by David Field
‘He went after some priests what had been staying here. To a place called “Cambridge”, I think. Would that be right?’
Walsingham nodded. ‘I believe it may be, and thank you. God be with you during your lying in.’
‘You’re welcome,’ Mary replied with a grim smile as she was led away, and Tom looked enquiringly at Walsingham. ‘Cambridge is a big place, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, but it has only a few staunch Catholics well established enough to risk involvement in the smuggling in of priests. And one in particular. I’ll have to hazard everything on my belief that he may be the one to whose estate Giles has ridden, but if I’m wrong then there are others we can visit.’
‘We?’ Tom echoed. ‘Can’t I stay here and look after Mary?’ Walsingham shook his head vigorously. ‘What do you know about childbirth, compared with what you appear to know about where priests may be hidden? You’ll be riding with us, but first I need to send ahead, in case Giles has already got himself in above his head in matters he doesn’t fully understand. Wait here a moment.’
Walsingham strode into the room where the rest of the household had been given permission to sit on the floor, guarded by those who had ridden in with him. He pulled one of them aside – the biggest and roughest looking of them – and gave him a new set of instructions.
‘Robert, time to earn your keep. Ride hard north, to the estate of Sir Humphrey Audley on the south side of Cambridge, and do what you can to preserve the life of Queen’s Constable Giles Bradbury.’
‘No! Please! Not that! Mercy!’ Giles pleaded, not necessarily in pretence, as he felt the heat from the burning brand that was being held close to his opened buttocks while a heavy ruffian sat on each of his wide-apart legs, pressing them firmly to the floor. ‘Tell me what you want to know, and I’ll tell you! But God’s mercy, not that!’
A grinning face appeared before his where he lay face down on the floor, and he was conscious of the man’s rank breath as he asked his first question.
‘Who sent you here?’
‘Francis Covington!’ Giles yelled in a moment of inspiration. ‘Hold there!’ Audley yelled to his torturer from his seat in the corner of the room. ‘Leave off with that brand and sit the man upright.’
Heaving a massive sigh of relief, Giles allowed the blood to flow back through his body and hastily concocted the rest of his story as he was turned to face Audley. ‘What about Covington?’ Audley demanded, ‘and why did he send you both here and to Dunmow?’
‘I was supposed to be making sure that you were conducting the transfers in accordance with the instructions from our mutual friends,’ Giles gargled. ‘I was ordered not to reveal my identity, but to ensure that there was no risk of anyone being exposed.’
‘And of what interest is that to Covington?’ was the next question, but Giles could tell that he had Audley worried, and opted to maintain the uncertainty. ‘You have no need to ask me that, if you are true to the cause. But when I last met with him in Newgate, those were my orders.’
‘And what have been your findings so far?’ Audley demanded, and Giles managed a smile. ‘You caught me out, didn’t you? I can report back that there is no risk of our being discovered.’
‘Tie him up and take him down to the wine cellar,’ Audley ordered, and Giles was lifted by rough hands and forced out of the room, into the main entrance, along a rear corridor and down a flight of stairs. There was a brief delay while the Steward was located with his keys, then Giles was bustled between lines of bottles to the end of a long dank room where he was bound hand and foot, then tied in a standing position to a bracket set into the wall that was presumably intended to be the start of yet another wine shelf. The door closed behind the men who had brought him there, and he was left in total darkness, thanking God for sparing him from the hot brand but wondering why his make-believe story had not led to his immediate release.
The reason for this was Audley’s discontent that the overall management of the English end of the plot to flood the nation with Jesuit priests who would minister to the chosen had been left to a cringing nobody in the lowest area of London whose only claim to such an honour was his alleged loyalty to the true faith that had been demonstrated when he had betrayed members of his own family. The man Covington, or so Audley had heard, had no breeding, no pedigree and no connections among the nobility, so who was he to be granted such a privileged role in the glorious scheme to place the rightful Queen Mary on the throne of England, following the overthrow of the Anti-Christ Elizabeth?
This was surely a matter that should be entrusted to the highest born nobles in the realm, and he, Sir Humphrey Audley, could claim kinship with the Howard family that for generations had proudly produced Dukes of Norfolk. He was not content to receive orders from some low-born whelp from the stews, and he might best demonstrate his scorn and contempt for the man by hanging his spy. How dare the upstart Covington presume to question how matters were conducted at Cherry Hinton? Even if the rogue currently locked in his cellars had demonstrated that there were problems with the management of the secure house at Dunmow, was this not a matter best left concealed from Covington, in case it threw the entire network of willing nobles under suspicion? His prisoner must hang, but for the moment Audley had more important matters to attend to.
His first priority had to be the accommodation of the two new arrivals, Ralph Ireton and Edward Blount. They were both ordained priests from the Jesuit College in France, and they would ensure the preservation of the souls of all those in Cherry Hinton who still clung to the true faith, for which they risked persecution and death. Sir Humphrey had taken the necessary steps to minimise the risk of either, but both young men required to be shown their designated hiding places, made available by the excellent work carried out by Nicholas Owen before he travelled south to Dunmow. Audley called the men in from the garden where they had been taking God’s good air after their somewhat uncomfortable journey north, and showed each of them where they were to be hidden should the need arise. Then he invited both of them to conduct a welcome Mass in the Main Hall, to which the most trusted members of the household were invited, with armed men guarding the door and keeping a careful look out down the drive.
It was by one of these men that Sir Humphrey was advised that he had a visitor who claimed to have travelled north in search of a horse thief. He had the man shown into the kitchen and given bread and small beer, while he urgently ordered that all trace of the recent Mass be hidden from view before he had the man admitted to his Morning Room. He was tall and grizzled, and dressed as if for the Hunt. He lost no time in announcing his business.
‘Thank you for receiving me, Sir Humphrey,’ he smiled. ‘My name is Robert Higham, and I’m a Constable from down south. We’ve had trouble with a man who’s been gaining access to wealthy estates on the pretence of being a gardener, and then stealing horses. Ordinarily we wouldn’t make such an effort to track down a mere horse thief such as he, but during his most recent deception, at a place called Dunmow, a girl from the neighbouring village was violated and left for dead. Fortunately she seems to be recovering, but the description she gave of her attacker fits the horse thief, and I’m most anxious to secure him and bring him to justice.’
‘What sort of justice can he expect?’ Audley enquired, and his visitor grinned. ‘The sort to be found hanging from a local gallows.’
‘After trial?’ was the next question, and Higham’s grin became less pleasant as he replied ‘Not if I can get my hands on him first.’
Audley smiled. ‘I think we can be of mutual service, Constable. Earlier today my men had occasion to apprehend a man lurking around our stables. He gave the name “Giles Bradbury”, and he claimed to have been riding from Dunmow in pursuit of a horse thief. He’s aged about twenty-five or thereabouts, a large-built man with long flowing brown hair much in need of a barber. Could he be your man?’
‘He fits the description perfectly,’ Higham grinned again. ‘Do you have him securely held?’
‘In my cellar,’ Audley smiled back, ‘and since nothing would give me more pleasure than to see him hanged, would you care to undertake the process?’
‘Gladly, should you agree to say nothing about my avoidance of the prescribed due process,’ Higham agreed, at which point he was invited to stay for dinner while suitable arrangements were being made.
Giles look up and blinked as light flooded into his place of confinement with the opening of the door. He was untied from the wall, and his legs freed from their binds so that he could stumble back through the house, his hands still tied in front of him, on the insistent physical urgings of his two captors. He was pushed through the scullery door and out onto the rear lawn, where there was a large oak tree, and underneath it a farm cart with a horse harnessed to it. His suspicions were confirmed, and his bowels lurched, as he saw the rope hanging from one of the lower branches of the oak. Inside the wagon stood a man who looked vaguely familiar, although in his immediate terror Giles could not place him.
He was thrown roughly into the wagon by the men who had brought him up from the cellar, who were then verbally castigated by the man installed inside it. ‘It’s easy to see that you blushing violets have no idea how to conduct a hanging,’ the man advised them, then he turned his attention to Giles, untied his hands and ordered him to stand up and turn round.
‘Is everybody here who wishes to see what we do to horse thieves and rapists?’ he yelled, and received his answer from a red-faced Audley, who was standing with four of his bullies in the centre of the lawn. ‘Get on with it, man!’ he yelled.
‘First of all,’ Higham yelled back, ‘you should know that a man who’s about to be hanged should have his hands tied behind him, not in front! I need to attend to that oversight on your part, then the entertainment can commence.’ He took the rope and moved behind Giles, hidden from view by those on the lawn.
Giles felt something being pressed into his hand, and from memory it felt like the hilt of a knife. But there was so far no attempt to tie his hands, and he was puzzled.
‘Don’t I know you from somewhere?’ he enquired of his executioner, but was ordered to shut up and pay attention. ‘This is a knife, as you may have realised,’ the man mumbled as he tried to hide from others the fact that he was talking to a man he was supposed to be hanging. ‘In just a moment I’ll put the noose round your neck. Try not to shit yourself when I pull the wagon forward and leave you hanging; that’s when you grab the rope with your free hand and pull upwards to loosen the noose from round your throat. Then reach further up with your other hand and cut the rope. When you hit the ground, head for those trees to the side and keep running. Good luck.’
It all went as predicted, and Giles needed no further encouragement to pull hard on the rope and slash through it with the knife as he felt the rough hempen cord tighten round his throat. He hit the ground awkwardly and went over on one ankle, but as the spectators gave roars of anger and began to converge on him he found the strength to fight through the pain as he made it as far as the copse of trees on the boundary of the lawn and crashed through the foliage like a mad bull escaping from a market stall.
He kept running without looking back, and made it into some sort of cornfield in which the first shoots of the season were barely a foot out of the ground. Beyond it was another line of trees, and his damaged ankle finally gave out as he reached what proved to be the bank of a stream, which he gratefully rolled down and landed with a splash in water so cold that it seemed to kick his flagging heart into further action. Then with a stab of terror he felt a hand on his shoulder as he was dragged under the decaying trunk of a large tree that had fallen over the stream, and by which he was hidden from view from above.
He rolled over, expecting to come face to face with one of his pursuers, but instead he was lying next to his pretended hangman, who handed him a broken tree branch. ‘If they come this far, be prepared to use it. Constables always come equipped with staffs of office, do they not?’
‘How did you know I were a Constable?’ Giles enquired through labouring breaths brought on by his race for freedom, and the man smiled. ‘Did you imagine that you were the only Queen’s Constable in England? Robert Higham, pleased to renew our acquaintance. Suddenly Giles remembered.
‘You’re the feller what come with us down to that place on the Thames, aren’t you? The one what captured the next priest what landed there?’
‘That’s me,’ Robert smiled. ‘I’ve been a Constable along the lower reaches of the Thames for most of my life. Now keep quiet, so that we can hear anyone who comes after us.’
There had been no immediate pursuit, since Audley had unwisely elected to order all his horses to be saddled and led from the stable for his men to mount prior to making a thorough and painstaking search of the entire estate, which was so vast that it would be impossible for the two escapees to leave its confines before dark. He rode to the head of his men, and was about to command them to split up into groups of two and begin at the estate boundaries when his attention was drawn to another group of horsemen. They were riding in from the road to the south, and they appeared to be in a great hurry.
An hour later, he was the one bound hand and foot, staring disbelievingly into the stern countenance of another upstart, Cecil’s grubby spymaster Walsingham, who was explaining with obvious satisfaction that Audley had a choice between confessing his part in a treasonous plot against Her Majesty here and now, or delaying that moment until he had made the acquaintance of the torturers in the Tower. Audley denied any involvement in any plot, and made outraged protests when he was accused of harbouring Catholic priests. Walsingham turned to the stern-faced individual by his side and smiled smugly.
‘Tom, please make use of your recent experiences as a carpenter and prove this oily rat to be both a liar and a traitor.’
‘I’d be honoured,’ Tom replied drily as he led Walsingham and two of his men on a tour of the lower floor of the grand house. In the so-called Library he stared hard at a section of the panelling on the inside wall and nodded to himself before walking forward, and fiddling for a brief moment with something to the side of it. There was a sharp clicking sound, and the panel slid back to reveal the pale face of a young man in a long brown robe who had been in the act of fingering a rosary. The man was seized and dragged away muttering something in Latin, but Tom was not yet finished.
Having tested all the remaining walls in the Library he led the way into the Great Hall, where he stared for a moment at the panelling behind the top table, then smiled at Walsingham. ‘That middle panel looks newer than the rest. Put your fingers between the new panel and the one on its left until you feel a small catch of some sort. Then pull it down.’
Walsingham did as advised, and another priest was found on his knees, praying under his breath. A further lengthy search of the house having yielded no more hidden priests, they moved back into the entrance hall, where Tom performed his carpenter’s magic on the fresh panel under the central staircase and pointed to a box full of what proved to be implements of Catholic worship. He was in the process of being congratulated by Walsingham on his trained eye when there was a commotion behind them, and Tom turned. Then he burst into peals of laughter when he saw the state that Giles was in.
‘I hopes you won’t be asking either Lizzie or Mary to wash them clothes,’ he joked as the two friends rushed towards each other and embraced, while Walsingham enquired of Robert Higham whether or not there were any of Audley’s men still on the loose. Assured that they had all been flushed from their hiding places and rounded up, Higham was instructed to lock them all in the stables, with guards all around the building, then join Walsingham, Tom and Giles as they made free with their noble prisoner’s larder and wine cellar.
Two days later they were riding back south with their prisoners trussed together in a wagon when a rider approached them from the south. He jumped from his horse and ran towards the southbound party, coming to a halt beside Walsingham’s mount.<
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‘You may wish to delay your journey overnight at Dunmow, sir,’ the man advised him with a smile. ‘It’s only a few leagues further on, and there are matters that require the attention of you all.’
‘Such as?’ Walsingham enquired, and the man’s smile broadened.
‘Sir Henry is prepared to make a full confession, and to implicate the man in London who was behind it all, who you previously advised me is Constable Lincraft’s cousin. And Constable Bradbury has a two day old daughter.’
Giles gave a hoot of glee and kicked his horse into action without seeking anyone’s leave. As they watched his dust cloud disappear south, Walsingham turned to Tom.
‘Time for that cold revenge, my friend.’
The sun was beginning to sink behind the tenements of Aldersgate three afternoons later, as Tom and Walsingham walked at a measured pace down to the junction of Newgate Street and Paternoster Row. Further down the Row a contingent of eight Yeomen of the Tower in full uniform could be seen walking up towards them with halberds in their hands and swords at their belts. They met up at the entrance to the courtyard, the centre of excited attention for the ragged urchins who had been playing in the street. On a command from Walsingham the soldiers formed up in a semi-circle in front of the peeling front door and stood at full attention. Then Tom wiped a tear from his eye as he thanked Walsingham for this long dreamed of moment and knocked on the door.
It was opened furtively by a rat-faced man whose jaw dropped as he saw the armed guard. Then his eyes opened in fear as he recognised Tom.
‘Good day, cousin Francis,’ Tom smiled grimly. ‘I come with a message from my father and brother.’