The Point of Death (16 page)

By the best of good fortune, Tom's last pupil of the day - filling the full hour from five to six - was Will. As soon as he arrived, Tom explained what Poley and he proposed to do and the playwright was happy enough to join the enterprise. Raids on Bridewell were an occasionally popular sport with young gentlemen, for the keepers of the prison were notoriously reluctant to put up a fight, and the whores who were rescued were famously grateful. Then Tom and he spent a quarter hour exercising with extreme care so that Will could test his technique and Tom could try out the Solingen blades that Ugo had set in the finest Ferrara hilts. As he warned Will about the properties of the blades, Tom reminded him about the almost painless wound the Spaniard had given to his side, and repeated his worrying theory that Julius Morton had not felt the same blade - or its sinister companion - pass through his body; only his hand.

Ugo
came out of the workshop at last and Tom pulled up his blade. 'Time to go.'

'You're
not wearing them?' said Ugo as Tom completed his preparations.

'I
am.'

'Both?'
The Dutchman was frowning, worried.

'Both,'
said Tom decisively, 'and the dagger in the belt at my back.'

As
they shouldered their way along the foot of City Wall, Tom explained. 'Half of the Spaniard's power comes from his two blades. Poley and I have discussed the matter and I agree. We face up to the Spaniard, Baron Cotehel and whoever else works with them, and we make ourselves the stronger. And how better can we face up to the Spaniard than in this way? My swords are the equal of his. My cunning is the equal of his - better, forsooth - in my right arm and my left. Let the Spaniard and Master Baines and Master Outram be afraid therefore -Tom Musgrave will meet them beard to beard.'

'Take
double care, and more, even so,' said Will, quietly, as Ugo nodded agreement. 'The man who declares a war is often the first to die.'

The
City Wall led them directly to the Bridewell Bridge over the River Fleet. Then they were on familiar territory hurrying south along the stinking bank down to the Bridewell steps and the Bookkeeper's entrance. They arrived in the midst of a stirring bustle. Men of all sorts were pushing in through the gates. Tom paused, looking around, well aware that it must be near six already - though he had not heard it struck. There was no sign of Poley and the men he had promised to bring with him. Instead, there was the Reverend Word-of-the-Lord Parris, his face folded into a frown and his eyes focussed solely ahead. He pushed rudely past, safe from the danger of challenge at his rudeness behind the reverend sobriety of his clothing. He was far too distracted to notice Tom.

Tom
met the eyes of his two companions. 'In,' he said quietly. 'We'll mask our faces when we act but until then we are simply part of the audience.' As he spoke, the bells of all the local churches began to chime the hour.

The
great court of Bridewell was busy. Men strolled or sat in a rough circle around the raised stage on which there stood the whipping post. There was an air about the place which was, to Tom's mind, vicious and unhealthy. It was the atmosphere he had experienced on the rare visits he had made to Tyburn, but there was an undisguised lustful element added to it - and by no means a lust for blood.

Tom's
narrow eyes raked the faces of the men there, looking for Poley. He did not see him, nor anyone else he recognised. Except for Will and Ugo, every man there avoided his gaze, until he began to wonder whether he would need to mask after all, for it seemed that he was hardly here at all. The feeling of invisibility was suddenly compounded by the throwing open of a large double door. Every eye in the place was suddenly fastened on the entrance of a column of girls and women led by the pompous Bookkeeper out into the yard. The women were of various ages and various aspects. They wore a range of clothing from the courtly to the ragged. They all wore chains. Cuffs closed around their wrists and were joined with fetters to each other - and to the ankle gyves they also had to wear. Tom used the collective sigh which whispered around the place to cover a swift check - still no sign of Poley. He narrowed his eyes, his mind racing. He would be prepared to act without the spymaster's help, but the risks were higher and the options for wider action limited. He moved sideways so that he could get a clearer view of the line of bawds. There were a dozen or so of them. Closer inspection showed them by and large to be a sorry lot, bedraggled and dirty, with a couple of cleaner, better dressed exceptions. They were all roundshouldered and downcast except the woman who led the sorry troupe - led in every way, as though she was their spirit, their pattern and their commander. The first of the line walked tall, with her red head set as high as the Queen's at a state occasion. There was no mistaking Mistress Kate Shelton. And no mistaking just how little time he had in which to free her if she was going to escape a whipping.

Already
one of the three guards accompanying the women was leading the first fair victim up on to the platform. The Bookkeeper and another two men stood waiting. The first of these was clearly the cell keeper, for he carried a chatelaine of keys and was reaching forward to unfasten the woman's wrist shackles as she mounted the stage, looking down her nose at him with undisguised disdain. The second man, having shaken out a whip of five lashes about a yard in length, accepted the woman had hooked her fetters up on to the top of the whipping post. Then, to another communal sigh from the increasingly excited crowd, he pulled open the back of Mistress Kate's dress, which she had wisely enough left unlaced. Beneath the finery of her bodice, she wore a shift of the snowiest white. The flesh of the bare back beneath it was exactly the same colour.

The
executioner pushed the edges of the shift wider sliding his fists under the woman's upstretched arms. He was brutally rough, perhaps to please the crowd or perhaps to revenge some failure by the beautiful, proud young woman to bribe or seduce more gentle handling out of him. The laces and straps across her shoulders tore allowing the whole of her top to fall down over her belly like an apron. There was a ragged cheer as her breasts were bared, and the executioner stood back with a leer, ready to send the first stroke broadly across back and front.

But
then Tom was up on the platform between the whipmaster and his victim. Somehow, without his even realising he had drawn it, his Solingen blade was out and resting on the gaoler's throat. 'I cry clubs,' he bellowed, invoking the universal call to riot and revolt against authority. 'Clubs and freedom for the ladies.'

There
was an instant of silence, then, 'Clubs,' cried Will and Ugo both together, each standing almost magically behind an official on the platform, daggers out and tickling ribs. Tom noted wryly that they at least had had the wit to pull up their masks. His eyes raked over the crowd of men, and a good number of eyes met his now. The line of whores waiting to be whipped suddenly lost their hang-dog expressions and started looking speculatively around. There was no doubt that a hot reward awaited anyone who saved their backs and got them out of here. But on the other hand, the three remaining guards looked threatening: their backs were at risk here too, for if the women went they would likely replace them at the whipping post. The situation teetered on the point of a dagger for an instant, then, 'Clubs,' bellowed a familiar voice, and Poley, masked but well-armed, appeared behind a guard and the crowd went wild.

Tom
turned and unhooked Kate Shelton from the post. He did so with his left hand, holding the gaoler at bay with the rapier in his right. Left-handed, he caught the key Will tossed, and he handed it to her so that she could free herself. She took off the wrist-locks and the ankle-locks before she began to pull up the front of her dress. And all the time, her eyes were fixed on his. Wide, excited, burning.

When
the clamour in the courtyard died sufficiently for them to exchange a word or two, she asked as she gathered the cherrytipped creaminess of her bosom and tucked it back within her bodice, 'And who do I have to thank for saving my tender back? Master ...'

'Musgrave,'
he answered, his mouth feeling dry of a sudden. 'Tom Musgrave.'

Chapter Nineteen - Kate

All the other women in the whipping line, accompanied by a good number liberated from the Whore's dungeon, were heading out past the helpless guards, borne by the largely exultant crowd. Tom and Kate were running in, deeper into the inner corridors and recesses of the place. Not for an instant had she seemed to doubt who Tom was - or what. They had become confederates as suddenly and as absolutely as had he and Ugo, long ago and far away. Ugo, who made the two of them a threesome, bringing up the rear. Will had vanished with Poley, his associates and the rest.

'I
have not yet met the Spaniard, but I know which one he is,' she said as they ran.

'How?'

'I have seen the Black Book. It records visitors as well as everything else. And you can imagine, I am certain, just how many Armada men have had visitors of late.'

'And
how did you get to see the book?'

'Vanity.
The Bookkeeper's. He believed like most men that there is something irresistible to women hidden under even the most repulsive and disgusting exterior. And that a full understanding of the weight of his great responsibilities would make his personal qualities utterly irresistible. I allowed him to live with his arrant self-deception until I had what I wanted then I roundly disabused him.'

'That
nearly cost you dear,' observed Tom, thinking of the brutal manner in which she had been prepared for her brutal flogging.

'When
I think of the alternative he had in mind,' she said, 'ten times the whipping would have been a Cheapside bargain.'

Kate
knew the inside of the Bridewell as though she had walked every corridor. Hence, thought Tom shrewdly, the vengeful anger of the gaoler with the whip. And they said that Vanity's true name was Woman. 'Hist!' she said, slowing her purposeful rush. 'Down here. And there's a guard.'

Tom
went first, tip-toeing down a narrow flight of steps into a fetid little tunnel so low he had to stoop. The tip of his high-held rapier scraped along the stony roof. It would have struck sparks from the flinty stone of the place except that the whole tunnel was oozing water. Some twenty feet down the running tunnel was a narrow doorway into a small guard-chamber. The disturbance aloft had not yet made itself known down here so the guard was sitting at their ease - or rather they seemed to be so. Tom froze, scarcely breathing, and watched the three men grouped around the table. A trencher of food was piled in front of them and scraps of it lay on the table before them, but none of them was eating. Instead they were hunched, heads close, as though in the midst of a whispered conversation. And yet they were not talking. A lamp close beside them was flickering, almost guttering, and the dancing shadows from it made them seem to be moving. And yet, he realised, with a tightening of his stomach, they were not moving. And were never like to do so again. Feeling the silent stirring of Ugo's arrival at his shoulder, he stepped into the cramped little chamber. None of the guards looked at him.

'They're
all dead,' he said to Ugo, and Kate coming in behind the Dutchman caught her breath. Tom crossed to the nearest, seeing the great key hanging from his belt. Ugo caught up the candle. Kate led the way down the corridor to the door at the end.

As
the heavy portal creaked wide, Ugo stepped in and Tom followed at his shoulder to be confronted with the strangest of sights. A tall, gaunt man, chained and dressed in rags, knelt astride a trencher piled with food, frozen in the act of fighting off four equally gaunt, equally famished-looking prisoners.

'Help
me,' he said in thickly accented English as he turned and glared into the light. 'Help me whoever you are. They must not eat this. It is poisoned and they are too famished even to care.'

K
ate darted in and caught up the trencher, whirling it back out of the door. The four starving men seemed to sag. 'You were wise, master, and you have saved your friends,' said Tom. 'The guards stole the best of your repast by the look of it and they have paid with their lives for their greed.' Kate was back. She held more keys. 'Don Diego de Villalar?' she asked.

'I
hold no rank,
señorita
, but yes, I am Diego de Villalar .'

'Then
I have come to set you free.'

'At
what price?'

'Life,
for a start. These four are like to kill you if you remain when we go. Perhaps you have all had enough of living, though. And advice. You are after all, an expert in some black arts are you not? Known to Señor Perez?'

'His
friend who carries two swords,' added Tom. 'The friend who sent you the food.'

'Yes.
Young Señor Domenico Salgado. I would enjoy another little talk with him.' And so, at last, the mysterious assassin D.S. had a name.

And
Tom had another ally to add to the list below Poley, who also wanted constant watching.

The central courtyard of the Bridewell was deserted as the four figures stole across it, but there was wreckage speaking eloquently of a riotous mob chased hither recently by a number of angry guards. 'What has happened here?' asked Villalar as he limped through the debris borne between Ugo and Kate while Tom led the way with his rapier out.

'To
come down and rescue you,' said Kate, with something of a laugh in her voice, 'our brave leader there led a riot and released half the bawds in London.'

'It
is not that I am not most grateful,' said the Spaniard. 'But could you not have saved one for me? Just one flawed jewel? It has been six years and more, and the
señorita
here, even though she serves but as a crutch, is setting my blood afire.'

'Indeed?'
said Kate. 'I had heard much of the gallantry of the true Dons. And now I experience it for myself. A crutch. A crutch, forsooth. I'd rather have taken my whipping and let the old goat rot.' And yet, for all her words seemed shocked and bitter, she still held him firmly and led him surely. But the wry words were scarcely out of her mouth before their luck ran out.

'Who
goes there?' called a raucous voice, and a sturdy body thrust itself into the gape of the gate. Behind the solid outline of his shoulder glinted freedom in the vision of the glittering river at the foot of the Bridewell Stairs. The four of them could hardly have looked more guilty. The trull who caused the riot, the roaring boy who led it, a Dutchman and a Don but lately taken from the Armada Hole.

'Shoot
him,' said Tom to Ugo.

Ugo
pulled out his wheel lock under cover of Diego's sagging body and cocked it against the pull of the wheel lock. He brought the pistol up, but just at the very instant he did so, the Reverend Word-ofthe-Lord Parris appeared at his shoulder, calling, 'Here. Here they are...'

'Shoot
him,' said Kate in a vicious undertone. 'Oh please, my brave pistoleer, shoot Parris. Right through his cod-piece if you can take the aim.'

Inevitably,
Ugo hesitated, and the moment was gone. Parris's shouts brought half a dozen guards back and suddenly even the sparkle of the Thames was blotted by their forms.

But
then, almost miraculously, Parris's shouts brought others back as well; for suddenly both he and the guards were swamped by a wave of men and women. 'It's Will,' cried Tom. And so it was. Will, Poley and his men, together with the more spirited of the girls they had rescued, had been waiting for Kate, Ugo and Tom. The guards, bested twice in one evening, broke and ran at once, leaving the Reverend Parris alone and badly outnumbered. He remained, dazed and stumbling at the top of the Bridewell Stairs as Tom led his little band out on to the low wooden platform. There they were welcomed with a rousing cheer which almost drowned the sound of Kate shoving Parris over the low rail on the east side and down into the slime of the Fleet Ditch. And Tom's wry words to the Spaniard. 'There,
señor
, you spoke too soon. It seems that we had saved you not one flawed jewel but an embarrassment of riches.'

The lads who rowed the wherries fell in with the adventure with an alacrity that was part of the tradition and the clocks had scarcely struck seven before the band - a dozen or so in all - were crowding up the Goat Stairs on to the Bankside where most of the girls lived their professional lives. Tom, Kate, Poley, Will and Ugo took the Don Diego to the Elephant and it was, perhaps, fortunate that Mistress Constanza had taken her Italian cards elsewhere for the evening. But the Elephant was only a stopping-off point where Diego was given the chance of a wash, a shave and a change of clothes. And if he needed the lingering help of two of the girls to assist him, why no one begrudged him, as long as he had the strength.

Will
departed almost at once. 'We've a replacement now to double as Mercutio and the Prince,' he said. 'The play is doing roaring business. Two houses a day, the better part of three thousand souls - I've never seen the like - and Master Henslowe's saying he is thinking of a full ten-day run. And in the meantime I'm to get the next play down. It's an old piece about Sir Thomas More he wants me to fix as swiftly as I can and then I'll try something new again. But in the meantime I must write and write and write ...'

Then
Ugo became restless. 'I never like to leave the Rooms for too long,' he said, his voice low. 'And there's too many know about the gun-smithing for me to sit easy. If you've no objection, Tom ...' and off he went. But for all his virtuous, sensible talk, one of the brightest and liveliest of the grateful girls followed him out through the door, and Tom smiled, thinking Ugo would be lucky to see his own bed in Blackfriars tonight. Or would that be
unlucky
...?

Poley
leaned in close. 'When the Don gets back we've one more call to make before they close the City Gates.'

'Does
it need all of us?' asked Kate, to whom bodily risks and high adventure seemed to have lent a considerable appetite - one that even the shock of hearing Julius Morton was dead couldn't quite drive away. She stuck Tom's new dagger in her pottage and speared a chunk of beef which she proceeded to nibble daintily - she had become very dainty after he had showed her what the German blade could do.

'Aye,'
said Poley. 'I've a man the Don must meet and I need Tom to see what they do and to guard our backs and although I know you would be better at Scadbury House or Hunsdon House - or even, God save the mark - at Nonesuch, I doubt you'll leave us alone this night.'

'You
have the right of it,' she said. 'But now we have a little leisure and not too many ears, Poley, can you whisper something of this man I risked my back - and a good deal more, I think - to rescue? He says he is nameless and of little or no account. And yet he carries himself more like a courtier than a commoner.'

'And
speaks English after his fashion,' said Tom. 'Not many Spaniards do that.'

Poley
hesitated, looking round. Then, in the face of the combined enquiry of their four wide eyes, he began to give them details in a most unaccustomed fashion. 'He was Perez's man. When Perez was the King's personal advisor. He was landed then, and wealthy. But when Perez needed a poisoner, it was to Diego of Villalar he turned. And when Perez was forced to flee, Diego would not leave his family. For which crime he was brought to court, stripped of rank and honour and made a galley slave. There were many slaves in the galleys of the Armada and many of them were Spanish criminals. Our justice made no discrimination between the captains who laid the plans and the galley slaves that pulled the oars. And so he is here now and at our beck. The Master of all the Masters of Spain in the art of poisoning ...'

K
ate laid down the dagger at that, and Tom thought the information must have stopped her appetite at last. It may have stopped it for pottage, but the rich stew was followed by warden pears preserved in syrup and served with a syllabub.

'But
Perez like as not knew of his old friend's fate,' said Tom, thoughtfully. 'And when he looked over the lists of the Armada men - no doubt at the Council's own request, and if not their's at Lord Essex's - he knew the name at once. And so he has called upon Don Diego in the past, to discuss matters of health, security, herbs and poisons. And sends his new young Master in the Dark Arts to see the old man, and perhaps, to bring him a timely rest from the sad burdens of living.'

'The
old man's worked that out,' said Kate. 'And has a score to settle with Perez now; and with his creature Salgado of the two swords. And, perhaps, with whoever is currently employing him. So our old enemy is now our new enemy's enemy. And our enemy's enemy is our friend.'

'For
as long as it suits him,' said Tom. 'Have you read much of Machiavelli?'

'Who?'
asked Kate, all innocence. She wrinkled up her nose in apparent distaste at the perfidy they were discussing and Tom thought the conversation must at last have stilled her appetite. But instead she caught up the horn spoon she was also sharing with Tom. She dug into the fragrant richness of the pears and syllabub ecstatically. Then she saw Tom looking at her and grinned. 'Heart and stomach of a man,' she said. 'Though not, like Her Majesty, of a king.'