He glanced up at Cecil. ‘Ready?’
Cecil nodded. ‘Ready.’
Rupert took the fuse from the bottom of the bag and began, carefully, to unravel it. Lambert’s seat, against the wood-panelled wall a few feet from the pulpit, was closest to the vestry door. The palace chapel had two vestries: one, the outward vestry, was on the north side and connected the chapel with the Great Hall. The other, the smaller of the two, was to the south, and opened on to Whitehall Palace Stairs and so the river. It was this second, smaller vestry that was key to their plans. Rupert had stained the long, thin fuse cord a deep brown, to accord with the dark oak beading of the wall. One end he affixed to the powder casket of the device beneath Lambert’s seat, the other he pushed through behind the panel that Cecil had unscrewed. As Cecil worked quickly to replace the panel, Rupert, on hands and knees, began laying the camouflaged fuse along the bottom skirting of the wall. They would run it beneath the vestry door and so to the outside where, just before the Lord Protector and his Council entered at the west door of the chapel, they would light it. The plan had been that Rupert and Fish would then leave – Fish to rally his Leveller friends, Rupert, or Mr Boyes as they still thought him, to rally his fellow Royalists. Cecil would remain behind, outside the vestry door, to shoot Cromwell should the Protector survive the blast and seek to flee the fire. That had been the initial plan, but Cecil’s bewilderment when face to face with Cromwell in Hyde Park had forced a change – he could not be trusted not to fail a second time, and their cause be lost. Fish, to his credit, had said he would remain behind and do it, but Rupert had his own debts to pay to Cromwell, and he would not stand amazed in the face of the tyrant when the time came to pay them.
The place was almost entirely in darkness. The sliver of new moon between the snow clouds gave little light. Cecil crouched above him, holding up a candle that he might see what he was doing. Snow was lying on the ground outside. Inside, the chapel was cold as a Puritan’s heart. Rupert’s fingers trembled a little. He told himself it was because of the cold. He had almost finished securing the fuse line around the other side of the vestry door. It would be easier from here on, few would pay attention to the skirting of the vestry. There were just a few yards left to go. And then they heard the sound of boots on the snow, and Cecil’s candle went out.
*
They went two abreast down the passageway between the pantry and the Great Hall. The outward vestry and the chapel beyond it were in darkness. Once past the Great Hall, Seeker positioned four men at the entrance to the outward vestry and motioned for the rest to follow him around to the west door. There, he took up position with three of the men, sending the remainder to the smaller vestry door that gave on to Whitehall Palace Stairs. At the count of thirty from their leaving the first group, they were to enter the chapel, leaving a man at each door.
At twenty-nine, Seeker raised his arm. At thirty, he dropped it. All three sets of doors to Whitehall Palace Chapel were forced open, and his men, heavily armed, poured in. Light from torches trailed over the walls, then spread up the chapel by degrees as candles in sconces were lit. The soldiers were well ordered, yet everywhere there was movement in shadows, everywhere noise in a place that moments before had been silent and still. He himself stopped at the bottom of the chapel. His eyes swept the rows of pews, the galleries above, the choir ahead of him where Cromwell and the Council were to gather to hear the sermon. He listened through the clattering of boots on flagstone floor and the clanking of arms for some other noise, the noise of breathing, of something that did not wish to proclaim itself, the noise of a thing hidden.
Seeker’s flintlock pistol hung in its holster at his waist, but a pistol could be a slow thing to use, and was not always to be relied upon: he preferred his mace with the shaped steel flange and conical finial. His old sergeant, who had carried it around the bloody fields of Germany, had gifted it to him at Dunbar, the sergeant’s last battle. Seeker liked the weight of it hanging from his wrist, liked the way the shaft, with its worn, twisting pattern of leaves and flowers, fitted in his palm. Hand to hand, face to face, man to man – that was what the mace was for. Let them keep their muskets: Seeker liked to look his enemy in the eye. He turned his wrist and wrapped his fingers around the mace.
Suddenly, there was movement ahead. An arm shot out from behind the pulpit and a musket was discharged. To his left, one of his men went down, clutching an arm. Seeker and three other soldiers were then running towards the pulpit when the sound of another shot filled the air, this one coming from the left-hand side of the choir. In the ensuing confusion, a man sprang from behind the pulpit, sword drawn, and made for the south vestry door. Just at that moment, the door swung open and another soldier ran in, sword also drawn, and planted himself in the fugitive musketeer’s path. The fight that ensued was brutal and without compromise, as it had to be, the rebel giving all or nothing for lack of a choice. He had clearly been a soldier and he handled his sword as one who knew what it was to fight for his life. For all that, he was no match for an opponent who was still a soldier and who drilled every day. Seeker had no fears over who would prove the victor. ‘Take him alive!’ he shouted, over the din of clashing steel. The shout appeared to distract the plotter just momentarily, but that was enough: the mildest turn of his head had left him exposed, and the point of his opponent’s sword moved quickly across his face and removed the end of his nose. The maimed man dropped his sword and fell to the floor clutching his face as blood poured through his fingers and down his arm. Before he could reach across the floor for his dropped weapon, a second soldier had kicked it out of the way and was yanking his arms back behind him, and fitting manacles.
Seeker registered all this as he ran the remaining distance up the chapel to the choir, from which the second shot had come. This part of the chapel was not yet lit and was a confusion of shadows. Three of his men had already vaulted the side rail and their shouts and the sounds of the scuffle told him they had the second marksman cornered. As Seeker stepped over the side gate into the choir, the man dropped his weapon and a glance at the green felt hat and the shape of a head he had last seen disappearing out of Lawrence Ingolby’s Clifford’s Inn window told him this was John Cecil. He looked back at Cecil’s bloodied, manacled co-conspirator. ‘Fish’, of course. That was two: Cecil, ‘Fish’, but no ‘Boyes’. Seeker quickly scanned the opposite side of the choir. Empty. His men would have found anyone lurking in either vestry as they’d come in. He wheeled back around and took hold of Cecil by the collar, hauling the terrified man off his feet.
‘Where is he?’
‘Where is who?’
Seeker slammed him full body into the seat he’d been cornered at. ‘Rupert! Rupert of the benighted Rh—’
Cecil gasped and cowered. He started to shake his head but then realisation dawned and a smile broke over his face. ‘Rupert! Of course! I knew it! Who else could it have been? To think I served the Prince . . .’
Even as he said it, something over Seeker’s shoulder caught Cecil’s eye and he looked away too quickly. Seeker spun round. At first he saw nothing, but a slight scuffling sound made him look up. A man was standing on the wooden balcony of the organ gallery. He was as tall as Seeker himself, but slimmer, more graceful of build. No grey clockmaker’s wig now, but long chestnut locks falling to broad shoulders, a swordsman’s shoulders. The man was dressed in a simple linen shirt and buff jerkin and hose, a carpenter’s belt was at his waist, but he was no carpenter. From that belt Seeker could see protrude no chisel or rule, but the butt of a flintlock pistol and the shaft of a horseman’s hammer such as he himself kept at his saddle. Seeker’s mind went back to the last time he had seen this man, who had been no carpenter then either, but commander of the King’s cavalry and general of the Royalist forces. It was eleven years ago at Naseby that he’d first seen Rupert of the Rhine, son of the Winter King and Queen of Bohemia, brother of the Elector Palatine, and nephew of the executed King
Charles I. Seeker remembered him that day, twenty-five years old, swathed in a scarlet cape and leading the Royalist cavalry in one of the most gallant charges he had ever witnessed. Ordered to fight by his uncle, Charles I, Rupert had taken an army of nine thousand men out against one almost twice its size and had believed he could win. But he had not won; slaughter had been done that day. The lesson Seeker had left the field with, his horse picking its way through the bodies of Rupert’s martyred Blue Coats, had been that there were few things more doomed to end in disaster than valour without discipline.
Seeker’s hand went to his mace as Rupert’s went for his pistol. As Seeker drew back his arm to throw, he saw Rupert pull back the trigger on the snaphaunce pistol. As Seeker released the mace, there was a flash and then a bang from above. He ducked instinctively, but a crash behind him told him Rupert had fired not at him, but at the heavy candelabra suspended from the ceiling. The shot split the link from which the ornate arrangement hung and all – brass, wood and crystal – came smashing and splintering down on to the floor inches from his feet. Almost as Seeker registered this, he saw Rupert jerk to the side to try to avoid the mace before throwing out a rope from the organ balcony to loop around the chain of the matching candelabra further across the chapel. The mace just glanced the prince’s shoulder, and there was a moment of stillness before, to Seeker’s disbelief, Rupert leapt from the balcony rail. The Prince held momentarily to the rope he had slung around the candelabra as he swung, before releasing it a moment before that too came crashing down, and he fell the last ten feet to the floor, just behind the huddle where Seeker’s men were still securing the profusely bleeding Fish. There was no one now between Rupert and the vestry door, and only one man still on guard outside it. That was at least two men too few for such a fighter. The shock of the shattered chandeliers was still resonating around the marble-floored chapel as Seeker drew his dagger from its sheath and yelled at his men to come after him.
A twisted arm of burnished brass sticking out from one of the stricken candelabra almost sent Seeker flying on his face as he ran for the door of the small vestry, but he righted himself and called out a warning to the men coming behind him. At his first attempt to get through the door, it would not budge, and it took a shoulder charge to get it to open. Once through, he almost went over again, this time caught by the prone form of the man he had left to guard it. The man was conscious, but bleeding from a wound to the temple that looked to have come from the butt of a pistol. Seeker stepped over him and shouted that someone should see to him. The door leading from the vestry out on to the passage for Whitehall Palace Stairs had also been rammed shut, and it took the shoulders of two men this time to dislodge whatever Rupert had stuck against it.
Once out into the passageway, Seeker could hear the muffled sounds of boots running through the snow, which was now falling heavily. The sounds were getting more distant, and they were going in the direction of the river. ‘Get over to the Cockpit, tell Mr Thurloe what’s happened, and tell him Rupert’s headed for the river.’ Then the man, and his torch, were gone. Seeker ran too, in the direction of the river. By the time he got to the Whitehall Stairs, a boat, with Rupert in it, was already being rowed at speed towards the south bank. Seeker stifled a curse. The only other boat at the stairs was a small rowboat with a floating pallet, stacked with other pallets, attached, and no sign of its oarsman. All other vessels had been pressed into the service of getting the Lord Protector and his household to Hampton Court. The snow was lying, thickening on the steps. Every moment that passed was a moment more in which Rupert could disappear. Seeker flexed his shoulders and swung his axe down to sever the rope between the small boat and its laden pallet. He could wait no longer: there was nothing for it but to cross the river himself.
Twenty-Six
The Bear Pit
Seeker’s hands were frozen, and his face stung with the cold, but the snow was getting lighter, and what at first had looked set to be a blizzard had gradually let up. By halfway across the river, he could see Rupert’s boat ahead of him. The Prince was pulling not upriver towards Lambeth, where lights flickered through the snow from the palace windows, or further south to Tradescant’s as Seeker had thought he might, but north, towards the darkness of the marsh. There was something odd in the Prince’s rowing action, and Seeker realised that not only was Rupert alone, but he was also clearly injured.
With each pull on his oars, Seeker was gaining on the Prince, and by the time Rupert reached the other side, the distance between them had almost halved. The lamp Rupert must have taken from the vestry guard was a beacon to Seeker, marking out his quarry. Once on land, Rupert picked up speed, his injured arm hampering him less on foot than it had done on the water. Seeker redoubled his efforts to power himself across as Whitehall receded further behind him, and the cries of some of his own men as they commandeered a boat died away to nothing through the snow.
By the time Seeker reached the far side, the light from Rupert’s lamp was just an intermittent glimmer, but it was enough. The Prince was heading not on to the marsh but towards Bankside. It took Seeker a moment to adjust his stride to the snow lying underfoot. Large, fat flakes flew into his eyes and seeped through his boots as he ran, but he dared not take his eyes from that lamp for a moment, for fear of losing sight of it altogether.
Rupert was slowing by the time he reached Cupid’s Garden, and it wasn’t long before Seeker was able to make out the form of the Prince himself. They were almost within sight of the first straggle of houses along Bankside when Rupert looked back on his pursuer for the first time. Without hesitation, he hurled the lamp away from him and Seeker lost sight of him altogether. Seeker took a gamble that Rupert would not go onto the marsh and kept to the road. At last some light began to appear from the windows of the Bankside houses, and Seeker saw that his gamble had paid off, and that the distance between himself and Rupert was down to forty yards. The way the Prince was moving, he’d have him in less than two minutes. But then, just as he was about to pass Paris Garden, Rupert veered right and disappeared.
Seeker cursed and turned down the first alleyway he came to at Paris Garden. He was now amongst the high walls and back yards of the depths of Bankside. Rupert could have ducked in to any lane or doorway. Seeker stopped running and listened. There was sound everywhere – singing from a tavern somewhere, sounds of an argument nearer the river, a woman’s voice raised and a man’s in response, drunk and conciliatory. ‘Where are you, you German dog?’ Seeker murmured to himself, and then he heard it, the sound of feet landing from a height, of a man having cleared a wall. It sounded to be about three gardens away. It was difficult to tell in the darkness, but he knew he must now be very near the place where he and Thomas Faithly had found the bloodied remains of Joseph Grindle. And what was clearer to him now, on this snowy night, than it had been before was that he must be less than eighty yards from the site of the old Bear Garden.
Seeker vaulted a gate into the back yard he thought the noise had come from and stopped to listen. He tried to cut out the sounds drifting down to him from the Bankside, from the taverns and stews, tried to cut out the sound of a cat mewing to be let in, of pigs shifting and grumbling as they slept in their pen nearby, of a horse whinnying in its stable. He listened for movement, outside. Dogs huddled in their kennels, birds kept to their nests, rats sought warmth and better pickings indoors. Nothing. Nothing out in these back yards but the particular silence of snow relentlessly falling. His eyes were growing more accustomed to the outlines of the yard and its buildings, and he could just make out traces of bootprints in the snow, sliding and gradually being covered, leading from one side of the yard to the wall on the other.
Seeker was already standing on a barrel, and reaching to the top of the wall, when he heard it: a slamming, muffled by the snow, but a slamming all the same. It didn’t sound like a door, but a shutter or something of that sort. He gripped fast to the top of the wall and hauled himself over, droppin
g ten feet to land on the other side. His feet went from under him in the snow, and he lurched sideways, falling hard on to his side and hearing the crunch as the wooden gunpowder flask he wore at his belt split beneath him. The measure of powder spilled to the snow and was gone.
Seeker heaved himself up and cast about for where the slamming might have come from. The back door and windows of the place were firmly shuttered and no light coming from them, nor from the range of outbuildings. He looked at the ground, and there they were, bootprints. It didn’t make sense at first – they seemed to just disappear, about six feet from the far wall, and then he saw, a few inches from the ground, the handle of a hatch door, as for a coal cellar or some other underground store. Some snow had slid off it into a pile – it had very recently been opened. Seeker examined the ground around the door: only one set of prints, and they went nowhere but to the door before disappearing. He bent his head to listen. Nothing. Slowly, he began to raise the handle, and as he did so, a dim glow of light filtered out from the darkness below, illuminating not a coal chute but a set of steps. Again Seeker listened: this time there was something – a muffled sound. It was the sound of someone who had been bound with a gag and not quite silenced.
The Bear Pit Page 29