The Silent Murder (Master of Defence Book 4)

by Peter Tonkin

  Trotting along behind the coach with its torch at each corner and the link-men leading the leaders, Tom looked over the last of the cliff above Whitsand Bay, then up at the torch-hedged Main Approach that swept down to the gatehouse ahead. He felt he knew the place, though it was his first visit here. It was a building with its own place in the public imagination, like the Tower of London or the Palace at White Hall. Everyone knew something of the castle and its history. Tom, being Tom, would have known more than most even had that been all; but he had been involved with the Outram family in one way and another for seven years, the last two, by chance, more closely – if never intimately until now. Such a mind as his, in such an association, simply soaked up all the information he could come across – either by chance or on purpose.

  Even Ben seemed awed as they trotted onwards, with the tall flambards blazing on either hand. ‘Best-built edifice I’ve ever seen,’ he said. ‘Even more solid than the Tower, by the looks of things. Almost as old, I should judge, in parts, though I look forward to seeing the later additions ordered by King Henry himself. Those torches show off the stonework of the gatehouse a treat. I wonder does that portcullis work.’

  ‘It should,’ said Tom. ‘They lowered it when the Great Armada came in sight. And they fired on the ships with those long culverins and cannons on the outer wall while Drake was finishing his game of bowls upon Plymouth Hoe. So the story goes, at any rate.’

  They came under the portcullis then and their horse-hoofs echoed into the castle’s main yard.

  ‘What builders must have made this,’ said Ben, awed.

  Tempted beyond consideration, Tom said, ‘Aye. It must make you proud to be a bricklayer.’

  In fact it did make Ben obscurely proud to be associated with workmanship like this, so he huffed a little, but kept his temper under control.

  The main keep of the castle rose above them, with two thick arms of grey wall reaching out to join at the gatehouse behind them. Storey after storey the keep rose until its square top stood outlined against the rising moon. Its back was hard against the cliff, its back wall famously more than twenty feet thick at the base.

  At the base of the keep on the inner side a great sweep of steps reached down from a main entrance a dozen feet and more above the ground. The balustrades of these steps, like the wide approach road, were all lined with blazing torches casting steady, golden light. The light itself, in such abundance here and jewel-bright within the castle keep itself, all bespoke one thing loud and clear: money. Only gold in great abundance could afford great brightness such as this; and were that message not well enough established, then the fact of it was driven home at once, like a dagger in a coup de grace. For from the doorway, down the steps, to the heads of the stamping horses and to the doors of the new-stopped coach, swept the castle staff, Captain Polrudden at their head, beside a tall, dark-faced echo of Agnes Danforth – clearly Martin the Chamberlain, her brother. Even had he not already been described in the young Baron’s gushing words, Tom would have known him from his black and sober suiting made pompous – in both senses – by his daffodil waistcoat and his matching cloth of gold cross-garters. Beneath this august pair there looked to be the better part of fifty people there, waiting to greet their young master for the first time and his Lady Mother their new mistress – though, after the much more modest staff of Elfinstone, it seemed to Tom that it was Lady Margaret and young Hal who were likely to be overpowered by this huge reception; and he would not have been at all surprised to find that this was the actual objective of the show.

  Captain Quin strode with stately officiousness towards the horses’ heads, while Chamberlain Danforth began to descend towards the coach door, cross-gartering gleaming impressively – clearly far too important and dignified to hurry.

  Unobserved, ungreeted and impatient on the sudden, Tom stepped down and threw his reins up to Ben. Then he was in motion, striding across the last of the flagged yard to the coach-side.

  Long before Martin Danforth condescended to negotiate the last few steps, Tom was at the door. He glanced across at Quin’s shoulders and the back of his red head as the Captain of Horse took his charges. Then, paying no attention to the squawking of the sluggard chamberlain, he swung the door wide. Lady Margaret appeared, radiant in the golden firelight. The servants there burst into applause.

  As though this was some kind of signal, the placid horses suddenly took fright and jumped forward, taking Captain Quin with them. Had Martin Danforth been at the door, Lady Margaret would have been thrown bodily from the coach and tumbled in the dirt; but Tom was there in his stead, and as the Lady Margaret was thrown out and down by the sudden lurching of the coach, Tom reached up and plucked her from the very jaws of disaster.

  Like the most courtly of gallants about the most elegant volte – Her Majesty’s favourite dance – he caught the Lady Margaret at the waist and swung her safely, securely, to the ground.

  ‘Welcome to Cotehel, My Lady,’ he said quietly, holding her still until she recovered from the shock of near-disaster and steadied under his hands.

  Nineteen: Rage

  Tom could scarcely remember having seen such rage in a man, let alone a woman; and it was all the more effective for being conducted in icy silence. Certainly Polrudden Quin and Martin Danforth quailed under the weight of it for all they both tried to bluster manfully.

  Tom suspected that Lady Margaret might have been more given to charity had this not been a fiasco performed in the face of the whole household – with a much more serious consequence so narrowly averted; and he was certain that the mistress of Cotehel would have been more understanding – even of the pompous self-importance of the pair – had not poor Hal been so upset. Tossed about the inside of the coach and tumbled under the considerable bulk of Mistress Agnes, he had seen his beloved mother thrown bodily out through the door. He had no knowledge of the safe hands into which she had fallen. With a vivid certainty against which his own discomfort was as nothing, he had supposed his mother hurt and humiliated.

  Consequently, when Tom had reached in and pulled him with almost fatherly hands from beneath the shaken Danforth, Hal had already been near hysterical. Only the strength of his aristocratic blood – amongst the purest in the land – had kept him in control as he walked with his mother through the crowd of servants; but there had been tempests and tantrums after that, and Tom, with ready sympathy, could well see why.

  The other coaches had arrived to find Lady Margaret putting the tearful boy to bed herself, in the absence of any servants familiar or trustworthy enough to undertake the task. In her absence, the feast of welcome remained untasted and slowly coming to ruin.

  When she did come down, like a whirlwind, it had not been to lead them to table. Agnes Danforth had been summoned. Some ten minutes later so had Tom, led by the shaken housekeeper to a private reading-room, where Lady Margaret sat beside a low-banked fire with a pile of paper on a little table beside her, writing furiously – writing so furiously, indeed, that the little silver bell beside the papers kept up a constant, gentle, muted tintinnabulation. No sooner had Tom entered than the housekeeper was given two more pieces of paper and, glancing at them, she vanished.

  Lady Margaret gestured Tom to a seat near at hand and he sat, uneasily. It did not feel right to him that he should sit in her presence; but if she so ordered, it would surely be a greater social mistake to disobey, and in her present mood it might well be very unwise to cross her.

  Idly at first he watched her fierce writing; then he frowned. Even Will Shakespeare, when working full-speed on his plays, used quill and ink – though that was slow and messy; and, unworldly when concentrating, Will was apt to run out of ink at vital moments. But Lady Margaret was using one of those new-fangled pencils Tom had heard about. Up near Carlisle, where he had been born and raised, there was a graphite mine so important that it was owned, mined and guarded by the Queen. For it was the only source in all the kingdom of the priceless columns of pencil-lead that were inser
ted into the little sticks. How much easier and more fluid was this new method of writing, Tom thought – how much easier, given that, apart from gesture and lip-movements, it was surely her primary method of communication.

  No sooner had he completed the thought than she thrust a paper at him.

  Thank you again, sir, it said. You have done me very great service.

  ‘I hope to do more, Lady Margaret,’ he began; but a knock at the door forestalled him.

  She picked up a bell behind the pile of papers. She rang it clearly once. Enter, Tom assumed, for the door opened.

  In came Martin Danforth first, still waistcoated and cross-gartered in daffodil. Polrudden Quin came behind him, face like a flitch of bacon. They stood before her like a pair of schoolboys caught scrumping the squire’s apples.

  ‘My Lady...’ they both began together, comically, like a pair of clowns in one of Will’s plays. Each looked at the other, mightily offended that he had been interrupted; and then each began again. ‘My Lady...’

  Up went My Lady’s left hand, silencing their bluster as effectively as a slap. Unexpectedly, Tom was thrust another piece of paper with her right. He glanced down at it. He blenched; began to huff and bluster a little himself. ‘Ah, the Lady Margaret wishes me to inform you...’ he began, eyes scanning down the note a little desperately.

  Her left hand rapped on the table, right hand busily scribbling. He faltered. She thrust another paper at him.

  Read my words.

  ‘All of your concern,’ he read obediently, ‘is to serve the Baron and myself, his mother. You have crossed us in our journey. You have slowed our progress. You have not worked to the best of your ability. You have welcomed us with pomp that would have made the Queen to blench and only Master Musgrave has saved us from disaster at your hands. You should thank him most profoundly, for it was only his swift thoughts and safe hands that have kept you in your posts. Good service I am swift to reward; laggard service I am swift to punish. If you fail again by the merest jot or tittle, I will send you packing, though your families have served mine since before this place was founded.’

  Tom finished reading. As he had been the speaker, both men had looked at him, with outrage and no little hatred written on their faces; but as soon as he fell silent, Lady Margaret rapped upon the table and met their gaze with hers. Tom had not realized before that blue eyes could burn with rage.

  But so, it seemed, they could.

  Quin spoke first, his voice like a rusty hinge. ‘My profoundest apologies, My Lady. It was an accident that will never be repeated.’

  The burning blue gaze swivelled to Tom, and Quin turned, stiffly. ‘I thank you, Master Musgrave,’ he grated, ‘for saving both my mistress and my employment tonight.’

  ‘And I,’ said Martin Danforth, his voice so thick with the Cornish tongue and manly outrage as to be impenetrable, ‘apologize that my slowness allowed such a thing to occur. I, too, thank the Master of Defence for helping in the matter.’

  ***

  ‘You have made two dangerous enemies there, Lady Margaret,’ said Tom, as the door closed behind them. ‘But you did well, I think, to spread some of their enmity to me.’

  I do not fear what they might do to me was her hastily scrawled reply. But Hal...

  ‘If you do not trust them, be rid of them.’ I seek only to winnow the wheat from the chaff. Many are very worthy.

  ‘But all of them must have been employed by your cousin Hugh.’

  That does not make them my enemies – just because he was.

  ‘But still, My Lady, you are too good. And to run such a risk.’

  No sooner had he spoken than there came a gentle tap at the door again.

  The bell rang: Enter.

  Agnes Danforth led in a couple of kitchen wenches bearing food and drink for two. They put the food where their silent mistress directed and, silently, left.

  When we have eaten, said the next note, I wish you to tell me all your news.

  Suddenly Tom found he wasn’t all that hungry after all; but, under Lady Margaret’s steady, unflinching gaze, he found he had no choice. So he started with the mysterious portrait.

  You have seen it?

  ‘I have it. Do you know whence it came?’ Essex. It came with a message which I returned. He wishes to mend fences.

  ‘Don’t trust him.’

  She smiled a little and shook her head as though she had never considered it – which, of course, she never could, he thought. Only a man as arrogant as Essex would have supposed she might, in the face of the fact that he had raped her and tried to kill her more than once. He must be desperate.

  Then Tom was forced to pull his wandering thoughts back to the matter in hand, with a mental admonishment. No matter what he spoke of next, he would upset her.

  She was stronger than he could ever have dreamed, however. She accepted with grim equanimity his account of why the portrait had vanished from her chamber: because it blocked the spy-hole and made the secret panel impossible to open. Once over that hurdle, he described the second tunnel and the spy-hole in her dressing-room.

  So. I must add another to the list of men that have seen me naked. Do you know who?

  ‘Not yet. But you must have suspected something yourself. Why else did you write?’

  I voiced a fear to Master Mann that I was being overwatched beyond reason and he suggested I do so. To someone I was sure would help me.

  Tom hesitated of a sudden – not because he was chary of explaining how the note was delivered at last but because of that word overwatched. It was a word he had taken most care in picking out of the original; and the phrase beside it – Help me – was the one phrase in all the missive that had been written whole. And they were not the same. Even with these being written in pencil and the other in ink, the handwriting was not the same. ‘So,’ he said quietly, ‘you gave your message to your secretary and he made fair copies of it for you.’

  Of course. Why else keep a secretary but to write my letters?

  ‘You were not concerned that he should know your fears?’

  Of course not. He knows all my business. I could not run my households without him. He reads and answers all my correspondence. I only see what he thinks is important enough to trouble me or I would be overwhelmed. I get letters from all over the kingdom – many of them begging. I have farms to run the length and breadth of the land as well as two castles to maintain. He writes to the factors of my estates. He even corresponds with the Rochester Assize for me. Did you know the Lord of Elfinstone is Justice to the court?

  ‘So he wrote the letters Mann and John Hammond carried.’

  Yes. Did you receive them?

  Tom’s deep breath warned her that his answer would be neither short nor pleasant.

  ***

  It is a miracle, she wrote at last.

  ‘What is?’

  That you should have discovered so much from so little. Have made such an adventure out of so few parts of words. Have come so far to aid me on such a slight summons.

  ‘I would have come further on slighter, My Lady, had I thought to be of help to you.’

  Gallantly said. The pencil hesitated. The hand withdrew. Returned. What next?

  ‘We must get some rest. Tired minds will never fathom this coil.’

  That’s wise.

  It is wise, thought Tom. But ‘tis also a lie.

  For he had no intention of sleeping tonight. Lady Margaret might fear the licence that All Fools would release within the great castle on Friday, but there was the potent promise of evil done long before that. And he would stand guard on her tonight – as close as ever he could – for were he the sin-worm or any one of the others confederated against her, he would be quick to consider swift action later this very night. Before he and Ben could explore the castle and its secret places; before the Lady could arrange her defences; while all was coil and bustle with everything out of place and nothing yet reduced to any order; and the lady almost as widely open to over-wat
ching and abusing as she would be by the end of the week.

  Twenty: Repose

  There was much more they needed to discuss, of course – enough to keep them going through days, let alone nights; but Lady Margaret, shocked and distressed though she was, acquiesced. For Tom was right: tired minds make bad decisions; and bad decisions under these circumstances had already cost lives.

  Lady Margaret rang the bell. Before its silver tinkling stopped echoing Agnes Danforth was in the room. The Lady’s dimpled chin made a decisive upward gesture.

  ‘Of course, My Lady. Your room has been prepared.’

  She half-rose, then sat again, scribbling.

  Hal?

  ‘Asleep like a babe, My Lady. In the dressing-room beside your own where you put him. There is now a fire burning in both, as you ordered.’

  Is he alone?

  ‘Not tonight, My Lady. Young Gwennyth as he likes so much is sitting up with a candle in case he calls for something.’

  Rooms for Master Musgrave?

  ‘Prepared long since, My Lady. His, ah...apprentice is safely bedded down. Master Martin has waited up himself to conduct Master Musgrave...’ She glanced across to where Tom sat, watching. ‘The rest of the household’s abed, My Lady – except for the chaplain. He’s celebrating the midnight services due to the season and the day. Maybe one or two there at communion with him those that missed it at Buckfast.’