The Point of Death (15 page)

'Seyton
away when they all died, you say?' said Poley, narrow-eyed. 'That was a monstrous piece of luck.'

'Ill
luck for him, poor man. Coming back to that horror near addled his wits. Them all stark dead - his beloved master and mistress; his own wife and sons as was among the servants. The lord's four children, on whom he doted as though they were his own. And poor Mistress Margaret up in the tower a week with only the scraps he had left her and the pitcher of water to sustain her, near famished to death. And she must have heard it all going on, for it can't have been that they died in silence nor anything like it. He never left the house again.'

'He
left it an hour since,' said Poley. 'Carried over to the church. They'll be calling for you soon, no doubt, to lay yet another body out.'

'This
one won't be pretty either,' warned Tom gently. 'He died hard. And if he was a friend ...'

'Aye,
it makes it harder. When it's a friend.'

'Run
mad, you said,' continued Tom after an instant's pause. 'He told you they had all run mad.'

'So
he said. They had all run wild, convulsing, tearing themselves and each other, ripping away at clothes, walls and doors but none of them strong enough to go into the street and call for aid. Last summer, mind, they'd have never found any for the place was a forest of crosses. With Seyton back, they were planning to go to the country, he told me once. They were only waiting for him before they left the accursed place. More crosses than doors, it seemed sometimes, and the dead cart out every night. We took them up to the Pardon Yard from here, hard by Barbican. And that's where My Lord Outremer and all his household went. Death's no respecter of titles or power.'

'But
you've helped Seyton look after Mistress Margaret, haven't you? During the last year?' persisted Tom.

'Lord
love you, sir, how could I not? He was only a man after all. He knew nothing of women and their ways. Married a score of years and a father twice over, but the first time she had her monthly bleeding he was round to my door crying death and destruction. For I'm known as a wise woman locally. Wise woman, Master Poley, not witch.

'And
I had been midwife to her in any case, all those years back when the little boy came. I'd brought in the new and laid out the old. Of course he came to me.'

Revelation
sang in Tom's head like the Heavenly Choir itself. Poley pounced while the Master reasoned. 'A child you say? The mad girl had a child? A boy?'

'Yes.
Early in Armada Year. She was run mad already and they had her locked up in the tower even then. A little boy it was. She doted on it and they let her keep it. Her mother and father would never look on her nor on the child, for there was never any father named for it - nor banns read nor vows exchanged. So it was Seyton and me as looked to it, poor little bastard mite. She was her own wet-nurse, though a lady born and should have been far above such things. And she doted on the babe. I'd watched her with it, or one of the serving girls would, for we never let her have hold of it alone. But then last summer my lord decided the child should go away and that's where Seyton was. Away with the child. Though it was a lovely lisping boy when last I saw him, five years old and sharp as a pin. None of his mother's madness there. He'll be turned six this summer. I don't know where he is, God love him. And never am like to now.'

Ten
minutes later, Tom and Poley walked slowly past the great water cans outside the Mercer's Hall where Poultry ran into Cheapside. They were deep in conversation. 'We had best take this to Lord Hunsdon,' said Poley. 'And he'll need to take it to the Secretary. I dare not move and must not stay.'

'Nor
even hesitate,' said Tom. 'They sought a will. I supposed it was a will that named a poor mad girl. A daughter to the dead lord, yes, but nothing of import. A botch in the plan; a roughness to be smoothed away. But now it is all changed. The mad woman has a sane son and the dead lord has a living heir and Baron Cotehel is suddenly second in line for the title, so his dogs are out again.

'They
knew about Morton and his fears for the family. They know about you and me; they know about Kate and the Searcher back there. They must know about the boy or Seyton would still be sitting in Hell. If we do not act, we die...'

And
even as he spoke, a white-faced apprentice came past at a run, crashing almost blindly into them. 'Where away so fast, lad?' asked Tom.

The
wild-eyed boy swung round. 'I'm to run for the Watch. There's murder done.'

Tom
caught the boy by the shoulder. 'Who?' he demanded. 'Where?'

'Mistress
Kinch the Searcher,' he answered breathlessly. 'She was called to St Margaret's to lay out a corpse but as she crossed into Old Jewry a man walking past her reached over and cut her throat. Cut her throat in broad daylight, just like that and vanished before any could call hue and cry. A man all in black, they told me, and I must find Master Curberry, the Captain of the Watch.'

Chapter Eighteen - The Raid on Bridewell

Tom and Robert Poley ran back at once, their eyes everywhere as they went, knowing that the Spaniard must be somewhere about. It had to be the Spaniard's handiwork- the swift execution had none of Baines's brutal stamp about it. If they saw him they would take him, hue and cry or no; whether the Watch were present or not. But there was no sign of him. Instead there was a bunch of onlookers crowded round the corner where the boy had said the murder had been done. With the necessary brusqueness of high office, Poley shoved the crowd around the body aside. Tom knelt by the Searcher as she lay, white as wax in the midst of a great puddle of blood. Typically, thinking to the end, her hands were clasped around her throat, trying to hold her blood in to the last. Her eyes stared fixedly into his as though trying to communicate some last, vital message. Some men believed, thought Tom, that the image of her murderer would be there, engraved upon the back of her eye, available to any who knew the correct necromantic spell. But he needed no magic to see who had done this. He eased the grasping fingers and laid bare the exact opposite to the last cut throat he had seen. The body under the rubbish pile outside Morton's lodgings had had his throat torn out as though by a wild dog- the work of a dull blade, of inferior quality, roughly wielded. Baines's work, thought Tom now, beginning to see clearly the differences between his opponents' handiwork. Here, however, lay a masterpiece of the assassin's art. Like Tom himself, like Will, like Morton, she would scarce have felt the blade slip in behind her Adam's Apple and slit through on its swift way out. The first she would have known about the serpent-swift bite of death was that first great spray of blood which soaked into the rags at her breast now, and the fact that when she tried to scream, nothing at all would come.

Tom
glanced up at Poley. 'There is nothing we can do here. Let us haste away now or we will waste the morning talking to the Watch.'

Poley
nodded and the pair of them shouldered their way back out of the crowds and turned south for the river at once. Poley was bound - more urgently now than ever - straight to Whitehall in the hope that Lord Hunsdon was still there. But that hope was increasingly faint- for Lord Hunsdon was also Lord Chamberlain, responsible for running the Queen's household - as Essex, Master of the Horse, was responsible for moving it. And if the Queen was growing restless at Nonesuch Palace, then her Chamberlain had best be close at hand. Tom was bound for Bridewell, armed with Poley's commission from My Lord in his purse. They separated at the Steelyard steps, Poley's wherryman unwilling to break a long westward run at Bridewell Stairs and Poley's urgency supporting him in this.

They
were to meet by noon, however, back here at the Steelyard, though Tom had no idea why. He knew that, whatever their business there, they would have to be quick. His first student of the day was due to be in Blackfriars at one - then his time was full once again until six tonight.

The
keeper of Bridewell's Black Book was so impressed with the commission that he did not even ask whether Tom was the Master Poley so trusted by the Lord Chamberlain and Her Majesty's Council. Together they looked through the admissions register, noting the names of the men and women brought here during the day, checking the times of their arrival and their destinations within the massive place. There had been no one called Shelton admitted at all. Caught between relief and concern, Tom was just turning away, when a thought struck him. 'May I see the book again?' he asked. And, while he checked through the names to see whether any bore the mark of Mistress Kate's peculiar brand of code, he fell into conversation with the man. 'I suppose you see most of the people you record here?'

'Most,
aye. They stand before me to tell me their names for the book and wait while I assign them to their quarters. It is a huge place, this, and we are not a huge company to run it. It was a palace you know, until poor King Edward gave it to the city. 'Tis a weighty responsibility, recording all the comings and goings.'

'And
you do it well. I shall mention it to the Council, rest assured. Do you call to mind a woman brought in earlier today? Brought by the Watch from St Martin's.'

'One
of Vicar Parris's trulls? He's always calling whore on some girl or another. Then, often as not he's here to see 'em whipped in. We do it on the bare back here, sir, all clothing pulled down. And no telling where the whip will wander.'

'Aye,
aye ...' Tom's mind was elsewhere as his eyes scanned the columns of names recorded in handwriting that only served to make the spelling more impossible to decipher. 'Did you see any such today? A tall, well-set woman with red hair and clear brown eyes. Modishly dressed.'

'Oh,
aye, I saw such a one and no mistake,' said the bookkeeper roundly. 'Gave me the benefit of her wisdom, too - though as nothing to what she was saying to the poor men from the Watch. Hair like a fox and the tongue of a shrew. Now what did she call herself ...'

But
Tom had found her. 'Mistress Catherine Poley. Bawd.'

'You
have it. Why, but that's ...'

Tom
had an instant to think. 'My wife,' he admitted, shamefacedly.

'Well,
you're not the first, Master Poley, and you won't be the last. 'Tis quite the fashion, I am told, for ladies of the better sort to go whoring around the town these days. But if you're here to buy her out, you must see the governor, or better still the treasurer-'

'No,
no.' Tom rose quickly. Mistress Kate had been here several hours - but she planned to try and make contact with a Spaniard in the Armada dungeons and that would likely take time. 'Let her stew for a little longer, eh?' he said to the bookkeeper, man-to-man. And was rewarded with a large wink in return.

'They're
all trulls at heart, Master Poley. You leave her with us and she'll learn to repent her ways. Come back at six this evening if you want to leave her that long, and see her whipped in with the others as I said. Fifteen lashes on their bare backs to welcome them. Then, if you'll take a homely man's advice, sir, you'll take the lady home and repeat the dose below the girdle that we have given her above. Then she'll mend her ways, doubt it not. "A woman, a cur and a walnut tree, the more you beat them, the better they be."'

Tom
left without further comment, mentally swearing by all he held dear that he would be back for Kate before six. With or without the real Master Poley.

The Steelyard was a great maze of buildings on the riverside a couple of hundred yards upriver from the Bridge. Here the smaller boats and barges docked, having transferred part cargoes in the Pool below the Bridge or in Deptford where the big ships docked when they came in from Germany and the North. It was the headquarters in London of that great pan-Germanic political and trading empire called the Hanseatic League. Since the times of Harry the Great and his movement away from Rome and into the Protestant camp, the Steelyard had been the gateway to a wonderland of artistry and invention slowed only during the Catholic excesses of Bloody Mary and her husband Phillip, King of Spain, and, briefly, of England.

Tom
could have been meeting Poley at the Steelyard for any of a thousand reasons - but the true one was the last he would ever have guessed. As Tom explained what he had discovered at Bridewell, Poley led him purposefully through a maze of corridors. His hurrying footsteps faltered only once - when Tom told him Kate's current alias. 'God's my life, she goes too far. I will leave her to the post and the whip. On my life I will. Catherine Poley. What of my good name now?'

'Your
good name ...' said Tom, carefully for no one is more careful of his reputation than one who has been to prison. Poley had first been there for using a Catholic priest in a plot to seduce Mistress Joan Yeomans. He had needed neither priest nor prison to repeat the offence on a regular basis, by all accounts. 'Your good name will by no means be enhanced by having her stripped and whipped under the common eye. The Bookkeeper tells me that like as not the Reverend Parris will slip up there after evensong to see it done. Purely for spiritual reasons, I am sure.'

'Well,
we must go in after her. And here is the best place of all to begin to make our plans.'

As
he spoke, Poley pushed open a little door and swept Tom into a small shop. Behind a table stood a rotund man in a leather apron and thick spectacles.
'Guten
tag
,
'
he welcomed them courteously. 'And how may I serve you gentlemens?'

'As
you might expect,' said Poley, apparently to both of them, 'we are here in the

Steelyard
to buy a yard or two of steel.'

'Ah,'
said the German with solid satisfaction.

'The
best. The very best,' said Poley. 'For the Master of Defence, here.'

'Please
to stand up straight,
Mein
Herr
.'

Suddenly
short of breath, like a boy at his first play, Tom stood.

'You
use the right hand,
ja
?
'

Tom
nodded, and followed the German's instructions to the letter. He stretched out his arm and was measured from shoulder to fingertip, from armpit to wrist. He picked up and balanced a series of weights and hefted a series of rods while the German made careful notes. When it was all finished, the little man bustled off into a stockroom behind the shop. A moment later he returned with a length of steel. White as silver, it gleamed with wicked brilliance as it lay on the dark wood of the table. At one end there was a spike of steel stretching little more than a hand's breadth of slightly duller roughness down to the brightness beneath. Then it was a finger's width of icy silver reaching down along a yard to the finest of points. At the spike-end, where the blade was thickest, in black chasing there was marked the figure of a running wolf. Tom reached out, entranced.

'Nein
,
'
called the German.
'Mein
Herr
, please to wait.' He pulled on a leather gauntlet and reached back into a cupboard behind him, then he lifted the blade with the utmost care and slipped the spike end into a plain steel hilt. A moment more of fiddling, then he handed the sword to Tom, holding the blade in his gauntleted hand. 'Take care with the blade,' he warned as Tom took the thing. 'It is so sharp it will cut to the bone and you will never even feel it.'

'I
know,' said Tom. 'I've had one through my arm and scarce noticed it. And I know a man who was run clear through the breast with one but only felt it when it also pierced his hand ...'

Tom
made a series of passes, watching the lethal beauty of the thing, utterly entranced. But more than his eyes were ravished. Even with this common steel handle - hardly to be called a hilt - the balance of the thing was wondrous. It exuded almost God-like power. Or rather, a Satanic power, for it whispered to him as he held it; wielded it. Like Marlowe's Mephistophilis it said, seductively, 'Kill before you put me up. I will only sleep if I have drunk enough of blood.'

'This
is a wondrous, terrible thing,' he said. 'Even my Ferrara blade was nothing compared with this...'

'It
is a Solingen blade,' said Poley, redundantly, 'like my own. And it is what the Spaniard wields, as you have said, I think. This is to replace the blade snapped by Nick o' Darkmans and his men.'

'A
thousand thanks, Master Poley...'

'It
is not from me,' said Poley shortly. 'I could never afford the like of this. But Lord Hunsdon wants you properly armed for the tasks we ask you to undertake.'

'You
saw him today, then? I had thought Nonesuch Palace called most urgently.'

'Not
today, no,' said Poley thoughtlessly, then checked himself.

'You
have hilts for this blade?' the German interrupted, with a pointed glance at the workaday rapier Tom had borrowed from the school.

'I
have some hilts of Ferrara make,' answered Tom, distracted, entranced. The German nodded approvingly. 'And,' he continued, 'I have a Dutchman who will fit them for me.'

The
German smiled.
'Sehr
gut
. But you will wish this to make the match,
ja
?
'
Where the blade had lain he placed a naked dagger - the very match of the rapier except that it came with a hilt. The blade alone was fifteen inches of razor sharpness almost impossibly slim and narrow. As Tom looked at it, he saw it in his imagination, sliding in through the Scavenger's throat and slitting its way almost painlessly out of the front. 'Aye,' he said breathlessly. 'I'll take that too,
Mein
Herr
.
'

'But,'
said Poley quietly, 'we are only halfway through our business. Put that blade down, Tom, and let the Steelmaster of Solingen here measure your left arm too.'