“A job that likes you?”
“Aye, that.” Thom nodded. “It’s not many stablemen my age that gets paid to sleep in a nice warm bed with only the occasional hindrance of a midnight ride. And even that is likable, truth be told: commanding a coach like this is a damned sight better than mucking out a stall.”
“Do you know who I am?”
“I do now. Everyone in the stables is guessing about your work. I listen. You’re Deacon Marbury.”
“Did you know me before last night?”
“Heard the name.”
The road bent, following the bank of the Thames, with its swans, salmon, and sewage. Icy waves peaked in the wind to the left side of the racing coach. Here and there a waterbird fished the river. The coach rolled over the Bridge, where severed heads on poles sat side by side with houses and shops.
Once the weavers and brewers of Cripplegate were behind them, the outskirts of London and the open field of Finsbury quickly faded into greener pastures. The city was gone.
To the right was a small rise, lined with trees. Beyond the trees were more open fields—some already planted with turnips and beets, some being tilled in the stark afternoon sunlight. When the coach was up to its full speed, the racket was deafening. The road narrowed, barely wide enough for the coach. The seat upon which Marbury and the boy were perched was hard as a gravestone, and the wind whipped their noses and cheeks and ears.
“How?” Marbury asked above the din.
“Pardon?”
“How had you heard my name? In what manner?” Marbury had to shout to be heard.
Thom turned to look at Marbury. “Truth?”
“Yes.” Marbury’s eyes bore into the boy’s.
“You’re Anne’s father. She’s perfection, if you don’t mind my saying so.”
Marbury took in a breath. “How do you know Anne?”
“Go on.” Thom laughed. “Everybody knows Anne. She’s the smartest girl in England. Bested three men, including my stable master, at mathematical computations. That was something to see, her summing before him. Then there’s the matter of her riding. She rides better than any girl I ever saw. Better than most men.”
“You’ve seen her ride?”
“I work in the stables.”
“But—”
“Beg pardon,” Thom said, lowering his voice so that Marbury could barely hear. “I couldn’t help but notice that there was a rider behind us. Could be nothing, just another traveler. But considering that you was poisoned in the King’s own palace, I thought it might be something worth mentioning.”
Before he could think, Marbury craned his neck around. Some fifty feet behind the coach was a single rider, hat drawn low, cloak wrapped tightly around him.
“You shouldn’t have looked,” Thom sighed. “Now he knows we’ve seen him.”
“How did you know that I was poisoned?” Marbury demanded.
“You can’t be serious,” Thom answered tensely. “Everyone in the palace was talking about it. Poison intended for the King, served to you. Your life saved by a magic potion, they say—an elixir known only to the King. It makes him invincible against all such treachery, they were saying.”
“Everyone knew?”
“So, things being what they are,” Thom drawled, “perhaps we ought to consider that the man behind us—”
“Can you pick up speed?”
“We can’t outrun a man on horseback with this coach,” Thom objected. “I mean, it’s fast, but—”
“Well, there’s no room to turn around. And we don’t need to outrun him, we only have to make it to a certain stretch of road before he overtakes us. Can you speed to the stretch of road where we stopped on our way to the palace earlier this morning?”
Thom took a moment. Marbury watched as several realizations swam behind the boy’s eyes. At last a conclusion emerged from those waters.
“You suspected something like this might happen,” Thom concluded. “That’s what deal you set up with our rummy little highwayman.”
“Indeed.”
“Well.” Thom grinned. “Pardon my saying so, but it’s very difficult to see where Miss Anne gets her brains—certainly not from you. That boy won’t be there. We’re for it.”
“If the boy is there,” Marbury said calmly, “we have help. If he is not, we have the best stretch of road upon which to defend ourselves. That is why the boy chose that part of the highway, you see: flat, easy to maneuver, easy to dash into the woods if need be.”
“We’ll see,” Thom grumbled.
“And there are two of us to his one. Do you carry a weapon?”
“Me? Christ, no. I can barely—”
“Take this.” Marbury held out a dagger. “Hold it in front of you and squint one eye.”
“I can’t—”
“Our attacker will have no way of knowing your level of skill. If you swagger and move about distractingly to one side of him, I may be able to get him from the other. Unless he has a pistol. Then he will likely to shoot us both.”
“Lord God in heaven! What the hell have you got me into—flying to London, poisoned in the palace, and now pursued by Christ knows what demon!”
Thom slapped the reins hard against the horses’ backsides, and the coach lurched forward. The man on horseback picked up his pace to match. He was not attempting to overtake, only to follow closely.
“Curious,” Marbury mumbled. “He is not trying to catch us.”
“Maybe he’s waiting for a good stretch of highway to make his stand,” Thom said, eyebrows arched.
“Are you absolutely certain that you were given this job as a reward?” Marbury growled. “You seem the sort of person whose cheek merits punishment more than gratitude.”
“True, that, sir,” Thom said, barely keeping a grin from his face. “And so I beg your pardon once again. But as to this job, well—one man’s hell is another man’s cook fire.”
“You mean you love this job.”
“Not at the moment, no,” Thom yelled. “But on the ordinary day—”
“Faster?”
Thom called out something to the horses—a sound meaningless to the human ear but clearly encouraging to the horses. They picked up their pace quite remarkably.
The coach flew along the water’s edge until the road veered inland, through a small forest. The man on horseback stuck like a shadow in their wake.
Marbury’s heart quickened when he saw, in the distance, the patch of ground where the young boy had waylaid them. He could find no sign of a lookout, no hint of the other boys in the wood. It seemed he would have to face the shadow alone.
19
Thom slowed the coach as they drew onto the flat part of the road. “Here we go,” he sighed loudly, his face a mask of resignation.
“No one in those woods.” Marbury’s eyes searched the trees and shadows.
“Right.” Thom looked around. “I told you he wouldn’t be here. Your angel’s gone.”
The coach came to a halt.
“You have my knife,” Marbury whispered.
Thom held it aloft, hands still on the reins.
“Keep it low, at the waist, flat out, as if you meant to sweep it upward into his gullet.”
“God.” Thom pulled back on the reins to steady the horses.
Marbury looked back. The man behind them had come to a halt, apparently perplexed that the coach had stopped.
Thom cast his eye about the wooded landscape once more, mumbling to himself.
Marbury climbed down from the seat and thrust open the coach door; rummaged under the seat and drew out his rapier.
“Let go of the reins and get down on the other side of the coach,” he instructed Thom. “You stay on that side of the road, I stay on this. Say nothing.”
“Can I make a noise like a bear? It’s a very frightening sound.”
“Say nothing.”
“Exactly.” Thom secured the reins to his seat and slid down onto the road.
The man on horse
back did not move, but Marbury began to stride quickly in his direction. Thom had to scurry to keep pace, trying not to look foolish, straining to harden his face.
“Are you going to make me walk all that way?” Marbury called out to the man. “Very inconsiderate. Poke your horse a bit, would you? I am in a hurry; I should like to kill you and be on my way.”
Thom growled, very much like a bear.
The man on horseback leaned forward. His horse began to walk slowly. Only then did Marbury hold out his rapier.
The man on horseback smiled.
Thom continued to growl.
Marbury strode more quickly and the stranger’s horse picked up speed.
A sudden gust of wind blew the stranger’s cloak aside for the briefest of moments, but long enough for Marbury to see that he was wearing the plain red robe of a priest, and Marbury had a sudden pang of doubt.
This man is a priest, he thought, only a fellow traveler—the poison has affected my reason. What am I doing?
“Friend,” Marbury began, lowering his rapier.
The priest nodded. A pistol appeared in his hand. It fired.
Thom grunted, more surprised than anything else. He stared down at his chest. A rose had erupted there, spraying red petals into the cold air. Thom sank to his knees, dropped the dagger in his hand. His head tilted in Marbury’s direction before he fell, hard, facedown onto the road.
Marbury sucked in a breath, staggered to one side.
The priest produced a second pistol and cocked it, his lip curling upward. Before he could take aim, the air around him was filled with stones. His face and chest were pummeled relentlessly by them. In seconds he was bleeding in a dozen places.
Marbury dove to the ground and rolled out of the line of pistol fire. From his vantage point in the ditch at the side of the road, Marbury watched as the priest was battered by what seemed to be hundreds of rocks, thick tree branches, several crude arrows.
Then the air was filled with high-pitched curses, and the priest slumped, sagging sideways, and slid off his horse.
At once a dozen or more frail ghosts were upon him, kicking, stomping, or beating him with rough-hewn clubs.
Marbury lifted his head and shouted, “Enough!”
The boys froze.
A familiar face looked up from the horde. “Like that? Is that what you wanted?”
The innocent highwayman and his cohorts, some as young as six or seven, all stood.
“Sorry we wasn’t in time to save your driver,” the boy continued.
Marbury’s eyes shot to Thom, whose body lay over a growing circle of rust. Otherwise, nothing about him was moving.
Marbury dropped his rapier and scrambled to Thom’s side, lifting him up. The body was limp, the eyes were rolled back in his head.
“Sangre.” The priest rolled onto his side, holding several of his wounds and staring at the wild boys. His accent was Spanish.
The young highwayman kicked the priest hard in the head.
Marbury stood. Three quick steps placed him between the priest on the road and the sun in the sky. “Get up.”
“No.” The priest coughed. He held the back of his hand to his mouth as he did, an odd bit of courtly manners in a desperate wood.
“Get up!” Marbury repeated, icy menace in his voice. “I mean to know more about you.”
“I am very tired—one of these arrows has cut into my liver and bowels. I face the prospect of an agonizing death within the week.” He smiled as his hand dropped away from his mouth. White powder was evident on the lips; a broken ring on the hand was similarly stained. “I choose this moment to end my work.”
The priest had taken poison.
“God,” he stammered to the boys, “sit him up.”
The boys moved at once, and the priest was sitting up, choking and gurgling. Marbury stuck his gloved finger into the priest’s mouth to make him vomit. The priest bit down so ferociously that his teeth broke through the leather and gnashed into Marbury’s skin, drawing blood. Only when one of the boys picked up a rock and broke it on the back of the priest’s skull was the finger released.
The priest was dead moments later, his body quaking on the side of the road. The boys stared down at him with absolute indifference.
When the twitching stopped, the young highwaymen smiled.
“Job done,” the boy said. “Fast poison.”
Marbury was at a loss for words.
“You thought I wouldn’t show,” the boy went on, “but I earned my angel.”
“Yes,” Marbury managed, “you did.”
The other boys stood silent—waiting for their leader to make the first move.
When Marbury realized what they were thinking, all he could do was reach into the hidden pocket of his doublet and produce more coins—three crowns. He held them out. No one moved.
“Help me get both of these bodies into that coach,” Marbury croaked, “and these coins are yours.”
“Come on, then,” the leader said to the others, taking the coins from Marbury.
Silently, like the ghosts they imitated, they lay hold of the priest and dragged his carcass toward the carriage.
Marbury let go of a long, staggered breath and went to Thom’s body. He gathered it up and carried it to the other side of the coach. The boys lay the priest on the floor. Thom was put to rest on the seat.
Thom’s blood stained Marbury’s new, expensive doublet.
When Marbury finally closed the door and looked around, only the leader, the bold, young highwayman, stood in the road, holding the priest’s horse.
“Tie this horse to the back of your coach?” he asked Marbury.
“Yes. Thank you.”
The boy found a convenient hitch, fastened the horse’s reins tightly, and stood back.
“I never thought . . . I never meant for you to—,” Marbury began.
“Fact is,” the boy said quickly, looking down at the road, “it’s not the first man we’ve killed on this road.”
“Oh.”
“But with the money you give us,” he continued, “who’s to say? Life turns like a road. Not all of it looks like this stretch, does it now?”
“Indeed it does not.” Marbury sighed brokenly. “Listen, you must come with me now.”
“What?”
“We could arrive at my home by morning. I cannot leave you here.”
“I think you’ll find you can,” the boy say incredulously. “I can’t go bounding off with you. These others, some of them’s not five years old. They depends on me. I’m the leader, see? I can’t leave.”
Marbury stared at the stain in the road where Thom’s blood was drying. “My name is Francis Marbury, can you remember that? I’m the dean of Christ Church in Cambridge. If you could manage to get your lot there—”
“Cambridge?” The boy shook his head.
“Will you at least consider—”
“It’s a kind offer,” the boy said, squinting his eyes, “and I don’t know what to make of it. But I’ll bring it up with the others.”
“You must tell me your name.”
The boy stared into Marbury’s eyes, clearly at war in his mind. At last he said softly, “Doesn’t matter.”
Without another syllable, he turned and was off the road, loping into the little bit of wood and shadow beyond the bloody ditches.
20
In Cambridge the next morning, Brother Timon’s right hand played across the surface of the small wooden wheel the way a master’s hand might play a lute. Though it was morning outside, midnight’s shadows still clawed at the candlelight inside. The room was on the ground floor, an unused servant’s place, far away from the family quarters, windowless and cold.
Timon’s fingers moved with lightning speed, hitting precise symbols, adjusting the wheel, turning the outward circumference or the inner surface. The wheel was smaller than a dinner plate, yet it contained an infinite universe of words. His left index finger raced along words before him, a manuscript bearin
g notes in Harrison’s handwriting. Timon had stolen it from the dead man’s desk. He had been up all night reading and memorizing each word and every mark of punctuation perfectly, flawlessly—owing to his memory wheel.
Timon’s chamber was not unlike most rooms in which he had spent his lifetime. It contained only a bed, a basin, and a book desk. The desk in the corner was high; the student was meant to stand: a seated man might fall asleep. The bed was along the wall opposite the door: flat boards, a single blanket, no pillow. The basin was two pieces: one held water, the other was a chamber pot. One was filled every evening, the other was emptied every morning.
Three tapers had burned down while Timon worked his alchemy. He read as quickly as he could so that he could return the papers to Harrison’s desk before anyone saw that they were gone.
Memorizing a document of this magnitude would be difficult if he became too interested in the contents. It could cost him pages of memorization—time spent thinking instead of absorbing words. So, with great irritation, he snapped at the urgent, early-morning pounding upon the door of his cell.
“Please go away!” he shouted. “I’m working!” Or trying to work, he thought.
“Brother Timon, this is Dr. Spaulding,” the urgent voice responded. “You must come quickly!”
“I am praying,” Timon insisted.
“There has been another murder! And I believe we have found the culprit!”
Instantly Timon slid his memory wheel into a hidden pocket in his robe. He kicked up a loose stone in the floor beneath the desk—a stone that he had himself freed—and he hid the stolen papers under it, replacing the stone perfectly.
He strode to the door and pulled it open. Dr. Spaulding stood straight as an iron pole. His coat was an unadorned umber, smooth lines reaching nearly to the floor, and so clean that it seemed more a painting of a garment than actual clothing. His cap was likewise simple: a dark golden skullcap, also without design or insignia. His face looked as if it had been sucked forward by some invisible force. The nose was pointed, lips pursed, eyes a bit beyond their sockets. His hands seemed incapable of rest. He folded them, unfolded them, scratched the back of one with the other, tapped fingertips together. All the while his breath kept pace: shallow, huffing, demonstrably impatient.
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