by Peter Tonkin
Like a great stone wave it rose before them, grimly forbidding even amid the spring-warm, sunny splendour of the happy, holy morning. Although the last week had been clement enough, the months before that had been amongst the wettest in living memory. Stream after stream came splashing down the grim granite precipices and the horses had to wade across the ford over the River Teign at Chudleigh Knighton. They pounded through long, thin Ashburton squashed against the moorside, and turned right at last, following the road along the bank of the lively River Dart. Up on to the Moor itself they cantered, towards where Buckfast stood on the ridge, and the abbey stood higher still, its tall steeples looking south to the Channel and north across the wildest stretches of moorland in the kingdom.
Even had they not known the road, the tuneful carolling of the abbey bells would have guided them like Ariadne’s golden thread. ‘I ache to get to services,’ said Tom grimly. ‘I was travelling all through Christmas Day and felt the lack of it then, but not so bad as this.’
‘I just ache,’ said Ben, grimly; but he was able to swing himself down from his horse with a great deal more agility than he had exercised in getting on to it at Exeter. Outside the ancient abbey’s extensive accommodation stood a muddied travelling coach, its traces empty. Under the dirt on its door panel was a familiar crest of cats, mice and nutmegs. In the abbey’s stables Tom found Lady Margaret’s ostlers, preparing her horses against departure when the service was done, and Tom left his hired horses with them.
Then, slowly, almost shyly, of a sudden – all too vividly aware that he had not been barbered for days, that nothing he was wearing had been removed except to allow calls of nature for nearly a week, and that as much mud as bespattered Lady Margaret’s coach also bespattered himself and his companion – Tom pushed open the door and tiptoed into the glory of the abbey church.
It was as though the very air was made of gold. Golden beams fell in cascades through all the windows until the stained glass’ above the altar rose in a jewel-bright glory of ruby, garnet, emerald and sapphire fit to rival the heavens themselves. Golden blades glanced and glimmered off the gilding on the fine, high columns that held the fluted roofing as though it were the floor of paradise itself. Golden sounds shimmered all along the nave, from chapels and choirs on every hand. Even the flags on the floor seemed to be running with gold as they trembled beneath the mighty chiming of the bells and the singing of the choir at Easter worship.
Tom was blinded by the light – light multiplied a thousand times by the tears that filled his eyes; but he would have been hard put to it to say with utter honesty whether his joy rose from the fact that he had completed his hard-won pilgrimage into the presence of his God – or into that of his Lady Margaret.
Not that there was, in the first instance, much to choose between them in his dazzled eyes. For when he discovered her at last, standing like a lily in the front rank of the congregation, she was, like all the rest in there, a thing compounded of airy gold. The lace that modestly contained her hair was a filigree of gilded threads, so fine, so burnished, that at first it was impossible to say what was headdress and what was hair. The curls the lace half-covered fell like glistering guineas to her shoulders, where a modest collar sat square before plunging into the bodice of golden silk. Even the glimpse of flesh the modest clothing allowed seemed cast of gold itself, like the works of the Italian metalsmith Benvenuto Cellini, whose work Tom had seen in Florence while he had been studying in Italy – seen and so admired.
Coveted, in fact; coveted most sinfully.
The word sprang into his mind unbidden. The idea was so sinful, so out of place with the rapture he had been enjoying, that it brought him up short, like a viciously reined-in horse. It cleared his eyes and mind alike. For was that not what he had been called here to prevent – the coveting of this golden woman? the secret worship of that golden flesh? the dangerous desire to possess it? – no matter what damage might be done to it in the process; no matter what further damage might be done to her.
He took Ben’s arm and pushed him sideways. There were no pews and the congregation stood, so it was easy enough to mingle with them – save that they were all fresh-washed and best-dressed, while the pair of new arrivals stank like stallions and looked like beggars.
Tom’s mind was instantly very far removed from the ecstatic heights it had reached on first entry. Instead, his eyes swiftly narrowed against the glare until he could make out the individuals in the entourage around Lady Margaret and the wand-straight boy-Baron at her side.
There was no mistaking Captain Polrudden Quin. Had his bearing not born the stamp of a military swagger, his hair would have betrayed him. Tom was no Cornish-speaker, but it had hardly exercised his intelligence to fathom that ‘polrudden’ was likely to mean ‘redhead’. So it proved. Tom had never seen such uncompromising copper in natural locks. Beside the gilded beauty of his mistress and master the man looked garish; his whole being seemed in bad taste. Red hair, copper ringlets in far too great profusion in Southampton’s style, or Essex’s at Court. Beyond a ruddy cheek and jaw, barbed bronze tangles of moustache – curled up in the military style – and beard, if anything, redder still. In the light from the stained glass it looked as though he might have simply dipped his chin in blood.
Beside him, a different proposition again: a tall woman of indeterminate years but jet-black hair, dressed in similar style to her mistress – similar but cypress, black head-dress, lace collar reaching to black velvet bodice.
Ben coughed like a brick chimney, clearing his throat of the road’s dust.
The woman – Agnes Danforth, surely – turned. Her gaze raked coldly over them but did not seem to see the newcomers. Tom saw sallow, olive skin, full and oily; an aquiline nose that would indeed have doubled as an eagle’s beak; a thin mouth with a disapproving twist pulling down lines from the flare of her nostril to the first fold of her jowl; eyes like the fat black olives they grew in Sicily. Tom’s eyebrows rose. He had seen women in the Alhambra who looked less Spanish than Mistress Danforth, he thought.
The man on Danforth’s left glanced easily over his shoulder too and a strange murmur went through the congregation. Tom’s eyebrows rose further still. How had St Just got here so swiftly? he wondered. It would be well to keep a close eye on someone who achieved with such seeming ease a feat that had come near to crippling both himself and Ben.
Dr Rowley and the branded Gawdy would
be catching up with them in due course, he thought – unless they rode with the fevered speed of Poley or Master St Just; but this was the heart of the household, none of whom Master Mann had much call to trust, especially if Tom and Ben had translated his report to Poley correctly.
Tom closed his eyes briefly, seeing again that water-damaged list of initials: D fth, St g, even Gy and Ry... And, of course, Q, my opinion of whom you know... Even before the matter of the secret letters abroad to France and Spain...
If Lady Margaret had any real reason for her fears, any true foundation for the letters she had written to him, then it must lie here, thought Tom. Would it not be neat to catch the sin-worm with his eyes fastened secretly but madly upon her – overwatching her, as she feared. Would it not make all the adventure so far immediately worthwhile and allow him to bring her, with his arrival, a full relief of all her terrible suspicions?
In fact it soon proved impossible for him to achieve anything of the kind; for even before the interminable Easter sermon began, it became clear to Tom that almost every eye in the place was fastened exclusively upon Lady Margaret.
Eighteen: Cotehel
At the end of the service, Lady Margaret led the worshippers out into the noonday sunlight as was her right and duty. To do this, of course, she would have to turn and process along the full length of the abbey church.
As she turned to begin this procession, Tom frowned to see the lines of worry and fatigue that marked her elfin face. Beneath those huge blue eyes were bruise-dark rings. There were lines across that snow
y forehead and astride the coral lips. The hand that she lowered to her son’s hand trembled, but not as much as the other, which she laid with cool formality upon Captain Quin’s forearm.
Tom’s heart simply twisted within him. He had seen Lady Margaret, child and woman, in the uttermost exigencies, in the midst of being ravished, chained as a Bedlamite and being hunted with horse and hound; yet he had never seen such a wilderness of weary defeat upon her face. Like a lodestone pulled by its star, with scarcely any real control over himself at all, he pushed back through the congregation and stepped out into the aisle before her. Her eyes met his; widened. Their focus sharpened. Shock and surprise flitted over her expression like cloud-shadows over the moors. Disbelief followed. The huge eyes blinked. She hesitated. Quin, seemingly unaware, marched onward as to war. Agnes Danforth, a step behind, saw well enough, however, and her speed began to gather as she surged forward like a stately Spanish galleon to hurry her mistress by.
Lady Margaret’s expression began to transform again. Cloud-shadow was replaced by simple, stunning sunshine. The worry and the wrinkles seemed to fall away. The most breathtaking, most dazzling, of smiles swept over her. She stopped. Quin strode on, then hesitated, foolishly, realizing he was alone and walking before his mistress, out of his place. Danforth crashed into her then stepped back stricken, off course and surprised, like the Armada under the guns of Howard, Drake and the rest.
The strange transformation was complete. With her son the Baron’s hand still in hers, moving with swift determination now, Lady Margaret, every inch the Countess Cotehel, crossed the abbey church towards him; and again, scarcely in control of his limbs, Tom knelt to her – back straight and shoulders square but head bowed, down on one knee, as he had seen the Earl of Essex kneel to the Queen in the White Hall tiltyard last Whitsuntide when he had been victorious at a day of jousting and tourneying, playing Sir Lancelot to her Queen Guinevere.
And as Her Majesty had done to her knight in shining armour then, so Her Grace did to hers now. She settled her hand like a white dove on his shoulder and, as if by magic, pulled him erect again. There was a profound silence in the place. The whole household and congregation seemed held alike entranced, watching Lady Margaret and the travel-stained stranger. Their gazes locked, like equals in station and in height, for all she stood as far above him in one as he towered above her in the other. ‘Welcome,’ said her lips, but no whisper of sound sullied the silence of the holy place.
Then her gentle hand was pushing him softly back, into his place; and she turned and gestured Quin imperiously back to her side. Her hand rested firmly on his forearm once again and she steered him decisively along to the doorway, out into the blazing noon as though she was utterly unaware of his beef-red cheeks and fiery looks.
Agnes Danforth disdained to look at Tom at all, as she swept past him, back on her course in her mistress’s wake. St Just measured him coolly once again, and Tom’s eyes met the gargoyle’s square on without flinching. Then, as of right, as though they were also senior members of her household, Tom and Ben fell in behind Lady Margaret’s entourage.
Tom calculated that it was thirty leagues almost to the ell from the door of Buckfast abbey church to the main gate of Castle Cotehel. Lady Margaret commanded that the coach-drivers proceed along the road at five leagues or so in the hour, however, for she clearly wished to be home tonight; and they were able to obey, he observed, for the roads near Plymouth were better maintained than most. She sent the fractious Quin on ahead to prepare the way and warn the hostellers and their ostlers that they would be coming through even earlier than planned. The redheaded Captain went with ill grace enough, flashing thunderous looks at Tom as he sawed at his gelding’s mouth with jerking reins and stabbed its sides with his spurs.
‘The innkeepers and post-horse stablers keep good stock in and a weather eye out all along this stretch,’ said Tom to Ben as they all set off together. ‘They’re well used to parties passing with little notice but at top speed, in each direction, day and night. We’ve seen the way Poley went with his troop. Earl Howard lives back in Arundel and Raleigh at Sherborne. Drake lives up at Buckland on the Moor itself, but also has a house in Looe Street in Plymouth. He is forever rushing between them – and up to London as well. They all wish to get themselves and their crews to their ships in Plymouth Sound swiftly and efficiently. And I observe the Lady Margaret is not above making good use of the systems in place for them.’
Even so, it took nearly three hours to get the Cotehel coaches to Ivybridge and their first change of horses. On the other hand, thought Tom more cheerfully, they were able to make much better time afterwards. They changed again at Plympton and again at the Jewell in Plymouth overlooking the Hoe. Then they trundled down the hill to the harbour where, perforce, they stopped upon the very last of Devon.
Quin had booked the biggest ferry to take them across the Hamoaze to Torpoint and Cornwall, but the vessel could only manage one coach at a time. Of course, Lady Margaret’s coach went first, across the glass-still waters on a gently falling tide. As the postillions guided the coach-horses aboard, the Baron’s head appeared briefly and one of the burly fellows came back towards where Tom and Ben waited with the rest.
‘You’re to go with the Baron’s coach,’ he informed them.
St Just started forward with them as well, but there was really only room for one coach, six horses and two riders, so, in the face of his master’s orders, he perforce remained behind. It was difficult to tell from his expression whether he was as discomfited as Quin had been; but Tom felt it safest to assume that he was.
‘Apart from the Lady and the boy,’ he said to Ben, as they stirred forward, ‘look for nothing but enemies at Cotehel.’
There was just room for Tom and Ben to swing down as the ferrymen bustled about. By no coincidence at all, Tom found himself standing at the door of the coach where Lady Margaret sat. She looked out through the open window straight into his eyes with almost disorientating intimacy. She put her hand out, but it was a moment before he saw that there was a tiny piece of paper in her fingers. He took it. When their fingers touched, a bolt of sensation passed between them that was almost too painful to bear. He opened the paper with shaking fingers, looking steadfastly down.
You are very welcome here, it said.
‘You are very welcome here, Master Musgrave,’ said a soft, dulcet voice.
Tom looked up again at once, stunned and disorientated. It was the voice from his dream of her – the way he had known in his very marrow that she would speak.
But no. The young Baron’s face had joined his mother’s at the window and was grinning down at him.
‘My Lady,’ Tom responded, a little stiffly, bowing his head from the neck almost in the German fashion. ‘My Lord.’
When he straightened, he saw another face in the shadows of the coach behind them, and met the disapproving, Mediterranean gaze of Mistress Agnes Danforth. ‘I have a great deal of news to give you both,’ he said. ‘But some of it is sad and some is disturbing, so perhaps it is better suited to some privacy.’
Lady Margaret’s level gaze met his own, seemed to plumb the depths of his dark eyes.
A flicker of a frown came and went.
‘But you will teach me how to fence in the new style, will you not?’ asked the Baron, all boyish enthusiasm. Mistress Danforth tutted at such unseemly enthusiasm, but Lady Margaret smiled.
‘Of course, My Lord.’
‘You must call me Hal,’ commanded the boy. ‘Everyone does.’ Then he leant forward across his mother’s bosom, lowering his voice into laughing conspiracy. ‘Well, the younger ones do. Captain Polrudden still says My Lord and so do Mistress Agnes and Master Martin the Chamberlain. But Gawdy and Rowley and Master St Just all call me Hal. ‘Tis fortunate. Hal is one of the few names Master St Just can say. You should hear the trouble he has with Master Martin and Captain Polrudden!’
Only his mother’s hand on his arm stilled the bubbling boy, Tom noticed; but
at her touch, the child glanced up at her with such a look of trusting love that he felt his heart turn over again.
‘Of course,’ he answered. ‘I shall be honoured to call you Hal, My Lord, and to teach you a pass or two, with the approval of your Lady Mother – and the leave, of course, of your own master of defence. I have seen Master St Just at swordplay and I assure you, sir, that there is little I could teach that he could not.’
‘You have seen Ulysses fight!’ said Hal, aglow. ‘But how could that be?’
It took Tom but one beat of reasoning to realize it must be Ulysses St Just, and that one atomy of time to decide how the story must best be told. Modestly, therefore, he described his own poor part in Ulysses’ battle with the Cyclops Jack Sleaford and the brothers Green; and by the time he was taxing his ingenuity for an outcome suitable to both the man and the boy, the ferry slid into Torpoint and they had to disembark.
Quin might have been disgruntled at being sent summarily on ahead, but he saw his duty and knew his job. Two link-boys riding ponies met them and then used their flaming torches to guide them through the gathering night out and round St John’s Lake past Antony, with the bells for Easter compline ringing in the little church. Up and up their way took them until Tom saw all too clearly why Quin had taken such care. They turned south along a cliff path that seemed to teeter on the very brink, high above Long Sands and Sharrow Point up to the brooding castle high on bleak Rame Head.
It was not a beautiful castle. Even in the last of the light on a clear evening with the westering sun setting away behind the Lizard, the place looked squat and brutal. It had been carved there, chopped out of the grey rock of the place by an earlier generation of Outrams, the almost-pirates on whom the family fortunes were founded, blunt and brutal men who had taken their ships out of Plymouth after the exotic fruits and spices symbolized by those silver nutmegs now. The place was designed to watch the western approaches, and so it was built right to the very cliff-edge, extending an already dizzy height by more than a hundred grey-stone feet, augmented both in height and depth by Henry’s engineers. It was designed to protect the anchorage and make kindling out of any ship seeking to slip into the Hamaoze unlooked for or unannounced.You could drop rocks on them, as blind Polyphemus had done on Ulysses; but there was no need: the most powerful guns in Henry VIII’s great foundries had been put here fifty years ago. Then, since Armada Year, these had been augmented and updated with his daughter’s best and most modern culverins.