Brothers' Fury (Bleeding Land Trilogy 2) (19 page)

‘You’re already old,’ Penn put in, grinning wickedly.

Tom nodded and handed Trencher the candle, at which the big man’s face lit up like a flame in the gloom, and rather than leave the workshop then, all of them were compelled to stay and watch the powder lit.

There was a flare of orange flame and a bloom of white smoke and the little blaze fizzed along its jagged course. And the small company scattered like leaves on the wind and vanished along the lanes, passages and amongst the messuages into the night.

All except for Tom.

Tom fumbled with the key in the lock, his chest thumping, fighting every instinct screaming at him to get as far away as he could, and then the lock clicked and the door was open again and he was inside. There was no time. Surely. He sawed at the rope which bound the editor to his printing press, the knife’s handle slick with sweat, as the furious seething flame scuttled ever closer. Only ten feet of unburnt powder remained. Seven feet. Five.

‘Move!’ he roared, a fist snarled up in the man’s doublet, all but hauling him across the room, through the thick, stinking smoke towards the door. Then out and down onto the grass, faces in the mud as the flame met the charge and the whole lot exploded like God’s wrath.

Birkenhead’s eyes were white orbs of unspeakable terror glowing in the moonwashed night, as Tom lifted him to his feet. ‘Run, you bastard, or I’ll cut your throat,’ Tom snarled, and they hurried down New College Lane, then Queen’s Lane, as the first shouts were raised in the darkness around them. Then, just past the church of St Peter-in-the-East, Tom shoved the smaller man up against a stone wall and pressed his knife
against his white throat. ‘Make a sound and I’ll kill you. Understand?’ Birkenhead blinked rapidly and nodded and Tom cut through the gag in the editor’s mouth and threw the thing over the wall. ‘Now you’re going to help me, Mr Birkenhead,’ he said, giving a smile that was cold as death on his own lips. The shouts were getting louder and now Tom heard the scuff of boots and the jangle of swords and kit, knew men were coming up Queen’s Lane towards them and must surely be upon them in a matter of heartbeats.

‘Up you get,’ he growled, lacing his fingers, creating a stirrup into which he invited Birkenhead to put his foot.

‘Over there?’ the editor said, nodding at the stone wall that was a little over six feet high. On the other side were trees and bushes and no doubt graves. ‘Now,’ Tom said, ‘and don’t even think about running,’ he added as the man stepped into his hands and grabbed the top of the wall while Tom lifted him up. Up he scrambled, neatly for a man of words, and Tom followed, fingers clawing at the damp stone, his arms hauling his body up until he could throw his right leg over the wall and then jump onto the grass below. Just as the night watch clattered past, hurrying north up the narrow walled lane towards the confusion of shouting and fire. Towards the chaos.

‘
WILLIAM, LORD DENTON AND
his son Henry. Where will I find them?’ Tom asked. He had taken a huge gamble by saving John Birkenhead’s life in exchange for information, but he knew there was a chance that Denton, his hated enemy, was in Oxford with the King. Where else would he be? And hadn’t Birkenhead himself said that Oxford was nowadays
full to the rafters with noblemen, knights and gentlemen
?

‘I do not know a Lord Denton,’ Birkenhead managed, the words squeezed through a throat constricted by fear.

‘You know him,’ Tom said. ‘The King and his court are here. Lord Denton is here.’ Tom glanced round and through a gap in the bushes saw the weak glow of candlelight through one of the church windows. But they were safe enough amongst the trees, for anyone curious enough about the tumult to investigate would be drawn away from them and towards Birkenhead’s flaming workshop at the college.

‘Why would I tell you? Why in God’s name would I help you?’ the editor said defiantly, so that Tom admired him, for all the good it would do the man. ‘You devils and traitors have destroyed my press and you will slit my throat the moment I have told you what you want to know.’

Tom grabbed a fistful of the man’s shirt and brought his
knife up to his bulging left eye. He could feel the editor trembling, could smell the terror on him.

‘Let me assure you, Mr Birkenhead, slitting your damned throat would be a mercy. If you do not tell me where Denton is I will cut off your ballocks.’ His mind recalled an image of George Green, Martha’s father, as they mutilated him, slicing off his private parts and casting them into a fire. ‘I will cut off your nose and carve the letters on your face so that the world will know you for a seditious libeller. And I will not kill you but will let you live in misery and abasement.’

‘I would still decry the rebels and their base villainy. I would still serve my king,’ the editor said, but even his short beard was trembling now, so that Tom knew his threats had taken root.

‘Denton,’ Tom growled, pressing the knife’s blade against the man’s nose.

Birkenhead held as still as his quivering flesh would allow and blinked slowly in place of a nod.

‘New Inn Hall. Lord Denton lodges at New Inn Hall. He has been appointed to oversee the establishment of the new Royal Mint.’

‘That comes as no surprise,’ Tom said, hatred for Denton welling in his gut and souring his mouth. Bats whirred above them, dark streaks against the smoky, moon-silvered sky. Some creature rustled in a nearby bush but did not show itself.

‘It’s half a mile from us.’ Birkenhead nodded westward. That sounded good in Tom’s ears. A chill ran up the back of his neck at the thought of bloody vengeance being within his reach at last. He was suddenly aware of the painful throbbing in the stub of his ring finger, could feel his pulse in it, and his mind’s eye summoned Denton again standing beneath his ensign on the plain below Edgehill. Before Tom had been shot and beaten down to the blood-churned filth.

‘What has the man done to you?’ Birkenhead asked, professional curiosity getting the better of mortal fear.

‘Just take me to Denton,’ Tom said, turning the editor round and pushing him through the trees.

Rather than go back north past All Souls and Birkenhead’s workshop, and risk the editor being recognized by the crowds that Tom presumed would have gathered there by now, they headed south and crossed over High Street. They stuck to the shadow-shrouded gravel back streets, the ancient litter-strewn lanes and even a stinking, unpitched cartway, but steered clear of Christ Church College, for that was where the King himself had his chambers and Tom had no wish to run into His Majesty’s soldiers.

Up ahead a college door creaked open and a man stepped out into the road. ‘Who goes there?’ he challenged them, a candle lamp flickering at the end of one spindly arm. An ancient sword wavered at the end of the other.

‘Get back inside and lock your door, old man. The rebels are here,’ Tom growled, marching past with Birkenhead. By the flickering light of the candle Tom saw a shock of white hair and a wizened face in which the jaw had all but unhinged.

‘Rebels? In Oxford?’ The man’s rheumy eyes blinked incredulously. ‘Fate stands now upon the razor’s edge,’ he murmured, then vanished, and there was a slam of door and clicking of locks and Tom and Birkenhead had the street to themselves once more.

‘Old fool thinks it’s the fall of Troy,’ Tom said.

‘Are you not Achilles full of wrath?’ Birkenhead accused him.

‘My horse was called Achilles,’ Tom said, a sudden pang in his chest as though a cold hand had clutched his heart. And then they came to the church of St Peter-le-Bailey where a knot of men were angrily debating whether or not to ring the bells in response to the earlier explosions.

‘What news?’ a man called to them, silencing the others with a wave of his cane. He was portly and well dressed, his beaver sporting three white plumes.

‘Some sort of accident near All Souls,’ Tom replied. His talk
of rebels had made the old man scuttle back inside and lock his door but these men would ring the bells and call out the regiment, which would make it harder for Tom and the others to make their rendezvous with The Scot.

‘It was no accident, sir,’ the man replied, crossing the street towards them, thrusting his cane into the mud with each step. ‘The watch have caught a damned Roundhead trying to slip out of the city!’ He flapped a hand. ‘Like a damned eel, may they stretch his neck and watch him do the gallows jig.’

‘Keep moving,’ Tom hissed at Birkenhead, whose shorter legs were struggling to keep pace with Tom’s long stride. ‘Then good luck to us all, sir,’ he said to the portly man, who pulled his plump neck in as though offended at being all but ignored.

‘You think we should pull on the damn ropes? Wake the town?’ the man called after them.

‘I do not!’ Tom called without turning, as he and the editor paced on up New Inn Lane, Tom ignoring the shouts of sergeants and officers coming from the castle whose imposing dark bulk dominated the western skyline off to their left.

Tom cursed under his breath. Which of them had been caught? Trencher? Penn? Some small part of Tom hoped it was Trencher. It was an ignoble and dark hope and Tom was ashamed of it. Trencher and Penn were the nearest thing to friends he had in this life, but he knew that the big, granite-faced man was tough to the marrow. Trencher burnt with a hatred for the Royalists and if anyone could hold his silence long enough for the others to get clear it would be him.

‘If you do not go now you will never get out of the city,’ Birkenhead said.

‘Hold your tongue or I’ll cut it out,’ Tom growled.
They do not know there are more of us
, he thought. The explosion could have been the work of one man, someone within Oxford who hated the Cavaliers, some Puritan zealot with a love of black powder.

But damn ill luck that one of them was caught.

New Inn Hall was, in the main, a grand-looking, stone-built affair with a slate roof, several broad chimney stacks and leaded windows. But what held Tom’s eye were the four sentries, two either side of the main entrance and all alarmingly well armed. Each had a good buff-coat, two firelocks thrust into his belt and a curved hanger or Irish hilt at his left hip.

‘Your rebellion exacts a heavy price and not just in blood,’ the editor said in a low voice. ‘The university’s silver plate has been requisitioned. It goes through that door, is melted down and comes back out as crowns to pay the King’s army.’ He grabbed Tom’s arm and Tom rounded on him and wanted to thrust his blade into the man’s neck. But Birkenhead held his ground. ‘Think, man!’ he hissed. ‘It’s the Royal Mint. There will be more soldiers inside. You will get us both killed.’

Tom’s heart was a raging fireball in his chest, burning with the need for vengeance, so that a part of him believed he could slaughter those sentries and anyone else who got in his way. But another part of him, probably the same cold, calculating part that had hoped it was Trencher who had been caught by the Cavaliers, knew that Birkenhead was right and that he would die before he even got a chance to spill Lord Denton’s blood.

‘Will the soldiers know you?’ he asked.

Birkenhead shrugged. ‘Perhaps they have seen me around the city. Perhaps not. They will know my words if not my face.’

‘Then get us in there,’ Tom murmured. From the corner of his eye he could see that the guards were looking over at them, more than likely growing suspicious.

‘How?’ the editor said under his breath, eyes imploring Tom to see sense and give it up.

‘Just do it and do it now, or you’ll greet the new day a corpse.’ Birkenhead exhaled slowly as though gathering himself, then nodded and they crossed the road towards the soldiers, who bristled and drew their firelocks, no doubt put on edge by the explosion to the east.

‘What is your business?’ one of them challenged.

‘I am John Birkenhead, the editor of
Mercurius Aulicus
, and I would speak with Lord Denton.’

The soldiers were wide-eyed. ‘We just heard tell that a rebel blew your printing press to shivers!’

‘Which is why I need to speak with Lord Denton,’ Birkenhead said sharply, ‘for we must have a new press built immediately and the college plate must pay for it.’ He lifted an ink-stained forefinger into the air and Tom hoped that the sentries could not see the tremble in it. ‘We must print a newsbook without delay to show the rebels that their base sabotage has come to nothing.’

‘Was anyone killed?’ another soldier asked, tucking his firelock back into his belt.

‘Just fetch Lord Denton before I put your teeth through the back of your skull,’ Tom snarled, at which the young soldier blanched and looked to his fellows for support that never came.

‘Lord Denton is not here,’ the first soldier said, looking from Tom to Birkenhead and back to Tom. ‘He’s been gone some four or five days and I cannot say when he will be back.’

The words struck Tom like a musket butt rammed into his gut; his hand found his sword’s grip and he resolved to drown the night in blood.

‘Tell Lord Denton I will call again,’ Birkenhead said, his tone suggesting that he suspected the soldier of some duplicity. ‘Come, Thomas, we have work to do,’ and Tom felt a tug on his arm and looked round as if in a dream, saw the editor’s eyes pleading with him to follow, and before his reeling mind caught up with itself he was walking south, back down the moonlit street, as a peal of bells assailed the night.