by Mary Gentle
She let go of his arm and stepped back, ankle-deep in slush at the roadside; pushing one thread of red hair back from her eyes. Voices called, chattered. Between hoofbeats and a distant sackbut, muffled church bells rang noon’s thirteen chimes. The sun’s warmth on her cheek felt a fragile thing.
She crossed her arms across her breast, gripping her upper arms.
"Will you . . ."
Not a smile: an upwelling of something too fierce and too joyous to be contained. She showed teeth. Her fingers dug deep into her biceps under the cloak. A deep breath: ". . . Will you trust me to do something, without my telling you?"
The Lord-Architect Casaubon raised his eyebrow, pained. "I most certainly will not."
"That’s—fair."
"Do what you want," he said, "and count me with you, but not without knowing what it is. Credit me with some sense, furies take it!"
"Rein me and spur me, will you?" She laughed. Astonished, feeling it shake her body. She swung on her heel and strode towards Roseveare Court’s back alley entrance, his shadow leaping ahead as he paced beside her.
No shifting hooves sounded in the stables, the gentlemen- mercenaries’ mounts gone. Sun glinted from frost and cobbles. Seeing Abiathar, she snapped her fingers: the click echoing off yard walls.
The black-haired woman held the kitchen door open. "Shout next time. Kitterage might blow your head off. He’s nervous."
The White Crow laughed. "He’s nervous."
Abiathar and the Lord-Architect exchanged glances.
"Come with me. Both of you." She threw down her cloak and took the stairs from the kitchen parlour two at a time, heard the woman’s questioning tone cut off as the door swung to; and made it as far as the second-floor front room before they caught up. She crossed to the desk and unlocked the drawer.
Casaubon, no sign of exertion in his face, unbuttoned his coat as he came into the room. Sunlight and warmth: and the smell of polished wood long neglected. She thrust the sheaf of folded papers into his hand.
"I’ll sign these, unless you tell me I shouldn’t."
In the far corner of the room an iron-banded long chest stood. She squatted and tried the key in the lock, wrist exerting force against the rust-starred metal.
"Damn, I—there!" She lifted her head.
The Lord-Architect stood in the centre of the room, head bent, reading. He handed each paper as he finished it to Abiathar. The woman wiped her hands on her skirts. She frowned in concentration, reading.
The White Crow opened the wooden chest.
A covering cloth. Parchments, rough against her hands as autumn leaves, their inks faded into purples and sepias, but the sigils still clear and strong. Two or three untitled books. She stacked them reverently to one side on the floor. And under it all, a mass of buckles, chains, leather straps, and a scabbard.
"Deeds of property. " The Lord-Architect folded the last between two fingers and proffered it to Abiathar. She nodded acknowledgement.
"Abiathar, what say you?" The White Crow knelt up, buckling the wide leather belt around her waist, over her breeches-belt. Two rivetted chains hung down: one short, one long. She clipped the one at her back to the lower scabbard-clip, the one at her side to the clip closest the hilt, and stood up.
And reached across with her left hand and drew the blade.
Oiled, cleaned, gleaming: no spot of rust. The razor edge of a live blade. She touched a fingertip to it, near the point. Burning as winter ice, a thin line of blood welled across the pad of her finger.
"It’s as near as I can get to a collective."
Abiathar cluckled sourly. "Try and deed property to servants and they’ll have you in Bedlam, not Newgate."
The black-haired woman’s eyes cleared. She tapped the papers thoughtfully against her other hand. "I’ll have to talk to Thomas and Edward. I suppose we may answer for those back at Roseveare? Now tell me if I have it right: you deed us power of attorney, and all other necessary powers—" She raised one script and read: "—for the maintenance of Roseveare Estate, its farms, properties, woods, and buildings; for as long as the Roseveare family remain absent."
The sword’s weight settled as the White Crow sheathed it, tapping at mid-thigh, hilt ready for her hand. She met Casaubon’s gaze. Sober blue eyes watched, level.
"Absent for how long?" he asked.
"As long as you like."
The slight stress on the penultimate word brought a curve to his delicately shaped mouth. He turned, took Abiathar’s hand, and kissed it. "Count on no short absence!"
"Oh, I guessed as much, my lord."
The White Crow put both hands down to ease the sword-belt. At Casaubon’s touch, she lifted her head. His finger caressed her cheek.
"You had this planned. Rot it, not because I want it?"
With a demure hilarity, she said, "Not just because you want it. There are others concerned."
"What about the children? Your son’s no more than ten years from an age to inherit. And there’s the child." Abiathar frowned. "I can promise you this, if either comes seeking Roseveare, they’re as like to get a cold welcome as not."
"As far as I’m concerned, I’m giving you the place. They’ll know it. It’s up to you to keep it."
She snapped her fingers again, took the papers back and carried them to the desk, flipping open the inkwell and signing in scrawled quill-pen Valentine Roseveare.
"Now . . ."
Her boots clicked on the floorboards, pacing to the window. Roseveare Court’s bookshops stood boarded up and left for the hanging-holiday. Snow choked all but a winding centre path. She squinted sideways, down between buildings towards the main road. Thoughts slotted into place, faster than words could follow.
"Bloody woman might have given the carriage back."
The Lord-Architect spluttered with laughter. She turned.
"Well. She didn’t need that. Unless she plans to travel in it when she goes into exile, I suppose . . . We won’t be able to leave town anyway until the weather shifts. Love, will you act the difficult part?"
Casaubon folded massive arms. She went on:
"Take Jared and the baby. This place will get ransacked, but that’s no harm; they won’t assume servants know where we’ve gone."
Abiathar, folding the signed documents, said, "Where will you have gone?"
"I think . . ." She looked at the Lord-Architect, prompting.
"The Liberty of Northbankside. One of the rooming-houses there." He stooped to kiss Abiathar’s cheek as the older woman left the room. "Rot it, it is the worse part. I’ll do it provided I’m told all else. Now."
"I . . . have to do something about Pollexfen Calmady. I’ve decided."
"Oh, good." The Lord-Architect beamed happily. "At last."
She made the sort of laughter that is really exasperation, one fist clenched, swinging round to point with her other hand. The sword banged at her hip. "Don’t you even care if it’s not moral—that it’s the wrong thing to do?"
Casaubon continued to look at her, his immense body still, the sun catching his copper hair and fair skin. Visible in his face, finally, and visible to her: a ruthless benevolence.
The White Crow said, "For you it isn’t even a question, is it?"
He loomed over her; seized her under the arms and pulled her up into an embrace, her feet eighteen inches above the floor.
"You’ve made up your mind!" He kissed her enthusiastically.
In the face of that massive refusal of judgement, she sought interior certainties.
"So . . . it’s the wrong decision, but it’s mine, and I abide by the consequences."
A single bell rang continuously, muffled, echoing down through Newgate’s stone walls. Pollexfen Calmady rested his head back against the man’s leather-aproned belly, stretching his throat and chin.
A razor feathered across his skin.
Prison ash-soap eased its passing. The last stubble scraped away, he sat up and dabbed at his face with dirty shirt-sleeves. Gadsbury ra
ised a slurred cheer. Arbella and Rule supported the small man; the tall woman leaning in turn on Bess, Lady Winslow, and the Margrave. The company of gentlemen-mercenaries crowded close, shouldering strangers further off. All the Pit muttered and buzzed with talk.
"Sir." Calmady rose and bowed to the man who shaved him.
"My pleasure, my master."
"Now strike off the chains."
Barred sunlight on the straw slanted north-east. Past two of the clock: the prison-yard outside a roar of gathering women and men and children. A shout went up at the rumble of wheels: the tumbril’s arrival.
The brawny man acting as barber snapped his fingers. His hair and beard caught the light as he knelt, brass-blond; and he blinked slow, brandy-brown eyes. Two lads ran forward with mallet and chisel, a dozen younger brats at their heels. The man swept them back with a bare, muscular arm. He placed the chisel and raised the mallet.
Pollexfen Calmady, his back straight, looked down to his ankles. Iron chains coiled about his bare feet. The mallet lifted, fell. A rivet shot out, lost in filthy straw; one shackle sprang open. The reverberate echoes of the strike diminished in the vaulted hall.
Iron to anvil: smithy-noises. The second shackle fell loose.
"Again, sir, I thank you."
He walked a few paces, barefoot, straw pricking the soles of his feet; light at heel for the first time in five days, and ridiculously, momentarily, light at heart.
The fair-haired hangman’s assistant rose. A leather apron covered black breeches and boots. His open face squinted against a bar of sunlight. Pollexfen Calmady pointed at a small man hovering behind him.
"You—you’ve a damned surgeon’s look to you!"
The small man’s eyes travelled up and down Calmady’s thick torso. "Many a man has sold what he will shortly no longer need to purchase what he would not be without. I’lI give you shillings enough to purchase clothes to be hanged in."
Calmady locked eyes with the Margrave Linebaugh across the man’s head.
"See I’m given honest untouched burial. If not, I swear you’ll never ride without a dead man in the company!"
The Margrave lifted his arm slightly, weighed down with folded shirt, breeches, and coat. "Your friend’s servant brought money, captain. And sends apologies that he dare not attend."
Calmady snorted. "Has Baltazar Casaubon sense enough to fear, now? That’s a wonder!"
"You’re a Queen’s man, hanging; there’ll be enough royalists there that the Protectorate’s renegade architect might well fear for his skin." Arbella Lacey held up polished white boots. "He’s done well by you, captain. As well as a man in his position could."
He reached up between his shoulder-blades and pulled the stinking shirt over his head. He did not look around, nor look for missing faces. A hand held out a clean shirt, all lace and linen, that slid over his skin, covering dirt and prison-rash. He stripped breeches and stockings, received new, and turned as he finished the fastenings.
"My god, will you look at that?" Lord Rule carefully rearranged one of the black periwig’s curls on his captain’s brocade-coated shoulder. His gloved hand flicked across white- and silver-lace splendour. "Flash. Very flash. We’ll have no cause to be shamed, knowing you today."
Pollexfen Calmady tugged boots on over white linen breeches and stockings. The silver-laced waistcoat buttoned a little tightly across his large chest. A momentary smile moved his lips at that constriction. He shrugged into the white brocade coat that Arbella held out, and put his fists on his hips, staring down the Ward: at men lying drunk or feverish against the walls, rats running across them; at a bare-breasted slut suckling a child; at the faces all drawn to follow him.
"I’m a magnetic north to them!" He trod his feet down in the new boots. Leather creaked. "Because I’ll shortly ride a horse foaled by an acorn. Let’s not keep them waiting. Have you money about you?"
Sir John Hay shook his head. "Not a farthing."
"Furies. Attend. Gadsbury has my voice for captain." He rested his arm across Arbella Lacey's shoulders as they walked, sparing a glance backward for the small dark man, staggering and supported between Linebaugh and Thompson. "Tell him so when he’s sober."
The redheaded woman cuffed a prison brat aside. She rubbed the mud-stain left on her old kid glove. Brocade breeches and coat embroidered with silver plate and sequins flashed in the barred sunlight. From polished heeled boots to plumed broad-brimmed hat, the woman strode with a mercenary’s brittle vanity.
"The company won’t be the same. Do you remember Parry, at Aqua Sulis?" Reflective memory of the dead captain clear on her face. "Damn, there was a shit-stupid man. Attack through the sewers, men, we can take the town! And us with a comfortable seige there to see us out the whole summer, if we nursed it along. "
"Not to mention petard mines in the sewer-system. I remember."
His stride outdistanced her under the stone arch, exiting into the open, bitter-cold prison yard. He all but ran into a man coming in the other direction.
"Sir." The man removed his plumed hat with some deliberation. Black hair straggled either side of a long, sallow face; his sharp chin made sharper by a small, pointed beard. Tan-and-cream brocade hung loosely on him as if his long coat had been made for a larger man.
"Phillip Nashe." A cultured voice. He held out a strongfingered hand. "Queen’s Hangman."
Pollexfen Calmady, dry-handed, returned the grip. He took in the weather-worn face, the expression somewhere between shabbiness and pride; summing him up shortly. "Captain Yates’s—no, Captain Huizinga’s troop?"
"Some four years since. I took orders Lammastide last." The priest-hangman drew a notepad from his waistcoat pocket and made notes with a charcoal-stick, glancing up, practised eye measuring height, weight, drop.
Cold air grazed Calmady’s newly shaven chin. He rubbed one cheek.
The straggle-haired man smudged calculations with a dirty thumb, frowned and nodded. He indicated the cart and two yoked dray-horses by the gate. An elderly man in a white shirt already stood in the tumbril. "I ride with you."
Calmady walked beside Nashe toward the tumbril and the prison-gates. The swarthy man limped slightly.
"There are good deaths and bad deaths, we know that." Pollexfen Calmady spoke quietly; businesslike. "Shot in the stomach; thirst; half your face blown off by some sappers mine; cancerous gangrene; well . . ."
Phillip Nashe’s bearded chin jutted, indicating the scattering of black-coated men and women among the yard’s crowds. "Yes, and Tower Hill, your entrails and privates hacked out and burned, before the axe. That would have been Protectorate justice, Captain Calmady."
Calmady’s features twisted into a momentarily uncontrollable expression. His gloved hand pressed into the bottom of the new coat’s pocket. A handful of metal circlets bruised his fingers. Relief, sudden and startling, sang in his blood.
"True enough, sir. Your business, now, is to tie a knot well, so matters expedite as quick as may be."
The sovereigns slipped from his gloved fingers to the man’s hand.
"You shall have a good knot. I shall have your coat and small-clothes too, or the compensation for that prerequisite." Nashe prodded the small heap of gold coins in his palm, and thrust them deep into his pocket. "And Queen’s Bounty. Sir, I’m obliged to ask what peace you’ve made, and how, and in what mind you’re like to die."
Shabby, dark-eyed, the priest’s gaze by reason of his shorter stature fell below Calmady’s face. Calmady shrugged.
"I’m caught between her Majesty and the bitch-General; a cause I’ve risked my life for, on either side. Non sum qualis eram: today I am a different man. It’s a fine irony that I should be brought here to make my peace with God."
Reverberate echoes from the cold masonry yard waked shivers between his shoulder-blades. Open, sunny skies blazed over the prison roofs. Wooden steps set at the back of the prison-cart sparkled, treacherous with frost. He halted.
"Captain. Here."
He took
a bottle from Lord Rule. His throat moved as he tilted his head back and drank, pale skin exposed to the winter sunlight. Another shiver walked the bones of his back.
Gadsbury’s head lifted. "Regina Carola, damn her."
"The Queen and her Hangman." Rough brandy scoured his mouth. Pollexfen Calmady coughed. He pulled Gadsbury into a bear-hug, the stink of stale vomit and brandy hitting him in the face.
"Do you carry all your brains in your arse? Go broke on brandy now and how will you live out the winter?" He shook the small man roughly. "Man, I remember you drinking! The night I lost the last of Calmady Estate on the turn of two cards. Go for a soldier now, you said, or go be a thief. We chose well enough."
"You never would cheat at cards."
"It brings me to this reckoning at the last."
He squinted at the early afternoon sun, westering; turned his face briefly into the east wind. Brandy blurred vision. The wooden steps knocked his feet, swinging himself up into the cart. Phillip Nashe banged the tailgate up; the elderly man—T branded already on his forehead—vomited a small pool of liquid onto the straw on the jolting planks.
The tension of his shoulders against the cold loosened. He stretched his head up. Winter sun, warm now that the cart rumbled out of the prison gates and the wind, slanted across his face. A deep breath escaped him.
Deep, felt through belly and the pit of his bowels, the tumbril wheels scraped straw-covered cobbles. Iron wheel-rims struck sparks and children darted back. The constant noise of shouting filled his hollow chest, effervescent; so that he bowed to either side, with a conscious style, smiling as the puppets in the convent-garden booths smile.
Every tavern in Holborn, every inn and every gin-shop spilled their customers out into the slush-deep road. Men and women crowded around the slowly moving cart. He leaned down to clasp hands with a dozen, two dozen; lifted his hat to acknowledge cheers. Hundreds of bobbing heads dizzied him crowding the road ahead. He lifted his gaze to snowy roofs, to the street’s windows, casements open despite the cold. Red-cheeked women cheered.
A yellow-haired girl leaned out to toss a bright object, fluttering down. He caught it from the air: a red rose, folded and cut from rosewater-coloured paper, bright against the winter white. He bowed, and removed his hat to fix the paper flower into the silver-lace band.