by Peter Tonkin
‘Wait out there. I shall explore,’ Tom directed as he lifted his second booted foot high over the wooden step. ‘James. Does your knowledge extend any further in this matter? You never answered when I asked just now. Come now, sir, be frank with us. A boy growing in a warren such as this must be expected to have explored – though only, I am certain, when the family was away.’
‘No, sir. I know nothing more than that a panel was said to exist. Not even said rumoured. Dreamed, rather. I hardly credited the legend with any truth and have never even discussed it with anyone else. And I have never, as you say, explored.’
‘Admirable sentiments,’ said Tom.
‘In every situation except for this one,’ added Ben in a low voice, ‘for we could have used a guide.’
‘But inevitable,’ said Tom, who was very slowly turning round within the confines of the tunnel so that he could look out into the room again. To the others he looked strangely shortened, crouching with his legs seeming to end a little below his knees. ‘For anything other than a hearty disbelief in the existence of such a panel in the Lady Margaret’s bedchamber must have led you to warn Master Mann at the least. Would it not?’
‘Of course. Just seeing the thing open now makes my blood run cold. When Lady Margaret sees it, we will all be out of her favour.’
‘And out of work, as like as not,’ said Talbot Law.
‘And out of Elfinstone,’ added Ben with some relish. ‘Faster than a Spaniard out of a fight.’
‘Check the panel when I have closed it, Ben,’ Tom ordered, ‘and leave the boy alone. We have need of his good nature and his help. Do not use them up too swiftly with that bitter tongue of yours.’ The last imprecation, however, came from behind the panel, for as he spoke, he stepped backwards, caught the makeshift doorway and swung it forward again until it snapped back into its place.
***
Alone in the little passageway, Tom slowly began to sink to his knees, holding the candle close to the rough inner surface where the panel stood untreated and unpolished. Nearly as unpolished as Benjamin jonson, apprentice bricklayer of Islington, thought Tom. There were hinges on this side, cunningly placed so that the pins holding them fitted into the grain of the wood, the backs of them secured to the nutmeg-covered edging that ran up and down between the panels as the cats and mice all ran across; a little spring with a catch above it, a metal ring on the inside of the thirteenth mouse, no doubt – a simple system, of indeterminate age.
Tom had been in tunnels under London Bridge that had seemed almost of Roman antiquity – that had certainly been there since Will Shakespeare’s famous Henry VI, cause of three whole plays, had been king. This tunnel also seemed to be that old – seemed to have been in place before the wainscot went in or the wooden floor had been raised. The system of catches and hinges, however, must have been of much more recent design. It seemed quite new; but that might have just been because it had been carefully maintained. Recently maintained, to boot; maintained and used, therefore, well within the year or so that Lady Margaret had occupied the room. Indeed, the tiny drops of wax on the panel immediately in front of his chin could have come there yesterday.
On his knees now, Tom pulled the candle to his lips and blew it out, adding, he knew, a few more drops of wax to the spray on the wood. In the sudden darkness, his eyes darted everywhere. The mysteries of Lady Margaret’s fears, the missing portrait and the panel itself all turned around one thing in Tom’s mind: around one tiny shaft of light. And there it was. Eagerly he leaned forward and pressed his eye to the hole in the wood that the light revealed. A knot-hole – like everything else in this elaborate system, too small to be readily seen; and yet, when his eyebrow leaned against the rough wood immediately above it, big enough to give him a good view across the room, to take in the whole of the undressed bed, and much of the rest besides. A man might kneel here in silence unobserved, all but unsuspected, and watch the Lady Margaret standing at her desk, reaching into her cupboard for pen and paper, ink or book; watch her come to bed, to sleep, to wake; watch her do everything a lady might do in the privacy of her bedchamber.
But what would the Lady Margaret actually do in there? Read and sleep, dream and wake; write her private letters – little more. No Diana at her forest pool, she would hardly disrobe herself in her sleeping-chamber; there would be a tiring-chamber for that. There she would don and remove her attire, don and remove any make-up with which she chose to adorn her cheeks; allow a maid, perhaps, to brush her hair, and one of her senior ladies-in-waiting to arrange it. He had suspected a mirror on the chimney-breast before the matter of the portrait had become more clear; but in fact there were no mirrors in the room at all. Unless the lovely lady favoured little hand-held ones – and then had taken them to Cotehel with her – she must certainly go to another room entirely to perform the secret intimacies of her attiring and toilet.
Deep in thought, Tom reached up and pulled the little ring that snapped the trap so that the panel jumped open. Light flooded in again and Tom shuffled back, eyes busy. The floor of the passage was clean and dust-free. Their sin-worm seemed a tidy soul – careful and meticulous at least. For an instant more he hesitated on his knees, calculating his next move. Remain here and look for details of the last man to occupy this strange location? Or light the candle, come to his feet and explore the tunnel behind him?
Carefully, he pulled himself erect and stepped out into the room. He found he was burning to explore – far too impatient for the minutiae of inch-by-inch search here; but first he had to check one thing. He swung the panel towards him with enough force to overcome the spring and, sure enough, it snapped shut once again. As soon as it had done so, he was on his knees again and looking for the knot-hole. Even though he knew where it must be, he still could not see it. Not until he slid his fingers over the slick blackness of the wood itself and felt the flaw like some dark lover’s secret mark did he understand exactly where it lay; and there, precisely above it, on the next panel up, stood the nail that had held the missing portrait. Exactly on either side of it were the slight golden marks which told of the picture’s ornate frame closing it off like an eye-patch – indeed, unless the sin-worm was absolutely confident that he could risk a good deal of noise and damage unsuspected, closing the panel itself as effectively as a lock and bolt. For even though the door opened inwards, only the most careful, crawling, exit from the tunnel could stop the precarious picture from tumbling off the wall; and swinging the door closed from the bedchamber, as he had just done, must surely bring it down.
This, indeed, was exactly what had happened, before it had been smuggled to the house in Water Lane and at once worshipped and desecrated. The floor, although meticulously clean, was dented where the heavy frame had fallen; and his memory of the frame itself, though it lay now in his practice room in Blackfriars, was clear enough to bring to mind sprung joints and splintered gilding – things that had seemed of such slight account beside those chilling, calculated slits from throat to bodice, through lips and through neck, though all of them were gaining in weight and importance now.
Gaining and gaining, moment by moment.
Ten: The Sin-Worm’s Steps
To give himself more room in the tunnel, Tom took off his swords and laid them on Lady Margaret’s bed. He laid his black doublet on top of them, in spite of the fact that the air in the secret passage was chill and the lawn and lace of his shirt designed for fashion, not warmth. Then, holding the longest candle as high as he could, he stepped back down over the ledge of wainscot and went into the tunnel again.
There was no turning around this time. Slowly, carefully, mindful of his head against the uneven roof, his feet on the slippery flooring and his elbows on the jagged walls, he went on. When the light around him died, he thought the door must have closed, but no – it was his apprentice in his footsteps like the page in the legend of Wenceslas. It might as well have been the door closing, however. The bricklayer was as square and solid as the portal, and filled t
he tunnel as absolutely. The thought was distraction enough to bring a lump to Tom’s head as he forgot to watch the roof. His mood darkened, only to lighten again as Ben’s head caught the same hazard with the sound of a cannon-stone hitting a wall. ‘Watch your head,’ called Tom, quietly.
The sound of Ben’s misfortune was still echoing more loudly than Tom’s warning when the tunnel turned. The candle was giving little light and their eyes were not yet dark-adjusted, so the turning came as a surprise – or its closeness did: its existence was a thing of inevitability, as far as Tom was concerned.
Still apparently deep in the castle’s internal walls, they went right with it, only to be faced with a junction after another half-dozen steps. The tunnel they were following ended with only a rubble-filled wall ahead. A branch went left while another went right. The left-hand path was wider, slightly taller, better made; the right-hand path a mean and narrow passage, rough-floored, rough-walled. After an instant’s hesitation, Tom went left. The short tunnel they had just traversed must run parallel to the corridor along which the Lady Margaret’s private chambers were situated. To turn right must take them back to the next behind the bedchamber. Logic dictated the tiring-chamber as he had suspected; but that was a conundrum to be considered later. In the meantime, to go left must take them somewhere new.
Within ten short steps it had taken them to another rough-wood inner surface. ‘More panelling,’ said Tom, feeling his companion crowding massively at his back. He moved the candle until another little ring, identical twin to the one behind the thirteenth mouse, appeared. ‘Step back, Ben,’ he ordered and waited until the uneasy sense of constriction had eased – and another cannon-stone crack announced that Ben had backed into the roof once more. Then, stooping, Tom stepped back again and pulled the ring. The secret door sprang ajar. Tom eased it wide and hesitated. All he could see was shadowy vacancy. The little candle flame did little to dissipate the dark. Tom eased himself forward, holding the little flame high – and, just at the last moment realized that what had seemed to be the low lintel of the doorway was the bottom of a picture frame. With all the slow purposefulness of one of Will Shakespeare’s actors miming, Tom lowered his head still further and hunched his back, like Richard III. At the same time he took a great slow step up and over the raised ledge and stepped into the room.
Only when his shoulders were well clear did he begin to straighten, pulling his second foot up after him. He held the candle high and looked around the room he had just entered with such difficulty. He was immediately aware of eyes almost without number, all sternly watching him. Such light as the candle gave caught the gleaming whites of them, brought the liquid sheen of them to life. Disorientated, not a little disturbed, he turned, frowning. Wherever he looked, the eyes looked back down upon him.
A secretive scuffle of movement from behind him made him turn, and even as he did so, a half-seen figure pounced down at him from the very outer edge of his vision. He leaped back, raising the candle, putting the life of its guttering flame at deadly risk. How poignantly he regretted the rapiers on Lady Margaret’s golden bedspread – but only for an instant. For, in the flickering near-darkness, surprised, disorientated as he was, he nevertheless recognized the man attacking him. It was a man he had seen dead at the Battle of Nijmagen eight years ago; a man he had last seen hanging in Highmeet St Magnus in London, in a portrait the twin of this one, a portrait of the current Baron’s dead uncle, a hero of the Engineers, who had given his life to save the Earl of Leicester’s army, mourned by the nation like Sir Philip Sidney had been.
The whole thing crashed to the floor. The raised boards shook and sounded like a drum-skin. Ben fell out into the room beneath the picture, whose frame had added yet another lump to his much-abused head.
The wind of the picture’s downfall seemed to have added some life to the candle, for it burned steadier and brighter now. Tom held it high again and looked around once more; and the picture itself had kindled understanding also in Tom’s mind.
‘It is the boy’s bedchamber,’ he said. ‘It is exactly as young James described it: a fit place for a young baron to sleep, under the gaze of his ancestors.’
‘Lucky I’m not a baron, then,’ said Ben, rubbing the bristles on his crown. ‘I could no more sleep with so many eyes upon me than I could dance a jig on the head of a pin.’
Tom laughed, and on the sound the door burst open. James led a fearsome-looking group of castle staff, but they all froze in the doorway, most of them gaping with surprise that two men closed in one chamber could appear in the midst of another. At least they brought more light.
***
‘Thus is revealed the beginning of the matter,’ said Tom a little later as he led Ben back into the tunnel. ‘At some time in the more distant past, a passage was made so that a mother could visit her son at night without the bother of castle staff and household staff, of barons and countesses – just a mother looking to her boy; a secret thing, however, so done at the same time as the floors were raised and the wainscot hung; an innocent enough beginning, to ease the nightmares of some young baron in history with a soul as tender as yours, young Ben.’
‘Though not a head as tender, I hope,’ said Ben.
‘But the good would seem to have been turned to bad. For the tunnel proved to be like any tree in a forest: it grew branches – one branch, at least.’
‘But how? Why? And who would do such a thing?’
‘How seems easy enough. The castle is ancient. The walls are solid, stone-faced and rubble-filled – even internal walls like these. The original passage moved sideways a little through that rubble filling – enough to give a lively mind a hint how the thing might be extended. Someone has removed the rubble little by little down to the floor, which seems to run solid at this level, and up to a low head height. And so they have made the second branch, a meaner, thinner brother to the first. Straight out of the side of the original and then in again, but this time at hazard, following gaps and flaws in the stone facing, making this smaller tunnel, which we are about to enter – being very careful of our heads.’
‘Leading to a door again?’
‘Logic suggests not. You see how the workmanship is much more basic here? The original, for all it was low and dangerous to your head, was journeyman-made. This never was. This has been done with stealth and in secret, by one man – I would judge – working alone. And, by extension, we find in the original tunnel well-fitted doors, craftsman-made – made by the men who fashioned the wainscot and the mice upon it, for only they could make both the doors and the mice that unlock them. But the man that picked out this meagre passageway could never have worked in wood like that. Therefore we look not for a door but for a knot-hole overlooking...Ah. The answer to your second question: Why? Our knot-hole overwatches Talbot Law seated at ease in Lady Margaret’s tiring-room well supplied with candles and admiring himself in a looking-glass. Here indeed might our sinister Actaeon discover his Diana disrobed.’
‘Or Tom peep at his Godiva,’ added Ben.
***
The four of them sat at the table in the servants’ hall. They were alone, surrounded by shadows and hunched over one dull taper – James was so careful of the precious candles now, so many had been used in the investigation so far, particularly as the exploration of the tunnel had been followed by examination of the young Baron’s room and the rooms of those most closely associated with him, Master Mann’s room last of all. But apart from Lady Margaret’s paper, they had found nothing more.
It was so late that dawn was almost threatening; but they still could not resolve Ben’s last question: Who?
‘If it must be someone intimate with the young Baron’s movements...’ said James.
‘As would seem logical to assume, if he gained entry from the Baron’s room,’ said Ben, echoing Tom’s logic of an hour ago. ‘Then we must return to the tutor, Dr Rowley.’
‘None of his body servants?’ probed Ben. ‘Has he no steward, butler or dresser?’
‘He has them all,’ answered James. ‘All and more.’
‘Who is his tutor in defence?’ asked Tom. ‘This Captain Quin you have told us of? The Master of the Horse?’
‘No. There is a bone of contention there, but the Lady Margaret maintains that Quin has enough to think on, overseeing his command of coachmen, grooms, ostlers and postillions. We use them but rarely, but they need constant watching; and when the household moves, as it is moving now, the quality and reliability of Quin’s men is crucial.’
‘But for most of the year his hands are idle, except that he is ape-leader to his equally idle men,’ said Tom thoughtfully.
‘Idleness breeds sin,’ observed Talbot. ‘It is an old saying rich in proof.’
‘And there is another man that teaches the Baron his more bodily skills therefore?’
‘Indeed: Master St Just. He sailed with Drake in the Revenge against the Armada, and had hoped to remain within his service; but he was wounded in the action at Portland Bill so that he fares to sea no more. Instead, he teaches the Baron the Sciences of Defence, Astrology, Astronomy, Navigation and Ship-handling. At Elfinstone this latter is all theory, of course; but down at Cotehel, they will put theory into practice, I believe. There are boats in plenty down there, of course. And that will all be to the good, I think, for Master St Just is young, growing stronger at last and increasingly active. He has found the post he holds increasingly irksome, I believe.’