‘Tom, old friend, we’ve been in some tight situations together.’
‘We have, Andrew, we have.’
‘But this is as tight for you as any I can recall. Richard isn’t waiting for the King. He’s put a price on your head. There are bounty hunters everywhere. One came here. It isn’t just the hanging, Tom, it’s the drawing and quartering.’
‘I’m aware of that.’
‘Are you? Seen one?’
‘No.’
‘I have. Executioner’s not just a hangman, he’s a butcher. Specially chosen. Artist in his own way. Condemned man is cut down half-strangled. Aware enough to watch – made to watch, that’s the point – his guts slowly cut out, very slow and lingering they do it, to please the audience. Then, as a finale, he will cut off your prick and balls and hold them up to the crowd.’
Scogman turned away, leaving his brandy untasted.
‘When you came to the door, Tom, I was surprised. Surprised? Shocked. Thought you’d left the country. Leave now, Tom. Leave while you still have a chance. I’ll do all I can for you if you need help.’
‘Not until I find her.’
‘Thought you might say that.’
‘Not until I tell her the truth about Luke’s death.’
He looked towards the books, the document she had signed. ‘In spite of all this you still want her back?’
I stood over him. ‘Back? What do you mean? We are together. Man and wife.’
‘Till death us do part.’
‘Till death us do part,’ I said.
I went to the window and stared out. The wind was growing stronger, whipping at the branches of the beech tree, some of which tapped and scratched at the windows. Anne had probably returned to London by now. Dark as it was, I felt the urge to be back on the road. It would be safer at night. But I had the nagging feeling there was something here I had missed, something obvious. I struggled to think, but my head ached and Andrew began to recount some rambling story about the house. He pointed out a long crack in the wall, which had been plastered over several times. It was caused by the trees being too close to the house. Every winter he swore he must cut them down but every spring, when the new leaf came, he postponed it. He drew his finger down the crack, catching a small piece of plaster as it fell away and holding it in his hand. He sighed and said he knew he must do it, or it would bring the whole place down.
In the field I had sat round many a camp fire with him, listening to such stories which always had a moral or an aphorism, and were always a mixture of warmth, entertainment and irritation. ‘What are you trying to say, Andrew?’
‘Leave her, Tom. Before she brings you down. She’s duped you.’ He pointed to the document. ‘God damn it, man, she’s a forger –’
I went up to him, struggling to keep my voice steady. ‘I told you, Andrew. I signed that document. If you ever repeat what you have said, our friendship is over.’
He swallowed. A trickle of plaster pattered to the floor as he crushed in his hand the piece he had taken from the wall. In the silence, I realised what I had missed. I searched the books Andrew had bought.
‘Where’s my Caesar? My Ovid?’
‘They were not offered to me.’ He breathed more quickly, his eyebrows lifting in astonishment. They were among the rarest books in Europe, what booksellers called the incunabula, the first books ever printed. My Ovid, printed in Venice in 1474, was once owned by Lorenzo de Medici, and bore his signature. ‘They were for sale?’ Andrew said.
‘No. No. She would not have sold those,’ I said. I was almost happy at the thought. It was a sign. Whatever she was up to, she had kept them back for me. Andrew said perhaps they had gone to another buyer with more money than him, but I shook my head.
‘She knew how much they meant to me.’
He sighed and looked at Scogman, and paced about the room. He examined the crack in the wall. Listened to the wind. Studied the crack again and turned to me.
‘Tom, old friend … Tom … she’s gone over to the Royalists.’
It was as if the trees had finally brought the house down and I had been struck by part of it. When my senses began to return Andrew was saying she had always been something of a Royalist. I must have been aware of that. Look at Highpoint. It was never a place to live, but a place for the King to stay. Did I never realise that was why I hated it? I must have done. Surely! Why had Luke become such a Royalist? Scogman was nodding. It seemed that everyone knew what had been happening in my house, except me.
‘Best you hear everything, from me, rather than anyone else, Tom … There’s a rumour going round the county that there’s another man. Some people are even saying that …’
34
I could not stand any more. They say that when disaster strikes you need your friends more than ever, but I could not bear any more friendship. Of course, it was obvious. Why was I the last person to see it? At Anne’s great parties at Highpoint there had always been men round her. And I had gloried in it! I may not have been sleeping with her, but no one else could. She was mine by legal contract, just as the land, the house and all the treasures in it were mine. Whatever curdled mixture of love, hate and position kept us together, I had believed we would always be together. Till death us do part. I had lost my position and she had dropped me. It was as simple as that. She was a thief. I had refused to believe it. She had robbed me of everything, including, with the use of my signature, myself. And I had protected her! What an idiot. What a fool. I walked out into the wind, which was the only companion I wanted. It bent trees, tore clouds from the moon, but it could not cool my burning head.
They thought I was mad when I saddled my horse. Taking the road to London at this time of night? Did I not realise there was a price of fifty crowns on my head? I did not care. All I wanted was to kill him, whoever he was, kill her and then myself. Scogman’s protestations were blown away by the wind and I was on the road before he could stop me. It was much worse than the green road, pitted and rutted, the horse stumbling into muddy pools. But it had a Roman straightness. A fitful, gibbous moon lit my way. Most of the time the howling wind was with me, and I was over the Chilterns long before first light. Not even thieves cared to be out that night. The only sign of life showed in the eyes of a fox staring from a wood; the only sound apart from the wind the scream of an animal he had caught.
I must have slept. I was half-slipping from the saddle, my horse lapping from a pool at the side of the road. A weak, hesitant sun was up and there was an eerie stillness. The wind had dropped. Birds were deafening. No sooner was I back on the road when I realised my horse was lame. I asked a passing labourer where I was. He looked at me with a mixture of curiosity and fear, hurrying away as he answered.
‘Hounslow.’
He probably thought I was a prig who preyed on the coaches crossing the heath. It was a bad place to stop but I had no option. At least The Bull With One Horn looked a respectable coaching inn where I could get a fresh horse. The ostler tried to fob me off with a poor nag. I told him the one I wanted and he began to laugh with derision until he saw the look on my face. Perhaps he too, I thought, took me for a prig. At any rate, he transferred my saddle without another word while I went into the inn, drawn there by the smell of that morning’s bread.
I meant to slip in, grab a loaf and leave. But however dead the mind is, the stomach will make its own demands and, once I broke the warm bread and my tongue tasted the butter, I was lost. I had to have another portion with cheese and small beer. I chose a dark corner. A coaching party, preparing to leave for London, was taking up all the attention, and I was congratulating myself on being unseen when I saw the ostler whispering to the innkeeper, who had a copy of the Weekly Discoverer. It was my red hair that gave me away, as it had when I was a boy, only this time it was my tangled, shabby, week’s growth of beard.
You never lose that fear. Not when it is bred into you as a child. It pulled me to a stop at the door to the yard. No wonder the ostler let you have the horse so
easily, the boy inside me muttered with contempt. Lounging near it, instructing a stable boy to polish the already gleaming brasses on their horses, were two men – one very handsome, until he laughed, showing a row of black, decaying teeth. The other had the face and build of a bulldog, but dressed very sharply, with rings that served as weapons and a bright red neck cloth stuck with a pin, openly proclaiming him to be a prig, a highwayman or, as I believe they called them on Hounslow Heath, a collector.
They had come to collect me. Their bounty. Fifty crowns split between them, with payoffs to the innkeeper and his ostler. No wonder the man with bad teeth was laughing. It was easy money. And it was legal! The man like a bulldog looked towards the door. He had eyes as pale as water. His rings glinted in the sun. I might take one of them on but not two. If I went through the front, the innkeeper and the ostler would pick me up. And how would I get to London without a horse?
‘Last call for London, gentlemen! Leaving now!’ the coachman yelled.
I darted down the corridor. Just inside the bar, an old man was struggling with a bag.
‘Can I help you with that, sir?’
‘Why, that’s very kind of you.’
The innkeeper was staring from the bar but a man banged his glass down, demanding service, and in the moment he moved away I slipped through with the case among the press of passengers, chatting manically to the old man, giving his case to the boot man. Only then did I see a constable riding on the back of the coach, pistol at his belt. He did not see me because he was staring towards the stable yard where the two collectors were standing.
‘All aboard?’ yelled the coachman to the boot man, followed by an incomprehensible cry to his horses to get them in line. As he drew back his whip, I ran up.
‘Wait! A Cromwell to take me to London.’
He stared down at me with a look that said: I know you from somewhere … The horses, still responding to his last command, jerked forward. He dragged at the reins with another strangled cry, snatched at the coin and bit it.
‘Might not be legal next week.’
‘Another when we get there.’
‘Jump in.’
There were mutterings and grumbles but the old man kept on saying, ‘Gentleman obliged me and I will oblige him,’ and somehow I squeezed in. I had a moment of intense exhilaration. It lasted for perhaps a minute. Squashed against the side of that boneshaker, whose rattling, squeaking door threatened to burst open any moment, I craned out to see the two collectors riding after us. They had no visible weapons, but then they did not need them. A short discussion with the constable was all that was needed.
‘You have a regicide … a murderer in the coach …’
I leaned against the leather headrest which smelt of stale tobacco. I had left in such a hurry I had no weapon but my dagger. I could scarcely breathe, let alone move, sweating profusely in my cloak and jerkin while the old man rambled on about how obliging I was. Obliging indeed! Far from escaping, I had put myself neatly, obligingly, into a trap.
We left the heath and rumbled through Isleworth, the children running out cheering, as they did at every coach. Their bare feet reminded me of when I was a child and had wriggled out of everything. But then I just acted. I never thought. Thinking was fatal: it took too long.
At Brentford I leaned out again. The collectors were riding at an easy trot. I expected them to catch up with the coach and speak to the constable, but they remained some distance away. The handsome one gave me his gappy smile and raised his hand. Of course. He would not approach the constable. In fact it was the last thing he would do. They would have to share the bounty with him – or, if he effected the arrest, he might claim it all for himself.
Lack of sleep, the bread and cheese, the swaying of the carriage: all combined to make sleep, deep, delicious, betraying sleep steal over me. I was vaguely aware of the orchards of Chiswick, but awoke to a shouting, a clattering, a screaming and jerking of wheels over cobbles, a yelling of voices crying hot codlings and poor jack, and a stink that made me fight not to breathe, with an old man telling me he would be obliged if I released him. I heard the echo of the scream after I had made it and took away my hand gripping his arm, muttering an apology thick with sleep. The other passengers shrank away apprehensively.
They were still following me, with the same expressions, at the same remorseless pace. I recognised the metallic stink in the air as tannin, from the leather works that emptied its grey, clogging waste into the Fleet River. We were going along Ludgate, approaching the hill, the driver shouting encouragement to the horses and cracking his whip. I opened the door and leapt, staggering, falling, hitting and rolling over the cobbles, as the coachman yanked the horses to a stop. There was a shot. A stabbing pain in my shoulder. Someone was screaming and went on screaming. Dust choked me. The acrid smell of cordite cut across the stench of the river. I felt my shoulder. There was no blood. I had struck a street post. The man built like a bulldog was screaming, holding his shattered hand. The other was struggling to control his rearing horse while the constable, who had fired from the back of the carriage, was reloading his pistol.
I scrambled up and ran. I was in Farringdon Street before I heard the other collector riding after me. I had no chance there. He would run me down. I twisted into a series of alleys, my haven as a child. My legs were old and stiff but they had the memory, the cunning of that child. Snow Court. Cock Lane. An alley so narrow that his horse would never get through it. He would never abandon his horse. Or so I told myself.
The sound of the hooves died away. I leaned against the wall, slowly sliding down it, taking in great gulps of air. I could run no further. When he turned the corner his black-toothed grin was even wider – perhaps because there was one less to share the bounty with. I stared at him with a curious indifference. All I wanted to do was rest. Only when he was almost on me and I smelt his carious breath did an overwhelming rage sweep over me. If I did not fight, I would never be able to kill the man who had taken Anne from me. It was a blind, fruitless rage. He was much younger and fitter and easily knocked my knife from me. But I would not give up. I had found the energy of hatred. I clawed my nails at his face. It was his weakness, his vanity. In the instant he flung up his hands to ward me off and protect his face, I grabbed the knife and brought it up into him, again and again.
Most of the blood went on the cloak, which I abandoned in the alley. Even so, there was blood on my hands and face, which drew the odd look but no more than that, which I could not understand, until I saw a pile of offal dumped in the street with people fighting over it and birds wheeling and squawking round them. The birds were so bold I had to duck from one of them swooping down. Perhaps he sensed the blood on me. It was a red kite. I began to laugh uncontrollably. Smithfield. The butchers had just finished their morning killing.
Blood seemed to be everywhere. Staining the people carrying offal away, on the beak of a screeching bird, splashed on the cobbles, hanging in the air, fresh and potent. I had to kill the man who had taken Anne away from me. Then I must kill her. Cut her white throat. Silence the voice that gave me such torment. That mocking voice. Then I would be at peace. It would be over.
It was my boots that took me there. Sometimes, very oddly, there were no boots. My feet were bare, innocent feet, closer to the ground, testing every stone. It was the boy’s feet that took me there. Long Lane, Cloth Fair – there was a market, so it must be Thursday – the sudden quiet and dimness of Half Moon Court, the gable of the house where it all began, tilting at an even crazier angle than I remembered, on the verge of toppling over on to the apple tree which, miraculously, was in full blossom. She would be hiding there as she always was.
‘Can’t find me!’
That voice. That throat. I felt for my dagger. She was not behind the tree. So it must be the coal cellar, or the paper store.
‘Cold … colder … freezing!’
That laughter, that mocking laughter, as clear as hill water and as cold as ice. There was a stra
nge woman at the door I had never seen before, a very ugly woman with a wart at the side of her nose. She began screaming. I had to silence her otherwise she would give the game away and I would never find Anne.
She backed into the house, yelling, ‘Sam! Sam!’
Sam? The house swayed, the gable lurching even further over me.
‘You have nothing to-to fear, Mrs Bridges,’ he said. ‘He is my f-father.’
Father?
Before I struck the cobbles he caught me in his arms. I had forgotten how gentle he was.
35
How long I was there I do not know. The fever I had suffered when I tried to rescue Luke returned. From time to time the woman with a wart brought me some herb soup, after which I would instantly fall asleep again. I must have told Sam about my old army doctor, for Ben came. He gave me something that smelt of the marshes where I used to collect feverfew and wild basil for the cunning man. I drowned in sleep, surfacing to hear them whispering together. Ben was saying I had had it before. It was partly the war. Some act of violence had brought it back. And it was partly some sickness of the mind or heart, which was beyond his herbs.
Beyond his herbs? What nonsense! She was not beyond them. Early one morning, when the light was just filtering through the window, I awoke to find myself in a strange nightdress. Tom Neave was sitting opposite me in a chair by the window, that cheeky smile on his face, the smile I used to have. She had stolen even that from me. She had left me locked inside that aristocratic wretch, Thomas Stonehouse. I shut my eyes and vanished into the marsh of sleep. When I surfaced again the sun was so bright it hurt my eyes. On the back of the chair was my hat. Draped on it were my linen, my britches and the jerkin. The stains were visible, but they smelt of wrinkled hands, beatings and fresh air. I dressed as quickly, as surreptitiously, as if they might be taken from me again.
The King's List Page 23