The Point of Death (19 page)

'Although
the matter began for me with a petty deception and a poor attempt to unmask the murderer of an actor at the Rose some three days since...'

Sir
Robert Cecil leaned forward and whispered in his father's ear again. His eyes rested on Tom reminding him suddenly of Will's eyes, for they were heavy with intelligence. This man, Kate had said and Poley had confirmed, ran the remains of Walsingham's intelligencer service and slept with her older sister Audrey who was set to marry Tom Walsingham, his predecessor's adopted son.

'This
court has no record of such a murder.'

Tom
continued to talk to Burghley but his eyes remained fixed on Sir Robert Cecil's eyes. 'I hid the body, my lord, for reasons I have explained to Master Poley, who is, sometimes at the least, an officer of the court; and to Lord Henry, here also. And, I believe, of Sir Robert, your son. It was only during my conversation with his Lordship and subsequently, working with Master Poley, that I came to realise that my little murder had anything to do with secret matters of state. But since I came to that realisation, reading Julius Morton's letter two days since in Alsatia, I have known. Yes, my lord.'

'And
yet you saw fit to continue?'

'I
stand to be corrected, my lord, but what I was doing seemed rather to be of help than otherwise. Always assuming that Master Poley's continued life, health and work were your lordships' principal method of investigation.'

'And
why should they not be?' demanded Sir Robert Cecil, his eyes never leaving Tom's.

'I
have Master Poley's word, my lord, and that of Lord Hunsdon. Both of course are sufficient in themselves. On the other hand, at no time has Master Poley made me privy to the full scale of the matter. In this case I am a veritable Pandora, my lord, and each time I open a box some greater evil leaps out of it. And opening boxes, my lord, is what I have been doing for the last three days; in the sure and certain knowledge that there are bigger boxes yet to be opened and Master Poley persists in keeping the keys concealed.'

'Were
you a Pandora in truth,' observed Sir Robert dryly, 'then keeping the keys concealed would be a work of wisdom.'

'Then,
my lord, if the truth is always to remain hidden from me then perhaps I should be hidden away from the truth.'

'Master
Poley?' asked Sir Robert. 'How do we untangle this coil? 'Twould be easy enough to take him at his word. There are cells within the Tower that could accommodate him until the outer bounds of patience and convenience. Always assuming we wish to keep him above ground or in the city.'

Tom's
heart clenched within him. But, just as Sir Robert had asked the question without looking away, so Tom awaited the answer with his eyes steadily on the secret Secretary's.

'I
have tested this man in many ways,' said Robert Poley quietly. 'And have yet to find him wanting. I am slow to trust and with good reason as you know, but I have come to trust this man as my Lord of Hunsdon does. Except in the matter of the body, everything he has told me seems to have the stamp of truth. And even though, when I checked at the Plague Pit on the night of our first meeting and found it untenanted as I reported, there may have been a body as he says. Others I have subtly questioned agree. And it may have been spirited away. Both Phellippes's man Baines and my Lord of Essex's man Salgado have been busy behind our backs. But the nub of the matter is this. As Phellippes and Will Shakespeare are with codes and cyphers, so is this man with logic, Sir Robert. If I asked him to expound the entire matter now, like as not he would do so from the start, missing out little of import in spite of what I have kept locked away from him. He has saved my life. He has done much to slow the massacre of my people. Chance, Fortune - or Divine Providence - has fitted him for the task not only with the sharpness of his mind but also with the genius of his fencing arms and the position in which we find him, acquainted with Kate Shelton, friends with Will Shakespeare, allied with the Bishop's Bailiff. He has played Moses to Baines's subtle Pharaoh and has vanquished him at every turn. And - and this is most important, though I cannot yet explain it - he holds an invitation to go to Elfinstone for Baron Cotehel wishes to see him - and he alone, none other but he - fence with the Spanish assassin Salgado before the Earls of Essex and Southampton.'

'Not
merely to fence, my lord,' added Tom quietly. 'To die. Whoever is Baines's master in this, the Earl of Essex or no, he has been ordered to ensure my arms are hurt. By rack or by bludgeon. I am to go there crippled if possible so that I may be seen to fight and die.'

'But
if you are crippled,' asked Sir Robert quietly, 'how will they make sure that you go? That you fight against such fearful odds?'

'I
have no idea,' said Tom quietly. 'But I know that it will be so.'

Henry
Carey, Lord Hunsdon and Lord Chamberlain, shook his head, brows folding in that familiar frown. Both Tom and Robert Cecil were fooled into glancing towards him. 'It sits ill with me,' he growled, 'that Cotehel be allowed to enter into his uncle's castle and estates before due process of chancery law. Even by a day or two.'

'Your
concern is noted, my lord,' said Lord Burghley. 'But what are your thoughts as to the matter before this court?'

'Oh,
aye. Let the boy go. If he can survive, he's like to learn what lies at the bottom of this. And it'll be something foul, I'll wager, rather than something fair. And, now I think of it, I'm more than a little worried about the part played in this by those actors. Most of them are masterless men since the murder of Lord Strange and there seems little limit to the mischief they get up to if there's no eye kept upon them. I'll take Strange's men under my livery. It was Strange's Men that Morton and Shakespeare worked for was it not? Yes. I'll take them. Anyone like to stand surety for the rest?'

The
Lord Admiral looked up. 'A good thought, Lord Hunsdon,' he said. 'I'll take the rest. Where are they playing now?'

Tom
opened his mouth to answer, but it was Robert Cecil who said, 'They're playing

at
the Rose, my lord.'

They probably would never had believed it if anyone else had told them - certainly none of them would have credited it from the lips of Poley, who stood at Tom's side in the middle of the Rose's stage. 'Those that were Lord Strange's men may call themselves Lord Hunsdon's,' he told them. 'And the rest of you the Lord Admiral's.'

'But
when is this to start?' demanded Dick Burbage, his face aglow.

'Not
before the week's end,' said Will with an unexpected frown. 'We play before my Lord of Southampton on Saturday. We cannot bow to another livery before then.'

'True,'
chorused one or two others - the younger men eager to sample the delights promised by a weekend at a great house.

'And
we cannot split up the company,' added Philip Henslowe, powerfully, 'before the end of our run with
Romeo
. We had planned to replace
Romeo
in the midst of next week. Let us wait until then and all part friends.'

And
so it was agreed, and the company went off to prepare for the first house of the afternoon. Except for Will; he went off into the tiring room to work through some ill hewn pieces of
The
Play
of
Thomas
More
. Tom followed, deep in thought, with Poley like Marlowe's Mephistophilis at his shoulder. 'Will. ..'

'Aye?'

'This Saturday...'

'What
of it?'

'You
play before Southampton, do you not?'

Will
turned. There was a glow of excitement - perhaps of something more - in his face and eyes. 'We do. What of it?'

'But
where do you play? Not Southampton House? For...'

'Ah.
I see. No. We play before the Earl away. We are part of the merry evening he has planned with his friend Lord Outremer. We play at Elfinstone.'

'Would that be enough to get you down to Elfinstone, broken arms and all?' asked Robert Poley as they sat at the ordinary table in the Elephant. They had discussed Poley's fears on discovering no body in the plague pit and the manner that this had slowed his trust. But things were becoming clearer between them now.

Tom
spooned some brewis into his mouth, savouring the way the salt-beef broth had softened the bread and filled it with flavour. There was a sallet of herbs on the table beside it and he took a mouthful of breath freshening leaves, thinking of Constanza and her basil - both now gone. And of Kate, not yet reappeared. 'No,' he answered roundly enough. 'There would have to be more. What do we know of Baines and his present whereabouts?'

Poley
chewed on his eel pie. 'Nothing. He'll have taken his warrant back to the Earl of Essex like as not. He's Star Chamber business now. The Fleet is the Star Chamber's prison and that's where he'll end when his foot slips. Or back with Topcliffe.'

'Aye.
But in the meantime, he's still likely dogging our heels. He and Salgado both.'

'Then
you had best watch your back as you go down to Elfinstone tomorrow.'

'Little
need for that,' said Tom with a lightness he did not feel. 'I have a retinue to guard me.'

Whatever
other confidences the two men might have been about to share were rudely interrupted by near pandemonium at the tavern's main door. Both men leaped to their feet and crossed decisively to the gaggle of people gathered loudly there. 'What's amiss?' demanded Poley.

An
ill-looking man tugged an oily forelock, his broad, stubbled face folded in almost vacuous concern. 'There's terrible trouble at the Clink, your worship. There's mortal sickness abroad and even the Bishop's Bailiff stricken down and like to die.'

Chapter Twenty-Two - The Golden Hind

Talbot Law was dying. Neither he nor Tom doubted that for an instant. The Bishop's Bailiff lay on the table in the cramped little watch room of the Clink Prison, his head cradled in his friend's arms, his body gripped by racking convulsions. And yet he refused to die. Instead, between bouts of gasping and vomiting, he was choking out his confession - or that part of it that might pertain to Tom.

'Seven
years back. At Nijmagen. The day the walls fell. Remember?'

'I
remember, Old Law. What of it?'

'Weighed
heavy on my conscience ever since. Time to unburden now, I guess. You call to mind the tent? Lord Robert's tent? The rape? Aye. I see you do. Think on that Tom, where was the Master of Logic then? Think on the girl. And the boy you cut down.' Talbot's eyes begged as his face twisted in a grimace and his racked body heaved again.

Tom
remembered. The scene had visited both memory and dreams often enough since, but he had never really thought about the incident. Truth to tell, he had always tried to avoid thinking about it. But as Talbot requested, and from the heights of much more worldly experience, he thought about it now. And saw at once what his friend was driving at. 'The girl had been ravaged. Thoroughly and brutally so. But not by the boy I fought. He was at a point, sure enough, and ready to push his rapine home - but he had yet to do so or he could never have faced me as he did. God's death, there was another man there. Hidden from us, letting his companion face us down!'

'Two
lads, aye. Young but vicious enough, in all good faith. Hell-born, the pair of them. I held them there in spite of all their threatening and caterwauling. And I sent word to Lord Robert too, while Bess tended the poor maid as best she could. Lord Robert came out of the battle at my call, for the whelps had been eager enough to tell me who they were while they threatened what they would do to me unless I let them go - and Lord Robert was responsible for one of them at least. As you'd suspect, given where they were.

'The
long and the short of it was that the Earl of Leicester himself came back from the battle like the wrath of God. He took one look at the situation; listened to what we all had to say. Then he whipped the pair of them to within an inch of their lives - there and then, in the tent, in front of the girl. He swore they were lucky he did not do the same in front of the whole of the army. Then he swore us all to silence and secrecy and we went on about the war.'

Tom
sat, awed by the patterns that the simple revelation set forming through his head. 'The boy I fought was Hugh Outram, before he became Baron Cotehel,' he whispered, remembering the picture in Highmeet House. The hare lip, the star shaped scar in the forehead. 'I marked him for life.'

'You
marked his face,' whispered Talbot. 'But the Earl of Leicester marked his arse a good deal more.'

Tom
gave a grating laugh. 'His arse wasn't in his portrait. But wait. The portrait that hung next to Cotehel's portrait. It showed the dead engineer. Captain Ive's messenger who died delivering the code.'

'That
would be young Lord Henry. Cotehel's cousin. Son and heir to Lord Outremer of Wormwood in Jewry. Died like Sir Phillip Sidney in the service of his country. You'll have been in Siena for the great outpourings of public grief in London. Then the Armada came and we all forgot. Then the plague came and Lord Outremer's family all joined poor Lord Henry, leaving Hugh Outram, Baron Cotehel, Sir Rapine the Ravisher, to inherit it all.'

'And
what of the girl?'

'Who
knows? Bess tended her for a while, but she was a broken reed. A spirited, independent lass before, by all accounts, she simply became a kind of puppet. To lose her maidenhead and her brother in the one day addled her wits, poor thing. Especially as it was her cousin that she had grown up with since the cradle that was set to rape her too. And from what I could gather, her father, who was there supplying the army and had brought her because of her own flighty insistence, blamed her for the matter. Though he was broken in his own way by the death of Lord Henry his son and by the perfidy of his nephew Sir Hugh.'

'A
heavy day all round,' mused Tom, thoughtfully. 'But tell me, Law, who was the second boy? The one who did perform the rape?'

Talbot
convulsed, his face working. Tom leaned forward into the cloud of foetid breath reeking from his friend and pressed his ear to Talbot's lips. 'It was Robert Devereux,' whispered Talbot, his voice ghostly already.

And
that was lucky, for at the very instant that Talbot spoke, Tom felt a heavy hand clap him on the shoulder. He glanced up to see Robert Poley looking down at him. 'Your friend is fortunate,' said Poley. 'I have managed to find both Señor Villalar and Master Gerard. If it is poison and anything can be done, these are the very men.'

Tom
straightened slowly, his eyes on Talbot's, the weight of his friend's confession threatening to stoop his shoulders, but its relevance shining through the darkness of his thoughts like a summer's dawn. Like a man in a trance he walked up the steps out into Clink Street and stood with his back against the wall looking over a low fence, past the water mill and across the river to the Steelyard. He was still standing like a mooncalf when Villalar came up beside him some time later. 'Fear not,' said the Spaniard. 'They were not poisoned. They were purged.' He held up a sodden plant for Tom's inspection. 'Cassia fistula,' he said. 'More powerful than senna pods. It was in the drinking water.'

Tom
simply gaped at the Spaniard, wrestling to bring his mind to a sharp focus on this. Of all the questions that came tumbling into his mind, the most urgent was: why? And the answer to that seemed all too plain.

Tom
pushed past Villalar and stumbled back down the steps into the reeking place. Poley was there, in frowning conversation with Gerard. Talbot had swung round on the table and was half sitting up. He was looking stronger. His eyes skated away from Tom's gaze and the too-early breaking of his promise to the Earl of Leicester lay between them like a shadow. Tom had no leisure to dispel it now. 'Poley,' he said. 'This was done on purpose and the Bailiff was not its main object. I was. And this has held me here, while some darker business has been toward in Blackfriars, I am certain. Shall we go and look?'

Poley
took a deep breath and choked upon it, then he gave a terse, frowning nod.

The
four of them went together, crossing from St Mary Overie Stairs to Blackfriars and running up the bustle of Water Street. The little crowd that had gathered outside Master Aske's haberdashery confirmed Tom's worst suspicions. The haberdasher himself was seated on a stool immediately outside his shop door, talking to the City Watch as Mistress Aske mended his broken crown with one of her good Spanish needles and some thread. 'I saw them pushing out of Master Musgrave's door,' he was saying. 'A band of ruffians carrying a half-smothered woman... O Master Musgrave, thank the Lord you are here, sir. Your rooms are robbed, sir, and the lady ravished away. I tried to stop them in the street, sir, and am lucky to be able to tell the tale.'

'Has
any been up to look?' demanded Tom, mentally swearing to thank his good neighbour more fully and formally when the opportunity allowed.

'None.'

Tom was in motion at once, shouldering through the crowd and pushing in through the vacant gape of his doorway. Eyes everywhere, wide in the gloom of his stairwell, he ran up the stairs. Poley was hard at his heels and Villalar not far behind. Tom erupted on to the landing and kicked the door to the long room open. The place was a mess - but his mirror stood unscathed. He turned and more gently pushed at the door into Ugo's workroom.

The
room seemed empty; stripped. Except for Ugo himself. The Dutchman was seated, lashed securely, on his work stool. Movement was clearly difficult, perhaps impossible. Out before his rigid body stretched his right arm, reaching towards the bench immediately in front of him. Here, his right hand was clamped in his work vice, its fingers spread like the arms of a starfish and his thumb standing rigidly upright. And deeply into the tip of the upright thumb there was plunged a Spanish needle.

Tom
thought he was dead. 'Ugo!' he called, his throat tearing.

But
the Dutchman's head swivelled round towards him, dragging eyes reluctantly away from the needle. His face was a mess, eyes swollen, nose flattened, ears crusted with blood. 'He has her, Tom,' said Ugo, his voice slurred and his tone dead; defeated. 'He took her half an hour since by the chimes of Paul's bells. And he left a message for you. Señor Domenico Salgado extends his compliments to Master Thomas Musgrave and expresses his keen anticipation at the thought of meeting him blade to blade at Elfinstone. Until that time Señor Salgado salutes Master Musgrave and is happy to inform him that it will be his pleasure to entertain Signora Constanza d'Agostino and Mistress Katherine Shelton, who is currently accompanying him into the country... There was more, in the same flowery vein, but I cannot call it to mind now. The burden of it was that if you try to follow now, and be lucky enough to overtake him on his way, he will simply cut Kate's throat before he lets you take her back ...'

As
Ugo was speaking, Tom crossed to the bench and gently loosened the vice, lifting his hand free, as carefully as though it were Venetian glass.

Poley,
at the door, observed dryly, 'Now at least we know how they plan to get you to Elfinstone tomorrow, broken arms and certain death or no.' Then he joined Tom in untying Ugo, slipping the ropes off with exquisite care, for the Hollander was swaying with pain and fatigue - at the very least. 'The needle's poisoned,' continued Ugo conversationally as though Poley had not spoken. 'He said it will kill me sometime tonight. He suggests you do not wait to bury me before you start out in the morning.'

'Arrogant
puppy!
Madre
de
Dios
!
'
Villalar spat from the doorway, where he had replaced Poley. 'Master Musgrave, bring your friend to myself and Master Gerard here, and we will undo what the poison has done, be it never so venomous. The quickest poisons are the surest. A lingering tincture like this will be more easily overcome. Señor Stell, can you stand?
Excellente
! Now, can you walk?
Hola
! We are on the way to making you well again, are we not, Señor Gerard?'

Tom
would have gone with them but Poley stopped him. 'Tomorrow morning you must go to Elfinstone. It may be that you will have to go alone, or it may be that Villalar and Gerard will be as good as their word. I will be close at hand but I dare not come into Elfinstone itself – no disguise would hide me from some of the eyes that will be there. It may be that you will be able to rely upon Will Shakespeare and his men if your need becomes great. But the long and the short of the matter is this, and you know it. Only you can stand against Salgado and the men he works for. Only you can free Kate - and Constanza if you wish - from the toils that have them bound down there. And only you can see us clear through to the black heart of this thing.'

'And
I can only do that,' concluded Tom, 'for as long as I remain alive.'

'There
will be no lessons this afternoon,' said Poley. 'None of your lordly pupils would come pushing past the Watch at your door. I will put up a notice of warning and leave you be while the Master Apothecaries see to Ugo. And you, for the love of God, must practise. Practise to the top of your bent.'

When
the rooms were quiet once again, Tom went through into the long room, stripping off his doublet and pulling on his black fencing gloves. He kicked aside the mess on the floor and picked up the wooden dummies marked with all the target areas, using the effort of heaving them back into position to bring fire and suppleness to his muscles. Then, having arranged them in a row alongside the end of the mirror, he cleared a line in front of them so that a glance to the side revealed his reflection. He loosened his sword belt and pulled out the swords. Then, slowly at first, he began to fall into a series of poses. One after another, he rehearsed all Capo Ferro's opening positions, and then added his own favourite variants. Right hand leading, with left curled like the tail of a scorpion; left hand leading with the right held low. From the
Posta
del
Falcone
on high, to the
Porta
di
Ferro
below. From the fourteen
pastas
or positions, he began to move into his attacks on the four openings, wounding the wooden opponents more and more fiercely on the right side, left side, right below the belt and left below the belt. And time after time, breaking from the rigorous inevitability of the chess-like fight sequences, to thrust with all his power, giving the great bellow of, 'Hey!' Knees and hamstrings, thighs, groin, hip, belly, wrist, elbow, shoulder, chest, heart, heart, heart, lung, throat, mouth, nose, cheek, eye, brain, all the targets felt his points repeatedly, unerringly, more and more swiftly, as he slid back and forth along the line of attack, ever glancing at himself in the mirror, coldly noting the perfections of his stance.