New World

by Jo Macauley

  The first time Beth had seen the view from the upper window, the scale of the devastation had taken her breath away. She had dim memories of seeing Richmond Palace from the river as a child. It had been a place of high towers and turrets, a fairy-tale edifice looking out over the peaceful river to one side and the green hunting grounds of Richmond Park to the other. Like many little girls, Beth had dreamed of living there, like a princess. Now, in the advancing twilight, it looked like nothing could live there but ghosts. The high walls had completely gone, along with almost all of the towers and most of the chapel. The gatehouse was still intact, but without the palace to protect, it was a gate to nowhere. The few structures that remained jutted up from the ground like odd teeth.

  Yes, Vale could easily live in a dismal place like this. But that didn’t mean he was there. Time and again, Strange had taught her that only the facts mattered. They were here to find out those facts, not spin tales of skulduggery...

  The grandfather clock solemnly tolled six, and they all looked up.

  “That’s your cue,” Beth told Ralph. “Cards will have to wait.”

  Ralph went to take John’s place at the window. For all his complaining, he watched with the patience of a hunter when it was his turn. John came over and collapsed in a heap opposite Beth. He began to munch an apple. “I’m not sure I can take much more of this excitement,” he said sarcastically. “My nerves are in tatters.”

  “How’s your dad?” Beth asked. She hadn’t wanted to say anything in front of Ralph, but she couldn’t wait any longer. John glanced wearily up, and Beth wondered when he’d last had the chance to rest.

  “He’s no better. And that sack of guts,” he checked himself, “his boss, Gaviston, has told him he hasn’t a job to go back to even if he does heal up.”

  Beth stared, aghast. “He can’t do that!”

  “Of course he can. He has orders coming in, he says, and if they’re not completed he’ll lose trade, which he can’t afford to do. So he’s had to give my dad’s job to someone else.”

  “That’s horrible! Oh, John, I’m so sorry.”

  “‘The ironworks isn’t a charity’, he says,” John spat. “Anyway, there’s no use in resenting it. I’m the man of the house now. Until the young ’uns are old enough to work, it’s down to me to provide for my family.”

  Beth’s heart sank for him. It wasn’t fair for so much responsibility to be dumped on her friend’s shoulders. She could tell he was being brave, but the hope had gone out of his eyes. He was desperate now.

  She reached out to him. “John, I—”

  “Psst!” Ralph said. “Get over here, now!”

  Quickly they scrambled to join him at the window. Even without Strange’s telescope, Beth and John could clearly see the man who was walking up to the tower door. He was carrying an armful of boxes, which he put down on the ground before glancing around suspiciously, like a man who had something to hide. He then let himself into the tower with a large black key – gripping it in his left hand which, they could see through the telescope, had one finger missing...

  “Edmund Groby,” Ralph breathed.

  Beth nodded. She’d know the sullen features of Vale’s evil main henchman anywhere. He’d been involved in every plot against the King that they had foiled – and he was a terrifying adversary. A shudder of excitement went through her as she realized how close they were to catching their prey. Vale’s gang was here, and for the first time, they had proof!

  Chapter Four - Tread Lightly

  John had been keen to try and apprehend Groby the moment they’d first seen him, but Beth knew they had to gather more intelligence before alerting the enemy to their presence. Luckily they didn’t have to wait long before the squat, dark figure showed himself again. The next day, while Ralph lay sprawled across the floor and John sat slumped in a chair – both of them asleep and snoring like drunkards – Beth saw Groby again. He peered out from behind the tower door and looked left and right. Once he had assured himself nobody was there, he slipped out. Without taking her eyes off him, Beth made a note.

  Then she froze.

  There was another man coming out of the tower. Vale? Beth held her breath and watched closely. No. It wasn’t Vale, but a man she knew nonetheless, though his face now bore hideous burn scars, and he walked with a pronounced limp.

  “Ed Hewer?” she whispered to herself. “I ... I thought he’d died in the Great Fire.” Hewer had been a low-level henchmen and accomplice of Vale and Groby in the last attempt on the King’s life. “John! Wake up, quick!”

  “Huh?” John jerked awake, knocking over the cup beside him on the nightstand. He flung the blankets off his knees and scrambled over to Beth. “Is it Vale?”

  “Look.” She let him take the telescope and watched his expression change from curiosity to furious anger.

  “Him!” John snarled. He clenched his fists. “As scarred as his soul, but that’s Hewer all right. God, if there’s any justice in the world I’ll get to kill that man myself!”

  Beth had expected this reaction from John as soon as she saw the man she thought had perished in the flames at Blackfriars church. Hewer had been involved in the plot to kidnap Polly, John’s sister, who the villains had tried to use as blackmail to get John to help them. Threatening his family was the one sure way to transform him from a kind, softly-spoken Navy Board clerk into a hard fighting man.

  “Whatever’s going on in that tower, it’s big,” Beth said. “Strange needs to know.”

  According to the terms of the mission, one of them was supposed to meet Strange at noon each day for a report, “unless the situation was urgent”, in which case they could find him at the Corinthian Club. Short of discovering Vale himself in this bolthole, Beth couldn’t think of a way this could be any more urgent. Vale’s men were gathering – something important must be happening.

  “I’ll go,” John said, stretching and trying to shake the sleep from his body.

  “No.” Beth laid a restraining hand on him. “You keep watch. I’ll go and make the report.”

  Keeping out of sight, Beth slipped out of the cottage and made her way back into the City of London, hiring a boatman to take her down the Thames once she was safely away from the ruins of Richmond Palace. She managed to get Strange to come outside of his gentlemen’s club by pretending she was a maid from his household with an urgent message. He quickly whisked Beth off to a side street as soon as he saw her, pulling on his cloak.

  “You had better have a damn good reason for this visit,” he hissed. “You’re putting us both at risk by meeting me here, do you understand that?”

  “Vale’s men are at the tower,” she told him, remaining calm and steady. “Groby and Hewer. We’ve seen both of them there – and once Groby was carrying boxes.”

  “Just those two?” Strange began to pace up and down.

  “There may be more of them inside, we’ve seen lights moving around. But so far, only those two have left the building.”

  Strange looked at her. Although his face was expressionless, a spark of excitement was burning in his deep black eyes. “Then Vale himself may be within...”

  “Ralph wants to get inside the tower,” Beth told him. “He says we’ll find out more that way.”

  “He’s right,” Strange said. “The time for surveillance is over. I appreciate it will be a difficult undertaking, but you must find a way to get inside. It sounds as though they are preparing for something. They may be getting ready to flee. I will not allow that.”

  We must get inside, Beth thought. Easy for him to say...

  “We’ll find a way in,” she assured him. If anyone could, Ralph could.

  * * *

  The moment Ralph heard the news he began firing off plans like a criminal mastermind.

  “Front door’s out, obviously,” he began, his thoughts coming a mile a minute. “Far too exposed, and they’ll be expecting it. If this had been some other gang of villains, I’d have said we dress up in disguise and try
to fast-talk our way in, but this is Vale’s lot, and they’re not stupid. Besides, Groby will recognize us. All the windows on the ground floor look like stained glass, and that ain’t the sort of window that opens, so we couldn’t jemmy one...”

  “Maybe there’s a back door,” Beth suggested. “We have only seen one side of the tower, yes?”

  “We need to scout the place out,” Ralph agreed. “It’ll be dark soon. There’s plenty of scrub around the outskirts. It’ll hide us if we keep our heads down.”

  They took a few moments to gather what they needed. Ralph took a length of mooring rope, John a shuttered storm lantern that would give light if they absolutely had to have it. Beth took nothing but a hatpin, thinking it might be useful for picking locks. Ralph had shown her something of the art, but she was still learning. Besides, she thought, she could always use it as a weapon if there was any trouble.

  Outside, the evening surprised them with its chill. A trace of mist had gathered, making the few remaining buildings look even more desolate.

  Ralph grinned.

  “That fog will make us even harder to see,” he whispered. “Come on.”

  Bending low, keeping out of sight among the bushes and bracken, they made their way from the back of the boathouse to the edge of the palace grounds. Approaching from behind gave them their first good look at the place. There was no surrounding wall at the edge of the grounds as Beth had feared, just a ditch where the stones had been.

  “Jump,” said Ralph. “It’s not wide.”

  Beth looked down. Dark, muddy water lay three feet below. As she watched, a rat jumped in with a plop and she grimaced, but then she steeled herself and jumped across to the other side. The mist was thicker now. She was standing in a broad field that had once been a courtyard, and heaps of broken stone lay here and there like burial mounds, waiting to be sold. Those used to be pieces of the palace, she thought. Those were walls that kept the royal children safe. Now they’re just rubble.

  “There’s the tower,” Ralph said. “And there’s light. Someone’s at home...”

  “And there’s our way in!” John said, pointing. “Look!”

  Beth could see the roofless building adjoining the tower more clearly now. Judging from the shape of it, it had once been the palace chapel. The front wall had looked mostly intact from the boathouse, but she now saw the back had been torn away, revealing the wooden beams and joists.

  “They haven’t finished breaking it up yet,” she whispered. “We can climb those stones easily. There’s bound to be an inside door.”

  “Let’s go.” John set off at a run across the grass.

  Ralph hissed, stopping him in his tracks. “Use them piles of stone for cover. Don’t just dash out over the green like a startled rabbit!”

  “Right. Sorry.” John ducked behind one of the cairns. Together, they ran from pile to pile, moving closer to the ruined chapel.

  A light went on in another of the upstairs rooms.

  They all froze in place behind a cairn. Ralph held up a warning hand. Beth didn’t even dare breathe. Slowly he peered out from behind the rocks, then gave them an all clear nod.

  One last sprint and they were at the chapel wall. The wet grass had soaked Beth’s shoes through and her stockings squelched. One after another they vaulted the remaining stones and stood in the gathering darkness.

  Five minutes passed. The three spies knew that they had to wait, in order to be totally sure nobody had seen them. Nobody spoke. They glanced at each other’s fearful faces, and then, after what felt like an hour, Ralph signalled for them to start exploring. Soon after, John made urgent come-and-see gestures – he’d found a door into the tower from the chapel.

  Ralph mimed turning the handle very slowly, and John followed his lead. There was the tiniest of clunks from the latch and he leaned his weight against the door, but it didn’t move. He mouthed the word locked to Ralph, who mouthed a word back that Beth pretended not to see.

  There had to be a way in. She looked up. The bare roof beams lay above their heads like an exposed ribcage, open to the weather. The top of the tower was only a few feet higher. She tapped Ralph on the shoulder and pointed upwards. Ralph stared, broke into a grin and nodded. “Perfect! We can climb up there,” he whispered. “If we shuffle across them roof beams, we can shinny up to the top of the tower and let ourselves in!”

  “Are you out of your mind?” John hissed. “One, those beams look like they’re fit to collapse, and two, how are we meant to reach them?”

  Ralph put his arm around John’s shoulder. “See that wall, where the stone blocks have been pulled away? We can use it like a staircase.”

  “And jump the last three feet to the beam?”

  “You jumped that ditch, didn’t you?”

  John’s voice was like a bat’s squeak: “That drop wouldn’t have broken my neck if I’d missed it! And look at that last bit, where the beam runs up to the wall. We’d have to balance like ... like ... tightrope walkers!”

  “So?” Ralph said with a shrug. “Scared?”

  “I don’t recall teasing you when you were quaking in your boots to go down the chimney of Somerset House!” John retorted. As part of their investigations into the kidnapping of John’s sister, the three spies had found themselves in a tight spot not so long ago, and Ralph’s fear of small spaces had made itself very clear.

  “Very well,” Ralph conceded, blushing. “Let’s tie this rope around our waists. That way, if one of us slips, the others can keep them from falling. Satisfied?”

  “Good plan,” Beth interrupted. “Let’s do it.”

  Ralph looped the stray piece of rope around each of them, knotting it securely and leaving a few feet of slack between each person. Then they began to climb.

  Ralph – who had once served on board sea-going ships and was happy high in the air on a slim beam – led the way, with John in the middle and Beth following behind. The ruined wall that led up to the beam looked easy enough to climb. The stone blocks were wide and it was almost like a set of steps, Beth thought. But when she put her weight on a stone that looked secure, it shifted under her.

  “Don’t take a step without testing it first,” Ralph warned. “Put your hands and feet where I do.”

  “Like Good King Wenceslas,” John muttered.

  They picked their way up the broken wall. Soon there was only a three-foot gap left before the clump of masonry where the beam jutted out. Ralph jumped over as if he were born to it and landed on the tiny platform. He immediately straddled the beam and shuffled forwards to make room for the others. John hesitated, but gathered himself and made the jump. He joined Ralph on the roof beam. Now there was only Beth.

  “Don’t look down,” Ralph urged her.

  Before she could stop herself, Beth looked. Suddenly the stones seemed to sway and buckle beneath her. She clung tightly onto the final block, not having really registered how far it was to fall. The rubble-strewn chapel floor looked as distant as the sea at the bottom of a cliff.

  “Just jump!” Ralph’s voice came to her. “You have to do it now or you never will!”

  Beth stood up shakily, braced herself ... and jumped. The stone platform accepted her weight, and Ralph gave a little cheer. “See? Nothing to it!”

  Beth closed her eyes. The sound of her heart hammering drowned out everything else, and she sat for a while, calming down before opening them again.

  “Let’s keep going.”

  John smiled and reached out to pat her on the shoulder. “I’m proud of you, Beth—”

  Just then, a crucial piece of masonry somewhere came loose. Stones rattled, and the beam dropped half a foot and tilted sideways. John tipped over and fell off, screaming before they could warn him about the noise.

  “Brace!” Ralph hissed. Beth and Ralph grabbed the beam with both arms just as the rope went taut, catching John’s full weight. The force knocked the wind out of her but she held on tight. For an instant Beth was sure she’d see John’s broken body far b
elow on the floor. But he was dangling in mid-air, gasping from the rope biting into his waist, flailing his arms and legs. She gripped hard with her thighs and leaned down as far as she dared.

  “Take my hand!”

  John made panicky, gasping noises as he reached out and grabbed for Beth’s hand. Their fingers brushed, and she stretched an agonizing few inches more, knowing that if she fell, Ralph couldn’t possibly hold them both...

  But John’s next lunge clasped her hand and held it tight. Steadily, a little at a time, she and Ralph pulled him back up to the beam.

  “Good to have you back with us,” Ralph said, gasping for breath. “Try not to do that again, all right?”

  From that moment on they sacrificed speed for safety. They steadily made their way over the beams, pausing every time they heard the creak of wood or the crunch of sliding stone. Beth had the sickening feeling John’s scream had to have been heard from inside the tower. They could easily be going through all of this only to find themselves captured, or worse.

  Ralph finally reached the far end of the beam and pulled himself up through the ruined roof. “I can reach the battlements, easy,” he whispered. “There’s a trap door up here – just pray it’s unlocked!”

  Only once they were all standing safely at the top of the tower, with the rope unfastened and put away, did Ralph try the trap door. It lifted easily, and they could see dusty stone steps leading down into darkness.

  Ralph licked his dry lips.

  “We’re in.”

  Chapter Five - Into the Tower

  Treading softly, still speaking only in whispers and hand gestures, they descended the stairs into a large, darkened chamber. The tall windows in the walls let in only the faintest scraps of light from the dying day outside. Five or six large objects stood in the centre of the room, and two more sets of steps led further down into the tower.