This is no bathhouse, 'tis St Paul's at high noon. I expect a sermon, a whipping and a hanging at any moment.'

But
it so chanced that the kitchen wench who carried through the cauldron was young, plump and comely - and not too shy to help their distinguished guest with his ablutions. And Will had brought his Master of Cypher's commentary on Julius Morton's dying words. So they got their sermon at once. For the whipping and the hanging, they had to wait.

Will
rehearsed Morton's last speech, disentangling the intelligencer's extemporised words from those he had written for Mercutio. To Talbot Law and the serving girl, this was all revelation. To Poley and Constanza, less so; and to the others not at all. 'The speech as I wrote it ends here: "Ask for me tomorrow and you shall find me a grave man." Now he goes extempore. I did not write "I am peppered, I warrant ..." see here? And "A plague o' both your houses." It fits well, but I did not write it. Then we have "A dog, a rat, a mouse, a cat to scratch a man to death." Again, that is new. "A braggart, a rogue, a villain that fights by the book of arithmetic ..." New again. But here he returns to the play. "Why the devil came you between us? I was hurt under your arm ..." And then, after Romeo's answer, "Help me to the house, Benvolio, or I shall faint." That is Mercutio's last line. Benvolio carries him off there and he dies in the tiring house. But he has added again, "A plague o' both your houses. They have made worms' meat of me. I have it and soundly... Your houses ..." That is all, but Dick Burbage swears he would have said more had they not carried him off the stage. So those lines, the extempore lines, are the cypher I have been working on.'

'And
this work,' asked Poley, his intellect involved now. 'Has it yielded aught?'

'Yes,'
said Will roundly. 'I believe that it has.'

'Expound,
then, oh Master of Cyphers,' directed Tom quietly.

'By
Socratic method, then, for I have not yet plumbed the depths.'

'By
Socratic method if you must,' said Tom, glancing across at Poley. Teaching through asking questions seemed to be a popular method among intelligencers, he thought.

'Whose
house has received the most pernicious visitings of the plague?' asked Will.

'Most
every house in London during the last two years,' answered Tom.

'More
than the common run. More than any,' insisted Will.

In
the little silence, Tom glanced across to Poley and caught the frown which dis figured his lean, saturnine face. Poley knew the answer, he realised with a prickle of revelation that came close to an icy shiver. 'Master Poley has an answer to your question, Will,' he said, his voice suddenly gravelly and hoarse.

They
all looked at Poley and the spymaster's frown deepened. 'The player speaks of the House of Outremer. In the last year almost every person living at his London house at Wormwood in Jewry has died. Lord Outremer himself, his wife and children, servants, cats and dogs. Even the very rats, they say, die in the cellars of Wormwood in Jewry. And that's an odd thing for a family whose fortunes were founded on herbs, medicines-'

'Spices,'
added Will. 'Peppers and the like ... And there you have it,' he cried, so excited that he overlooked the tone in which Poley had described him as a 'player'. 'But you do not have it all. For with old Lord Outremer dead without issue, who is like to inherit?'

'Hugh
Outram,' answered Constanza, who had not wasted her year in London without picking up whispers from all quarters, and the juicier the better. 'Baron Cotehel. Third of the Unholy Trinity with Wriothsley and Devereux, Earls of Southampton and Essex. I hear tell the three of them are Raleigh's School of Night reborn, dealing in alchemy, necromancy, all manner of unholy arts. And wait, wasn't Kit Marlowe supposed to be-'

Will
cut off her gush of gossip with uncharacteristic rudeness. 'And the London home of Hugh Outram, Baron Cotehel, soon to be Lord Outremer, master of the pepper trade?' he persisted, aglow with febrile, almost frenetic excitement.

But
Tom knew this answer, for he had been invited there to give young Baron Cotehel the benefit of his tuition. 'Highmeet House,' he said. 'In the parish of St Magnus.'

'Highmeet
St Magnus,' confirmed Will. 'You have it.'

'I
have what?' Tom glanced around the steamy little room. Constanza pouted, hurt by Will's rudeness. The kitchen wench rubbed Poley's back, lower and lower, her expression dreamy. Poley himself still frowned, and Tom suspected he saw all too clearly what his dazzling friend was driving at. But Tom had teased him once already. Time to stir his own heat-addled wits. 'Two houses, then, Wormwood already cursed by plague and Highmeet like to succeed it. Literally, if you have the right of Morton's curse. One family, the elder line deceased, the cadet bound to inherit.'

'You
have it, Tom. The houses. The names of the houses.'

'Wormwood
and Highmeet. Dear God, Will, you're in the right. Wormmeet. 'Tis the two conjoined. Could this be?' he asked, turning to Poley. 'Could Morton have been warning his contact against Hugh Outram?'

'He's
the only one of the Three not at Nonesuch,' admitted Poley heavily. 'Essex is Master of the Horse and the Queen needs him to oversee her next move down to Richmond. Southampton is there with Lord Burghley, his guardian, for four more months to the very day. If Morton was caught spying on any of them, then it would be Outram he would have to avoid.'

'If,'
said Tom. 'If. If. If. We have too much conjecture and not enough certainty, even from you, Master Poley.'

Poley
stood up so swiftly that the steaming water cascaded out on to the rough wooden floor. He stood for a moment, looking around. His clothing was with Tom's steaming in front of the fire and there was no sheet brought by fair hands to cover his loins. But he cared not, it seemed. 'Then we had best look over the letters he had sent us,' he said. 'At the very least your playercodemaster here can reclaim the lines Morton had secreted at his lodgings amongst other, weightier writings. I need a napkin,' he concluded. 'A gown and a private chamber and for God's grace, some peace.'