The Point of Death

by Peter Tonkin

  Blunt's legs were in the air now and the weight of his thighs and backside was working on the fulcrums of his ankles. And the moment his shoulders left the floor he saw that Tom's words were literally true. Something cracked, the sound explosively loud in the little room. It might have been the beam, the rope, the gyves or any of the bones they gripped so cruelly. The hanging man screamed. 'Nick o' Darkmans. They call me Nick o' Darkmans.'

  Tom's eyes met Talbot's and the Bishop's Bailiff, pale and wide eyed, nodded. Tom's hand went up and Nick o' Darkmans came down. 'The Bishop's Bailiff knows you, man. And that means hanging or burning like as not. Unless you can give us other game to skin. What was your latest business with me?'

  'Not to kill you, Master. Never to kill you.'

  'What, then?'

  'We was to break your sword, then your arms and your hands. Then your skull if we wanted. But we were to leave you alive, Master, I swear it.'

  Constanza screamed, choking the sound off with the back of her hand. Tom looked across at Poley and Talbot. 'Not dead, but crippled. Who would want that for me?'

  He was addressing the question to his friends but Nick o' Darkmans was falling over himself to answer it. 'His name is Baines. Richard Baines. He tried to hide the truth from us by calling himself Henry Carey. Said he came from Berwick and spoke with a Northern voice well enough. But we saw through him all too quick, though we never told him aught. 'Tis a law of the trade - always know your employer.' Now it was Tom's turn to look surprised, for he had been certain in his own mind from the moment Ugo warned him of the man in black that he was being followed by the two-sworded ambidextrous who had murdered Morton; the Spaniard staying in the Earl of Essex's household. One of two Spaniards waiting there for my Lord's duties at Nonesuch to be done.

  But no. From the moment Blunt had admitted he was Nick o' Darkmans, the truth had flowed from him, as pure as Jordan's stream. Tom would just have to find out more about this Richard Baines and fit him into the widening web of the puzzle. He suddenly remembered what Poley had said about Morton's murder being like the pinnacle of a pyramid of Egypt and the full massive truth lying buried in the sand far below.

  'Is Baines a name that means anything to you?' he asked Poley and received a curt, negative shake of the head in reply and a speaking look around the company - from which he assumed that Poley might pass on information as soon as they were alone. The next step would require more time and teasing out of information from the man. Time they did not have to hand now. 'Take him away,' he ordered Talbot's men, 'and keep him close. We have work to do which calls urgently on us now; but, like so much else that we have gathered today, Nick o' Darkmans will bear closer scrutiny when our leisure serves.'

  Then, as they began to pull their own clothes back on, Tom managed to clear the room at last and Poley began to speak of Richard Baines. 'When Master Secretary Walsingham died, the company he had gathered together began to fall apart. While he was still alive, there were a goodly number of us working on such matters as the Queen's cousin Mary of Scots, dealing with such as Babbington and his traitors, as you know. It was the same company that Sir Francis had created over the years to guard Her Majesty against plots from Cadiz, from Rome, from much nearer home. I was the head of the active section. My duties were to contact, examine, report. Work on the streets, in the stews, the counters and gaols, anywhere sedition and treason were brewing. But, equally important, was another section. This was the dealers in Codes and Cyphers. It was led by Thomas Phellippes. Richard Baines works for him - or used to do so. Even Masters of Cyphers need protection sometimes - and that was what Baines was there for. He's a roaring boy, a bully, a quick man with a knife.'

  'And where does your ancient intelligencer owe his loyalty now?' asked Tom quietly. 'Wherever Thomas Phellippes owes his - or so I would believe.'

  'And where does this code-master Phellippes roost?' Tom glanced up from the task of pulling up his sodden boots.

  'At Essex House.'

  'So,' said Tom thoughtfully, tightening his belt at last, 'the company of Sir Francis, his secret servants, have fallen into two camps now that Master Secretary is dead. You and those few of your men left alive seem to be working for the Council, reporting to Lord Hunsdon, looking into the deaths of a shocking number of important men. Phellippes and his crew work for the Earl of Essex. And these are the men that are set to kill us all if they can.'

  'That would seem to be the bare bones of the situation.'

  'But you have no idea why this should be.'

  'I have ideas in plenty, Master Musgrave. But none for the common ear - or even your own at present. Come. There have been enough confidences. We have work at hand and an ounce of proof is better than a tun of speculation.'

  Tom and Poley's clothes were still damp but - to begin with - warm. And they smelt of vinegar instead of ordure. Had either man been particularly worried about their state of dress, the bustle that followed their re-clothing would have distracted them. For there was to be no further hesitation. Pausing only at Blackfriars to gather Tom and Ugo's best, they were off to Old Jewry and Wormwood House.

  Talbot had agreed to join them, pronouncing himself weary of the simple tasks of being Bishop's Bailiff and keen to see real action once again of the sort he had enjoyed with the Master of Logic at Nijmagen. His men declined the opportunity to risk a moonlight flit from one end of the city to the other, armed to the teeth under the eyes of the Watch - this leading only to the opportunity to search in secret darkness through a cursed house full of madness, demons and death. 'You can hardly blame them,' said Ugo solidly. 'I could do with some Dutch Courage myself.'

  It was a breathless, overcast night. The moon was just rising as Tom tore himself away from the delicious farewells of Constanza and ran out of the Elephant, across Bankside and down to Molestrand Dock. A couple of wherries took them swiftly across to Blackfriars Steps and a link boy guided them swiftly up Water Street, for it was not yet ten. Up in Tom's rooms they gathered swords and daggers, making sure that each of them was well supplied with cold steel before Ugo began to pass out his own special wares. Poley's wheel lock and Tom's snaphaunce revolver were out of commission. Ugo kept his own revolver and replaced Poley's with a single-barrelled weapon. 'We'll need to prepare for silent work as well,' said Tom quietly, and for him self and Talbot he pulled off one of Ugo's shelves a pair of small cross-bows which were carefully designed to fire either from shoulder like a small musket or hand like a big pistol. With each came a belt-full of slim iron-headed bolts. Thinking ahead, and dismissing the bulk of what Poley had told him earlier, Tom took a second rapier and slung it across his right thigh for when they summoned Will to join them. Then, with Tom armed like the ambidextrous Spaniard, they were off into the night.

  As they ran out of Blackfriars into Carter Lane, the great bell at Bow rang out. The bustle in the dark roadway ahead of them began to thin out almost magically. Link boys began to run home to their beds, taking their blazing torches with them. By the time the four companions reached the end of the long thoroughfare and crossed into Maidenhead Lane, the only lights still on were the torches by the doors of civic men slow to extinguish their civic duties. The bustle had died to the extent that they could hear the Bellman in the distance calling, 'Remember the clocks, look well to your locks...'

  By the time they had followed Maidenhead Lane into Friday Street and run northward into Cheapside, all the mighty heart of London seemed to have slowed in sleep. Under the inconstant moon, the road way - widest in London with the Cheapside Market packed away until dawn tomorrow - was a silver river running between great black cliffs of shadow. And it was the shadows that claimed them, for in spite of Poley's bravado, they really did not want to show Lord Henry's commission to the City Watch - most of whom were illiterate and many of whom were ill conditioned and ill tempered.

  They paused at the corner of Old Jewry and held a breathless conversation, the burden of which was that Tom should run on to call Will if he so desired. The rest
of them would wait for them here for a count of a thousand. If Tom had not returned by then - or if anything served to disturb them in the meantime - they would proceed to Wormwood House and all would meet there in any case. It seemed a sound plan.

  Tom ran off up Old Jewry. The swiftest way to Will's lodgings would take him past Wormwood House and then up Lothbury, Throckmorton and Threadneedle. He had it all planned ahead in his mind, knowing every twist and turn; hoping Will would not mistake him for a hooker when he tapped on the window and call down the Watch on him. But thoughts of the hooker's long hooked pole designed to pull valuables out of unlatched windows - indeed, thoughts of Will and all - were driven out of his head as he came close to Wormwood House itself.

  The house stood on the corner of Old Jewry and Lothbury Street. It was a great old mansion, built the better part of a century since when men such as the first Lord Outremer were opening up the great trade routes in spices and herbs such as the one that gave the place its name. It had been added to by the lord lately deceased and it now stepped out into the air, storey overhanging storey, to blot out the moonblue sky. There was a maze of rooms within, by all accounts, a wilderness of corridors. There was even, at the inmost corner of the place, a tower, so Tom had heard. The swift patter of his footsteps slowed as Wormwood House reared its shadowed head over him. He was no more superstitous than the clearest thinking humanist of his time and yet he could not help a shudder at being so close to the place alone. But then his fears were set aside by circumstance.

  For, deep within the stygian darkness of the place he saw a pinprick of light. The fact of it stopped him in his tracks. His shoulder was already brushing the sill of the window where the light shone. He pressed his ear against the ancient glass, squinting to see where the pinprick of brightness was coming from. And the instant that his ear touched the icy pane he heard the moaning. His hair stirred and for a moment he thought it was alive, seeking to crawl from his very head. But if his hair was stirring it was the only part of him that was. His heart seemed to have stopped and his very blood was frozen in his veins. The moaning went on and on. Hoarse, desperate, as though uttered by a throat long past the necessity of breathing. Something within Tom associated the sound with the light - perhaps because they were both so ghastly and unvarying. And once his wits had stirred themselves that far, he was able to drag first his mind then his body into motion. It seemed that he had found Master Seyton, the Chamberlain of Wormwood - but he had found trouble into the bargain.

  Down Old Jewry he stole, his eye enthralled by the way the light blinked out and on again as he passed along the deserted roadway. At the corner of the two grand old streets stood the main door of the accursed place, and it stood wide. Out through the black throat of it there issued that almost silent moaning. Had he not known of it, had he not been listening for it, Tom would never have heard it. Those few - like the Watch, perhaps- scurrying past this haunted and accursed place, would never have heard it. Would probably never have stopped to see the door standing wide open. But Tom could hear and Tom could see. And Tom was going to investigate.

  There were two steps, hollowed by a century's busy traffic, up into Wormwood House. Tom took them a'tiptoe. Then a low sill separated the outside step from the inner flags of the hall. Here, on the very lip of the threshold, Tom hesitated. Should he close the door? He thought not. The only people he was like to be keeping out were his friends, due in a count of five hundred or so. Whoever had been here to leave all unguarded was gone, apart from the moaning man they left behind. And the Watch were hardly likely to be a trouble in this place - in this place least of all, in fact.

  Ten careful steps took Tom into the centre of that cavern of darkness- a place confirmed only by his ears registering accoustics far beyond his comprehension. But in the coaly darkness of the place, the thread of sound ran true, guiding him under a bulk of greater darkness into smaller, more confined environs. And here, distantly, but blessedly, he got his first flicker of that distant, golden light. The sight of it betrayed him into confidence and he strode through an open portal into a passageway, walking as though that distant star were a sun on midsummer day. He crashed into a toppled chair and nearly tripped headlong. Then, feeling ahead of himself at knee height, he soon realised that the whole hallway was filled with the wreckage of smashed and scattered furnishings. He piled it against the walls, worrying only about clearing a passageway through to the light and the gathering sound.

  At last, he came into the source of both. It was a great wide parlour with a kitchen area two steps below it. The whole place looked like the hall and he had to toss wrecked furniture hither and thither as he fought his way across to the only piece of furniture in the place still standing. It was an ancient table. At it sat a man whose face seemed to be in like condition to the rest of the house. It was puffed with beating and seemed so black with shadows and bruises that it might have been the face of a blackamoor. The jaws were wedged wide and the cheeks puffed by a gag forced immoveably between his jaws, round which the unvarying moan seemed to be his loudest cries for help. All that seemed to be holding him erect was the great candle which stood between his hands, into the searing heat of which his face would have fallen had he moved. At first, Tom could not work out why the old man - battered and blood-bespattered to be sure - did not simply pick up the candle and either toss it aside or use it to light his way to the Watch. But then Tom noticed the old man's hands, where they lay half engulfed by molten wax from the candle.

  They were nailed to the table.

  And that, in fact was only the first part of a series of revelations. The old man could not move the candle because of his hands. He could not blow it out because of his gag.

  He could not use his face to blot it out at the price of a burn and some wax-scalding because the blackness on his skin was not bruising - it was gunpowder. And the great gag, dribbling black spittle down the old man's chin, was a bag of powder too. He could not pull back from the searing heat because of the way his hands were nailed yet he dare not rock forward at all or the candle would ignite the powder and blow his head off there and then.

  Tom rushed forward, hurling a shattered stool to one side, just as the old man's face fell forward into the candle flame. The searing pain and the shattering noise jerked the swollen eyes into a narrow glare. The ancient body heaved until only the hands held it grotesquely in place. The candlelight spread to reveal a skinny chest and brutally abused shoulders.

  Tom swung round the table and caught the mouth of the powder-bag gag, easing it out of the old man's mouth. It was a solid bag of the finest leather, swollen to the size of a fist with the powder. On it were embroidered in fine gold thread the letters S and D all interwoven in a strangely ornate fashion. But Tom had no great liberty for examination, for at once the moaning choked into words. 'Bring her back, señor. She will harm no one. She says nothing and lives as quiet as the mouse on my master's arms. She has not stirred abroad this five year, señor, and speaks no word to any. I did not lie when I told you. Never a word. Never a word to any. I have kept her by the book with kindness and never needed the whips. Oh do not take her to Bedlam sir, I beg you in my master's name who gave her charge to me.'

  Tom stood by the old man, thinking nothing of his raving for the time being. 'Master Seyton,' he hazarded. 'Is it Mistress Kate you speak of?'

  'Oh, you cannot trick me, you Spanish devil,' spat the old man, full of fire and choler suddenly. 'You know we talk of Mistress Margaret whom you have stolen away from me. Burn down the house as you burned down Mousehole. Burn it down around my ears and have done.'

  Tom knelt on one knee and looked up into Chamberlain Seyton's ruined face. 'I am no Spaniard but Tom Musgrave, Master of Defence. I have come to aid you and yours, Master Seyton, but I must know what has gone on here and I must know of Mistress Kate if you have news of her.' His hand went up the old man's back to the shoulders, supporting him as he crouched on the three-legged stool they had left him on.

  Seyton
gave a great shudder and leaned back, no longer having to hold himself erect, no longer having to save his crucified hands. He looked Tom in the face and something moved in the blood-red slits behind the blackened ruins of his eyes. Tom wished that it had been sanity and recognition; willingness to impart the information that he needed, but it was not.

  'If you are not the whoreson Spaniard,' whispered the old man with a lunatic's cunning, 'then why do you wear his swords? You are a creature compounded of lies. You and your crew and the bookseller's boy this morning whose volumes brought my lady no peace. No peace ...'

  Tom only half heard the end of this diatribe for he was looking down, thunder struck, at the hilt of his own sword on one side, and the hilt of the second one he'd brought for Will on the other. And he realised with a lurch like a body-blow what the old man had been talking about. But when he looked up, the ancient chamberlain was dead. Still leaning back against his shaking hand, still staring with those mad red eyes. But stone dead for all that. Tom had seen enough death to know. The weight of the frail old body became well-nigh unbearable.

  With the reverence due to such simple bravery in age, Tom moved the candle forward and laid the ancient head between the tormented hands, then he put the bag of powder in his belt and set to searching for some other light. He had only just begun when a crash from the end of the corridor informed him that the other three had arrived. He went with the candle and guided them through. Then they shared the table with the ancient corpse and held a swift council of war. The bag of powder that had served as a gag was examined in as much detail as the candle would allow, but even Poley could make nothing of the ornate initials D.S. or S.D. And so they proceeded to do what they had actually come to do.