The King's Spy (Thomas Hill Trilogy 1) (36 page)

On the third day, Thomas awoke desperate to escape the confinement of his room and the oppression of the king’s mood. He walked round Christ Church Meadow, heaving again with artillery pieces, mortars and stores of small arms, up St Aldate’s and Cornmarket, and back towards Merton by Broad Street and Catte Street. In Broad Street, John Porter’s bookshop was closed, having run out of either books or customers. Everywhere there were even more beggars and whores, and more filth and decay, than when he had first arrived
in Oxford. Refugees from villages burned down to prevent their falling into enemy hands had poured into the town, as had the maimed and wounded from each new engagement, while the reinforcements the king had demanded from the Shires were arriving in their hundreds. Barely a house or a college room remained un occupied by soldiers or members of the royal households. All around, Thomas saw disease, poverty and degradation. Oxford had long since ceased to be a university town; it was a military encampment.

A military encampment with a difference. In Catte Street, a line of revellers, the men in the red uniforms of the king’s Lifeguards, their masked ladies in flowing gowns, danced down the street to the music of flutes and pipes. They were led by a young man in blue whom Thomas recognized as Prince Rupert, a lady on either arm, singing lustily and trying vainly to keep time with the tune. Thomas stepped aside to let them pass. The dancers took no notice of the limbless beggars lining either side of the street, or of the abuse shouted at them by watching towns people. A woman in an old straw bonnet and a torn dress, who tried to join the dance, was shoved roughly aside. It was a spectacle that Thomas had not before encountered. Starving beggars and dancing soldiers. What a war.

Before Merton, he went to the Physic Garden,
where Jane had shown him daisy fleabane and they had walked together between stands of lavender and beds of violets. The violets were over, but the lavender still flowered. He twisted a head from its stem and rolled it between his fingers. Its scent was the scent of Jane. He had never had the chance to learn about flowers and to impress her with his know ledge, to invite her to Romsey, to woo her properly. Now there never would be a chance.

At Merton, he found Simon sitting on a bench in the little quadrangle behind the chapel, a quiet spot away from the comings and goings in the front quadrangle. Thomas sat down beside him. ‘Has there been any news?’ he asked yet again.

‘None that I know of. The second message changed everything and the queen still awaits instructions from the king as to her day of departure, and her destination. Her mood, as ever, reflects his – black, sullen and ominous. And she still grieves for Jane.’

‘As do I.’

‘Have you heard from the king?’

‘Nothing. I still hope for an escort home, but his majesty will have other and more pressing affairs to attend to.’

‘Among them, the capture of Tobias Rush, I hope.’

‘I doubt he’ll be caught now. He could be in
Manchester or London or Cambridge. Somewhere he can’t be reached.’

For an hour they sat together, sometimes talking, sometimes sitting in silence. When Thomas rose to go, he had made up his mind to seek an audience with the king and to ask for permission to go home. Surely his majesty would not refuse such a request. He would ask him at once.

That evening, however, his request for an audience was refused. The king was too busy to see him. Frustrated and furious, Thomas stormed out of Christ Church, hoping to cool his temper by the river. He had come here under sufferance, he had done what was asked of him and he wanted to go home. Perhaps, rather than waiting for the king to provide an escort, he would take his chances and go anyway. Tomorrow morning, he would just walk out of Oxford, find a horse and make his way to Romsey. If he had to, he would hide in woods and live on toadstools. He had lost a dear old friend and a lady he loved. He missed his sister and his nieces. He had been away far too long.

Much cheered by his decision, Thomas returned to Christ Church, going over in his mind the practicalities of the journey. He had enough money, he could buy a horse, he knew the route. Once he had gone, the king would forget him. He’d be quite safe in Romsey.
Three days on the road and he would be home. At last.

The blow that knocked him cold came from behind the door as he entered his rooms. He saw and heard nothing. It was a blow from a heavy object, delivered by someone who knew what he was about. A blow to render his victim unconscious, not to kill him. When Thomas came to, he was on his back, ankles bound together and wrists tied to the frame of the bed. His movements were restricted to raising his throbbing head and wriggling his backside. Through eyes that refused to focus, he thought he saw a black-clad, crow-like figure approach the bed. The figure stooped to examine its prey. In its hand it held a cane with a silver top. It spoke.

‘Master Hill, we meet again.’

RUSH PULLED UP
a chair and sat by the bed. He pushed one strip of shirt into Thomas’s mouth and secured it with a second, tied around his head. Then he held up the silver-topped cane where Thomas could see it, and drew out of it a very thin blade.

‘The finest Spanish steel, Thomas, made especially for me by the best swordsmith in Toledo. Its point is as sharp as one of your sister’s sewing needles. As you can see.’ Holding the sword by its silver handle, his eyes never leaving Thomas’s, he touched Thomas’s arm with the point. A trickle of blood appeared. ‘The secret is in the mix of metals. That and the exact heat of the forge and the length of time the sword is in it. The smiths measure the time by reciting prayers. Then the blade is cooled with oil. A fine Toledo sword is every
bit as much a masterpiece as a Michelangelo sculpture.’

A slow smile crept across the narrow face. ‘I can see that you’re surprised to find me here, Thomas. I quite understand. I could have been in London by now, yet somehow the idea of our meeting again proved irresistible. I am unaccustomed to defeat – a poor loser, you might say – and unwilling to concede victory, especially to so unworthy an adversary. Tobias Rush bested by a Romsey bookseller? I think not. With a little help from some friends, it was not difficult to return unnoticed to Oxford, or to enter Christ Church and wait for your return. You’d be surprised just how many of us there are in the town, and we are more each week. Dis enchantment with the king grows with his every extravagance, and those of the queen, and it does not take a military eye to see which way the war is going. I believe I may claim, in all modesty, to have been instrumental in recruiting a good many to our cause.

‘And I had expected to go on doing so. Until, Thomas, you stumbled upon a means of decrypting our messages. You look surprised. Of course I know about the second message, revealing the queen’s destination. Not only did it arrive by only one of its two routes, but certain friends here alerted me to its interception. So you discovered our plan. An excellent plan, too, if I may say so, devised by myself. Imagine it. The queen and her
unborn infant in our hands, her devoted husband unable to do anything to recover her but to accede to our demands. The war would have been over within days.’ Rush bent his head to Thomas’s ear and whispered, ‘Now, Thomas, I am going to allow you to speak. But if you so much as raise your voice, you will immediately lose your right eye. Do I make myself clear?’ Thomas nodded, and Rush removed the shirt from his mouth.

‘There, now we can talk man to man. How is your head?’ Thomas said nothing. ‘Very well. I recall from my visit to the prison that you are prone to spells of sullen silence. I shall continue. Assuming that my rooms have been searched, we will no longer be using the codes and keywords that may have been found there. Monsieur Vigenère has served us well for over a year, but he too will now have to go. How clever you were, Thomas, and how fortunate, to discover his secrets, and ours.’

‘Why did you kill Erasmus Pole?’

‘Ah. He speaks. A question, though not a very interesting one. Pole had become a liability. After the affair at Alton, we had to decide whether to keep him. We decided not to. He was an old man and had outlived his usefulness.’

‘Why did you take a blind man’s eyes?’

‘Now that is more interesting. They were no use to Master Fletcher, of course, but that is not quite all. I find
a certain satis faction in the neat removal of an eye. I imagine a surgeon feels the same way when he cleanly removes a musket ball. A neat incision and out it pops. A good job, performed by an expert. Does that answer your question?’

‘Did you order the murder of Jane Romilly?’

‘I thought we would come to that. Lady Romilly disobeyed me. She persuaded the queen to authorize your release from gaol. That could not be tolerated.’

‘Why was she raped?’

‘That I put down to the exuberance of youth. They doubtless allowed themselves to be carried away by the moment.’

‘Fayne was one. Who were the others?’

‘How do you know about Fayne?’ Rush’s eyes narrowed and his voice was suspicious.

‘He told me before he was executed.’

‘Fayne’s dead? Excellent. That saves me the trouble.’

‘Who were the others?’

‘They were the same men who inconvenienced you on the way back from Newbury. I had hoped that they would find what I was looking for.’

‘They killed both coachmen.’

‘Yes. Necessary casualties. They would have killed you, too, had I not instructed them most clearly not to.’

‘Why?’

‘Is that not obvious, Thomas? If you were dead, I would not have known what you had done with the message or whether you had decrypted it. Our plan would have had to be abandoned. As, I fear, it has been.’

‘Jane bled to death.’

‘Such a pity. A lovely lady. But she betrayed me.’

‘Did you instruct Fayne to search my room?’

‘Fayne? Good God, no. I would never entrust a stupid soldier with any task requiring discretion or intelligence. His clumsy efforts earlier, however, gave me the idea of instructing Lady Romilly to do so. You naturally suspected Fayne again. And I must thank you for alerting me to his liking for dice. It gave me a most useful argument when I did have need of him.’

‘Round Hill was your doing, wasn’t it?’

‘It was, and I’m proud of it. Essex’s men should never have gained the high ground. If the king had held it, Newbury might have turned out very differently. A brilliant deception.’

‘You’ll burn in hell, Rush.’

‘Very probably. And you’ll be able to tell them to expect me.’

‘You’re a vicious murderer, a traitor and a coward.’

A shadow passed over Rush’s face. ‘A coward? No, Master Hill. I have no time for soldiers or soldiering, but
a coward I am not.’ He shoved the shirt back into Thomas’s mouth and secured it. ‘Now we shall see who’s a coward.’ He ripped Thomas’s shirt down the front, and dragged the point of the blade diagonally across his chest. Thomas’s back arched against the pain, and blood from the wound dripped down his stomach. Again the blade sliced his flesh, its line forming a cross with the first cut. Rush rose and fetched a pail of water from the washstand. He threw it over Thomas’s chest. ‘There. We don’t want you bleeding to death quite yet, do we? The water will help to keep you going.’ Thomas closed his eyes and bit down on the shirt in his mouth. The cuts had been finely judged. Deep enough to cause pain, not so deep as to kill.

Rush sat back on the chair and admired his work. ‘Not a bad start, although the smaller cuts are more difficult to make precisely. How fortunate that we have all night. A man’s pleasures should always be taken slowly. Speaking of which, I found an excellent bottle in your cupboard. Are you thirsty? No? Well, I am.’ The bottle produced, Rush poured himself a glass and sipped it appreciatively. ‘The college cellars are one of the few good things about this city. I daresay that’s why the king chose to come here. This is a splendid claret. Are you sure you wouldn’t care for a glass?’ Unable to speak, Thomas forced himself to keep his eyes open, willing
Rush to see the contempt in them. At the same time, he wished he could close his nostrils. The stench of the man was overpowering. If witches carried the smell of evil, Rush reeked of the devil himself. Thomas gagged on the shirt in his mouth, and swallowed the bile in his throat.

‘Your sister, I’m told, is a handsome woman,’ went on Rush, ‘and your nieces very pretty little things. I have not yet had the pleasure of meeting them myself, although I hope that will not be long delayed. Ah, you’re wondering how I know. I have friends in Hampshire. One of them has been keeping a close eye on your sister and her daughters.’ The threatening letters. Rush’s doing. ‘We did think you might hurry home when you heard news of them. Alas, you chose to stay in Oxford. Most unwise.’

Rush poured himself more wine and took his glass to the window. ‘A lovely city, Oxford, as is Cambridge, which I know better. I was there myself, you know. I studied law at Peterhouse. Nothing like as grand as Christ Church, of course, but a charming college. Do you know the most unusual thing about both places? People listen. They learn by listening. Everywhere else, I find people do not listen, they merely wait for their turn to speak. Sometimes, they don’t even do that. They interrupt. I learned to listen at Peterhouse, and the habit has never left me. In gathering information, I
find it an invaluable skill.’ Taking up the sword, Rush pressed the point under Thomas’s ear and drew it down his neck and across his throat. Thomas felt a trickle of blood.