by Jake Lynch
‘We’ll just have to wait,’ Armstrong was saying, ‘and hope College can get back on his legs and rouse them again. I’ll come back when they’re ready.’ He slipped out of the door, leaving Hawkins and the two others with her, as well as Francis, who stayed at the far end of the enclosure.
Chapter 68
A Bargain is Struck
Luke turned to the two Guards captains.
‘Master Settle and I need a word in private.’ So, Ed and Tom Lucy waited in the main bar while Luke seized the Green Ribbon man by the arm and propelled him through to the back parlour: the very parlour, in fact, where Unsworth had met his doom. He pushed the pamphleteer into the corner, drew his dagger and held it to the man’s throat.
‘I know what’s in that wallet, and why you came back for it. I had the shorthand translated. And we both know it would send you to the Tower. They’d surely hang you, but they’d have to scrape up what was left of you, first.’
Settle gulped again, but still seemed in no way cowed. ‘I know what goes on in the vaults under that inn, The Mitre – and I know you’ve turned a blind eye to it. That makes you a Papist collaborator.’
Luke stepped back, and sheathed his blade.
‘Very well. It seems we both have something on the other. You’ll give me that wallet, before we leave this place. And you’ll take me to where Cate’s being held. And as long as she and her family are safe, I’ll not take it across the road, as I should, to give to Lord Finch.’
The other stood scowling, it seemed for an age. Finally, he sighed, and his shoulders slumped.
‘Know that I do it not for myself, but for the other men named in here, who have England’s best interests at heart,’ he said, drawing the wallet from beneath his jacket, and handing it over. Luke transferred it to his own pocket.
‘Now – Cate!’ Picking up the two captains, they hurried out through the inn and up Fish Street towards the Guildhall. College was now back on the platform. As they drew near, snatches of his invective, directed against the Duke of York, were just audible – though many in the crowd seemed to be arguing volubly among themselves at the same time.
Chapter 69
Blades
Armstrong had returned.
‘’Tis no good – there’s a fight broken out now in the mob. Some are saying Harbord was being paid by the French.’
‘How can that be?’ one of the other Green Ribbons demanded, sharply. Hawkins turned to look at Cate, with an expression so full of hatred and malice that, as she caught his eye, a massive sob rose irresistibly within her.
‘We should wheel her out and set her off, just the same.’
‘Don’t be so damn stupid, man!’ Armstrong spat. ‘How’s that going to look, without College telling the crowd what we’re doing, and why? They’ve stopped listening to him.’
‘It’d be one less Papist in Oxford,’ the other replied, his eyes glittering, and took a step towards her. Cate nearly fainted in terror.
At that moment, a shadow flitted across her field of vision, and a deep voice cut through the palpable air of menace.
‘I think not.’ It was Francis! His movement was so quick and fluid – his sabre seeming to materialise in his hand as if from nowhere – that he managed to interpose himself between Cate and the other three Green Ribbons, as Armstrong, the fourth, stood off to one side, an agonised expression on his face. ‘I told you before, Hawkins, there’s no point going through with it.’
With a fearful oath, Hawkins drew his own sword, and sprang forward – but in one almost graceful motion, Francis swatted his blade aside, and brought his own up on the back-swing to nick the big man below the ear. Hawkins sank to one knee and pressed his hand to his neck. Now, though, the ex-soldier had to face the two others, with Armstrong seemingly immobilised by panic at the disintegration of their scheme. Francis easily evaded a wild slash from one of them, repositioning with more difficulty just in time to fend off the other. As the pair circled, Hawkins recovered his weapon, blood trickling over his collar. Cate panted with the tension: now it was three on to one. Surely even Francis could not take on all of them at once?
His movement was a blur. A great ‘zing!’ rang out as first he parried to his left, then just about deflected a thrust from the man in the centre. Hawkins’ attack from the other side, however, came just too quickly – and, while he managed to divert the blow, twisting the blade as it flew towards him, the heavy hand-guard on the big man’s sword-hilt caught Francis a mighty buffet to the side of the head. He fell to his knees, the sabre jolting out of his hand and skittering off across the enclosed yard.
Pushing one of the other Green Ribbons aside, Hawkins now lifted his weapon, and made to strike what would surely be a mortal blow to the black man’s prostrate form. Desperate at seeing her last defender thus exposed, Cate wriggled her right ankle – and, sure enough, her foot was free. Immediately, she reached out with it and prodded Hawkins’ backside as hard as she could. With the weight of the sword in his raised hand already pitching him forwards as he swung, the touch was enough to overbalance him, and he stumbled over the unconscious Francis and went crashing down.
Cate’s flash of triumph, as the other two Green Ribbons stood momentarily nonplussed, was followed immediately by a vertiginous moment of terror: the momentum from her kick was starting to topple the whole assemblage forwards. She was going to plunge to the ground! The huge wheel would crush her, and, with hands bound, she would not even be able to break her fall. Frantically, she thrust her body mass backwards as hard as she could, somehow arresting and reversing the impetus. The iron counterweight tilted it backwards, but it did not have far to go, the trolley on which it rested having been placed hard up against the wall. As she felt it make contact with the vertical surface, Cate was suffused with relief – but only for an instant. The chock, holding the rim and the dovetailed apparatus together, dislodged, and fell with an ominous thump.
The wheel lurched alarmingly on its footing, and Cate felt the X-shaped structure start to swing round; the blades, gleaming and jutting from their positions on the spokes, waiting to cut into her as she rotated. With all her might, she strained the other way, just managing to counter the motion. But how long could she go on doing it, as the now independently spinning circles propelled her this way and that? As she looked up, Hawkins had scrambled to his feet and was reaching for his sword from where it had come to rest, a murderous expression on his face.
Chapter 70
‘You never know where
a door will open’
With the two Horse Guards captains, Luke padded up Fish Street behind Settle, urging them on as they ran. At the junction with New Inn Yard, the pamphleteer suddenly stopped, turned round to face them, and began to back away.
‘She’s down there,’ he panted, gesturing towards the narrow opening, an unaccustomed look of panic on his face. ‘I’ll go no further with you.’ With that, he turned again, and ran off into the crowd, which was now reduced to chaos and confusion as multiple brawls and quarrels raged – the speakers having apparently abandoned their improvised stage altogether.
‘Shouldn’t we go after him?’ Ed demanded. ‘You have him under arrest, don’t you? Can’t let him get away.’
If Luke hesitated, however, it was only for a split second.
‘Nay – let’s find Cate first, we’ll worry about Settle later.’ He felt the reassuring bulk of the wallet under his coat. Surely it would be straightforward from here, to reach her and make her safe? The pamphleteer would surely not risk any harm coming to her, out of fear for his own skin? A fear mingled, Luke suddenly realised, with a different terror – at the prospect of Settle’s own comrades witnessing him arrive on the scene of her captivity in the company of a City constable and two officers of the Blues. He would look like a traitor to their cause. That must be why he had run off.
The captains drew their sabres, and they set off down New Inn Yard at a brisk walk, looking this way and that. It took but a few seconds to tra
verse the length of the alleyway, but felt far longer, as one nook or recess after another proved blank.
‘What the Devil did he mean, “she’s down there”?’ Tom Lucy demanded. They were staring at a patch of tangled vegetation, in front of a wall, which was covered with evergreen ivy.
‘Whatever we’re looking for, it can’t just be a wood-shed or something,’ Ed said, stepping to one side to look back the way they had come. ‘Must be a big enough space to have held three people for two days and nights.’
Three people: Cate, Settle – and Francis, the blackamoor, whom they had not yet seen. He must be here somewhere. Joan was not the only one in Oxford any more. A tiny worm of recollection burrowed its way towards the surface of Luke’s memory. Joan: what was it Joan had said, when he complained about the lack of progress in the investigation?
‘You never know where a door will open,’ he said out loud. The others looked at him blankly. A sudden intuition now quickening his stride, Luke grabbed his stave and hacked back the undergrowth, stepping through it to take a closer look at the wall.
‘The door – it’s here!’ he exclaimed, turning to the others – but they were now right behind him. The three of them burst in, to be confronted by the Green Ribbon men, brandishing their swords. Armstrong was slumped on the floor to one side, breathing heavily, and Francis had seemingly passed out – lying face down towards the far corner.
A pitiable cry came from over by the right-hand wall.
‘Luke!’ At last! She was alive. He had begun to fear they had killed her, as their plot failed. But he registered in an instant that something was very wrong: Cate was at a diagonal angle. And – Christ! – bound to Jethro Cox’s terrible wheel! Luke sprang towards her just as the momentum accelerated her towards the blades that were sticking out from the spokes. A whisker above the first of the razor-sharp edges, he caught her in his arms, righted her, and clasped her to his chest, her chin resting on his shoulder.
Suddenly, he felt her tense through the huge sobs now racking her slight frame. As best he could without releasing his grip, he looked round, then braced for a blow as the biggest of the three swordsmen – Hawkins – made to strike. But the contortion of fury on the man’s reddened face abruptly gave way to an expression of astonishment, and he looked down at a thin metal object suddenly protruding from alongside his sternum.
‘No you don’t.’ It was Tom Lucy, whose reflexes and skill at arms had won his promotion, despite his youth. The officer drew his blade back out, and Hawkins crumpled to the ground.
‘Drop it,’ Ed was saying to the others, in a warning tone, as his fellow captain turned round to face them. The remaining pair let their swords fall, and placed their hands behind their heads.
‘Who’s that in there? That you, Master Sandys?’ There was no mistaking those gruff, bumptious tones.
‘Robshaw! In here, quick!’ The door was thrust open, but the first to enter was Settle, his arms manacled behind his back and his ear clasped in Robshaw’s meaty fist, a grimace of pain on his rodent-like features.
‘Found this one trying to slip away,’ the deputy said, with a triumphant grin. ‘Got hold of him, clapped him in irons, and boxed his ears till he told us where you was. See, my way’s best for making them talk.’
Settle let out a whimper, as two other constables followed them into the now very crowded walled-in space, and restrained the other Green Ribbon men under the captains’ watchful eyes. As they were led out, Cate finally found enough breath to speak.
‘You’d better untie me, Luke.’ As he cradled her waist with one arm to steady her, and reached up with his other hand to loosen the bond around her wrist, their eyes met, and she smiled for the first time. Even through her tears, there was an unmistakable light of recognition, which passed between them like incandescence from a taper to a candle.
Chapter 71
One Last Mystery
‘Against thee, thee only, have I sinned,’ Settle intoned, his sardonic expression back in place; ‘and done this evil in thy sight: that thou mightest be justified when thou speakest, and be clear when thou judgest.’
‘You plan to plead Benefit of Clergy?’ Luke exclaimed. ‘But murder’s not been a clergyable offence for a hundred years.’ The ‘benefit’ was to avoid punishment under criminal law: instead, an offender had merely to convince a bishop of genuine repentance. To qualify, a convicted man had to prove he could read aloud the words of the 51st psalm, from a written text put in front of him in court – which would present no difficulty for Settle, especially as he evidently knew the relevant passage by heart. But the recourse had been abolished for murderers under Queen Elizabeth, over a century earlier.
‘Ah, but Unsworth was not murdered – he died in a chance medley, with no pre-pensed malice. ’Twas manslaughter, at most.’
‘I see you know the letter of the law, as well as the Psalter.’
Confined though he was in a cell at Oxford Castle, the pamphleteer’s customary self-assurance had returned.
‘The gaolers here will let one have access to legal texts – for a consideration. And it never does to sit idle.’
‘Anyway, that’s rot, about Unsworth, and you know it.’
‘What I know or don’t know is neither here nor there. ’Tis what you can prove – in front of the right judge, of course,’ he added, smirking. ‘Anyway, even if that doesn’t work, I’m sure Old Rowley will give me a pardon.’
‘The King? Why would he do that?’
‘Well – I’ve heard there were treasonous mutterings in that tavern. Unsworth, as the innkeeper, must have been aware. And yet he didn’t report them. Maybe we just took the law into our own hands.’
Luke let his breath out with a ‘pfff’. ‘You’ve got some nerve, I’ll give you that. And Royal pardons don’t come cheap.’ But he could already guess the answer.
‘Money’s no object to the people I work for.’
The chief gaoler jingled his bunch of keys to signal to Luke that it was time to wrap up the interview.
‘At least let me ask you about one thing that’s been puzzling me.’
‘You can ask.’
‘Harbord’s dagger. We found it on the ground at New Inn Yard. You – or someone – removed it from his body.’ The other gave a cautious nod. ‘Why?’
‘Well… we found him about a minute before the night watch turned up. We had no idea who’d killed him. But it did look odd, that his own dagger had been used. A single-edged Scotch dirk – very distinctive. So we undid his belt, grabbed the knife, sheath and all, and made ourselves scarce.’
‘Might have interfered with the tale you wanted to tell, that he’d been attacked by “Papists”?’
By way of reply, Settle simply gave a shrug and sat back in his chair, a complacent expression on his rodent-like face.
Luke felt a tension relax within him as he was escorted back towards the daylight. A dangerous enemy was to go free: surely it was just a matter of time before Settle’s friends arranged for his release. But at least he had proved Harbord’s murder was not a political killing – in the nick of time to save Cate. He would have to satisfy himself with that. As he approached the Castle’s open front gate, a familiar figure was limned on the threshold against the morning sky. There was no mistaking that tapered upper body, and the slightly convex curvature of a tall capotaine hat.
‘Francis?’
The big fellow turned, a half-smile on his face, and touched his brim with an index finger. ‘Master Sandys! At your service, sir.’ Another man, who was standing slightly off to one side, let out an impatient sigh.
‘Aren’t you due back in court for the committal hearing?’
‘It seems I’m wanted elsewhere.’
The newcomer waved a piece of paper, retrieved from an inside pocket of his coat.
‘Order from the magistrate for his release,’ he said. ‘’Tis all above board.’
Luke briefly scanned the document, which was countersigned at the bottom by a Colonel Ger
ard, commanding officer of Gerard’s Regiment of Horse.
‘So you’ve got off the charges through “Benefit of Service”. You’re to go to Tangier, it says?’
‘Aye, with Captain Coy here. We’re to reinforce the garrison. Can’t let a bunch of heathens get their hands on the King’s wedding present.’
The port city, Luke remembered, had been transferred to English rule when Charles married Catherine of Braganza, decades earlier.
‘Come, Francis,’ Coy snapped. ‘We sail on the night tide.’ The castle ostler had brought out two horses, saddled up for the journey to London.
‘You’ll have to make haste.’
Francis finished pulling on a pair of fine leather gloves, and mounted a strong-looking bay mare. ‘Don’t worry. ’Tis a fast road from Oxford. As long as there are no cattle on it.’ And with that, he winked, clicked his tongue to gee up his mount, and they were off.
Chapter 72
Happy Couple
Oxford was returning to normal. Parliament had been dismissed after a single week in session, when MPs presented another Exclusion Bill from the Commons, and it was duly voted down by the Lords. Rumour had it that Charles would now rule alone, with financial support from his cousin, Louis XIV of France – obviating the grubby business of bargaining with Parliament for supply. So, politicians and their hangers-on set off back for London, and the city’s taverners, merchants and traders put away their surplus stock in disappointment.
There had been joyous scenes at The Mitre when Cate arrived after walking the short distance from New Inn Yard, leaning on Luke’s arm as her legs were weak and unsteady after her ordeal. He was giving a daughter back to her parents, which was no doubt where she belonged – for now. Would she ever belong by his side? The couple met, days later, for another confidential chat over coffee, in their favourite corner overlooking Turl Street.