That done, he left his prey on the forest floor with his hands and feet tied together and returned to the road. No one, thankfully, had stolen the horse. He ripped a shred from his shirt and, using the diamond pin, he affixed it to tree. A fitting marker, he thought. An end and a beginning. He rode for the city as the the flat spring daylight gave its last gasp, and the sweet air turned musky.
It took some asking around, but eventually he found his way to the grand house in which the countess of Northumberland was apparently living like an exiled queen. Acre hovered around the servants’ entrance at the back. No one paid him any attention, except for a singing maidservant who was laying what looked like a baby’s garments on a hedge to dry. He ignored her and continued to wait. When twilight had come on, he managed to gain the attention of a clerk as he stepped out to piss into the canal. ‘Whatever you’re selling, man, we’ll have none of it.’
‘Not selling,’ said Acre. Bullishness rather than charm, he had decided, was key. ‘Looking for a man. Owes me money. Name of Cottam.’
Acre thought a change came over the clerk, but the man’s voice, when he spoke, was perfectly normal. ‘I’m afraid you won’t see that money, and you’ve no use waiting around here begging it.’
‘He’s not here?’
‘He’s … he’s indisposed.’
Acre’s mask slipped, the contained rage of the previous days bursting free. He grabbed the man by the collar and lifted him from his feet. ‘Where is he?’
‘He’s in prison – he’s locked up – a thief, a plotter! Let me go.’
‘Here? He’s locked up here?’
‘Yes! Yes! Let me go!’ Acre continued to hold the man, who tried to kick him. Without thinking about it, he returned the favour, kneeing the struggling clerk hard in the groin. So, he thought, Jack Cole’s wife had brought her poison here. That complicated matters. He might continue as planned, luring her out, or demand that his brother go free in exchange for Jack Cole’s life.
He did not give it much thought. The diamond plot was dead – it was exposed. Adam was dead and their mother was dead. William was a greedy man, and he had never shown the same kind of love and understanding towards him as they had, not when they were lads and not since. Acre found he did not much care if his eldest brother went the same way as the Cottam couple who had burned in their beds. ‘Find a woman in that house,’ he growled, close to the man’s face. ‘A woman called Cole. Tell her that her husband is alive. Ride out on the road through the Bulskampveld, tell her. Alone. I’ll be waiting. If she doesn’t come, he dies. If she brings anyone, he dies.’ He let the clerk slide to the ground, gibbering. ‘And then,’ he added, ‘change your clothes. You’ve pissed yourself, you filthy beast.’ The clerk began half-crawling, half-bounding, back into the house.
He watched the house from the front awhile, hoping to see the tumult as horses were raised and the woman sent. Probably, he thought, they were debating what to do – how to try and trick him. They would fail. If they organised some mounted force and he ended up having to kill Cole and leave the wife to breathe another day, so be it. She could not last long, a foolish woman in a foreign country. As he watched, irritated and, he was loth to admit, unnerved by the lack of activity, a cold voice inside his head reminded him that the woman had somehow evaded his mother, and the husband had evaded him. As much to silence the voice as anything else, he took his horse and took the road back out of town.
The turning was hard to find in the dark and made more difficult by the fact that his marker had been stolen. He had half-expected it, of course – he had been lucky enough that the horse had not been taken when he was digging the grave. This time he took the beast part of the way into the brush before tying it to a felled stump and going in to check that nothing had happened to Jack Cole in his absence. Sure enough, the fellow was lying there by the edge of the grave; the most he had managed was to roll over onto his side.
Acre moved over to him. ‘If your wife wants you, she will come. And when she comes, you will watch her beg for mercy. You will watch her–’
His words became a high-pitched scream as pain shot through his leg – the same leg that still throbbed occasionally from its turned ankle. But Cole was still on the floor, he thought, confused. He looked down. An arrowhead was protruding through his burst breeches. Someone had shot him. As he stared dumbly at the unexpected wound, he heard a woman’s voice. ‘Now, Jack!’
The prone man suddenly stretched out an arm – unbound – and yanked hard at Acre’s bad ankle. He stumbled, tripped, and fell headlong into the clothes chest at the bottom of the grave.
8
‘Is he dead? I was aiming for his head,’ cried Amy. ‘Can you see, Jack – is he dead?’
They had barely had time to speak since Amy had found him. He had heard the crackling of footsteps as he lay with his face buried in greenery and assumed that his insane captor had returned. Hope had risen when he heard her voice, to be replaced by confusion when she said, ‘lie still, sweetheart – I’ll untie you. Pretend you’re still down. And throw him down when I say.’
Amy came stepping across the forest floor from where she had concealed herself, wraithlike in the gloom. ‘I’m no shot even in good light. Is he dead?’ Together, they peered over the edge of the grave. The man who had been calling himself Acre was very much alive, though on his backside, pulling the arrow from his leg. He made no noise as he did so.
‘Alive,’ gasped Jack. Speaking was still painful. ‘How did you … what happened?’
‘Later, I’ll tell you later. We have to bury him.’
‘But he’s … still alive.’
‘That’s too bad.’ She had picked up the discarded shovel. Below them, the man tried to stand and fell back. Instead, he began scratching weakly at the sides of the wooden chest, reaching up to the earth walls above him.
‘Shouldn’t … shouldn’t we kill him first?’
‘I’m not climbing down there. He’s tried to kill you – would have killed us both. And God knows how many others.’
‘But we can’t … it’s not …’ Jack was too dazed to think properly. In his mind, there seemed something wrong about burying the man alive, even though that was probably what he had intended for them. There was something inhuman about it. Killing him outright, in self-defence – that would have been fine. Necessary, even. To have him at their mercy and then slowly pile earth on him as he lay wounded, though … what did that make them?
‘Would stabbing him in the heart first make him any less dead, in the end?’ asked Amy. ‘Or giving him to the hangman?’
‘But … for honour’s sake, shouldn’t we …’
‘Hell with honour. What honour would he have shown you? Or me? If I’d got him in the eye would that have been honourable?’
‘Give me the shovel,’ said Jack.
Together, husband and wife began scooping and pouring dirt over the scowling creature who lay on his back, choking and gasping as it rained down on him, in the grave he had dug himself. ‘He’s saying something,’ said Jack. ‘Shut up, shut up, shut up!’
From the bottom of the grave, the wounded man was hissing. ‘Demons. Monsters. Look at me. Look at what you do.’
‘Ignore him,’ said Amy. ‘Don’t listen.’ Lacking a shovel, she was dropping and kicking mounds of dirt down into the grave. ‘Where’s the lid? Of the chest, where’s the lid?’
Jack began scrabbling in the undergrowth until he found it. With him taking one end and Amy the other, they stood at either end of the grave and dropped it down. ‘No!’ cried the stricken man from below. ‘Not the dark!’
The lid did not strike home perfectly, but it covered the fallen man well enough. ‘Dirt’ll do the rest,’ said Amy. ‘Weight it, I mean.’ They fell again to filling in the hole with mud and stones.
When they had finished, they stood staring at the mound. ‘How … how long can he be alive down there?’ Jack asked, wiping sweat from his forehead and leaving a dark stain.
‘
I don’t know. Not long. Probably dead already. I hope. I keep thinking his hand is going to pop out of the ground.’
Jack could not see her face in the dark, but he put an arm around her. ‘He’s dead. A bad way to go.’
‘What are we, Jack? What are we to have done this?’ She shook her head, not waiting for a response. Instead, she provided her own. ‘We had to. We had to do it. He deserved it.’
He did not answer. Instead, he kissed her hard on the top of the head, and then took her by the lips. They trudged out of the forest and took the dead man’s horse back towards the city.
***
Amy explained what had happened on the weary, moonlit ride.
A Spanish soldier visiting the countess reported that he had seen a strange man carrying a bound prisoner by the side of the road. The news had spread like wildfire through the household – especially because the soldier had himself come from the duke of Alba and knew of no Dutch prisoner.
‘I was all in a panic,’ she said, her hands clasped around his waist. The evening’s events seemed to have taken something out of her. ‘I forced myself in, begged the countess for information. Offended her, I think.’ She paused to yawn. ‘And confused the Spaniard. You should have seen his face. But he said he’d take me to where he’d seen the man. He was leaving tonight anyway. Had only come to say that she had promise of a house in Malines if she wanted it.
‘We were all ready to leave. Then Kat came in and said there was a man outside who looked like Cottam.’
Jack gave a hoarse laugh. ‘Yeah. Cottam. That’s who he reminded me of. I knew the face looked familiar. I was coming to warn you all of him when that mad dog got me.’
‘But he was alone. So we went anyway, right away. The soldier, he let me down when he saw there was no one about and I told him to go his way. I thought if he had you somewhere out there, I could get you before he got back.’ It was her turn to laugh. ‘And I remembered that bow, the one the countess made me practice with last year when she wanted me to look a lady. Never was any good at it. But I thought if I saw him coming on the road, I could get him before he could touch us. Then … well, you know.’
‘I know you saved me. You saved me again. Whenever I get into a scrape, Amy Cole comes and … gets me out of it.’ He had nearly said ‘digs’ and bit his tongue. The damp, earthy scent of turned soil had got into his nostrils. He doubted he would ever be able to walk in a forest again without the smell reminding him of that night’s dark work.
‘And if you keep getting in scrapes … I’ll have to keep doing it. Promise. You know I will.’
Jack did. Amy had only just beaten the madman, sending the soldier on his way and tearing down the diamond pin and marker before he arrived. And then they had buried a man alive. ‘It’s this way,’ said Amy. She directed him through the city and together they went in through the servants’ entrance to the countess’s house.
They ignored the barrage of questions and made directly for her private rooms. She received them.
‘You are alive,’ she cried. ‘And … begrimed. This fellow you warned of, Mrs Cole, this last diamond plotter – he was here. Looking for you. He attacked one of my clerks. He wished you to ride out to meet him for your husband’s life. I … I was worried. Worried that it was some kind of trap. Bless you, both.’
‘It was,’ said Amy dully. ‘But it snared him, not us.’
‘You mean he is …’
‘Gone,’ said Jack. ‘There wasn’t any other way.’
The countess nodded and gave a thin-lipped smile. ‘Cottam has spoken. I did not have time to tell you before, Mrs Cole.’ Jack and Amy said nothing, but they looked at her expectantly. ‘He has confessed to everything. Rather a sad tale.’ She bit her lower lip and looked down. In her hand was the diamond pin. Amy’s hand went to the one she had torn down. Seeing them both, Jack reached inside his mud-spattered coat and drew out his. ‘It was like this. A little girl had three sons by a corrupt priest. He sold them away from her to a family living in Calais. Back then it was an English town, before Queen Mary lost it to the French.
‘When Calais was lost, the couple and their charges remained. Only the poor and the titled were expelled. The rest kept money flowing. One of the boys, William, the eldest, loved money. The nature of the man he had thought to be his father was passed on to him, I suppose. The other loved religion. Adam, who trained as a seminary priest. The third … he was a troubled child. And becoming a vicious brute, rather frightening to his eldest brother – and certainly to his parents.’
‘What was his name?’ Jack whispered.
‘It doesn’t matter,’ snapped Amy. ‘Sorry, my lady. But truly it doesn’t. We don’t need to know what his name was. Please, continue.’
‘I … quite. Yes. I understand. Of no importance.’ She cleared her throat. ‘Well, when this boy learned of his true parentage, he burnt down his house. He and his brothers were then sought out by their real mother, by then a creature overblown in pomp and wealth, and driven half-mad by the years of waiting and watching. She embraced her sons, and together this group formed plans. They would bring shame on the church that had given the boys life and then taken them from their mother. They would see the whole of Europe brought low by war. The eldest boy would profit by it. The next would see corrupt Catholics and their enemies, the false Protestants, cut each other down, allowing a true Roman church to be reborn from the blood of the sinners. The last boy – troublesome boy – he loved his brothers, but he was a dangerous madman. He would be given purpose. They took the name of the suit of diamonds. The rest, Cottam says, were just numbers – nothings, nobodies used as couriers.’
‘And now only the eldest remains,’ said Amy.
‘What happens to him?’ asked Jack.
‘He begs mercy. He says he has killed none by his own hand.’
‘But the ale-seller in this town,’ Amy began.
‘Mr Cottam claims that that was an accident. He does not understand poisons. He acted only to scare you, my dear, from meddling.’
‘Liar – that man is dead and –’ The countess held up a hand before continuing herself.
‘He says also that he believes you have taken more from him than he has taken from you.’ Jack and Amy looked at one another but said nothing. ‘He has constructed of you quite terrible monsters.’
‘He and his family were the monsters,’ said Jack. Amy nodded. ‘Will he get mercy?’
‘That is not for me to decide. I shall send him to the Holy Father. With a written report of all that he has done. If he deserves mercy, a higher power than I shall give it. If not, then … it will be divine judgement. At any rate, the faith is unharmed. The diamond plot is broken. Its worst agents are in their graves.’ Jack shivered at the word, and the countess gave him a sidelong look. ‘I wish to hear no more of the matter. The question remains, of course, what to do with you. And your wife. Mr Cole?’
‘I’d like to go in peace,’ said Jack. ‘Somewhere … holy. To confess and be shriven.’ He could sense Amy rolling her eyes.
‘Then that is for your conscience to decide. Tell me, does Cecil’s man still court you? Walsingham? Never mind. Kat has already informed me that he waxes soft towards you both. Allowed you to lay your heads in his house. It is just … those who are loyal Catholics and yet who have friends amongst the back-biting heretics … especially friends who are trusted by the supposed English queen … might be of use to me.’
‘Madam, we would be out –’
‘Pray let us think on it,’ said Jack, putting a hand on Amy’s arm to quiet her. He did not look down, although he could feel her startled eyes on him. The countess smiled. ‘Very well. Go and think.’ Her baby began to whine. ‘Send Kat to me. You may lodge here tonight, after you have bathed in the waters behind the house. My hospitality is no less than Mr Walsingham’s.’
Jack and Amy left as Kat, presumably alerted by the sound, entered. They passed through the clerks’ room, into the outer hall, down the stairs, and outsi
de via the front door. As soon as they were out of the countess’s presence, Amy began an angry tirade. ‘It’s not right if Cottam gets to live. He’s a killer – he killed that old man. Whether he meant to or not. And he was up to his balls in all the rest, whatever he says.’ Jack did not respond, letting her run herself dry as they passed around the house towards its rear. ‘And you! You don’t want to stay, do you? Passed back and forth between them as they claw lumps from each other? Her, the French dowager, Walsingham – they only ever mean to use us. It’s just all a more dangerous kind of service. Sure, they might pay us, but they’ll never care for us, these lot. Not secretaries or queens or ladies or any of them. You can’t want to be tangled with them, not again.’
‘No. No, of course not. You’d have to be mad.’ They had come to the edge of the canal, and the sound of gently lapping water caressed them.
‘Then why did you tell her that? For a bed for the night?’
‘No. Well, not only that. To temporise.’
‘What’s that?’ Suspicion sharpened her words.
‘Something a friend taught me. Say yes, if you have to. To keep going.’
‘What friend? When?’
‘It doesn’t matter.’
‘Well, we can’t go back to Paris. Leastways not for a while. That old goat Walsingham won’t be happy with us, me running off like that. I … What’s wrong, Jack?’ She licked her finger and wiped away dirt from his forehead, brushing away the stray lock of hair. ‘This thing we’ve done tonight … it troubles you.’
‘Doesn’t it trouble you? I mean, shouldn’t it trouble us? Jesus, Amy, what have these people made of us? Her, and Walsingham, and all of them? Are we bad people – are we monsters?’
‘No,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘It’s a monstrous world. Good people have to do bad sometimes because there are such monsters.’ She sighed, and a tear cut a path through the muck on her cheek. ‘It’s a rotten business, this always thinking of what you’re doing. It makes your teeth itch.’
Divided Loyalties: An Elizabethan Spy Thriller Page 24