A Midwinter Murder (An Elizabethan Murder Mystery), page 27
Tom had an instant to glance down again and up before the first of them could come crashing into him, and in that atom of time he saw all too clearly what he was dealing with here.
No football at his feet — instead it was the severed head of a red-haired, green-eyed, hook-nosed woman. A twenty-fifth to add to the two dozen heads that should have filled the gateway; that did so now, in perfect series as they had done for months past. Yet it had come from there; never a doubt of that. One football had gone up over the gateway and one head had bounced back down whence it had come, leaving twenty-four safely, still in their places, impaled by the order of the Queen and her Council.
One head too many, in fact, Tom calculated grimly. Then he swung into action again.
Chapter Two: Eureka!
Reaching behind himself, Tom took the Dutch girl by the waist and hefted her, one-handed, round over the lip of the great granite trough. He glanced down at the head on the cobbles again, but he saw all too clearly that he would never be able to get it and stand against the wild charge hurtling down the slope of the South Wark. He leaped backwards, therefore, twisting and taking care to protect the precious length of his rapier, before he fell into the trough atop the shuddering softness of the Dutch girl.
Gentleman to the last, in action if not quite by title, and satisfied as to the safety of his sword, Tom took his weight on widespread elbows. Gripping the rough sides of the trough with his knees, he raised himself a little from the panting frame beneath. With unaccustomed intimacy, he looked once more into the still deeps of her eyes. Like her fine-edged nostrils and bruised-tulip lips, the eyes were as wide as they could be. The peachy flush of her cheeks had darkened towards a passionate scarlet. Had they not been adventurers in a trough amid a riot in Borough High Street, they might have been lovers in bed at play.
The trusty trough spent a few minutes behaving like a little Thames wherry shooting the Bridge at fall of tide. As though tossed in the whirling rapids and races set up between the great stone piers and starlings that bore the spans of the Bridge across the river, it heaved, plunged and tossed. Then, finally, blessedly, it shuddered and settled. Even so, it was a long moment before Tom realized that the roaring of the apprentices was rushing away down Tooley Street whence it had come.
Lithe as a cat, he pushed his long frame lightly up on to the granite side, then swung his legs over and sat, his eyes busy on the ground. He sprang to his feet at once, widening the compass of his search, turning to scan the opening into Tooley Street even as the girl rose out of the trough like the pearl that was cast before swine in the Bible.
As Tom reached for her he saw, past her bright-blue shoulder, that the Puritan had chased the mob into Tooley Street and was lingering there now, also apparently looking around on the ground. With his eyes busy on the stooping man, Tom caught at the girl and lifted her high even as the Puritan swung round with a great shout: 'Eureka!' he bellowed, echoing Archimedes' cry, 'I have it...' and rushed towards St Olave's Church.
Tom lowered the trembling girl on to her feet, his mind reeling — reeling and racing as he fought to fathom the immediate relevance of the strange man's declaration. He too had been looking for something on the ground, as Tom had. But he alone could call, 'I have it!' Surely it would be stretching credibility too far to suppose that, in the presence of a severed head rolling through the streets of Southwark in place of a pig's-bladder football, the Puritan should be declaring his satisfaction at having found anything else.
Suddenly and overwhelmingly, Tom wanted that head. It was a terrible thing, a thing of great evil — he saw that instinctively. On the battlefields of his youth, such a matter would hardly have warranted a second glance. In the European cities of his training — Siena and the rest — a slit throat or a severed head might have passed as a warning to the wise.
Even now, years later, had the thing been parboiled and tar-dipped, one of the twenty-four polls standing spiked at Her Majesty's pleasure, it might have passed without much remark. Had not the head of Thomas More dropped into his daughter's lap as she passed beneath the old Drawbridge Gateway in the days of Harry the Eighth and been buried with her in due time? Such things were by no means unknown.
Or, had it fallen on the far side of the Great Stone Gateway, to become the business of the City Watch, then that would have mattered not at all. Had it even rolled to any other toe-caps here in Southwark, it would have remained a matter to be passed quietly to the Bishop's Bailiff, the Law south of the river, and none any the wiser.
But this head had come to Tom. It had come to him in person and it had looked him in the eye like the ghost in the hoary old play of Hamlet, seeking redress. It was more than a riddle. It was more than an intellectual challenge. It was a gage hurled in his face. It was personal.
Tom turned to the shivering girl. 'Go home,' he said in English, the foreignness of the language made more impenetrable to her, no doubt, by his flat northern accent, the abrupt rudeness of his action — probably far beyond her virginal understanding — aroused to something so much more complicated by the forces with which they had wrestled here. 'You'll be safe now,' he assured her as he turned away.
‘Meinheer...' she called again as he wavered with unaccustomed indecision, his eyes on the hunched black figure bustling down Tooley Street. Safe as she now might be, he could not leave the shocked and frightened girl here alone. Roughly, he caught her by the arm again and pulled her back across the road to the door he had exited mere moments ago. Two mighty blows begat an answer and Tom tersely exchanged one companion for another, handing the shaken girl down into the shadows of the Borough Counter gaol and pulling up in her place the Bishop's Bailiff himself, the Law south of the river, his old companion Talbot Law.
`Whither away so fast, young Tom?' grumbled Talbot as the pair of them pounded across the cobbles and into the gape of Tooley Street.
In as few words as possible, Tom explained. Talbot knew him too well to question his account, asking instead, 'Should we not call my watch to help us go chasing heads through Southwark?'
`No, Old Law. Even your watchmen would take time to assemble and our head is making off too fast to allow the wait.'
`Our head, forsooth! And making off to boot. Has it grown legs?'
`It has borrowed some, I fear. Good stout Puritan legs, for all they seemed to limp a little... Ah!'
They were level with St Olave's Church now and Tom dived sideways towards it, seeing a secretive scurry of black cloth against the black shadows of the inner porch. The pair had fought in more than one battle side by side and they moved as one, diving under the shadow of St Olave's tower and tearing shoulder to shoulder into the chilly darkness within.
Against the light from the westering sun, shattered to red rainbow dazzle by stained glass, Tom saw his quarry part-way down the aisle. 'Hold!' he shouted, heedless of where he was – or to whom he was talking. Skidding on flagstones now as he had skidded on the cobbles outside, he swung himself down the nave, careful only to keep his sword from getting tangled in the pews between which his passage lay.
The Puritan froze and turned. Red light from behind him glowed around him like the very flames of hell itself. The shadows before him gathered under the brim of his hat and masked his face, except for the gleam of two eyes and the tumbling silver of a beard. And, in between…
`What desecration is this?' he demanded, taking a step back up the aisle towards them. His voice was strange, constricted, unearthly. There was a familiar tone to it that Tom could not quite define. The Puritan took another step towards them; the light leaped about him, revealing the dark roundness clutched weightily to his chest. Talbot bit off an oath, thinking of where they were.
`No desecration,' answered Tom, slowing to a walk and crossing his right hand to the hilt of the sword at his left hip. `But we seek what you carry.'
The Puritan looked down. 'What I carry?' His strange voice was blank with astonishment. He stopped moving and looked from side to side.
`We will not be denied,' warned Tom smoothly, forcefully.
`You must render it to me,' chimed in Talbot. 'I am the Bishop's Bailiff. Even here, I am the law.'
The Puritan stepped forward and the light from the transept fell upon his face with more than natural force. Under shaggy brows his eyes gleamed. Pocked cheeks fell hollowly into the silver of his beard and above the parted gape of his lip, over the silvery wings of his moustache, a length of twine held in place the simple silver beak of a false nose.
Tom knew him then. This was Nicholas Hazard, the curate of St Magnus' Church, which sat at the northern, City end of the Bridge as St Olave's sat here at the Southwark end. Nicholas Hazard had a great reputation as a brimstone preacher, Puritan second only to Knox himself, and author of the gruesome pamphlet 'In the Hands of the Inquisition', which explained, amongst other matters, where his nose and the ears that should have stood beside it had all gone to.
If the truth be told, Hazard was something of a hero to Tom. During his years at University in Glasgow, he had fallen under the potent spell of a particular teacher to whom the great John Knox had seemed a paradigm; and Hazard, more than a generation later, had seemed John Knox reborn. Both had been great preachers against the dangerous folly of the Catholic Church. Both had suffered for their faith, one at the hands of the Catholic French and the other at the hands of the Inquisition itself. Both had been doomed to die in the galleys but both had escaped to renew their thunder, Knox against Bloody Mary and the Queen of Scots from Geneva, Hazard against the Catholic tendencies and plots still simmering in London even now. However, Tom realized with a very new insight born of recent experiences, Hazard was more likely to be a common spy than a heroic martyr after all. His work abroad, famous through his miraculous survival of the terrible Plague at Rheims in 1580, some fourteen years since, even before he had gone south to Spain and the Inquisition, all marked him as one of Sir Francis Walsingham's secret intelligencers.
Tom opened his mouth to speak again, but he was prevented. A shadow fell across Curate Hazard's strange face, and the man to whom the shadow belonged spoke instead.
`Brother Nicholas,' drawled the newcomer lazily, 'you are confronted by the minions of Caesar. Render unto them that which is Caesar's therefore. They'll give it back to us in due time, I doubt not.'
Tom swung round, squinting into the light. Behind him, he heard Talbot Law mutter a quiet oath, in spite of where they were, for they both recognized the newcomer's voice. It be-longed to Robert Poley, latterly the head of Walsingham's spy network and, since Walsingham's death, the head of Lord Robert Cecil's Secret Service; a man whose toils they had but recently escaped and whom they had both most vehemently hoped never to meet again.
While they stood, tricked into gaping silence, Brother Nicholas obeyed his master's voice and dropped what he was carrying. Slowly, unpredictably, heavily, it bounced up the aisle towards them.
It was a second pig's-bladder football.
Chaper Three: Poley
Between St Olave's Church and Bridge House further east along the street, at the end of a little alley running up towards the river, stood St Augustine's Inn. Like many of the more solid buildings nearby — like the Borough Counter and the Clink Prison further west — this had once been a church; but the building had been reassigned during the Dissolution under old King Harry and never quite reclaimed under Bloody Mary after him, so it was a tavern now.
In what had once been a little chapel the four men now sat. On the table in front of them stood two leather tankards stiffened with pitch and filled with ale; a Venetian-glass goblet, thick and green and full of sack; a battered silver chalice full of water, and the filthy, flaccid puddle of a disembowelled football. And a message.
The message lay before them now, wrapped in waxed paper to keep it safe and dry, still sealed closed and secret. Tom for one was looking at it over the top of his tankard with a great deal of suspicion. If the football was part of a plan, then so was the riotous game. So, perhaps was the head. Though, thought Tom, the spy master had seemed as surprised as his clerical secret agent to hear all about it, and neither had demurred at sending a pot-boy to the Borough Counter to rouse Talbot's watchmen for a search.
Tom looked up. Poley was watching him. 'Go on, my Master of Logic. Tell me about the message,' he purred. Nicholas Hazard gave a peculiar, derisory snort, and Tom's eyes flicked over to the ravaged profile that was all that God and the Inquisition had left to the man.
Without his hat, Hazard's bald pate served only to emphasize the scar-circled holes of his close-cropped ears and the black line of twine holding his false nose in place. Terribly scarred cheeks, marked with smallpox, sank into the silvery fullness of his beard. Apart from his face, only his hands lay uncovered, huge, brutal and powerful — hands that had pulled oars for years after the Inquisition condemned him to rot in the galleys, from which he had so famously escaped in Armada year. His mouth was lipless and twisted. His teeth were blackened stumps. Yet his eyes burned clear and blue with a fearsome intelligence — mingled with contemptuous disbelief now.
It was the glance more than the note that drew Tom on at last.
`The note must be one of a pair. One in each bladder. Logic dictates that the messages in each will be identical so that if one be lost the other may yet be found. As is the case now, unless we are all bound to climb up atop the Great Stone Gateway to seek this unfortunate ball's companion.'
Tom swung round, looking at Talbot with a frown. 'You and I must thither in any event, Old Law, and with some urgency if your watchmen discover my head.'
`As may be,' purred Poley. 'And in due time, perhaps. But for the nonce, Tom, we discuss my note and you continue to raise the curate's eyebrows.'
`And his belief in witchcraft,' growled Nicholas Hazard.
`The note is from one of your spies, Master Poley,' Tom proceeded. 'A young one. A cunning lad who must conceal from his companions the fact that he can write. A Cambridge man, perhaps — of the sort you have always favoured — but one who can pass himself off as a local youth if he must. Someone fit to mix with the apprentices. Lusty enough to be the man they choose to blow up their footballs — or how else came the notes inside with no notice? A leader amongst them, then; or someone near to his side. And your agent, Master Poley, because the Council wishes to know the names of the troublemakers and the signwriters so active amongst these young men. They wish to know the fomenters of sedition against the Hollanders to whom we have opened our doors in this time of need as they support us in our great war against the Whore of Babylon and its strong hands in Rome, Rheims and Cadiz.'
Tom swung round to look at Hazard once again, his burning brown eyes meeting the curate's stunned blue gaze and staring it ruthlessly down. 'Which brings us to the instruments you have chosen to facilitate this little plot. One glance at that steely nose and the hardiest apprentice might waver. Such a man as the good curate here is known through all the land. He has walked by a miracle out of the plague in Rheims and out of the hands of the Inquisition and Philip of Spain's Armada galleys. One sight of him calling down damnation on the band might make any man hesitate for long enough to allow your messenger's boot to connect with your pig's bladder here, and the message to be delivered.'
`It is the plan…' whispered Hazard. He looked across at Poley, who answered with his most wolfish grin.
`Did I not say?' growled the spy master. 'And he has told us what the message will contain, to boot. Do you care to give us the names on the paper now, Tom? Or shall we open it first?'
`If you want to know who hates the Dutch, perhaps you should ask a Dutchman,' suggested Tom abruptly, losing patience with Poley's game.
The hawk-nosed spy master pulled at his beard and grinned. `And you have just the Dutchman we need, do you not? Your friend and gunsmith Ugo Stell, assistant Master of Defence, who stands just behind you, just outside the door to the Guild Hall of your peculiar Science, Art and Mystery.'
`You speak in riddles,' spat Talbot.
`He speaks the truth — or part of it,' said Tom, for he could see reflected in the battered silver of Hazard's water-filled chalice that Ugo was in fact coming into the chapel behind him. 'As much of it as he is ever likely to part withal...' He rose, turned, and went to meet his friend.
`Do you come to chide me for some student I have forgotten or some lesson missed?' Tom asked easily as he closed with Ugo out in the main part of the tavern.
Ugo gave one of his brief grins. 'Neither. You know your schedule as well as I. There are no more lessons this side of Midsummer.' The Dutchman hesitated, his gaze going over Tom's shoulder, past Talbot's approaching figure to where Robert Poley still lounged at his ease with his curate, his pig's bladder, his secret and his sack. 'Or none at the Blackfriars School. And none in the Science of Defence.'
`None here either,' said Tom, his fist tightening automatically on the hilt of the sword that was the object of his mastery and the source of his livelihood as he spoke. 'Though, truth to tell, I could have done with a lesson or two in the Dutch tongue this afternoon. For I met a girl...'
`Hell's teeth,' spat Talbot Law. 'The girl!'
The three of them hurried out into the humid night. This side of Southwark Street was quiet. As the three men hurried towards the gaol, therefore, they were able to exchange snatches of conversation, for Ugo had come looking for Talbot, not Tom. 'Fräulein Van Der Leyden is but newly arrived,' he was calling to the Bailiff. 'She went out at sunset...'
