The Point of Death (20 page)

Darkness
gathered until Tom was little more than a shadow moving in the shadowy mirror like a deadly fish deep in a still pool. The targets began to splinter, gouged into perfect little hollows by the repeated, relentless probing of his unerring point. The cool of the evening stuck the billowing lawn of his shirt to his sweating torso. His hair wound itself into dripping coils and hung burning in his eyes. His mind soared free, like the falcon that gave its name to his first high stance. Refusing to speculate about what might be happening to Ugo, Kate or even Constanza, he let it wander freely looking down at the patterns this active day had shown him. As Poley had asked him to, so seemingly long ago, seeking for the one throat to cut, the one head to lop whose fall might bring the whole coil to an end. It was like a quartering after the hanging and drawing. First the limbs and then the head. First Baines, then Salgado, then who? Who? Who?

Tom
had no knowledge that he was shouting the question
'Who
?
'
instead of the fencer's
'Hey
!
'
at the completion of each attack, until Ugo called gently to him, 'Master?' Breaking his terrible concentration just at the moment that Poley brought in the light.

Then
all three of them stood staring, simply appalled, at the relentlessly focussed devastation he had visited on the crippled, man shaped targets.

Exhausted
on every level, Tom plunged into a sleep every bit as deep as the one Villalar's healing potions induced in Ugo. So that it was Poley, coming down from Hog Lane laden with plans and breakfast, who awoke them in the morning. As they ate and drank, Villalar arrived, fresh from Gerard's apothecary. He carried a black box the size of a church bible. Inside it he revealed and then described some half dozen jars containing remedies to various poisons. 'And this last, it is most sovereign but most dangerous. It is a tincture of aconite, good for treating most poisons, according to the ancients, as fire can cast out fire. But it must only be used in the last extremity, for it is as like to kill as to cure. Here you see a bleeding bowl and surgeon's knife, tourniquet, syringes and a jar of leeches.'

While
their guests finished Poley's breakfast, Tom and Ugo both went through what was left in their ransacked rooms. Ugo pulled the snaphaunce revolvers from their hiding places and gathered sufficient gunpowder and lead to load them both, a laborious procedure largely completed lefthanded. Then he looked to some clothing impressive enough, he hoped, to make the legendary chambermaids overlook the ruin of his face and the bandages on his right hand. Tom, meanwhile, saw to the tending, scabbarding and packing of his Solingen blades, then sorted out the best attire his years in the cockpit of Italian fashion could afford.

They
set out for Elfinstone mid-morning, starting at the Blackfriars Steps and shooting the Bridge on a falling tide, before they transferred to one of the larger ferries which jostled along the length of Deptford Strand. If Tom suspected that the big house up above them there was the house of Mistress Bull where Kit Marlowe had died bleeding over Poley's hands, he said nothing - beyond giving his directions to the boatmen. The boat dropped them at Greenhithe little more than an hour later and Ugo, narroweyed and practical, hired them four good looking horses. One of was them black as night - a fine gelding entirely suited to the swagger of a Master of Defence called to perform the mysteries of his science before the richest and the noblest in the land. No one argued when Tom took that one.

An
hour's leisurely travel, enlivened by the deepest, darkest conference, brought them along the south bank of the river to the village of Gravesend, with its crossing to the grander town of Tilbury to the north. There the Earl of Leicester's last public responsibilities had been accomplished mere days before his death. Then they turned south through the balmy afternoon, into the gentle Kent countryside, following an ancient roadway wandering past tiny hamlets to the crossroads at Higham where they meandered eastwards to the inn at Wainscott. Here they tethered their horses and gathered in the coolness of the tap for a final, almost whispered conference.

The
land to the south of them gathered up and fell away, Rochester on the far face of the rise overlooking the River Medway and King Henry's Dockyard at Chatham. Along the eastern stretch of the cliff, well outside the town itself, stood Elfinstone. Had any of them cared to stand up on the old inn's thatched roof, they might have seen its upper battlements from here. At Wainscott, finally, Tom and Ugo invested an hour in gorging themselves with the finest the old inn had to offer. 'For remember,' said Villalar urgently, as they left at last, 'eat nothing. Drink nothing, if you can. Any drop or morsel that passes your lip might be death.'

'Our
very bedding might be deadly,' said Ugo lugubriously, half an hour later. 'Clothing can be primed to kill. I am no scholar and master such as you, Tom, but I know well enough the way even mighty Hercules was killed with a poisoned cloak, by his wife Dejanira at the bidding of Nessus the Centaur.'

'My
life at least is like to be preserved until the fight after the play tonight,' said Tom. 'My life, if not my limbs.'

This
last observation served to take them under the great gate that stood astride the main entrance into the walled grounds of Elfinstone. On this side they were walled, to stop the deer in the park from wandering away, but further east, as the ground settled down to the River Medway, there was no need for walls and the great hunting grounds swept away almost unlimited towards Cliffe and Hoo St Werburgh. To the west, the cliff on which Elfinstone itself sat, gathered into such precipitate wildness that only the most desperate hart or hind would dare attempt it.

The
gate stood wide, inviting Tom and Ugo to follow the broad roadway down to the castle, but the pair of them turned aside into the wooded sward on their right hand, preferring to come upon Elfinstone unannounced, from the wild side, having spied out the time and the land. The woodland gathered rapidly and the hillside gathered beneath it until Tom slowed the black gelding to a careful walk. 'There's a cliff edge hidden in the undergrowth nearby,' Tom said quietly. ' 'Tis time to turn and see how we can reach Elfinstone from here.' But the instant that he spoke, the quiet of the summer's afternoon was shattered by the baying of hounds. Away, further right still, at the very cliff edge hidden in the woods, a hunt was in progress. Tom's horse danced uneasily, and Tom himself rose in the stirrups, looking around with a frown. 'There looks to be a pathway down here,' he began, sitting again and nudging his nervous mount forward.

No
sooner had he done so, however, than a wild figure hurled out of the undergrowth beneath its very hooves. The gelding reared and Tom fought for a moment to settle it down again. By the time it was still, Ugo was down, had knelt, and was standing again. In his arms he held the slight figure of a woman. She seemed to have fainted or been caught by the plunging horse's hoof. Her hair was a tangle of dark gold badly in need of a wash and comb. Her clothing seemed to consist merely of a solid bodice and the rags of a skirt. As Ugo lifted her higher, Tom saw that she was wearing a thick belt with short-chained manacles designed to hold her hands at her sides. Frowning, he reached down and caught her up out of Ugo's arms. The rags of skirt fell away from long, lean thighs, but Tom's eyes remained entranced by the pattern instead of the nudity. He knew the cloth she was wearing. And he knew her, therefore.

Her
eyelids flickered. 'Mistress Margaret,' he said gently. 'Mistress Margaret, I have followed you here from Wormwood House. I bring greetings from Master Seyton ...'

Her
eyes opened, as though she had been in the deepest sleep. The bright blue of her gaze swirled around huge black pupils which seemed to gulp him down like the River Styx washing into the deeps of hell. He felt her tense, fighting like a hind indeed to be free of her relentless hunters. 'Margaret,' he said again, with all the gentleness at his command. And the writhing of her body stilled. A kind of recognition entered those wild eyes. Recognition and a kind of trust. She nestled against him and he saw, in the wild riot of her hair, half covering her naked and abused body, this same girl, seven years earlier in the Earl of Leicester's tent near Nijmagen, falling fainting at the feet of her would-be ravisher, the Baron Cotehel.

The
dogs burst out of the undergrowth then, with the huntsmen hard behind them. Surrounded by baying hounds, Tom's gelding simply froze; and much to his relief the Lady Margaret did the same.

So
it was that he was able to confront his host, straight-backed and eye to eye. Baron Cotehel reined his mount to a plunging stand as half a dozen wild bucks did the like behind him, and his huntsmen ran forward to whip the dogs away. The two men knew each other at once as though they had been adversaries fighting face to face over the last few deadly days. Over the shrinking form of the shackled, half-naked woman, Tom made his most courtly bow. 'My Lord of Cotehel,' he said quietly. 'May I congratulate you on your accession to the titles, lands and chattels of Outremer, when they come to you tomorrow.'

The
sneering boy had grown into a sneering man - aided by the damage Tom had done to his lips. He had lost nothing of the temper or the arrogance Tom remembered so well. His face went purple now as he saw the terrified object of his hunt held safe in Tom's strong arms. The scar upon his forehead burned red like a new brand. He opened his mouth to reveal smashed and blackened teeth.

'Out,
you whoreson ...' he began, and two men spurred up to sit beside him. Domenico Salgado sat tall, and every bit as deadly as Tom remembered from his fleeting glimpse at the Rose, though he wore no swords when hunting, of course. On Cotehel's other side sat a tall gallant a year or two older than his friend. He had a long face with high cheekbones and steady brown eyes astride a long nose. The long hair and the wisp of moustache were at the pinnacle of fashion. Beneath the moustache the thin upper lip twisted in a smile that barely stirred the sensuous thickness of the lower and reached nowhere near those steady, chilly, chocolate eyes. 'Come now, Hugh,' drawled Robert Devereux. 'You said whoever caught her could have her. And Master Musgrave has her, never a doubt. It is Thomas Musgrave, Master of Defence, is it not?'

'It
is, your grace. Though how you come to know me I cannot begin to tell.'

'Oh
I know you, Master Musgrave,' purred the Earl of Essex coldly. 'Though I regret that our acquaintance shall be sadly short-lived.'

Chapter Twenty-Three - The Point of Death

Any attempt to spy out the land in secret was now at an end. With the half-naked woman sitting, shrinking, across his saddlebow, Tom turned the black gelding's head towards the main gate and the thoroughfare leading down to Elfinstone's grand entrance. All along this open, public way were the marks of earlier celebrations. A cart of deer hunted to death yesterday trundling inwards for tonight's table. The blackened, smouldering craters of huge bonfires, the scars of the blazing, showering and exploding of fireworks. An empty pavilion down by the castle's wide fishponds, a gilded barge pulled on to the sloping sward beside it. What looked like a mermaid's tail, eerily empty. An antique tomb lying open, blasted wide, apparently by some pyrotechnic accident. The atmosphere of dissipation spinning into wild excess closed relentlessly around them as they approached Elfinstone's craggy walls.

Tom,
Ugo and the silent Lady Margaret passed through a lengthy series of rituals as they were guided deeper and deeper into the cold grey heart of the place. In the graniteflagged courtyard inside the huge portcullis, they were relieved of their horses, which were led away by Lord Outremer's grooms. They were assigned servants to take the baggage that the horses had carried and to guide them through the maze of the massive, steely keep to Tom's chamber first, then Ugo's bed in the servants' hall. As a guest of the chamber, Tom fell under the sway of my Lord's Chamberlain, and that assured him of elevated status in accommodation, of service and at meals. And, indeed, he was to be flattered with one of the most commodious chambers, on the outer wall above the midden, with its own private garderobe, four-poster and wide ewer of fresh water. From its one tall window, it commanded a view across the western grounds, over the blasted tomb towards the forested cliffs. Ugo was destined to sleep in the hall, pitched in with the retinues of the other visiting dignitaries; but even he took precedence over the lowlier servants of Elfinstone Castle itself, many of whom had been dragged in from farms and smallholdings on the estate and nearby for the occasion.

This
was just as well. Ugo bore no indentures and was a freeman in a guild of his own. Only his association with actors over the last few months allowed him to move out of his real self, forget what respect was due to him, and assume the person of the Master's man he seemed to be. Tom, of course, had taken to duplicity as though it had come to him with his mother's milk - though had he been the man he pretended, he would have been wet-nursed.

Now
he gazed deeply into the wide, trusting eyes of Lady Margaret as she sat, rigid on his bed. Ugo finished loosening the straps that had pinioned her arms. She moved them stiffly, as though unused to having them free. Such was her fierce concentration on Tom's face that all else seemed blotted out to her - not least the utterly revealing nature of the few shreds of rag that were all she wore beneath her waist. Hesitantly, like a virgin lover, she reached out to Tom. Tom, all but entranced, reached out to her in return. Gently, she took his hand and pressed it with fearsome strength to her bosom. Through the stiff bib of her bodice Tom could feel the pounding of her heart, the urgent swell and fall of her breasts. She looked at him, frowning with concentration, her mouth wide and working, but silent.

'What
is it, my Lady?' he asked gently. 'What would you have of me?'

Frowning
more deeply still, she crushed his hand to her softness, but he could not understand what she was trying to tell him.

His
kindness and concern were focused upon her, but in truth his mind was not. He wished to see her properly dressed, and wondered how to go about that. He wanted to explore the castle - to find out where his enemies were, and where they held his friends. He ached with impatience to assure himself that Kate and Constanza had not been harmed. And yet he was held here by the wild eyes of this poor mad girl, the strength of her grip and the burning softness of her bosom.

The
door to the chamber opened behind him. He turned, hearing a quiet step and the swish of a skirt. 'God's my life, Tomas. I cannot visit you these days but I find you sporting with some naked trull. When you wish to end an
amour
, sir, you certainly go about it hammer and tongs!'

'Bella!'
he cried with relief. 'Are you well?'

'Why
should I not be well?'

The
simple innocence of the question gave him pause. He had supposed her ravished away; and yet, apparently not. 'You are a guest here?' he asked.

'Of
Señor Salgado, the Spanish Maestro, friend and advisor to His Grace of Essex.'

'He
is your lover, then?' asked Tom with some relief.

'Tomas!
Not in front of Signor Stell, whom I know well, and certainly not in front of some doxy I know not at all! Why does she press your hand to herself in this manner? What in all the world is that mess she is wearing?'

Ugo
rose to the occasion while Tom was caught between framing a lie that would cover it all and trying to recover his hand. 'She is a maudlin woman we found in the woods,
madonna
. Master Tom wishes to take care of her and was trying to find out about her when you came in.'

'So,
she has her past engraved on her heart, has she? Well, her future must involve some bathing and some dressing. Maudlin, you say. Is she new escaped from Bedlam then? Does she rave? Is she dangerous?'

'The
opposite,' said Tom. 'She has been ill-used beyond imagining and yet she sits silent as a puppy.'

'Well,
I will tend to her,' decided Constanza. But her simple plan was lent unexpected complexity by Lady Margaret's intractable refusal to leave Tom's room. Constanza swept out to get her maid and some clothing. Tom sent Ugo out to look for the servants' hall and reconnoitre as he did so.

The
instant they were alone, Margaret let go of Tom's hand. He stood back a little, frowning down at her, all too aware that her presence here was a responsibility and a handicap he could well do without. He glanced at the door, crossed to it and exchanged a nod with the servant standing guard outside, closed it again then turned back to the bed - and found Margaret stark naked. Above the scratched and battered paleness of her body, her eyes claimed his again. There was nothing of carnality in them; little enough of madness. Simply an absolute, child-like, overwhelming trust. Out above the mottled moons of her breasts, she was thrusting the verminous wreckage of her clothing at him, the bodice of her gown spread taut. He took it automatically, and the moment that he did so, he realised what she had been trying to tell him. The layers of material crackled stiffly between his fingers. He brought the bodice up closer and looked at it. There was layer upon layer of neat stitching around the edge where layer after layer of extra cloth had been sewn on to the inside. He slid out his dagger and slit the cloth with all the care of a barber surgeon. And pulled out Lord Outremer's missing will. One glance at the ornate writing on the official-looking parchment was enough. This was the document Wormwood in Jewry had been torn asunder to find. And she had carried it next to her heart all along. Constanza's jibe had been true enough after all. His eyes met Margaret's over the top of the document and both of them smiled.

The
door opened and the fleeting moment of intimacy was past. As was the tiny instant of sanity. The naked woman's eyes were blank, fathomless. 'Tomas!' cried Constanza. 'What now?'

He
stood between the women, using his body as a shield while he folded the will into the breast of his doublet. 'I think Lady Margaret is ready for a wash,' he said. Then he wasted ten more minutes explaining to Constanza how he knew the lady's name and title all of a sudden, what little he knew of her - what little he dared reveal to Domenico Salgado's new
amour
.

The Great Hall was a wild bustle. It was a room large enough to have contained the Rose, tall enough to have held two of its three galleries. And it was galleried indeed, on three walls, with tall windows standing high above. Below, the east and west ends of the room were distinguished by the Great Door and the Lesser Door and along the walls to north and south stood suits of armour holding huge swords such as might have been wielded in the heroic days of old.

Above
the Great Door hung the coat of arms of Lord Outremer. Through this door, beneath these gilded arms, all the guests would process to table tonight. Above the Lesser Door to the west stood a gallery like the minstrels' gallery at the Rose, which would indeed be a minstrels' gallery tonight, until the play transformed it into Juliet's bed chamber, and her tomb.

Between
the Great Door and the Lesser Door, tables, trestles and trenchers; benches, chairs and stools were all lying scattered hither and yon. Chairs lay ready to seat the guests and, in the centre, a huge gilded throne, backed with the arms of Outremer, sat ready to elevate the Baron Cotehel. Boards and costumes, props and playbooks were generally disposed. Chamber staff, kitchen staff, actors and onlookers bustled and gestured, rushed and dawdled and lolled. Somewhere a lutanist was practising an ancient air by Thomas Tallis. Somewhere a consort of viols was preparing the latest fashionable air by Peter Phillips, a musician popular amongst those who had spent time in the Low Countries, his 'Dolorosa Pavane' and 'Galliard'. It was mid afternoon and the feasting was due to start at six.

After
two hours of eating and drinking, accompanied by music and general entertainments, there would be dancing to music livelier than Phillips's 'Pavane', after which the Rose Company would give
Romeo
. Then Maestro Domenico Salgado would execute Master Thomas Musgrave for the amusement of the new Lord Outremer and in elegant completion of his designs for usurpation and revenge, and the company would go to bed at midnight.

Or
that, thought Tom grimly, was the plan. He leaped easily up on to the low stage that stood to one side of the Lesser Door at the west end of the chamber, ready to be pushed into place beneath the gallery there when the feasting was done and the coming-andgoing at an end. He needed to learn these boards, for it was likely that his duel with Salgado would be fought across them. But he needed to talk to Will Shakespeare more.

The
playwright was pacing through Mercutio's death with the relevant actors. Luckily, the Rose's stage was small enough to be perfectly reproduced here - or Tom would likely have been distracted in earnest, called in to restage Romeo's mock duels with Tybalt and the County Paris before undertaking the deadly reality of his own. 'Will,' called Tom. 'Have you seen Kate Shelton?'

'No.
But I've seen both Salgado and Baines. And I hear Constanza's here some where too.'

'Are
you all staying after
Romeo
for the rest of the entertainment?'

'For
your duel? Of course. I have laid ten angels that you best him within the first five passes.'

'Can
I call on you? Can I count on you?'

'Is
Ugo not standing with you?'

'Yes.
But if I need to, can I count on you?' Will looked straight into Tom's eyes. He said nothing. In spite of his light banter about betting, Will knew there was something more serious at hazard here. But would he stand with Tom if the dreadful need arose?

Tom
thought of the summer Will had spent in Southampton House and moving through the Earl's country residences with the Earl, the Earl of Essex and their courtly circle. He was asking the playwright to walk away from undreamed riches, all but limitless influence. From the love of a powerful patron, bosom friend to Her Majesty's current favourite. 'I must spend the remainder of the day avoiding Salgado's poisons and Baines's bullies simply to stand on level ground tonight,' he persisted. 'Cotehel is the kind of man that hunts women through his parks with his hounds for his pleasure and holds Kate somewhere in this palace he has slaughtered a family to get, and he wants me dead and you know well enough why. I'm surprised he's let you live as long as this yourself, for you were there with me at the start.'

'Now
why should I fear the fox,' asked Will quietly, 'when I have slept with the lion?' On that he turned back to his business and Tom went away about his, wondering why Will should leave it until this moment to confirm at last that he had read the long-banned, deadly dangerous works of Niccolo Machiavelli.

There were only two places Kate could be, thought Tom grimly. In a private chamber or a dungeon. If Morton's fears for her had any basis, then a dungeon seemed most likely, unless she, like Will and Constanza, was sleeping with the enemy already - or, like him, was destined to be exhibited tonight so their fates could be sealed in public. These thoughts were chilling enough, but the alternative was worse - especially to his ears that remembered the sounds Kit Callot had made on Topcliffe's rack when he had thought the tortured screams were hers.

Using
the bustle that ranged throughout the castle, therefore - the fact that there were so many guests and servants stranger here, and most of them lost for much of the time - he spent the next two hours in fruitless search. It was only when a heavy hand fell on his shoulder and a flustered, familiar servant, discovering him in Lord Outremer's own quarters, backed this time by a dangerous-looking guard, insisted on guiding him back to his chamber, that he was forced to give up.