The Point of Death (12 page)

Poley
got his napkin and, soon after, a gown. He and Tom were made free of the tapster's Sunday best. They removed into the quietest of the public rooms, but peace was hard to come by. Will, signally unsatisfied with the mere return of his playsheets, departed moodily, for it was well past ten now and the exigencies of two performances and much brainwork were taking their toll, and his bed in St Helen's beckoned. Constanza, at Tom's request, went off to see whether something more solid than the usual supper could be culled from the ordinary pot below. And so they were, briefly, alone. But before Poley could fall to his urgent inspection of Morton's papers another interloper arrived. It was Ugo.

'They
say Alsatia's still alight,' he reported at once. 'But the blaze is dying back, so I'm told.'

'God's
death, Ugo, you haven't been waiting there all this time?'

The
Dutchman laughed grimly. 'Nay. I've had other business to keep me busy, Tom. Did you know you were followed to Hanging Sword Court?'

'No.
By whom?'

'A
shiftless scoundrel attired in black.'

Tom
shivered, suddenly, and the wound in his arm gave a poignant twinge. He thought of the ambidextrous, dressed all in black, looking back up Rose Alley as Julius Morton lay dead on the table, killed at his hand. Perhaps there was more blood to be shed before his account was settled in full. 'This watcher in black,' he said. 'Could you see what he carried? One sword or two? Could he have been of Spanish blood d'you think? A Mediterranean man?'

'I
cannot say,' said Ugo in his solid, forthright manner. 'I can tell you little more than I have. But he has dogged your heels like the veriest hound all day.'

'That
must have taken some cunning,' observed Poley.

'Cunning
indeed, and from both of us. I've never seen such shift to speed out from under a maze of falling bricks and down the very banks of the Fleet with the pair of you bobbing like mermen on the back of your river horse. You kept my guns safe, I trust.'

'Safer
than my sword.'

'Aye,
I heard tell. And that's the next point of my news. For when my man had followed you across the river - with me scarcely a wherry-length behind - I saw him talking to three ruffians. Solid-looking men, armed with solid-looking clubs. I chose to follow him rather than them and so I think I missed something of your battle. But I did not miss its aftermath, for when all the hue and cry was done, with my man sitting supping sack in the Bear as quiet as you like, a bloody man came running up to him, all distressed. I heard little of the conversation but the pair of them started up again at once and were off through the door like hares at a coursing. I followed the pair of them down to the waterside - a quiet little bank below Goat Stairs - where they hauled me out another ruffian with his leg all torn and his privities on show. After a moment more of talk the wounded birds limped off into the night and my man came back up on to Bankside.'

'Well,
God's my life,' breathed Tom. 'And whither went our fight-maker then, pray?'

'Down
to the counter, as bold as brass, with his purse in his hand. When I saw that I thought I'd best come here with all good speed.'

'He's
gone to buy the third man free,' said Tom, pulling himself to his feet, stiffly and a little unsteadily. 'He'll be done before we can stop it and vanish into the night.'

'Hold,
Tom,' said Talbot Law. 'He'll not have bought him out of the counter. 'Tis my prison and I left word. No one can get him out of my cage except myself. And that, I think, I shall do presently. If I'm quick, I'll get the both of them.'

As
Tom gave the guns to a tutting Ugo, and Constanza stuck her head round the door to promise a resurrected pottage, then vanished to get Tom her fork, the two men at last found the leisure to turn to Morton's papers.

They
started with the letter addressed to Poley, talking quietly as they gingerly opened it and fell to closer scrutiny of its contents. 'It was probably a mere trap,' said Poley. 'Morton must have left it for anyone who knew what he was about and for whom he was working.'

'Men
such as he feared the most,' agreed Tom. 'Knowing that of all the papers there they would hasten to open this first, and so fall victim to the Spanish pins. Take care. There is one still left. Here, let me take it and keep it safe. All the uses I have heard of this device require that the pins be poisoned. Do you know an apothecary skilled in poisons?'

'Perhaps,'
admitted Poley guardedly. 'But such knowledge is dangerous.'

'Almost
all your knowledge seems to be dangerous,' said Tom seriously, and Ugo snorted with grim amusement. 'However,' continued Tom, 'let us consider the letter further. Let us suppose that Morton wrote a genuine letter to you, but had not the means of opportunity to put it in your hands. Could he have relied upon your finding it should anything happen to him?'

'All
things being equal,' said Poley slowly. 'I did find it, after all.'

'In
that case, the pins are a way of making certain that yours would be the only eyes to see the message. Would you have taken care how you broke the seal, as I did with my sword?'

'Of
course. The package was heavy. Stiff. I would have opened it most circumspectly. He would have known that.'

'Then
we can assume that he would have written freely to you. This is his parting word.
Quod
erat
demonstrandum
, I believe. What does it say?'

'
"Poley. In haste and in the knowledge that if you read this I am dead. In that case look well to Kate. I have warned Gil Brown to stay close at the Rose for fear of her, but he is not to be relied on for he is slow. My end may be swift but hers would be lengthy and torturous. I fear the Three, though only one is abroad. They have at play not one Don but two, and it is with one of them that the matter of Lathom lies, I fear. They have at play also Phellippes and his crew, I believe, but their object remains obscure. Of one thing I am certain, there are more than are found in Mantua and one such has visited Wormwood in Jewry with what results all the world knows, but with what object and at whose behest? After the play I have told her to ask Master Seyton of Wormwood the manner of things there. I have also given her the name of the Searcher of St Margaret's Old Jewry. But which of the other concerns have been so visited as Wormwood? Kenilworth, or Buckstones, rather? St Augustine's Papey? And what part of the great plan can so many deaths pretend? Such men as you and I must look about us, Poley. Warn Gil Brown. Have a care to Kate, I prithee." '

'I
would hazard,' said Tom when Poley had finished reading this, 'that it was Gil Brown who told you of the play?'

'It
was.'

'And
who lay under the dust pile in Alsatia with his gullet torn asunder?'

'Sadly,
yes.'

'
'Tis too late to warn him, then. But what of her?'

'She
would not go to Wormwood in Jewry. She would not dare.' But Poley did not sound too certain.

'If
she went, she went a day since,' warned Tom. 'And knowing nothing of Morton's death, like as not. But his words on stage would be likely to send her to the house as agreed, if she's of any determination at all.'

'She
is My Lady Determination,' admitted Poley.

'Then
she has gone.'

'But
it is the Lion's den. Death to all who enter there, save only Seyton, the Chamberlain.'

'Then
we'd better shift to follow her straightaway.'

'Not
without some preparation. And not without some force.'

'We
are a force of three,' said Tom.

'Well-armed
if we can call in at my rooms to supply our want of guns and blades,' added Ugo, grimly.

'Four
if we can tempt the Bishop's Bailiff north of the Thames with us. He might well come exploring on the strength of Lord Hunsdon's writ.'

'On
the strength of that I could command the Watch,' said Poley, growing thoughtful.

'If
the City Watch are worth commanding, then I'm a Cardinal,' growled Ugo.

'Five
indeed,' persisted Tom, all restless energy now, 'if we could stop off at St Helen's and rouse Will Shakespeare. 'Tis hard by Wormwood Street and no distance from Old Jewry.'

'Indeed,'
said Constanza suddenly. 'And have you noticed that, when things begin to gather into trouble, at the Rose, at Southampton House, at Wormwood in Jewry, why there, right at hand, is your Master of Cyphers? And remember, Tom,' she added, sending a darkling glance across at Poley as he spoke, 'Will Shakespeare was as good a friend to Kit Marlowe as he is a friend to you.'

Chapter Fifteen - Wormwood

The invasion of Wormwood in Jewry began with a mess of pottage. The serving girl who had bathed Poley arrived with two wooden trenchers piled with the thick stew of pork belly, root vegetables and beans thickened with oatmeal and spiced with sage. There was salt, but it never left the ordinary room, where it sat on the high table. The scrapings of the ordinary pot were supplemented by two legs of capon, spit-roast, and a slab of coarse bread broken in two. Poley fell to at once, using the one horn spoon provided, his dagger and his fingers. Tom, suddenly ravenous, would have done so too, though he lacked the spoon until Poley was done with it - and a dagger come to that. Had not Constanza slipped off to get her fork, Tom would have been reduced to eating with his fingers like a beggar. Or, more likely, to waiting like the poor gentleman he was until the implements were wiped and passed. A bottle of sack completed the repast, and Tom got to the pewter tankard first.

He
was on his second cup when Talbot Law returned. 'I have your assailant,' he said shortly, 'but his would-be liberator's gone.'

'Bring
him up,' suggested Tom.

'He's
coming,' said Talbot, and a rhythmic crashing proved his words. After a moment more, the door heaved open and two burly warders hauled the leader of the cardsharps and Tom's main assailant into the room. Round his neck he wore an iron collar which was attached to two solid bars perhaps a yard in length reaching down between his knees to ankle gyves. From midway on each bar there stood out to right and left another shorter bar ending in wrist cuffs. The effect of the whole device was to hold the unfortunate wearing it in a painful squat from which position any movement was impossible. It was a brand-new fettering system recently invented by the Warden of the Tower. It was called the Scavenger's Daughter. When the warders dropped their burden he balanced on his feet for a moment, like a goose laying, then he toppled slowly on to his side.

Talbot
had said the man had been crying assault on Tom. But that was before his employer had failed to release him and he had begun to suspect just how powerful Tom might be. Also, no doubt, before the irons went on. He was silent enough now.

Tom
used Constanza's fork to strip the flesh off his capon's thigh. He did it slowly, lingeringly, threateningly. The coney-catcher had certainly never seen a fork before and its novelty alone was likely to prove unnerving. Tom chewed a sliver of meat and they all sat silently looking down at the silent man. 'Let us begin with you,' said Tom at last. 'Your name is not Paul Carter and you are not a merchant up from Chiddingstone with a load of early apples for the Cheap.'

'No,
master. That's true.' The man's words were slow but his eyes darted quickly enough around the room, assessing the situation and measuring the odds against him.

'Then,
as the first step on the long road you will need to follow before you are out of the counter and out of those gyves, tell us your real name.'

'I
was christened Nicholas Blunt, your worship. Parish of St Mary, Islington, the year of the Queen's sickness, sir.'

'But
Islington is a thieves' haunt little better than Alsatia or Damnation Alley. You won't be known as Master Blunt in such quarters, will you? How are you known amongst your confederates, the coneycatchers?'

'Quick
Nick, your worship.' The answer came far too swiftly. A thief's trade name was an important commodity jealously guarded; for upon it rested his reputation and his fortune.

Tom's
eyes flicked across to Talbot and his men. Infinitesimal shakes of their heads told him they had never heard of anyone by that name. 'You're lying, Master Blunt. You're a man well set up in your business. You look like a merchant from Chiddingstone. You sound like one and you dress like one. Only a man of established reputation could achieve such things. We will know your name when we hear it. And we will know you are lying in the meantime.'

'We
have no time for these courtesies,' suddenly spat Poley. He turned to the kitchen maid who had stayed to make sheep's eyes at him. 'Go down to mine host and tell him I want a rope. We have strong beams up aloft,' he continued as she vanished, 'and I can show you a trick for loosening tongues that was taught me by no less a man than Rackmaster Topcliffe himself.'

Master
Blunt had come up with several names by the time that the rope arrived, but he had convinced nobody that he had achieved a state of truthfulness and grace as yet. He had, however, begun to sweat. His words became more effusive, tumbling over each other as Poley slung the rope up over the stoutest beam and looped it around the ankle end of the gyves. 'This is nothing but coney-catcher's cant,' snarled Poley when the rope was tight. 'Take him up, Master Law.'

Tom
knelt stiffly at the babbling villain's head. Such sympathy as he displayed was largely feigned, for this man had broken his beloved rapier and had been within a whisker of breaking his skull to boot. But he displayed sympathy nonetheless, to balance Poley's brutality. ' 'Tis only the beginning, man,' he said as the rope creaked over the beam and the gyves began to rise. 'We have an infinity more of questions and you are like to meet an eternity of pain if you equivocate with us. I was lately talking to a friend called Kydd, a scholar and playwright racked more than a year ago in the matter of Kit Marlowe's death, and he was scarce able to walk since. A broken man after an hour or two's examination; not long for the world. And what Master Poley has in mind for you is worse than ten rackings, I can see that plain. Be straight with us, man, or you'll be Blunt the Beggar, crutched or crawling, with your limbs askew and your business gone, your sons in the Islington brick kilns and your wives and daughters turned to bawds. There are houses here,' he persisted, 'as will take a girl from eight years old, for the gentlemen that like them young.'

Blunt's
legs were in the air now and the weight of his thighs and backside was working on the fulcrums of his ankles. And the moment his shoulders left the floor he saw that Tom's words were literally true. Something cracked, the sound explosively loud in the little room. It might have been the beam, the rope, the gyves or any of the bones they gripped so cruelly. The hanging man screamed. 'Nick o' Darkmans. They call me Nick o' Darkmans.'

Tom's
eyes met Talbot's and the Bishop's Bailiff, pale and wide eyed, nodded. Tom's hand went up and Nick o' Darkmans came down. 'The Bishop's Bailiff knows you, man. And that means hanging or burning like as not. Unless you can give us other game to skin. What was your latest business with me?'

'Not
to kill you, Master. Never to kill you.'

'What,
then?'

'We
was to break your sword, then your arms and your hands. Then your skull if we wanted. But we were to leave you alive, Master, I swear it.'

Constanza
screamed, choking the sound off with the back of her hand. Tom looked across at Poley and Talbot. 'Not dead, but crippled. Who would want that for me?'

He
was addressing the question to his friends but Nick o' Darkmans was falling over himself to answer it. 'His name is Baines. Richard Baines. He tried to hide the truth from us by calling himself Henry Carey. Said he came from Berwick and spoke with a Northern voice well enough. But we saw through him all too quick, though we never told him aught. 'Tis a law of the trade - always know your employer.' Now it was Tom's turn to look surprised, for he had been certain in his own mind from the moment Ugo warned him of the man in black that he was being followed by the two-sworded ambidextrous who had murdered Morton; the Spaniard staying in the Earl of Essex's household. One of two Spaniards waiting there for my Lord's duties at Nonesuch to be done.

But
no. From the moment Blunt had admitted he was Nick o' Darkmans, the truth had flowed from him, as pure as Jordan's stream. Tom would just have to find out more about this Richard Baines and fit him into the widening web of the puzzle. He suddenly remembered what Poley had said about Morton's murder being like the pinnacle of a pyramid of Egypt and the full massive truth lying buried in the sand far below.

'Is
Baines a name that means anything to you?' he asked Poley and received a curt, negative shake of the head in reply and a speaking look around the company - from which he assumed that Poley might pass on information as soon as they were alone. The next step would require more time and teasing out of information from the man. Time they did not have to hand now. 'Take him away,' he ordered Talbot's men, 'and keep him close. We have work to do which calls urgently on us now; but, like so much else that we have gathered today, Nick o' Darkmans will bear closer scrutiny when our leisure serves.'

Then,
as they began to pull their own clothes back on, Tom managed to clear the room at last and Poley began to speak of Richard Baines. 'When Master Secretary Walsingham died, the company he had gathered together began to fall apart. While he was still alive, there were a goodly number of us working on such matters as the Queen's cousin Mary of Scots, dealing with such as Babbington and his traitors, as you know. It was the same company that Sir Francis had created over the years to guard Her Majesty against plots from Cadiz, from Rome, from much nearer home. I was the head of the active section. My duties were to contact, examine, report. Work on the streets, in the stews, the counters and gaols, anywhere sedition and treason were brewing. But, equally important, was another section. This was the dealers in Codes and Cyphers. It was led by Thomas Phellippes. Richard Baines works for him - or used to do so. Even Masters of Cyphers need protection sometimes - and that was what Baines was there for. He's a roaring boy, a bully, a quick man with a knife.'

'And
where does your ancient intelligencer owe his loyalty now?' asked Tom quietly. 'Wherever Thomas Phellippes owes his - or so I would believe.'

'And
where does this code-master Phellippes roost?' Tom glanced up from the task of pulling up his sodden boots.

'At
Essex House.'

'So,'
said Tom thoughtfully, tightening his belt at last, 'the company of Sir Francis, his secret servants, have fallen into two camps now that Master Secretary is dead. You and those few of your men left alive seem to be working for the Council, reporting to Lord Hunsdon, looking into the deaths of a shocking number of important men. Phellippes and his crew work for the Earl of Essex. And these are the men that are set to kill us all if they can.'

'That
would seem to be the bare bones of the situation.'

'But
you have no idea why this should be.'

'I
have ideas in plenty, Master Musgrave. But none for the common ear - or even your  own at present. Come. There have been enough confidences. We have work at hand and an ounce of proof is better than a tun of speculation.'

Tom
and Poley's clothes were still damp but - to begin with - warm. And they smelt of vinegar instead of ordure. Had either man been particularly worried about their state of dress, the bustle that followed their re-clothing would have distracted them. For there was to be no further hesitation. Pausing only at Blackfriars to gather Tom and Ugo's best, they were off to Old Jewry and Wormwood House.

Talbot
had agreed to join them, pronouncing himself weary of the simple tasks of being Bishop's Bailiff and keen to see real action once again of the sort he had enjoyed with the Master of Logic at Nijmagen. His men declined the opportunity to risk a moonlight flit from one end of the city to the other, armed to the teeth under the eyes of the Watch - this leading only to the opportunity to search in secret darkness through a cursed house full of madness, demons and death. 'You can hardly blame them,' said Ugo solidly. 'I could do with some Dutch Courage myself.'

It
was a breathless, overcast night. The moon was just rising as Tom tore himself away from the delicious farewells of Constanza and ran out of the Elephant, across Bankside and down to Molestrand Dock. A couple of wherries took them swiftly across to Blackfriars Steps and a link boy guided them swiftly up Water Street, for it was not yet ten. Up in Tom's rooms they gathered swords and daggers, making sure that each of them was well supplied with cold steel before Ugo began to pass out his own special wares. Poley's wheel lock and Tom's snaphaunce revolver were out of commission. Ugo kept his own revolver and replaced Poley's with a single-barrelled weapon. 'We'll need to prepare for silent work as well,' said Tom quietly, and for him self and Talbot he pulled off one of Ugo's shelves a pair of small cross-bows which were carefully designed to fire either from shoulder like a small musket or hand like a big pistol. With each came a belt-full of slim iron-headed bolts. Thinking ahead, and dismissing the bulk of what Poley had told him earlier, Tom took a second rapier and slung it across his right thigh for when they summoned Will to join them. Then, with Tom armed like the ambidextrous Spaniard, they were off into the night.

As
they ran out of Blackfriars into Carter Lane, the great bell at Bow rang out. The bustle in the dark roadway ahead of them began to thin out almost magically. Link boys began to run home to their beds, taking their blazing torches with them. By the time the four companions reached the end of the long thoroughfare and crossed into Maidenhead Lane, the only lights still on were the torches by the doors of civic men slow to extinguish their civic duties. The bustle had died to the extent that they could hear the Bellman in the distance calling, 'Remember the clocks, look well to your locks...'