Queen's Ransom (16 page)

“I have to take the word of Seigneur de la Roche that you did not lead your English retainers here on purpose,” he said, though it was clear that to believe in my innocence pained him considerably. “But I still believe that they fired the inn. The blaze was obviously started on purpose.”

“Where
are
my English retainers?” I interrupted.

“In my cellars. At this end of the inn, quite safe and well away from where the fire was. Permit me to finish. In the middle of the public room I have found the remains of logs that someone dragged out of the hearth, still alight, no doubt, and pushed among the furniture. The same was done with the kitchen fire; at least there is ash in a pile on the floor. My servants have quarters of their own to sleep in; I do not have them sleeping in the kitchen. I think someone got in. There is a window frame in the front of the house that is splintered as though it has been forced. It is blackened, but one can tell.”

“That is very shocking, madam,” Brockley said to me, when I had dutifully translated. “But I can’t believe it of the Dodds, or even of Searle.”

“Fetch my men up here,” barked Ryder. “Let us hear what they have to say!”

Once more, I translated, this time for Charpentier’s benefit. “I can guess what they will have to say, and it will all be lies!” Charpentier seized a goblet in his soot-stained hand, poured himself a hefty draft of wine, and gulped at it. “Those men will stay in my keeping until I can bring them before the mayor. Do not expect considerate treatment because you are foreigners. The seigneur your husband may vouch for you, madam, and that I will accept, but why should I believe the protestations of this man Ryder? Or Brockley? It is my opinion that those miscreants in my cellar—”

There was a tap on the door and then, without waiting for permission, Van Weede walked in. Considering that he had been up most of the night, sword-fighting and firefighting, he looked astonishingly spruce. His shirt and hose might be dirty, but he had combed his hair and beard and washed his cheerful, rosy-brown face. His dark eyes were as bright and his step as springy as though he had just risen from eight hours on a down mattress.

“Excuse me for interrupting,” he said in French. “But the woman who has been serving you came to where I was eating breakfast, and repeated something of what is being said here. I have come to say that I think I know who fired the inn and why, and to assure you that it had nothing to do with Madam Blanchard’s men, or with the unhappy disputes that are now disturbing the peace of France. The offenders were trying to smoke me out of my room in order to kill me. They—or colleagues of theirs—have tried to kill me before. But it’s too late to take reprisals against them because they’re the two who are lying dead in the stableyard.”

We all stared. I muttered a hurried translation for Ryder and Brockley.

“I ask your pardon, Charpentier,” said Van Weede seriously. “I thought I had shaken off the pursuit. But I have looked closely at those bodies out there and I recognize one of them. Besides, they attacked me last night. There really is no doubt that they were responsible for all the mayhem. I am really
very
sorry, Charpentier, and I shall offer you compensation.”

Charpentier had risen indignantly to his feet. “What is all this? You stride in here uninvited and begin talking nonsense! I tell you that my inn was set alight by the men attached to Madame here, who sought to seize or kill her husband, a prominent supporter of our good Catholic cause.”

Van Weede, unimpressed, shook his head. “I think not. The perpetrators were almost certainly men in the employ of a consortium of merchants who object to the idea of England trading directly with Persia and bypassing tolls and middlemen of Turkey and Venice. I’m traveling under a false name. I am not really called Van Weede, and I’m not from the Netherlands. I’m another of the Anglaises who are so unpopular here just now, although believe me, I have no interest in the civil wars of France, one way or another. I am a man of business, pure and simple. I am an English merchant in the employ of the Muscovy Company and my name is Anthony Jenkinson.”

“The trouble began soon after I left Persia and started for home,” Jenkinson told us, over the wine. He had declined the bread and cheese, saying that he had eaten already and now would rather talk. He did so bilingually, speaking every sentence first in French and then repeating it in English, bridging the language gap with what was evidently practiced ease. “I meant,” he said, “to go back by the route I’d used on the outward journey, and travel north up the Caspian Sea, then by river to Moscow, and then north again to Archangel, and westward round the Norwegian coast, before next winter begins to freeze the seas. I don’t know if you recognize any of these names, but . . .”

“I’ve heard most of them. Merchants come to this inn,” Charpentier said briefly. He seemed prepared to listen, though he had obvious reservations.

“When my first husband was alive,” I said, “we lived in Antwerp, where my husband was employed by Sir Thomas Gresham. The voyages of merchants and explorers were often discussed. Since then, I have been at the court of Queen Elizabeth, who also takes an interest in such things. I understand very well.”

Ryder nodded agreement and so did Brockley. Brockley was always well informed. Jenkinson looked pleased.

“Good. It makes it easier to explain. I had had a successful audience with the Shah in Persia and I found him willing to enter into a trade agreement with England, although there were protests from Turkish and Venetian representatives then at his court. They appeared to yield gracefully when the agreement with me was made and signed. But then they left Persia rather suddenly and that made me uneasy. I thought they might well have gone to consult with their superiors in Istanbul or Venice. Istanbul probably; it would be nearer. I should have heeded that feeling and taken myself off at once, but I wanted to purchase a first consignment of goods to carry home, and I wanted to inspect the workshops where fabrics were woven and jewelry made. Unwisely, I lingered, though I planned to set out north before Christmas, intending to reach Russia in spring—you don’t make rapid headway with a merchant caravan—and travel round the Norwegian coast in summer.

“But I left it too late after all. We chartered two vessels to take us across the Caspian Sea but halfway across, we were attacked by what we at first thought were pirates. We fought them off and we took a prisoner, and from him we got some interesting information. He was no pirate, or not in the usual sense. It seems,” said Jenkinson, “that the merchants of Venice and Turkey were very upset indeed at the prospect of losing so much valuable trade through me. In particular, there is a consortium of merchants who call themselves the Levantine Lions. I’ve heard of them before. They have a ruthless reputation and they had decided not to let me get back to England with my treaty. According to our captive, I had a whole pride of lions on my spoor. He and his piratical friends were in their pay.”

No one asked what had finally happened to the captive. It would have been a silly question. Jenkinson had natural charm, but it was a velvet covering over a chain-mail gauntlet.

He also had a resonant, flexible speaking voice, and that curious thing known as presence. He was capable of holding even a reluctant audience.

“And so?” Charpentier, however weary, dirty, and furious about the disaster to his inn, was growing interested in spite of himself.

“I talked with my men,” Jenkinson said, “and we decided to make it more difficult for the enemy by dividing our forces. I was carrying two signed copies of the treaty. We changed course, reached a small port, and hired some extra men as additional protection for the main party and the goods caravan, which I sent off on our planned route, in charge of a man I could trust. One copy of the treaty went with him. The other copy I kept on my person. With three companions I then set off home but by a very different route.”

Here he paused and smiled. It was a wicked and engaging smile. I had a feeling—an awed feeling, I may say—that I knew what was coming next.

“I decided,” he said, “that the safest thing to do was the most unexpected. The Levantine Lions represent the interests of Turkey and Venice. They wouldn’t expect me to appear, therefore, in either place. So I arranged passages for us to Istanbul.”

We gazed, fascinated, at this insouciant adventurer whose idea of avoiding dangerous and well-organized enemies was to saunter into the heart of their territory.

“You say your name’s Anthony,” I said. “Shouldn’t it be Daniel?”

Jenkinson smiled again. “Maybe it should, because after all, I think somebody did recognize me. Merchants go everywhere. Every great fair brings them together from far-flung places. I daresay that in every city of Europe or the Levant, there’s someone who knows me by sight. Though God knows, I was careful. I did have an idea of revealing myself and complaining to the authorities, because I doubt if the Levantine Lions are official in any way. English relations with both countries are good and I don’t see the rulers of either Turkey or Venice wanting to wreck them by assassinating respectable merchants. But I decided not to risk it. It wouldn’t be the first time a government’s right hand hasn’t been quite clear about what its left hand was doing.

“I took the name of Van Weede and melted into the scenery—or so I thought—as a Netherlands merchant interested in luxury goods. Most ships were laid up for the winter but there’s always coastal and short-haul traffic. I managed to get us to Rome—changing ships at Athens—and I thought I’d escaped. I lost a man on the voyage to Rome, but that was through some sickness or other that he’d picked up in Turkey. That left me with the two you saw last night. They’re still having breakfast.”

“Remarkable swordsmen,” Brockley observed.

“Are they not? Stephen Longman and Richard Deacon, their names are. Deacon fights like a leopard, and though Longman isn’t so very tall, he has shoulders like a bear and can kill a man by picking him up and hugging him. I took them on as lads and I trained them myself,” said Jenkinson smugly, “and though I say it myself, they’re a credit to me. Well, we got to Rome, and then we were attacked in the street after dark. I was glad of Longman and Deacon then, I can tell you. We fought them off and we didn’t take any prisoners to question this time, but I think they were Lions. There were six of them and they all looked to me like Venetians or Turks. Unfortunately,” he added, “we only killed three. The rest ran away.”

“And then?” Ryder asked.

“We found another ship as fast as possible. It was bound for Marseilles. Well, France was on the way to England, so to speak. I decided that we would cross France overland and get a ship to England maybe from Calais. It saved trying to get a passage out round Spain. You may not know about this,” he explained, “but the Atlantic tides pour into the Mediterranean and one needs not only a favorable wind to get out against it, but a strong wind, as well. Sometimes ships have to wait weeks for the right conditions. It’s such a waste of time. Marseilles would do very well, I thought.

“I had no idea, of course, that France was on the edge of a civil war. I’d got out-of-date with the news, what with all my wanderings round the Caspian Sea and the Mediterranean.

“We reached Marseilles and the moment we landed, Deacon said to me that he was sure he’d recognized a man on the quay as one of those who had attacked us in Rome. He said you tend to remember a face when the last time you saw its owner, he was trying to stick a sword into you.”

It was probably Master Jenkinson’s airy, almost amused tone that accounted for the strangled voice in which Brockley said: “Quite so.”

“There were a couple of fast vessels in port,” Jenkinson said. “Someone could have got to Marseilles ahead of us, once they learned which ship we were on and where it was bound. I fancy we were chased all the way from Istanbul. We were three days changing vessels at Athens. Our pursuers could have caught up with us easily enough.

“Well, we got off that quay as quick as we could, and put up at an inn. The three of us shared a room and slept with our swords beside us, which was just as well because that night two men crept into the room with daggers.

“Luckily, I’m a light sleeper and I woke up in time and so did my companions. We made a quick job of things and there wasn’t much noise. It was all very awkward, though, because it meant we had two corpses on our hands.”

“Yes. That would be very awkward indeed,” Ryder agreed, with a straight face. Even Charpentier was now staring at Jenkinson with the bemused expression of a child being shown around a menagerie of exotic animals.

“But this time,” Jenkinson said, “once again, I got some information out of one of them before I dispatched him to his maker. Or rather, he spat it at me. He said I need not think that he and his companion were all I had to worry about. There were others, he said, and more still following.

“I knew there was at least one other—three got away in Rome. But this sounded as though we still had quite a pack on our heels. It worried me. I thought,” said Master Jenkinson, “that our trail would be all too obvious if we were kept in Marseilles to answer questions in an inquiry about the said corpses. We had to do something.”

“Such as?” Charpentier inquired.

“Escape, of course,” said Master Jenkinson, like a tutor deploring a pupil’s inability to perform simple addition. Two and two make four, boy, not five. And if you’re staying at an inn and you happen to have killed a couple of midnight intruders and don’t want to answer questions, you flit by moonlight, fast and quietly. What else?

“We got dressed,” continued Jenkinson. “We put the bodies in our bed—it was big; we’d all been sharing it—and on a table we left enough money to pay for our night’s lodging. Then we took our packs and climbed out of a window and slithered down a most useful vine on the wall. We hid in the town until daybreak, and then we hired horses and got out of Marseilles. We soon found that we were in a very disturbed country. Maybe that’s why there was no hue and cry after us, or not one that ever caught up with us, anyway.”