Once, after the Marignano campaign, Ryman was in Ferrara, and saw its duchess going in a grand procession to the cathedral. He recalled the name she had borne before her marriage: Lucrezia Borgia. He suspected that the little woman before him fancied herself cast from the same mould, but Thomas Ryman knew milkmaids in Dunwich who had more of the serpentine and allegedly murderous Duchess of Ferrara in them.
Ryman rose from his bow, glanced at Bleasdale, and saw that the falconer was grinning. Oh, he would support the duchess to the very hilt, and add a few embellishments of his own. If Ryman stayed where he was and argued the case a minute longer, he had no doubt that he would be in chains before sundown.
‘Then, my lady, I shall quit my position forthwith. If I may have permission only to remove my possessions from the house?’
She waved a hand, as though swatting away a particularly persistent fly, and made to turn away. Then, though, she turned back to him once again, a strange expression on her face.
‘No. No, on second thoughts, not. You have been insolent to the House of Howard once too often, Master Ryman. You will remain here at Kenninghall until my father or brother return to decide your fate.’
Both Norfolk and Surrey were on campaign in France; all of England knew that. If this vengeful harpy had her way, Thomas Ryman might be imprisoned at Kenninghall for months. Most certainly, he would miss going on the next expedition with Jack Stannard.
‘You have no power of arrest, My Lady,’ said Ryman, regretting the words as soon as they were out of his month. ‘And you forget the law of habeas corpus—’
Her cheeks flushed with rage.
‘Habeas corpus, sirrah? This is Howard land, I am the daughter of Howard of Norfolk, the sister of Howard of Surrey, and I am the good-daughter of the King of England. Habeas Corpus is for the crows, Master Ryman, not for the likes of Howards. And in any case, who talks of arrest here?’ She turned, a mock-questioning expression on her face, and Bleasdale grinned sycophantically. ‘You are my father’s retained man, and he will continue to retain you, aye, and pay you too – and how can a man be under arrest if he is being paid? It is just that I choose to retain you in a somewhat different manner. In a locked room, in fact.’
TWELVE
Southwold’s rage, its first attempt to obtain vengeance for Martin Raker, awaited a roke, one of the wetland fogs of that coast. On the second Sunday after Easter, a thick grey blanket duly settled over the Suffolk Sandlings, stretching far inland. The men of Southwold emerged after Mass from the great church of Saint Edward, went into alehouses, then returned to their homes and took up weapons. Punts and skiffs ferried them across the Blyth, with some then continuing on into the Dunwich river, where the tide was flooding. The men on shore made their way through fog-shrouded Walberswick, gathering the two dozen men from that town who were bent on avenging Anthony Maddox. Then they went down to the edge of the marsh fringing the high, dark trees of the Dunwich Westwood, and skirted their way southward, keeping the broad river and the Kingsholme beyond it to their left. They could hear the tolling church bells of Dunwich, and smiled at each other. The people of the ancient town would be at mass, or else in their homes, sheltering from such a foul day. The one place where they would not be was at work in the small shipyard by the Old Quay, where a new hull, almost complete, lay upon the stocks.
* * *
‘I win!’ cried Meg Stannard. ‘I found you! I am the Devil of the Doom, and I win again!’
Her little brother emerged from behind a knee timber in the hold, his face only just visible in the blackness.
‘I’m wet,’ said Tom. ‘I want to go home now.’
‘You didn’t want to go home when you won, and you were the Devil of the Doom.’
‘Want to go home now,’ repeated Tom, stubbornly.
‘We won’t be able to play here much more, you know. Father’ll launch her on the next spring tide, and she’ll be gone. No more hide and seek. No more playing at Barbarossa and Andrea Doria. And then I’ll marry the Prince of Wales and I’ll never play with you again, Tom Stannard.’
‘Want to go home!’
‘Boys,’ said Meg, petulantly. ‘You’re all so boring.’
Even so, she took her younger brother’s hand and guided him to the ladder. They climbed to the upper deck, and Meg looked at the scene around her. Spars and shrouds made ghostly shapes, appearing and disappearing by turns, both on the new ship and on the fog-shrouded half-dozen craft alongside the Dain Quay. Not a soul could be seen. There was no sound, other than the lapping of the tide against the timbers of the quayside and the screech of a seabird.
She frowned. Tom was pulling her arm, trying to draw her away, but she stood stock still, listening hard, squinting into the fog.
There were other sounds, she was sure of it. Not marsh birds; too big for them. Not cows that had strayed. Not the distant, muffled bells of Dunwich’s lost churches beneath the waves, which she was sure she sometimes heard in the middle of the night. Meg thought she saw ripples on the water, and heard something strange. What could be the cause?
Rowlocks. Oars cutting through water.
She could see the faint outline of a small, low hull, a hull that seemed to be crowded with dark shapes. One of the shapes coughed. And then she knew.
‘We need to run, Tom!’ she whispered to her brother. ‘We need to run like the wind!’
‘Is this a new game, Meg?’
‘Yes, Tom! A really important game! And we must be really, really, quiet! Come on!’
The two children climbed out onto the scaffolding, then swung themselves down to the ground and started to run toward the town. As they did so, the first of the Southwold men stepped ashore by the Old Quay, the fleeing Stannard children hidden from them by the fog.
‘The French!’ cried Meg, as she ran down the road from the harbour, past the decayed Customs House. ‘The French are landing!’
That, after all, had been the fear and expectation in Dunwich, if not in all England, for many weeks.
A few townspeople, on their way back from church, stared at her curiously, but took no action in response to her dire warning. Tom, with his shorter legs, was lagging well behind her now, but even so, he, too, was doing his best to raise the alarm.
‘French!’ he bawled. ‘Scots! Romans!’
Meg ran around a corner and collided with a woman coming the other way, carrying a basket of herbs.
‘Margaret Stannard!’ cried her aunt Agatha, gripping her shoulders and shaking her. ‘Is this a way to behave yourself on the Lord’s day? I’ll take you to your father for a thrashing, girl!’
‘But aunt, the French are landing! Hundreds of them! By the Old Quay!’
Agatha Stannard looked down at her niece, and took in her serious, urgent expression. Meg, she knew, was not given to lying. Nor was she given to sacrilege and blasphemy upon the Sabbath. Agatha had no offspring of her own, but she had a name as a healer, and had seen every mood and expression that the faces of children could muster. All that being so, Agatha decided, there was only one explanation for the girl’s behaviour.
‘Come, children,’ she said, as Tom hurtled round the corner, breathless. ‘Let’s to your father.’
* * *
The single tenor bell of Saint John’s tolled, followed by the equivalent bell of Saint Peter’s, then that of All Saints. From doors all across the town, men emerged onto the streets, cudgels, gutting-knives and staves gripped firmly in their hands. They moved like wraiths in the fog, all with one purpose, all in one direction. At their head marched John Stannard, sword in hand, Jed Nolloth, and William Girdler, the senior and by far the more valiant of the two bailiffs of Dunwich, a tall, gaunt figure whose frame belied his trade as a butcher. Beside them strode the unlikely figure of William Seaward, the eager young rector of Saint John’s, whose love of Christ and His message of peace did not prevent him cradling an ugly-looking club that served otherwise to kill the rats that infested the church.
The men of Dunwich mo
ved in one body down the High Street. They passed Agatha Stannard’s house, once her father’s, and Jack saw his sister standing, grim-faced, in the doorway, holding tightly to Meg and Tom. Jack nodded to them. The time to decide whether his daughter deserved punishment for taking her brother to play on the ship, or reward for raising the alarm, would come later.
He saw, too, the strange look that passed between his sister and Jed Nolloth. Some little time before, their father told Jack that, unaccountably, the shipwright was paying his court to Agatha. Peter Stannard gave him short shrift, notionally because Nolloth was nearly a quarter-century older than his intended, but chiefly because the old leper still hoped against all hope to find someone of greater rank, and above all of greater income, who would take such a plain and determined woman, very nearly the wrong side of thirty.
Further on, they passed the small tenement which belonged by inheritance to Thomas Ryman. It was locked and shuttered: Jack wished the old warrior was with them, but there had been no word of him since he returned to Kenninghall, and it was unlikely Ryman would be seen again in Dunwich until after the Howard household decamped to London at the end of the summer.
The fog was thinning a little by the time the Dunwich men reached the harbour. Jack could see men, strangers, upon the scaffolding around the new hull, hammering and cutting at the planking. Others were arranging faggots around the keel. Seeing the approach of the defenders, they were hurriedly attempting to light the pyres, but much of the timber was damp from the recent wet weather, and would not catch.
Between the ship and the oncoming army stood a line of invaders, armed with the same kinds of weapons as their opponents from Dunwich.
‘They don’t look French,’ said Seaward.
‘And don’t sound it,’ said Girdler. ‘Swear I’ve seen some of them before. That fat one – he’s the miller of Reydon, as God is my judge.’
‘French or Southwold,’ said John, ‘those plague-sores aren’t burning Dunwich’s ship!’
‘My ship,’ murmured Nolloth.
The men behind them growled their approval.
‘As bailiff,’ said Girdler, raising his voice, ‘I answer for the keeping of the peace in this town to Sheriff Drury, and above him, to the king himself. Now, boys, it seems clear to me that the breakers of Dunwich’s peace are those fellows, there, and our undoubted duty is to drive them from the bounds of our borough! So jammock the fuckers, my lads!’
Cheering erupted at the bailiff’s uniquely Suffolk permission to beat their opponents to a pulp, and the men of Dunwich surged forward.
Jack Stannard made for the supposed miller of Reydon, who stood his ground, swearing oaths of defiance. But the fat man was no fighter. He raised his club and swung it at Jack, but had no control over the attack. Jack, for his part, ducked low and slashed his sword across the miller’s ample gut. It was not a fatal wound, merely an ugly gash, but the miller howled as though he had been struck a mortal blow, and sank to his knees.
For a keeper of the peace and a man of God respectively, both Girdler and Seaward, to Jack’s right, were proving themselves to be remarkably ferocious fighters. Girdler had a hook-bladed bill, and was wielding it as easily as though he were scything corn. A thin youngster was coming at Seaward with a small blade, but the Rector of Saint John’s swerved away from the attack before landing his club on the side of the youth’s face, shattering the cheekbone. Jed Nolloth, meanwhile, swung his shipwright’s adze as though it were a battleaxe, and his opponents from across the Blyth fell away before him.
All around, more and more Dunwich men were coming into the fray, but the confined space meant that their opponents could still hold their own. Jack, though, had no thought of the men directly before him. He wanted to be at the whore-maggots who were trying to fire his ship, and those who were breaking its timbers.
The ship he intended to name Alice.
No other man on the strand bore a sword, so the Southwold men preferred to stand at a distance from Jack, blocking his path and stabbing at him with their bills, rather than engaging directly with such a fearsome weapon. Jack thrust, slashed, and parried, but could see no way of breaking the barrier of five billmen who stood between him and his ship. He wished as never before that Ryman was with him, and not at Kenninghall – the old soldier would know what to do.
But the old soldier had taught the young Jack Stannard. He had taught him countless lessons from the old battles, and the ways of the great warriors from Alexander to Bayard.
He had taught him of Hastings.
So Jack Stannard turned and ran. Seaward, a few yards away, stared at him in astonishment. But then Stannard turned back. Three of the billmen had come after him; the other two had sought out other opponents. In any event, the wall of bill-hooks keeping him from his ship was broken, just as William the Bastard had tricked the Saxon shield-wall into breaking on Senlac Hill. Jack charged the first billman, stabbing him in the right arm, parried a thrust from the second, and slashed the third across the face.
He was through, and running for the hull, where three separate fires were finally gaining some purchase, as was another upon the unfinished upper deck. He was aware of an ally at his right shoulder – a glance told him it was Seaward – and sensed there were others behind him. Everywhere upon the shingle adjoining the Old Quay, the men of Southwold and Walberswick were breaking. Those upon the scaffolding, seeing how the fight went, hastily climbed down and retreated into the fog. One, who was too slow, had his hamstring severed by Jack’s sword, and yelled as though to wake the dead. The firestarters, too, abandoned their kindling and joined the retreat.
‘Save the ship!’ cried Jack. ‘Water, now! Fetch pallings from the warehouses!’
With his sword, he began to fence with the nearest fire, knocking burning brands out onto the shingle. Girdler joined him, using his longer bill to good effect. Then more and more Dunwich men appeared, some with buckets filled with water from the river, some with large palling-sheets. They attempted to douse the fires, but even if they succeeded, the damage would be serious: the blaze on the upper deck was harder to reach than those set beneath the hull, and might yet consume the entire ship. Nolloth was on his knees, weeping, and Jack laid a hand upon his shoulder, then went round to the other side of the ship.
The men of Southwold and Walberswick were retreating along the Kingsholme, screaming oaths as they went. The men of Dunwich who were not employed in tackling the fires held their ground around their precious hull, staring silently after the attackers.
One of the retreating invaders was more forward than the others. He still spoiled for a fight, and had to be pulled away by some of his fellows. His feet dug into the shingle as he tried to resist their efforts. He was a very young man, probably not yet twenty. Jack had never seen him before, but the face was somehow familiar, although he was not sure why. It was the last face that disappeared into the swirling fog, the eyes wide with fury, the mouth still yelling at Jack.
‘We’ll bring you down yet, Stannard! You and your fucking damned Dunwich! I’ll have revenge for my father if it takes me until Judgement Day! I curse you. I curse your whole family, I curse your ship, I curse your whole shitting town. Remember my name, Stannard. Remember the name of Stephen Raker!’
THIRTEEN
St Paul’s Cathedral looked splendid in the strong May sunshine. Its tall steeple pointed the way to heaven, while its stout walls and brightly coloured windows, towering far above even the tallest buildings round about, provided reassurance of the eternal presence of God. To tell the truth, though, Will Halliday’s thoughts were of a somewhat less spiritual nature as he made his way toward Paul’s Cross, in the open space before the west front of the great building. Marion Bartleby, the young lady whose favour he sought, daughter of a prosperous master pewterer of Bassishaw Ward, was much given to frequenting the cathedral, and Will had received certain indications that she would be there today. With all the shipping having finally been despatched from the Thames, William Gonson was
in a rare mood of good cheer, and had awarded Will a half day’s holiday, which the young clerk intended to employ to its best advantage, even if that meant spending much of it in at least nominal prayer.
A great procession, the climax of Rogationtide, was meant shortly to be entering the cathedral, prior to a service of thanksgiving for the victory in Scotland, while also imploring God’s blessing upon the king’s ongoing and undoubtedly righteous war with France. Will, who spent most of his waking hours employing earthly means to achieve that same end, would have wanted to take part in this even if he had not had another motive for so doing, and a large crowd had gathered, lining the road all the way down to the Lud Gate and the bridge over the Fleet river beyond. As was the custom on such occasions, wine was being dispensed with seemingly limitless liberality from the many serving stations that had sprung up all over the City. As Will moved through the throng, though, he heard whispers and rumours, not all of them fuelled by the wine. Something different was going to happen today, people were saying. Something new. Something important.
He caught sight of Marion Bartleby, and made his way through to her side. Of course, she had an attendant, but Will had encountered her before: a large old woman who once served as Marion’s wetnurse, but who was now, thankfully, entirely deaf. In any case, the oldster looked favourably upon Will, which Marion’s father and mother certainly did not; it seemed he reminded her a little of her only lover, who had perished on Flodden Field thirty years before.
Will bowed to both in turn, and smiled.
‘Mistress B-B-Bartleby.’
‘Master Halliday. Such a surprise.’
She was some years younger than him. Red hair, just protruding from beneath her gable hood, framed a small, pale face, which might have been stern but for her delightful, slightly lop-sided, smile. She wore a dark green gown which concealed most, but not all, of the curves that so interested Will Halliday.
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