Gideon's Angel (26 page)

It was the pig man. The same I had fought off on the south bank. The hellish creature pulled itself up, its huge baleful eyes never leaving me. It opened its wide maw, hog tusks yellowed and dripping, and let out a squeal that went to my marrow. It was far bigger than I had thought, glistening grey, its back covered in long bristles. I turned and ran for the stairs leading up to the next floor. When I reached that, I kept going, the narrow little staircase twisting up and around to the loft above. And below me I could hear the flapping and scratching feet of the creature as it pounded the staircase after me, the walls shaking as it bounced and pushed its way through the narrow stairwell. And all the while that terrible cry like some creature being scalded alive.

By the time I reached the loft my chest was heaving. I didn’t have the balls to start drawing a chalk circle and reciting a prayer while that thing was nearly upon me. So there was no place to go but out. I burst open the dormer window frame with my shoulder, lifted my leg over the sill, and climbed out onto the roof. Christ alone knows how I managed to scramble up the peak of the dormer, but I somehow perched myself, heels slipping on the slates. I could hear the creature hissing and snorting inside the room beneath me, and although it seemed to have few brains it somehow knew how to sniff me out.

And it gave me no respite. I felt the peak of the dormer shudder under my crotch and realised the beast was battering the window frame like a ram. I heard the wood crack and several slates went sailing off a hundred feet below into the Thames. My perch was fast disintegrating beneath me and then a black, spindly hand twice the size of any man’s appeared next to my boot. I swore and pulled my legs up and with only the moonlight to aid me, craned my head upwards, looking to see how I could climb further. The roof was steep but there was another dormer just higher up that I might reach. If I could get to the peak I could crawl to the next house and enter through a window there. Already, the dormer beneath me was sagging inwards, about to collapse. I balanced as best I could, stretched out and was just able to grasp the second dormer above.

As I began pulling myself upwards, my knees and boots scrambling for purchase, the pig ripped the dormer to pieces. I looked down to see its head and shoulders rising up from the hole it had torn in the roof. Its arm was beginning to reach upwards so I raised my left boot and gave it a thumping kick to the head. It howled in rage and while only annoying the thing for a moment, terror gave me the strength to pull myself to the next window with the grace of a baboon.

I was now perched on the second, smaller dormer window, the peak of the house some six feet higher up. Straddling it like the wooden hobby horse we used to punish drunken soldiers on, I tried to pull my blade out of its scabbard without sending myself tumbling over sideways. I watched the unblinking eyes of the pig thing as it heaved its bulk up, desperate to come out and join me. I was gasping now, my sword across my lap, and I knew I had little strength left to fight the thing off once it climbed out. My arms were shaking and if I tried to climb higher I knew that I would lose grip and fall.

So I sat there and watched as the pig scratched away at the roof slates and slowly managed to pull itself free of the hole. Once it had gotten its long feet up on the edge of the hole, it regarded me like some dog about to attack. The rotting scent I remembered from before wafted up to me: its fetid breath. Bracing itself with one arm, the other shot up to me, grabbing my ankle. I slashed down with my sword even as I held on to the peak with my other hand. My blade nicked its wrist and it howled and let go. Its head shook and flecks of foam from its snout splashed out across the roof. Again it grabbed for me and I swung again, weakly glancing off the slates and missing. Either I would fall from my own frantic struggles or it would pull me down and savage me. That was about all there was left. But something made me remember the pentacle—and the words written upon it. Da Silva had said the name of God held power in itself. I pulled it forth from my pocket, palmed it and thrust it out towards the pig man.

“Is this what you want?” I yelled.

And even as I did so the thing leapt upwards, pushing with its mighty legs, both arms stretching out to seize me. I fell backwards against the roof as it landed on top of me. My sword went spinning but somehow I kept the pentacle in my hand and thrust it out. The pig’s jaws snapped and it raised a clawed hand ready to slice me open like a rabbit. And I pushed the pentacle into its chest. Instantly, a white flame erupted, the searing sound loud in my ears and that terrible cry of pain from the beast. It leaned backwards, limp as a doll, tottered for a moment, and then slipped sideways, rolling down the roof. It disappeared over the edge and fell to the river below.

I can barely remember getting down off that roof. Somehow I crawled through the hole the creature had made, regaining the room below. I staggered down the stairs, only half caring whether Fludd and his men waited below. My heart was still beating a rapid tattoo when I reached the bottom. All was quiet. I stumbled in the gloom into the front room to find both Billy and d’Artagnan still upon the floor. Gideon Fludd was gone.

Billy was groaning, his boots scraping along the floor as he tried to rouse himself. I helped him sit up but his head lolled like a drunk’s. Then I heard d’Artagnan cry out in pain. I turned to see him pulling himself up off the floor, holding his noggin. I was on him in an instant. Practically straddling him, I hauled him up by his shirt front and shook him like a hare.

“Where did you leave Marguerite? Tell me!”

He was mumbling about who had struck him the blow.

“You goddamned fool! You’ve led Fludd here. To us. Where is she?”

He looked up at me, eyes beginning to focus. “She’s at the inn where you stayed the other night... The Bear.”

“Bastard!” I threw him backwards onto his arse and moved back to Billy who was moaning softly and cradling his broken head. “Billy! Billy Chard!”

He looked up at me. “The fucking sod crowned me good, Mister Eff. I’m poorly.”

I cupped his face with my hands. “You’ll be right as rain, Billy. Now listen to me. Are you listening?”

He nodded.

“Good. I need you to make your way back to da Silva’s house. Tell him that Fludd is on the move. He came here after d’Artagnan struck you. Do you understand?”

Billy was rapidly clearing his fog. “He was here? In this house? Oh, Christ.”

“I’ve got to go find Maggie. I will try and get back to da Silva’s later. Don’t wait around for d’Artagnan to get up. Get out of here now!”

“I’ll kill that French bastard first.”

“Just leave him. Come on. There’s a lad... up we go.”

Billy steadied himself, hands gripping the table edge. “The... the buff coats... I brought them.”

“Fetch them if you can, but get out now. I don’t know who will be on our doorstep next!” I clapped him on the back and made for the threshold. D’Artagnan was retching in the corner. “And you,” I said, stabbing a finger in the air, “you I’ll be back for if she has come to harm!”

It was all unravelling. I knew that as I emerged from the house to see several folk standing by, alarmed at what had been going on for the past half an hour.

“Here now! What’s all the ruckus in there?” I could see in the lantern light it was some bloody-aproned butcher coming towards me, cleaver in hand.

I must have looked a sight; my coat ripped open, shirt undone and breeches caked in slime and seagull shit from the roof. “Mind your own business!” I blustered, tottering along the cobbles, away towards the Southwark end.

I reached the Bear and made my way to the stairs, ignoring the challenges of the serving boy and landlord as I entered, pushing past the drinkers and whores. Up the stairs, bouncing along the walls of the hall, I found the room. The door was wide open. Wheezing and panting like a spent hound, I entered, already knowing that I was too late.

She was not there. But—sweet Lord—her valise lay torn apart on the floor, its contents strewn about the room by someone who had been furiously intent on finding something. I absently gathered up her ripped chemise and so too her hooded russet cloak. Clutching them, I sat on the little bedstead in the corner, the pit of my stomach in a wrenching knot. A chair had been dashed to pieces and the bed itself had been pulled away from the wall. I could almost see her being thrown about the room by Fludd, and she, in turn, lashing out like a cornered beast.

And then, horrid confirmation of what my mind had summoned up. A tuft of long brown hair, my Maggie’s, lay at the foot of the bed, and my heart was stabbed straight through. Tears welled up and I could not drive from my head ever more dreadful visions of what had befallen her. I rubbed my face with the back of my sleeve. I had little time to track her, find her before it was too late. I took a deep breath and even as I did so, felt anger welling up to replace the tears. Then, by chance, I spotted a sheet of paper upon the little round table across the room. I put her things on the pillow and rose, making my way to the table. It was just some ha’penny broadsheet, but the thick pencil-scrawled message along the margin, bold and stark, was meant only for me. Whether Gideon Fludd had written it before or after he and his minions had accosted me, I knew not. Nor did it really matter.

Bring it to Whitehall Park.

He had her. And his bargain was clear. Give him the pentacle, and he would free her. I also knew that my life was part of that deal as well.

I dropped the ultimatum back to the table and was about to gather Maggie’s things, but when I looked up, someone was standing in the doorway. I did not know who he was but he was studying me intently—and in some confusion from the look on his face. He was in a black suit with a plain collar, no weapon in hand. A man with an unspoilt face and gentle eyes, obviously having seen little of war or hardship. His long hair fell to his shoulders, swept to either side of a high forehead and a narrow nose. He looked like a lawyer.

“Who the hell are you, sir?” I growled, suddenly realising I too was weaponless.

“I am someone who has been looking for you for some time... a considerable time,” he replied. He then shook his head sadly. “Leastways I
think
you’re the one I’m searching for. I had expected more... presence of quality.” And he then nodded to someone else in the hallway. In an instant, three burly redcoats piled in, pushing me back. One stuck his forearm against my throat and pinioned me to the opposite wall. My limbs were still weak and shaking from my rooftop fight and I gave no resistance as my back and head hit the plaster.

“My name is John Thurloe of the Council of State. And you, I presume, are Colonel Richard Treadwell.” He moved deeper into the bedchamber and threw back his dark cassock off his shoulder as he reached for the paper on the table. He was still looking me up and down in open disbelief at my shabby, stinking condition. “I thought the Royalists were paying better than this. Christ’s wounds! Look at the state of you, man.” He scanned the paper but gave no reaction to Fludd’s message.

A fourth soldier came in jangling a set of rusty manacles.

“Put him in irons,” said Thurloe quietly.

He was still shaking his head in disappointment as they bustled me out the door. As I was swept past, I heard him mock me. “And he’s a new knight of the realm, to boot. Sad times indeed.”

Chapter Sixteen

T
WICE BEFORE
I had seen the palace of Whitehall and both times it was a gloomy ramshackle place, full of endless passages and built without rhyme or reason. More so now that the king was dead. He had been led out to his execution on a scaffold from the window of his own banqueting hall. And the palace died with him. The place was empty, cold, and full of shadows and distant echoes now. Empty that is except for a few buildings near to the street of Whitehall where I found myself being driven: the old gate and guardhouse between the palace and Scotland Yard.

Without a word, my guards took me down from the coach and marched me underneath the archway of the brick gatehouse that led into the old courtyard and the heart of the old palace. I craned my head back to glimpse Thurloe emerging from a second coach that had followed. On either side were two great doors that I remembered were the chambers for the royal guard. It was here that they pushed me into the door to the left and I found myself in a large unadorned chamber, plaster falling off the brick walls in huge slabs, and the floor made up of large flagstones, cracked and uneven. It contained just a few tables and benches, some guttering tin lanterns and a great fireplace at one end, unlit. Leading off from this was another door—one with an iron grate and locks. Two redcoats stood up as we piled inside, looking a bit confused at my arrival and leaving their tankards upon the table.

“Sit him down over there,” ordered Thurloe as he came into the room and removed his gloves. “And get a fire going.”

“I thought I would be going to the Tower,” I said, standing in the centre of the bitterly cold room. A soldier grabbed my arm and shoved me down onto a cracked and wobbling bench.