The message might be a trap. But what if it was genuine? Jack missed Ryman – his steady advice, his stout sword arm. And it was the sort of thing the old man had done before, when he had a matter of confidence to divulge. No, Jack could not ignore the summons. Saying his farewells to the children, he went to the stables of the Pelican in its Piety and hired a horse for two days. The road to Blythburgh took him down Saint James Street, past the leper hospital, and he called briefly on his father to let him know what he was about. Peter Stannard was even more sceptical than Joan had been, and implored his son to take some men along with him. Jack dismissed his concerns. If the message truly was from Ryman, he argued, then he must have good reason to insist that Jack should come alone. And if it was a trap, Blythburgh was a busy place, if decayed from its ancient glories, and well disposed toward Dunwich; there were bound to be worthy men aplenty in the White Hart or the other taverns and alehouses of the place to come to his aid. The old leper was unconvinced – a goose chase, boy – but Jack dismissed his concerns, told him to light a candle for his safety in the hospital chapel, and rode on, out onto the ancient highway known as King John’s Road. The track, deeply rutted by cartwheels, ran through the thick forest of Westwood, then out onto Dunwich Heath, where the dense purple gorse was slowly losing its summer glory.
The first that Jack saw of his destination was the tower of Blythburgh’s great church, one of the most prominent landmarks in the entire area. Similar to All Saints at Dunwich, but much larger, it towered over the marshes and the little town that stood at its foot. Jack arrived just after four, nearly two hours ahead of the time specified by Ryman, so he stabled his horse at the White Hart and went into the inn for some bread and ale. There was no sign of his old mentor; he had not expected there to be. But there was also no sign of anyone suspicious. The customers seemed to be the usual mixture of bargemen, carters, ploughmen and travellers, and none seemed to take any special interest in Jack Stannard. A couple of fellows of his acquaintance nodded their acknowledgments. It all boded well.
As the clock in the church tower struck six, Jack made his way through the lanes to the priory. This had been a house of the Augustinians, and well respected in the area for its good works and charity, but like all the rest, it had been swept away by royal order. The buildings still stood, although some of the outer walls had been robbed for stone for houses in the town, while the lead had been stripped from the roofs to refurbish the Duke of Suffolk’s palace at Westhorpe. The new owner had not yet converted it into a house, or whatever else he intended for it, and in the meantime, the buildings were open to the elements, a playground for bats and children.
Jack walked carefully through the gloom of the church, stepping over the great stones that had fallen from the walls. Then out into the cloister garth, overgrown with grass and weeds, treading carefully between the overgrown graves of long-dead monks. Jack shivered. He chided himself, for it was a cold evening, perhaps set for the first frost of the season. Even so, he felt a sudden pang of doubt over his decision to come alone. Instinctively, he felt for the hilt of the knife in his belt, although he knew full well it was there.
He called out:
‘Master Ryman!’
No answer.
‘Thomas Ryman!’
There was a movement across the way, in the cloister proper. It was too dark to see whether it was Ryman, or the shade of a long-dead monk, or someone else entirely. Jack peered into the gloom, trying to make out the figure who was moving into the open.
It was not Thomas Ryman. It was Stephen Raker.
Jack’s immediate reaction was not surprise, nor fear. It was that same strange sense of half-recognition he had felt when he first clapped eyes on his young enemy, that day upon the Kingsholme after Southwold’s attack on the hull of the Alice.
A half dozen other fellows emerged from the cloisters, entirely surrounding Jack. All, no doubt, were Southwold men, or else Walberswick. All were strongly built, all had hostile expressions, and all were armed. All were enemies of Jack Stannard and Dunwich. Jack sensed at once the enormity of the mistake he had made, and the likely imminence of his death.
‘John Stannard,’ said Raker, smiling in an almost friendly manner. His voice was educated, and carried little trace of Suffolk; Jack recalled his father saying once that the Raker boy had been sent to the cathedral school in Norwich. ‘My uncles said you’d never swallow my little tale. But I’ve grown impatient, you see, and said to him that nothing ventured was nothing gained. All the ways I’ve put in train to bring you and Dunwich low, to raise Southwold to its rightful place… so much time, so much money, so many little acorns planted. But at bottom, the simplest will be the quickest and the best, especially as you’ve been so obliging as to play into my hands. So say your last prayers, John Stannard. You’re bound for Purgatory before the last of the light dies.’
Despite the hatred and threat in his words, there was a song-like quality to Raker’s speech. Perhaps he, too, had sung in a choir-stall.
No time for such an idle thought.
Jack drew his knife from his belt and crouched into a fighting posture. It would be a hopeless fight, one against seven, but if he could take Raker with him, then he would not die in vain.
Raker drew out his own blade, and advanced.
‘My lads, here, could rush you,’ he said, almost pleasantly. ‘We could have you dead in an instant, all our blades in you at once, like a stuck pig. But I’d rather it was slow, Stannard, as my father’s hanging was slow. Like my mother’s death but lately, still grieving for him, was slow. And I’d rather it was by my hand. My hand alone. An eye for an eye – a Stannard life for a Raker life.’
Raker’s men moved forward slowly, so slowly, relentlessly closing the circle around Jack. He stepped forward suddenly and stabbed at one, catching him in the arm, but that only left Jack’s flank and back exposed. The men rushed in, grabbing his arms, forcing the blade out of his hand, and gripping him firmly. There were growls of triumph and hatred.
Raker walked forward and stood before Jack, toying with his blade. Then he raised it, and pressed the tip under Jack’s chin.
‘I shall slice you, John Stannard,’ he whispered. ‘Piece by piece. As a boy, I loved nothing better than watching the butchers slicing the cuts from the carcasses, so I know the business, you see. And you know what? I’ll send your parts back to your father, the old leper in Dunwich, one at a time. And then, one day, I’ll do the same to your son and your daughter.’
Jack attempted to cry out in the hope that someone, anyone, was within earshot, but one of the men holding him clasped a hand across his mouth. Raker pressed the tip of the knife closer to his flesh, making a nick and drawing blood.
‘I hope my father laughs when he sees you join him in Purgatory, John Stannard. I hope he laughs long and hard, and then longer and harder still when he ascends to Heaven and watches you descend into the fiery pit.’
Raker moved even closer. He whispered in Jack’s ear, too quiet even for the men holding the prisoner to hear.
‘And I hope my mother’s soul will finally be at ease, my dear brother.’ Jack’s eyes widened in disbelief. ‘You didn’t know? The old leper never told you? She confessed to me, upon her deathbed, not a week past – the hurt, the shame, she had borne for all of my life. So ask him about it, the leper, when he joins you in Hell.’
Stephen Raker stepped away, looking at Jack with a strange expression of triumph and hatred united. Jack could say nothing, and not only because of the hand over his mouth. He knew in his heart that Raker’s shocking revelation could only be the truth; for he now knew why the fellow’s face had seemed so familiar, when he first saw him on the Kingsholme, during the attack on the Alice, and then again a few minutes earlier.
Stephen Raker bore more than a passing resemblance to Jack Stannard’s long-dead elder brother, Adam.
Raker spoke loudly for the benefit of his men.
‘Time for Southwold and my father to be avenged, boys.
Time to make the first cut, I think. The first of very many. What do you think, lads? His cock first, or else a finger or two?’
Raker moved his blade down toward Jack’s groin, very slowly, but inexorably. Laughs and growls came from the Southwold men. A couple of them cried obscenities.
‘This was a house of God,’ said a new voice from the shadows, suddenly, shockingly, but very calmly. ‘A holy place. To some, it still is. And you’ll kill no man here today, Raker.’
Thomas Ryman stepped out of the darkness of the cloister, his sword in his hand.
‘Ryman,’ said Raker. ‘Which circle of hell spewed you forth?’
‘Behold, a Southwold man who can read Dante. A Southwold man who can read anything at all. The Lord be praised indeed. Now drop your blade, boy, and release my young friend, there.’
The man of Raker’s who was closest to Ryman rushed at him, reckoning that his youth and speed would get him past an old man’s feeble reflexes. The speed with which Ryman’s sword came up, and then thrust deep into the fellow’s chest, disabused him in an instant.
Ryman calmly withdrew his blade from the dying body, not even bothering to glance at it as it fell to the ground, then made a beckoning gesture with his left hand. Half a dozen men emerged into the cloister garth. Jack recognised all of them. They were Dunwich men: two were distant kin of the Stannards. All were armed with a variety of blades and cudgels.
‘I’ll kill him before you can touch me, Ryman!’
‘True. Oh, very true indeed, Master Raker. So you could. But you’ve already got one man dead, another with a wound in his blade arm, so the odds are heavily against you. And I have this sword, a better weapon than any other in this place, just as I know how to use a blade like this better than any man here, as I don’t doubt your uncles told you long ago. So trust me in this, Stephen Raker – holy ground or not, I’ll happily use it to spill your guts out of your worthless body. So release Master Stannard, there, and be thankful I’m letting you escape with your miserable lives. Until another day, at any rate.’
Jack was close enough to Raker to see the fury and indecision in the man’s face – his brother’s face, if Stephen Raker’s impossible, terrible words were true. The tip of the knife was still pressing against Jack’s flesh. But then, almost imperceptibly at first, Raker reduced the pressure. Finally, he withdrew the blade altogether, nodded to his confederate to release his grip on Jack, and with evident bad grace, beckoned to his men to follow him out of the priory ruins.
The Dunwich men came up to Jack, grinning and slapping him on the back. Ryman, though, remained apart, merely nodding at his sometime pupil.
‘Too trusting, Master John Stannard. How often did I teach you that?’
There was no anger in Thomas Ryman’s voice, only quiet disappointment.
Jack could barely think. Stephen Raker. His brother. How on God’s earth could that be so? But he could not tell Ryman. Not here, not now. With an effort, he made himself answer his old teacher’s question.
‘I wanted the message to be from you. I made myself believe it had to be from you. But how did you know I was here?’
‘I must have come into Dunwich by Middlegate almost as you were leaving by Saint James Street. Your daughter and Goodwife Cowper told me of the false message, then I called upon your father, whose note of hand was enough to supply men and horses. I could have brought a small army of Dunwich men willing to come and save you, but I knew speed was all.’
Jack silently nodded his thanks.
‘But where have you been all these months? We thought you dead, Thomas Ryman.’
The old man sighed.
‘That, my friend, is a long story.’
And that night, as the men of Dunwich slept in the empty rooms of the sometime prior’s residence, Thomas Ryman told it: of how the capricious whims of a slip of a woman, and then of a mere boy, had imprisoned and then freed him. In turn, Jack Stannard told him of the Boulogne campaign, of his sightings of the king, and of Raker’s apparent attempt to suborn Simon Bullbrooke.
‘Raker is a vengeful young man,’ said Ryman. ‘Determined, too. He’ll have other schemes in hand, we can be sure of that.’
‘Aye, he admitted as much to me when he had me in his power. God willing, though, we’ll put paid to all of them, especially now you’ve returned. You’ll come back to Dunwich, and sail with me next summer?’
Ryman shrugged. In the dim light of a single candle, he looked far older than he was, the single flame picking out every line, every scar, every ancient dagger-nick on his face.
‘I can hardly go back to Kenninghall – at least, not until I have a chance to lay my case before the duke or the earl. So yes, Jack, for now I’ll return to Dunwich, and go on campaign again. I’d hoped my campaigning days were behind me at last, but Investigabiles sunt viae Domini.’ The old man chuckled, convinced that if his life, and especially the last few months of it, proved anything, it was that God did, indeed, move in mysterious ways. ‘For one thing, your father wants me to watch over you, to ensure you get safely to the altar and your new bride.’
‘Ah. He told you, then.’
‘You don’t have the tone or appearance of a man in the throes of passion, John Stannard.’
‘That, Master Ryman, is also a long story. A very long one.’
But even as he smiled, Jack knew that he had matters to discuss with his father, and that of his proposed wedlock with Mistress Jennet Barne was the very least of them.
TWENTY-FOUR
The leper of Dunwich sat before a blazing fire within the infirmary of Saint James, reading a tightly bound book that his son knew to be a volume of the works of Cicero. He did not turn as Jack entered the room.
‘Ryman saved you, then, boy,’ said Peter Stannard. Apart from a slight hardening of the rasp in his voice, it was impossible to detect whether he felt anything at all at his son’s escape. ‘God’s providence, that he should come back when he did.’
‘And God’s providence that Stephen Raker should tell me he is my brother.’
The leper looked up from his page of Cicero, gazed into the flames for a moment, then closed the book and placed it on a stool.
‘I heard she’d died,’ he said. ‘I paid for prayers to be said for her at John’s. So she told him, then, at the last. Never thought she would. She never told Martin, for certain, although I think he had some inkling, some suspicions over all these years. But he thought he had cause enough agin me as it was. The number of times I’d thwarted him in one or other of his schemes… And there was the matter of your mother, of course.’
‘It’s true, then? And yet you never saw fit to tell me?’
Peter Stannard bristled, as he had done in times past just before erupting into yet another tirade against Jack. Never answer back, boy. Never question your father, boy. Ephesians Six, boy. But now the shoulders merely slumped into a feeble shrug.
‘What good would it have done to tell you, boy? Would you have gone over to Southwold, cried “hail, brother, well met!”, and carved a roast ox with him? What would he have done, do you think, other than try to put a blade in your guts so much sooner than he has? Do you think he would happily acknowledge you as your brother, boy, when all his fortune, all his rank within that town – Christ’s nails, bailiff at twenty! – all of that depends upon his being the lawful son of Martin Raker?’ Peter Stannard shook his head. ‘All best forgotten. I thought Sindony Raker believed so, too, but they say Martin’s death unhinged her, made her starve herself to death. And at the end, she told the lad. Women and secrets, boy, women and secrets.’
‘How?’
‘How did I come to father him? Apart from in the obvious sense? You really want to know?’
‘Do you not owe it to me?’
Something that might have been a sigh escaped from Peter Stannard’s mouth.
‘I owed it to you to keep this knowledge from you, boy. There’s enow bad blood between Dunwich and Southwold, between Stannard and Raker, without stirrin
g a little hemlock into it. What purpose would it serve, for you to know?’
Jack stared at the old leper, and sensed how little he really knew this man, his father. Over the years, he had feared him, envied him, hated him, but never truly known him. Would he, too, in time become like Peter Stannard: closed and bitter, secretive and sickly? He prayed not. But he knew that, in one sense, he was already very, very like his father.
The younger Stannard, too, knew how to drive a hard bargain.
‘What purpose? The purpose of my marrying Jennet Barne, Father. You want that. I want this. A simple trade.’
Peter Stannard turned a little, to look at his son more fully. He nodded and smiled, although it was barely possible to tell that his broken lips had moved.
‘Your grandfather told me, when he was starting to fail, that there comes a day in every man’s life when the roles of father and son are reversed. And behold, the babe who spewed all over me when first I held him in my arms now becomes my master.’ The leper beckoned for his son to sit, and Jack perched on the stool, placing the copy of Cicero in his lap. ‘August of the year ’twenty-four, Jack. We’d had twenty barks in the Iceland fishery that year, Southwold and Walberswick another twelve. What a summer that was! Such catches, it seemed as though the fishermen apostles themselves were driving the fish into our nets!’ Jack was startled at this glimpse of the father he had known so rarely in his childhood: a man who could, perhaps as often as twice or thrice a year, laugh and be happy. ‘So we returned well content, until we struck one summer storm after another. Martin Raker’s ship fell by the wayside first, forced to take shelter and repair in Orkney with two or three others. We of Dunwich were nearly home, though, almost off the Ness of Lowestoft, when another storm blew up.’ The old man closed his eyes, and Jack sensed that he was there again, young and whole, recalling every moment. ‘The Virgin’s Falcon, old Sanders’ ship, ran aboard us, shattered our larboard quarter and the rudder. I managed to run us onto the beach between Kessingland and Covehithe. We salvaged as much as we could, then made our way down the Reydon road into Southwold. I should have known better, of course, should have taken the longabout way through Blythburgh…’
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