The Point of Death (13 page)

By
the time they had followed Maidenhead Lane into Friday Street and run northward into Cheapside, all the mighty heart of London seemed to have slowed in sleep. Under the inconstant moon, the road way - widest in London with the Cheapside Market packed away until dawn tomorrow - was a silver river running between great black cliffs of shadow. And it was the shadows that claimed them, for in spite of Poley's bravado, they really did not want to show Lord Henry's commission to the City Watch - most of whom were illiterate and many of whom were ill conditioned and ill tempered.

They
paused at the corner of Old Jewry and held a breathless conversation, the burden of which was that Tom should run on to call Will if he so desired. The rest of them would wait for them here for a count of a thousand. If Tom had not returned by then - or if anything served to disturb them in the meantime - they would proceed to Wormwood House and all would meet there in any case. It seemed a sound plan.

Tom
ran off up Old Jewry. The swiftest way to Will's lodgings would take him past Wormwood House and then up Lothbury, Throckmorton and Threadneedle. He had it all planned ahead in his mind, knowing every twist and turn; hoping Will would not mistake him for a hooker when he tapped on the window and call down the Watch on him. But thoughts of the hooker's long hooked pole designed to pull valuables out of unlatched windows - indeed, thoughts of Will and all - were driven out of his head as he came close to Wormwood House itself.

The
house stood on the corner of Old Jewry and Lothbury Street. It was a great old mansion, built the better part of a century since when men such as the first Lord Outremer were opening up the great trade routes in spices and herbs such as the one that gave the place its name. It had been added to by the lord lately deceased and it now stepped out into the air, storey overhanging storey, to blot out the moonblue sky. There was a maze of rooms within, by all accounts, a wilderness of corridors. There was even, at the inmost corner of the place, a tower, so Tom had heard. The swift patter of his footsteps slowed as Wormwood House reared its shadowed head over him. He was no more superstitous than the clearest thinking humanist of his time and yet he could not help a shudder at being so close to the place alone. But then his fears were set aside by circumstance.

For,
deep within the stygian darkness of the place he saw a pinprick of light. The fact of it stopped him in his tracks. His shoulder was already brushing the sill of the window where the light shone. He pressed his ear against the ancient glass, squinting to see where the pinprick of brightness was coming from. And the instant that his ear touched the icy pane he heard the moaning. His hair stirred and for a moment he thought it was alive, seeking to crawl from his very head. But if his hair was stirring it was the only part of him that was. His heart seemed to have stopped and his very blood was frozen in his veins. The moaning went on and on. Hoarse, desperate, as though uttered by a throat long past the necessity of breathing. Something within Tom associated the sound with the light - perhaps because they were both so ghastly and unvarying. And once his wits had stirred themselves that far, he was able to drag first his mind then his body into motion. It seemed that he had found Master Seyton, the Chamberlain of Wormwood - but he had found trouble into the bargain.

Down
Old Jewry he stole, his eye enthralled by the way the light blinked out and on again as he passed along the deserted roadway. At the corner of the two grand old streets stood the main door of the accursed place, and it stood wide. Out through the black throat of it there issued that almost silent moaning. Had he not known of it, had he not been listening for it, Tom would never have heard it. Those few - like the Watch, perhaps- scurrying past this haunted and accursed place, would never have heard it. Would probably never have stopped to see the door standing wide open. But Tom could hear and Tom could see. And Tom was going to investigate.

There
were two steps, hollowed by a century's busy traffic, up into Wormwood House. Tom took them a'tiptoe. Then a low sill separated the outside step from the inner flags of the hall. Here, on the very lip of the threshold, Tom hesitated. Should he close the door? He thought not. The only people he was like to be keeping out were his friends, due in a count of five hundred or so. Whoever had been here to leave all unguarded was gone, apart from the moaning man they left behind. And the Watch were hardly likely to be a trouble in this place - in this place least of all, in fact.

Ten
careful steps took Tom into the centre of that cavern of darkness- a place confirmed only by his ears registering accoustics far beyond his comprehension. But in the coaly darkness of the place, the thread of sound ran true, guiding him under a bulk of greater darkness into smaller, more confined environs. And here, distantly, but blessedly, he got his first flicker of that distant, golden light. The sight of it betrayed him into confidence and he strode through an open portal into a passageway, walking as though that distant star were a sun on midsummer day. He crashed into a toppled chair and nearly tripped headlong. Then, feeling ahead of himself at knee height, he soon realised that the whole hallway was filled with the wreckage of smashed and scattered furnishings. He piled it against the walls, worrying only about clearing a passageway through to the light and the gathering sound.

At
last, he came into the source of both. It was a great wide parlour with a kitchen area two steps below it. The whole place looked like the hall and he had to toss wrecked furniture hither and thither as he fought his way across to the only piece of furniture in the place still standing. It was an ancient table. At it sat a man whose face seemed to be in like condition to the rest of the house. It was puffed with beating and seemed so black with shadows and bruises that it might have been the face of a blackamoor. The jaws were wedged wide and the cheeks puffed by a gag forced immoveably between his jaws, round which the unvarying moan seemed to be his loudest cries for help. All that seemed to be holding him erect was the great candle which stood between his hands, into the searing heat of which his face would have fallen had he moved. At first, Tom could not work out why the old man - battered and blood-bespattered to be sure - did not simply pick up the candle and either toss it aside or use it to light his way to the Watch. But then Tom noticed the old man's hands, where they lay half engulfed by molten wax from the candle.

They
were nailed to the table.

And
that, in fact was only the first part of a series of revelations. The old man could not move the candle because of his hands. He could not blow it out because of his gag.

He
could not use his face to blot it out at the price of a burn and some wax-scalding because the blackness on his skin was not bruising - it was gunpowder. And the great gag, dribbling black spittle down the old man's chin, was a bag of powder too. He could not pull back from the searing heat because of the way his hands were nailed yet he dare not rock forward at all or the candle would ignite the powder and blow his head off there and then.

Tom
rushed forward, hurling a shattered stool to one side, just as the old man's face fell forward into the candle flame. The searing pain and the shattering noise jerked the swollen eyes into a narrow glare. The ancient body heaved until only the hands held it grotesquely in place. The candlelight spread to reveal a skinny chest and brutally abused shoulders.

Tom
swung round the table and caught the mouth of the powder-bag gag, easing it out of the old man's mouth. It was a solid bag of the finest leather, swollen to the size of a fist with the powder. On it were embroidered in fine gold thread the letters S and D all interwoven in a strangely ornate fashion. But Tom had no great liberty for examination, for at once the moaning choked into words. 'Bring her back,
señor
. She will harm no one. She says nothing and lives as quiet as the mouse on my master's arms. She has not stirred abroad this five year,
señor
, and speaks no word to any. I did not lie when I told you. Never a word. Never a word to any. I have kept her by the book with kindness and never needed the whips. Oh do not take her to Bedlam sir, I beg you in my master's name who gave her charge to me.'

Tom
stood by the old man, thinking nothing of his raving for the time being. 'Master Seyton,' he hazarded. 'Is it Mistress Kate you speak of?'

'Oh,
you cannot trick me, you Spanish devil,' spat the old man, full of fire and choler suddenly. 'You know we talk of Mistress Margaret whom you have stolen away from me. Burn down the house as you burned down Mousehole. Burn it down around my ears and have done.'

Tom
knelt on one knee and looked up into Chamberlain Seyton's ruined face. 'I am no Spaniard but Tom Musgrave, Master of Defence. I have come to aid you and yours, Master Seyton, but I must know what has gone on here and I must know of Mistress Kate if you have news of her.' His hand went up the old man's back to the shoulders, supporting him as he crouched on the three-legged stool they had left him on.

Seyton
gave a great shudder and leaned back, no longer having to hold himself erect, no longer having to save his crucified hands. He looked Tom in the face and something moved in the blood-red slits behind the blackened ruins of his eyes. Tom wished that it had been sanity and recognition; willingness to impart the information that he needed, but it was not.

'If
you are not the whoreson Spaniard,' whispered the old man with a lunatic's cunning, 'then why do you wear his swords? You are a creature compounded of lies. You and your crew and the bookseller's boy this morning whose volumes brought my lady no peace. No peace ...'

Tom
only half heard the end of this diatribe for he was looking down, thunder struck, at the hilt of his own sword on one side, and the hilt of the second one he'd brought for Will on the other. And he realised with a lurch like a body-blow what the old man had been talking about. But when he looked up, the ancient chamberlain was dead. Still leaning back against his shaking hand, still staring with those mad red eyes. But stone dead for all that. Tom had seen enough death to know. The weight of the frail old body became well-nigh unbearable.

With
the reverence due to such simple bravery in age, Tom moved the candle forward and laid the ancient head between the tormented hands, then he put the bag of powder in his belt and set to searching for some other light. He had only just begun when a crash from the end of the corridor informed him that the other three had arrived. He went with the candle and guided them through. Then they shared the table with the ancient corpse and held a swift council of war. The bag of powder that had served as a gag was examined in as much detail as the candle would allow, but even Poley could make nothing of the ornate initials D.S. or S.D. And so they proceeded to do what they had actually come to do.

They
searched in pairs, starting in the wreckage of the parlour and spreading out into the devastation of the rest. Dining chambers, reception chambers, galleries and sleeping chambers all were smashed and shattered. Public rooms and private, owners' quarters and servants', living rooms, working rooms and storage rooms - it was all the same. 'Such destruction,' whispered Talbot Law, awed, to his partner, Tom. 'It bespeaks great madness or great rage.'

'Or
a great search for a small thing,' said Tom. 'But how could this much have been done with no one coming to investigate or offer help? Where was the Watch?'

'Where
are they now?' asked Talbot. Then he answered his own question. 'Paid to look the other way.'

But
search as they might - exchanging information when their paths crossed - neither pair could find sight nor sign of Poley's Mistress Kate nor Seyton's silent Margaret, one or the other or both of them carried away by the Spaniard who always wore two swords. And, thought Tom grimly, if the Spaniard had exercised such fiendish cruelty upon a harmless old man and left him like the Inquisition just for amusement's sake, then Morton's fears for Mistress Kate's lingering, torturous death were well founded indeed, and he held out no great hopes that the lady Margaret would fare much better.

Chapter Sixteen - The Mad Room

Tom found the doorway first, though it hardly lay hidden now. Obviously it had once stood in a secret corner of an apparently little-used upper gallery, covered by a tapestry; but now the tapestry was torn asunder and the doorway gaped like every other doorway in the ravaged house. 'This place is like Nijmagen was, when we had looted it and left,' he whispered to Talbot. The old soldier gave one grim nod, and side by side they stepped over the rags of tapestry, through the ravished portal and into the stairwell of the tower.

Round
about the outer walls the circular staircase wound, up the shaft of the ancient stone keep and into a turret room. The room was entered by a trap that stood as open as all the other doors. Candle high in one hand, and sword in the other in spite of the oppressive silence of the place, Tom went first. Like Leviathan arising from the depths, he rose into a circular room whose thin, leaded windows nevertheless gave a sight of the moon and stars on every hand. But it was not the heavens beyond those walls that held the secret agent rapt. It was the realisation of what a hell had lain within them. For this was a mad room. Like any public chamber in Bedlam, just outside Bishops Gate, not so far north of here, where the good folk of London could go on a Sunday to see the lunatics chained, stripped, abused and whipped, this was a room designed to hold a lunatic. There were straps and manacles secured to the heavy wooden frame of the bed - though the bedding itself seemed soft and clean - or it must have been so before it was torn asunder and strewn. The posts at the bed's foot were particularly strong and both bolted to the floor. There were manacles and iron belts secured to both of them. The cuffs and waistband, Tom noted automatically, were set for the slimmest of figures.

By
the largest of the windows, looking down over the bustle of Stocks Market and Dowgate to the river beside the Steelyard, was a standing lectern half the size of a table. No chair or stool. The books that might have lain upon it or on the little shelf beside it were all strewn in tatters on the floor. Around the bare and brutal walls hung a range of medicinal whips and scourges which ranged from a few light cords such as might be used on a child to the sort of instruments usually reserved for the cart's tail, Tyburn, Paul's Churchyard and Bedlam itself, to whip out the madness as prescribed by medical wisdom for the benefit of the patient. They were all dusty, however, and clearly wanted use.

And
what made the room doubly sad in Tom's eyes was the scrap of rag that Talbot was holding now. It fitted so well with the settings of the manacles and the lightness of most of the scourges, for it was a piece of a woman's dress. This, Tom realised, was where Mistress Margaret had lived, until the Spaniard had come with his men, torn the house to pieces searching, tortured the ancient Seyton and spirited poor mad Meg away.

But
where was Poley's Kate in all of this? Why had Morton sent her here? What had she seen when she came - and what had she learned? What did she know and where was she now?

What
had Poley called her? Tom thought, as his mind raced. My Lady Determination. If Mistress Kate had been here then she would have contrived to leave a message somehow. Yet the old man had not known the name - unless he was just too taken up with Mistress Margaret, whom he must have tended and shielded for at least a year since the rest of the family died. In such circumstances who would give a second thought to some woman but lately arrived when such a trust had been broken in such a manner?

'We
must get Poley up here,' breathed Tom to Talbot, but the instant that the Bailiff looked down through the trap he said, 'He's on his way.'

A
moment later the mad room was more crowded than it was likely to have been in a long, long time. Poley looked around, his expression much as Tom's had been. 'Mistress Margaret,' he said, his voice dull.

Tom
nodded. 'But what of Mistress Kate?' he mused.

'What
indeed?' wondered Poley, clearly shaken, looking around with a vain attempt to mask his confusion and anxiety.

'Think,
man. Morton must have sent her here a day since. This was done tonight or the old man and the candle would have died long since. If she came, would she have lingered?'

'Surely
that would depend on what she sought,' chimed in Talbot.

'Aye,
but Master Poley here does not know what she sought. Do you?'

'No.'
Against his inclination, belief and usual practice; clearly under the greatest duress, Poley followed Tom's more open approach, certain that all here were confederates and there was none to overhear. 'Morton had discovered something he wished to impart to me but he was killed before he could do so.'

Save
that he wrote the import of it in a letter, thought Tom, but he said nothing for the moment.

'Since
that time,' continued Poley, 'almost all the men he worked with have died too. Everyone who might have known what he discovered is dead or under threat - including Tom, as we know, and myself. What Kate knows only Morton knew, and why he sent her here perhaps even Kate did not know. It is something about this house and how and why all who lived here died. It might even have been to do with that poor old man downstairs and the mad woman they held up here. I do not know. And I do not know how long Kate would have stayed for I do not know what it was she sought. And I do not know whether she was here when Morton's assassin arrived with the other men who did this. I hope she was not, or she will be beyond all help now if they have taken her.'

'Well
enough,' said Tom. 'But we have not yet reached the limit of where logic might take us. Master Poley, if we know nothing about why Mistress Kate came, can we at least guess how she came?'

Poley
frowned- as did the others. Tom expounded. 'Would she have come as herself.
Per
exemplum
, we know Master Nicholas Blunt of Islington had little enough business on the Bankside; but Nick o' Darkmans was like a Drake or Raleigh among the thieves' brotherhood working there. Is the same true of your Kate? Would Mistress Kate So-andso have had reason to call at Wormwood House? Or would she have come in disguise like an actor or a coney-catcher? And, if so, was there a disguise she favoured? One she would most likely have used?'

Poley
answered at once. 'For herself, she would have had no business here. Therefore she would have come disguised. I have often met her at Paul's Churchyard, and I have seen her at play there as though she were at the Rose with Master Shakespeare. I have seen her be the country maiden of Puritan bent, up to hear the sermons. I have seen her pretend to be the courtier of fashion jetting in the walk - almost to the bawd, though I have never seen her whoring. I have seen her act the earnest young assistant to the myriad booksellers there. But that is all. I have never seen her singing "Cherry Ripe" nor bearing a milk yoke such as country wenches do. Only of the better sort...'

Poley's
voice trailed off, for he had clearly lost Tom's attention. While the others stood gaping, Tom had fallen on his knees, candle aloft and sword cast carelessly aside. And he was gathering up the scraps of paper on the floor. The remains of the pamphlets and the books such as were sold in their hundreds every day at St Paul's Churchyard.

'The
old man,' he explained. 'With his dying breath he talked of the bookseller's boy. It must have been your Mistress Kate in disguise, Poley. She was here today, and some of these at least must be her wares.' Talbot Law held the light high; the Bishop's Bailiff, apparently, being above such common pastimes as scrabbling on the floor. The other three gathered the scraps of paper together. 'These have just been wantonly destroyed,' said Tom. 'There was surely no design to find any message hidden in them. And yet they searched for something small that might be hidden anywhere. Even in a book or pamphlet such as these.' 'Particularly in a pamphlet,' said Poley grimly, 'if we may judge from the state of these. As you find them, pass them to me and I will try to piece them together if I can.' After a while, he continued, in Tom's fashion, 'They searched for more than Mistress Margaret, then. But did they find what they sought once they had discovered her?'

'No,'
said Tom roundly. 'Had they found what they sought, then their destruction would have stopped. It did not stop - therefore they did not find it.'

'Quod
erat
demonstrandum
,
'
said Talbot. 'You should still consider Bartholomew Fair if they close the theatres again.'

'But
stay, there is more. I rival Doctor Dee tonight. For the thing they sought might have been concealed anywhere - or they would never have broken everything. In a padded chair-seat, behind a picture, even in a mad girl's bedding; in a pamphlet. Most especially in a pamphlet. It is of paper, then, and written or printed. Some document of legal weight and import.'

'A
map of the route to Cathay?' hazarded Ugo, unexpectedly romantically, thinking no doubt of how the Lords of Outremer had made their enormous fortune.

'A
chart of the Spice Islands,' Talbot took up the theme.

'I'd
hazard something more immediate and practical. What about you, Master Poley?' asked Tom. Poley merely grunted in reply, consumed with trying to rebuild the ruined books upon the lectern by the window.

Tom
sat at more ease on the edge of the bed. 'We have a house recently bereft of its lord and his family,' he said. 'A house about to fall into the hands of the next in line, Hugh Outram, Baron Cotehel, friend to the dazzling young earls of Southampton and Essex, desperate to keep up with the brightest and most dangerous stars at Court. But within the death-house, what do we find? An ancient chamberlain who remains in spite of all; remains against all reason. And why? To tend a mad woman in the tower. Who should this woman be? Who could ever garner such loyalty in the face of her insanity?'

'The
daughter of the house,' spat Poley over his shoulder. 'Half a wit could see it clear, but that you obscure all with your exercises of logic.'

'The
daughter of the house,' agreed Tom cheerfully. 'The last of the dead lord's line. Beloved daughter of a father richer than Croesus, the ballast of whose very ships is gold instead of stone, or so the story goes. And what might the Spaniard and his cohorts be searching for among the writings of the house, therefore?'

'They
seek the old man's will,' snapped Poley.

And
Tom swung round then, his lips thin and his level brows twisted in a frown. 'Right, Master Poley. The will. And they do not have it. You see how swiftly and clearly we can move forward when you say what you think and tell us what you know instead of equivocating with half-truths and secrets.

If
we sit atop a pyramid of mystery and murder, as you say, then you above all others hold the plans to the place and we need to see at least a part of them. Can you begin to imagine what they will do to Mistress Margaret, mad or not, if they think she might know where the will of Lord Outremer might be hidden?'

'There,'
said Poley, and this time it was his turn to let his rage have rein. 'There. In that very question lies the reason I will never share the whole truth with you. You would charge off to save the fate of one mad girl in the face of the plague of treason and assassination that holds us in its grip. You exercise your logic well, Master Musgrave, but you exercise it on a trifle, on a toy. Did you not listen when I read Morton's missive to you? Have you no idea what he suspected?'

'Aye,'
said Tom. 'Well enough.'

'Then
expound again, O Master of Logic, whom nothing ever escapes. Cut this Gordian knot of black satanity for me with the shining sword of your reason.'

Tom,
sitting in the wreckage of the mad woman's bed, looked up at Robert Poley then, his sympathy stirred by the man's frustrated rage. 'Very well,' he said. 'Without the cant and rigmarole, in plain blunt terms.

Your
intelligencer Morton feared that one of the Spaniards currently kicking their heels at Essex House is an assassin. A man who can kill by blade or knife or more darkly subtle means. He believed that this man or another like him has found employment here regularly in the past five years, working at the behest, perhaps, of Essex or Southampton or Outram or some other of their dangerous circle. The assassin's employment has been political and personal. He has added his dangerous wisdom to the ravages of the plague and so the senior line of Lord Outremer's family have all died out - all but the mad girl in the attic.

'But,
feared Morton, and fears Master Poley, all too clearly, there have been others dying suddenly over recent years, dying mysteriously before their time, suddenly clearing paths to power and wealth, as Hugh Outram's path is now so clear to Lord Outremer's titles, houses and fortune.

'But
his investigation did not begin here. His suspicions were not aroused here - but at Lathom House. So, I surmise, he and you - and the Council - fear that Lord Strange, who died two months since, died of poison and murder. And, said Morton's message to Master Poley, one such also died at Kenilworth, or rather at Buckstones. That could only be Lord Robert Dudley, the Earl of Leicester, the Queen's own darling and strong right hand, at the end of Armada year. And another died less than a league up the road at St Augustine's Papey hard by Bevis Marks, halfway between this place and Bedlam. To wit Sir Francis Walsingham a little more than four years since - Mr Secretary Walsingham the secret councillor, unmasker of plots and master of intelligence, for whom, I guess, Master Poley here has worked. If Morton has discovered that even such men as those were not safe, 'tis no wonder he beset his house with traps and sought to hide himself behind an actor's mask, as poor Kit Marlowe did before him.' Poley was white. 'Do you know what you are saying, man? Do you not see where your precious logic has led you? You talk of treasons so terrible it is treason even to think of them. A breath of such thinking goes outside this room and we are all fodder for Topcliffe and his monstrous machines. We would die to a man like Babbington, choked to the very edge of death at Tyburn but watching our guts and private parts burn in the hangman's brazier. Forget your Master Marlowe blinked out on a summer's evening like an ant beneath an impatient heel, here and gone in the blink of an eye. I saw it done to Babbington and his crew of plotters slowly and by the book and I tell you young Chidiock Tichbourne was still alive and screaming when the horses ripped him asunder into quarters.