Knaves Templar

by Leonard Tourney

  Twenty-Two

  THEY stood in a little island of light waiting for death, as they might have waited for some proud lord to make his will known, reverent and abashed. It was not clear to Matthew how it could be otherwise, virtually entombed as they were and with the tide rising, the dark, swirling water already lapping at their shoes. Matthew held Joan tightly; Alice stood a little farther off. Her plaintive cries had resumed as soon as Hodge and Flynch had shut the door upon them. But now she had fallen still again, overcome with a sense of her fate. They were all subdued now, and the little nub of candle had burned so low that its tenuous flame seemed to grow out of Matthew’s fingers.

  “How high will the water come?” Joan asked. It was a sensible question, but her voice was strained and distant, despite her nearness.

  ‘‘Not so high as the door’s threshold, but over our heads. ’ ’

  He had already inspected the stone walls for handholds. The old stonemason had done his work too well. Without the ladder, they were at the mercy of pit and tide. They would have to tread water. Or swim to the portcullis and cling all night to the bars. But neither Joan nor he could swim.

  *

  It was Joan who suggested that Hodge might have lied about the water’s depth. Surely at one time the little inlet might have been dredged out to afford harborage for boat or baige, but these had ever been shallow-draft vessels, not seagoing ships, and wouldn’t it have filled in over the years? Besides, she reasoned, how did Hodge know how deep it was? If the water was as pestilential as he claimed, he certainly wasn’t wading around in it himself.

  “The portcullis is our only chance. Our screams will not bring him back,” she said.

  “But time may—to see if the tide has done its work.”

  “And then?”

  “We shall see.”

  “As we are, we’re as good as drowned. See, Matthew, the water is already at my knees.”

  He saw how little there was to lose in the endeavor. If the water proved too deep, they could return to the wall for what little time and light remained beyond that. He told Alice the plan, but she made no response. Frozen in fear, she stood as one already dead, and when he tried to drag her, she let out little shrill cries and clawed at his face and nearly caused him to lose the candle.

  Joan told him to let her stay where she was. It was futile and dangerous to force her.

  Matthew took Joan’s hand and moved into the water toward the portcullis, which he estimated at twenty paces or more from the wall. He held the candle aloft to extend their vision.

  The vertical bars of the portcullis reflected the light; beyond was absolute blackness.

  They had become accustomed to the water’s stench; now they felt the soft yielding and sucking of the channel bottom, the frigid grip of the water as it penetrated their garments and made bold against the warm flesh of their bodies, causing their very frames to tremble, their teeth to rattle, and the air to be sucked out from their lungs. Halfway, the water was to Matthew’s belly and rising. His heart was in his throat. He hated deep water, yet how insistently had bitter fortune thrust him in. Once before in London in the swollen Thames.

  Again in Derbyshire in Challoner’s dismal mere. Deep water had become his personal image of death, replacing fire and ice. Sucked down into the blackness, almost overwhelming his hope of Heaven.

  Beside him came an anguished cry, a resistance to further progress, and an “Oh merciful Jesus.”

  He stopped and turned to where Joan was, candle aloft. She had averted her face from him, out of shame or horror. No, he saw it was not from him but from something floating by her, something doubtless that had touched her or she had touched unknowingly, emerging from the unseen depths or floating near her, half-submerged like a rotten log. It was a body, a man. He told her not to look again, as though she needed to be told, and raised the candle over the bloated horror, turning it over and seeing to his own amazement and disgust what it was and who it had been. So this was the company Hodge had meant. Their predecessor in death. Theophilus Phipps. Drowned dead. And by the ravaged face, as smooth in life as a girl’s, Matthew saw the Treasurer’s clerk was already food for rats.

  “It’s Phipps,” he said. “Come, let’s move on. There’s no help for him now. ’ ’

  “Oh, curse Hodge and Flynch and Leyland, who did this,” she said.

  He thought, Amen, yes amen, but was too intent on reaching his goal to utter it, pulling Joan after him, the water swirling around his shoulders. His arm was weary from holding up the candle, and the wax was melting to a warm nothingness in his hand.

  He cried, “Reach out, take hold on the bars.” He sacrificed the light for the opportunity, unwilling to let Joan go. Their vault dissolved into darkness, he pushed forward and with his free hand seized the rusted iron of the grill and pulled himself to it.

  His legs swung free of the river bottom. Beside him he could see Joan’s shadow. She had made it too. So they wouldn’t drown, although how long could one survive such numbing cold? He turned to look behind them, and might as well have been a blind man for all that he could see. Then Alice’s single ungodly cry broke from the awful gloom.

  “Oh, Matthew, save her,” Joan gasped.

  But there was nothing to be done.

  Suddenly his foot found a submerged cross brace in the grillwork, and with what seemed the last of his strength, he stood upon it, rising from the tuigid stream until his head touched the roof of the vault. He told Joan to do the same. She found the same support and in an instant was beside him.

  The question then in his mind was how high the water would still come. They enjoyed several feet of air between the timbered ceiling and the suiging water, but that space was rapidly diminishing. He could see enough to tell that the vault extended another dozen feet beyond the portcullis before opening into the river. Surely someone walking upon the bank could hear them if they cried out, but who would be walking there at such an hour, and what could he do to free them if he heard? Would he not think their appeals a ghost’s wail, or some brigand’s trick to lure him to destruction? They would have to save themselves.

  Her teeth chattering so that she could hardly speak, Joan mumbled how cold she was and said, “Let’s pray,” for they had done what they could and God must do the rest. He agreed to the prayers, but for salvation, not to surrender to what was beyond help. No, he would not give up yet. He must live to avenge them all, yes, even the wretched Phipps, who, whatever his sins had merited, could hardly have deserved so ignominious a death. And he must save Joan. He shook the bars violently, and found no cause for hope there. The grill covered the entrance of the secret harborage, joined bleak stone on each side. But what was beneath?

  A little hope reclaimed his courage. Without telling Joan his plan, he stepped off the crossbar and let himself down until his mouth was just above water, exploring with his feet the unseen depths. His effort was rewarded. He pulled himself up again to meet Joan’s objection that he had frightened her to death, for she thought the tide had pulled him under or his will to live had failed.

  “Not failed, stronger now,” he gasped. “I have found a cause of hope. The grillwork has a limit. We can go under. We need only hold our breaths and the bars. We shall come up on the other side, work to the wall.”

  “But I’m afraid, Matthew.”

  “Do as I do,” he said. He took a deep breath and went under.

  It took some effort for him to submerge. The tide worked against his efforts, and his lungs were near bursting when he felt his way beneath the portcullis, finding only a few feet of clearance between it and the river’s bottom and then scrambling quickly up the other side. He looked through the bars at Joan, who said, “Oh God, I can’t. I can’t.”

  He screamed to her she must, screamed to her again how he would save her. How he would go down again on his side and under to bring her round if he must, but she said no to that. “Don’t let Leyland have his way, Joan. Breathe deep and give me your hand. Trust me.”
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  He almost laughed with joy when he saw her take a deep breath and go down. He went down too, groping for her in the water, feeling her slide more readily beneath the portcullis than he had done, and the next moment she was in his arms, shooting upward to the surface and gasping for air. “Now to the bank,” he cried. They floundered in the water; beyond them now was the open river and farther yet the lights of Southwark like little dim stars, low in the sky, and beautiful to see.

  He found a ready purchase in the bank, reached down for her, and after some effort, both lay breathless on the moist earth, shaking so with cold that neither could speak but only clutch the other like one creature made of two. But after a while he said, “Come, Joan. We can’t stay here, no matter how precious solid earth may be again. We’ll die of cold, and there’s work to be done—even tonight.”

  She groaned at the thought. “But where, Matthew?”

  “To the Temple. It’s close by—it and fire and dry clothes, and a fiery hot drink to warm our innards—and then to Bish-opsgate, where we will serve Master Leyland as he would

  The gates to the Middle Temple were closed for the night, as they knew they would be, given it was near twelve o’clock. Matthew rattled the door of the porter’s lodge, and presently Jacob opened and looked at Matthew and Joan with amazement. He told them that Master Hutton was probably not gone to bed, for several gentlemen of the Court had come to the Temple, one to see Matthew, and they were all assembled in the Treasurer’s office conferring on some great matter.

  Joan looked at Matthew. “Sir Robert, do you think?”

  “If so, he’s timely come.”

  “Oh, but you’re both half-drowned,” Jacob said, as though just noticing their condition. “Did you fall into the river?”

  “In a manner of speaking,” said Matthew, “but do let us in before we freeze. ’ ’ They went into the lodge, and Matthew asked Jacob for fresh water and a kettle to heat it in.

  “Water, sir? Have you twain not had sufficient of ?”

  “For washing, Jacob,” Joan explained. “And we shall need soap. If scented, all the better, for I shall not endure another half hour stinking like a cod. ’ ’ Kneeling by the fire, she was still trembling, fumbling with her cloak. She needed dry clothes, she said. Matthew too. Else they would catch their death. Alarmed, Jacob said he would fetch Matthew’s other suit from his chamber. As for the woman, he said, shrewdly appraising Joan’s height and girth—she was somewhat shorter and fuller than Jacob—he thought he might have something to replace her sodden garments, but no female dress. She would have to content herself with a man’s garb. That was the long and short of it, he said. And for added warmth, his spare gown.

  “Yes, yes,” Joan said impatiently. “But please hurry.”

  “And what of the gentlemen come from the Court?” Jacob asked, turning to Matthew, who was now stripped to the waist and drying himself with a rough towel. “I was to tell them when you returned. Master Hutton was most explicit as to that point.”

  “I won’t be seen like this,” Joan said. “Not until I’ve washed.”

  “First hot water, then dry clothes, then to Master Treasurer and the gentlemen,” Matthew told Jacob, making his instructions as emphatic and plain as possible. ‘‘And make haste, please.”

  Jacob went about his work, fetching water from the well and putting it on the hob, then finding the clothes for Joan, and the scented soap, and then out again into the night for Matthew’s second suit. In his absence, Joan scrubbed her body, bemoaning the filth it had endured. Meanwhile, they talked of what had happened and what it meant.

  ‘‘Leyland’s our man, without a doubt,” Matthew said. “And the Templar conspiracy made-plain—this laudanum prepared by him and sold, doubtless with the same intent as poor Alice confessed, to make thralls of them all.”

  “But why murder them—and Phipps, who wasn’t on the list?”

  “The cause can be known when Leyland is taken. He’ll confess willingly or otherwise. Since his guilt is certified by our own experience, it will little profit him to keep silent.”

  But Joan looked worried; he asked what was file matter. Wasn’t she pleased now that the mystery was solved?

  “I fear for Nan Warren. What danger she must be in, living in the very house. She must be warned and saved, Matthew. As for your understanding of these matters, I think we only know part, Matthew. We are seeing through a glass darkly, as the Scripture says.”

  Washed and dry, Joan felt like a new woman and was at the moment struggling to get into the clothes Jacob had provided. “We know the who,” she continued, “but not the why. For myself, I shall not be pleased until we know what moved the man to kill the geese that laid his golden eggs. Phipps’s death is easily explained. Like us, he stumbled upon fatal knowledge. Thank God we missed his end—and wretched Alice’s, whose screams I even now hear in my head. I only pray to God we can prevent Nan’s coming to a similar fate.”

  ‘‘For which death and the others Leyland and his companions will pay with their lives,” Matthew said, unsure as how to answer her objections.

  She said amen to that, but still she wondered. The identity of the fifth Templar continued to elude her, and until she had given a truer name to Giles’s “Prideaux,” she would not consider Matthew’s case settled.

  Men’s voices came from outside the door, and the next minute Master Hutton appeared, all bundled and red-faced.

  He was immediately followed by a small, well-dressed man with a hunched back, a finely trimmed beard, and a silver chain of office hanging around his neck and just visible through the parting of his cloak.

  Matthew greeted the Queen’s Principal Secretary with a reverential nod while Joan, her face to the hearth, turned slowly at the door’s opening and the sound of boots on the floorboards.

  Sir Robert Cecil greeted the both of them warmly and thanked God for their safety. He looked Joan up and down and smiling said, “By Heaven, Joan, you look every inch the man in that gown. With your back turned to me just now, I took you to be some Templar wandered in to keep Matthew company before the fire.”

  “Oh, I am woman despite these things that the ancient porter gave me,” she said, but at the same instant Sir Robert’s statement of confusion sent such a thunderbolt of revelation to her brain that she remained stone-quiet during all of Matthew’s report of their false imprisonment, the grisly discovery of Phipps’s body, and their near drowning by Ley-land’s henchmen.

  “Two of the rogues are taken!” exclaimed Hutton, grinning broadly with satisfaction and looking toward Cecil for approval. “Osborne gave me your message. But unfortunately, not until after his play, which was foremost in his thoughts, hence our delay. ”

  “Both your men, Flynch and Simmons,” added Sir Robert, seating himself on a rickety stool by the fire and pulling off his gloves to warm his hands. “Of course, neither admits to assaulting you, Joan—or, for that matter, even to knowing you.”

  “They’re liars every one,” said Matthew. “They know her well and would have murdered the both of us had Heaven not decreed otherwise. But what of Hodge?”

  “Then he’ll warn Leyland,” Matthew said grimly. “He’s your murderer, Master Hutton, not Keable, as you supposed. And if Hodge has alerted him, as I suspect, there’s no chance in Hell that he’s still in London.”

  Cecil answered, “The barkeep was there when we arrested the others, then fled into the night before we could question him further.”

  Matthew quickly summarized the case against the physician, interrupted from time to time with mild protests of disbelief and dismay from his friend Hutton, who was finally forced to accept the evidence against his favorite physician.

  “Laudanum, is it?” said Cecil when Matthew had finished. “I have heard of the stuff and can well understand how a clever and unscrupulous apothecary could profit by its most remarkable effects.” Then he stood up suddenly and thrust his long, white fingers back into his gloves. “But there’s no time for speculation
now. Matthew is surely right. There may be but one chance in hell, but at least it is a chance, and my wagering instincts drive me to hazard all for what it may be worth. Come, let’s proceed to Bishopsgate at once. If Heaven’s with us, we’ll rescue your friend Nan Warren, who lives in his house, and catch Leyland before he can escape.”

  Twenty-Three

  NOT ONE hour later, the three were on their way in Cecil’s coach to Bishopsgate Street, with a troop of armed men of Cecil’s household following on horseback. It was the second or third hour of the new day; the streets were dark and deserted, and over the clatter of hoofbeats before and after and the cracking whip of the coachman, Joan tried to explain her new understanding of the Templar murders. She would address a remark to Cecil, then to Matthew, and then to Cecil again. The trouble was that Matthew knew so much, and Cecil so little about the case; and yet both needed to be told. The seating arrangement in the coach was awkward for her purpose, she crunched up against Matthew; the both facing Cecil opposite, he having naturally taken the side with the plushest cushions and the velvet armrests. But there had been such a rush to be off, no time for more talking then, when her deepening suspicion, so repugnant and painful in its implications, had yet to harden into conviction.

  “Oh, don’t you see?” she said to Matthew, twisting toward him. “The mysterious Prideaux, the stealth with which the murderer came and went. Strange that it was Sir Robert himself who set me on the right track. ’’

  Cecil expressed amazement. “Why, Joan. Surely you give me more credit than I deserve. What was it I did? I hardly said a dozen words of greeting before we were in the coach and on our way.”

  “You mistook me for a man,” Joan answered. “Upon entering the porter’s lodge. Oh, sir, it was most reasonable, your assumption, for I was dressed so, and because my back was turned, you were easily deceived. So was Keable.”