by Angus Donald
Blood stepped in, leaned over the bleeding septuagenarian and said: ‘Another word, old man, and it will be your last.’ Edwards looked beyond Blood and saw that the giant Paris had a long, slim dagger in his big hands. But Edwards once had been a brave man. He had faced death at the hands of the massed ranks of the Parliamentarian pikemen and in that moment he remembered his youthful courage. He took a deep breath and shouted with all his might: ‘Help! Help me. The Jewel House is being robbed . . .’
Joshua Parrot shoved Blood roughly out of the way. He loomed over Edwards and plunged the long blade into his belly, withdrew and lunged again into the man’s chest. A third blow lanced into his shoulder and a fourth lacerated his cheek.
‘Enough, Joshua, enough,’ said Blood, hauling at the man’s massive shoulder. ‘He’s quiet now.’
Edwards was indeed silenced. He lay still, with his eyes closed in a spreading pool of his own gore. Tom stared at him with vast cow eyes, the two pieces of the gold sceptre still in his hands.
‘Get as much as you can into your pockets,’ said Blood. ‘Fill your boots to the top with gems. There is no more time to waste.’
*
Outside the Irish Tower, William Hunt felt a chill of fear ripple up his spine. He could clearly hear the shouts of alarm wafting up from below. He looked around him at the empty cobbled courtyard – nothing. The ancient lion farted surprisingly loudly and rolled over to a more comfortable position. Above him he heard a window slam open and a square, shiny, bulldog face under a white cap poked out.
‘Good morrow to you, mistress,’ said Hunt. ‘I am John Halliwell, guardian of young Thomas Ayliffe. Your husband has very kindly been showing us the jewels in the chamber below, but I have just stepped out for a breath of air. It is somewhat stuffy in there.’
‘Oh yes, Mr Halliwell, welcome. Is all quite well? I thought I heard something.’ Mistress Edwards smiled down at her guest.
‘All is well – Mr Paris was just being enthusiastic about the great beauty of the jewels. He can be rather voluble when roused to admiration. But all is well, I assure you.’
‘That’s good. Be so kind as to tell Mr Edwards that breakfast is on the table whenever it suits the gentlemen’s convenience. It should be ate up hot, so tell him not to dilly-dally down there.’
‘I shall tell him, madam,’ said Hunt and he watched with relief as the window slammed shut.
He closed his eyes and concentrated on breathing in and out, in and out. It would soon be over, he told himself.
‘Who are you? And why is my front door wide open?’ said a voice from behind Hunt. He opened his eyes and turned to see a man of about thirty years of age in a scarlet coat adorned with a quantity of gold lace, with a gilt-chased pistol shoved in his sash and a leather baldrick over one shoulder from which hung a long, heavy sword.
‘I am a guest of Mister Talbot Edwards. He has invited me and my friends for breakfast.’
‘Oh, that’s my father,’ said the soldier. ‘Come on, let’s go up.’
Hunt was momentarily paralysed. He could call out and warn his friends but that would mean fighting and probably having to kill this fellow, if he could – he was far bigger than Hunt and younger, too. Or he could obediently go up stairs with the man and into the house – that should allay his suspicions. But if the cries for help continued, he would have to deal with him then, and probably Mistress Edwards and the daughter, too. What Hunt most wanted to do was run, but he could not do that. Instead, he stayed where he was and put his hand in his coat pocket and felt the cool, smooth wood of the pistol grip under his fingers.
Hunt was saved from having to make a decision by the appearance at the top of the stairs of Blood, with Parrot looming behind him. He glimpsed Tom coming up from the Jewel House last of all. Blood looked dishevelled, his coat bulged in unexpected places, his white collar was pulled loose, his face was red, the spectacles were gone and his blue eyes glittered.
The soldier, Wythe Edwards, took a step back at the sight of the three big men coming out of his house and down the steps towards him. He put a hand on his sword hilt. ‘And you three are?’ he said.
‘They are also friends of your father,’ said Hunt quickly. ‘Invited this morning for breakfast.’
‘Good morrow to you, sir,’ said Blood, coming down the last few steps with something approaching a happy smile on his face and his right hand extended in greeting. ‘My name is Ayliffe . . .’
Blood got no further. From behind him, a terrible howl erupted from the open doorway, only slightly resembling the words: ‘Help! Murder! The jewels are stolen!’
Blood did not hesitate. Using his downward momentum from the steps, and the full weight of his shoulder, he leaped forward and smashed his right fist into the side of Wythe’s face, following that blow with a round-arm from his left to the soldier’s temple, which knocked him instantly to the ground.
‘Don’t run, lads,’ he said. ‘Whatever you do, don’t run now. We walk nice and calm all the way out of the Tower. Just walk, all right.’
Leaving Wythe stunned and bleeding on the cobbles, the four men began to walk casually out of the courtyard in front of the Irish Tower, clanking a little, and with Joshua Parrot swinging his legs wide and still apparently sporting a monstrous erection. They had barely got thirty yards when they heard Edwards senior cry out once more. Tom looked back and saw an awful blood-drenched figure standing at the top of the steps leading to the Irish Tower, shouting his heart out. And below him on the cobbles his soldier son was shaking his head and slowly getting up from his hands and knees. They walked on across the Inner Ward, past the row of trees before the Grand Stone House, four men, casually sauntering in the early morning. They walked on; a dozen measured strides. Another dozen.
Blood could hear the shouting behind, loud and urgent. He stole a glance. Wythe had emerged from the courtyard of the Irish Tower his pistol in hand and was raising the hue and cry – calling for the Tower guards to come from their barracks and prevent a foul treason. One of the sentries outside the door of the barrack dashed inside. The other looked uncertain, but hefted his musket, glancing between the shouting and gesticulating Wythe Edwards and the four men walking casually towards Tower Green.
A dozen men came scrambling out of the barracks door – shrugging on buff-coloured leather coats, tightening straps on their shiny cuirasses. Some had muskets, some swords or half pikes. There were more men behind them.
‘Now we run,’ said Blood quietly. ‘Run, you bastards, run.’
And the four men took to their heels.
*
When Holcroft pushed open the door to his master’s study, the first thing he saw was a pair of pale, heaving buttocks. It checked him. Then he saw the rest of the Duke of Buckingham, his breeches round his ankles, his coat thrown across the desk, waistcoat tails rucked up around his waist, ploughing away on top of another body. A ginger head peered out from under the duke’s armpit and looked directly at Holcroft. And, like a bucket of icy water thrown in his face, he saw that the duke’s partner was Fox Cub.
Holcroft stood stock still, unsure what to do. Then the duke spoke, without breaking his rhythm, or even once looking over in his direction.
‘Thank you for coming, Holcroft. I’ll be with you directly.’
And he was – after a dozen more thrusts and a grunting sigh, the Duke of Buckingham came off the little boy’s body, wiped himself on Fox Cub’s shirt tails, and pulled up his own breeches. He picked up the heavy coat and shrugged it on, leaving the waistcoat beneath unbuttoned. Then he searched briefly on the desk, shifting the piles of paper, before seizing on a piece and handing it to Holcroft with an innocent smile.
‘I want three copies of this in the usual code; then burn the original. And I want you to give the copies to Mullins for dispatch before sunset, understood? Good. Well, I shall leave you to it. I’m playing at cards with Sir Thomas Littleton – he wants me to try this new game Whisk, the one they’re all so excited about, and I’d
best not be late. You know how old Littleton mopes like a child if he feels he’s been slighted.’
And with that the duke was gone. Holcroft looked down at the piece of paper in his hand. It was addressed to the duke’s agents; a request for information about Dutch shipping that had docked at English harbours in the past three months. It was nothing unusual; Holcroft had encoded a dozen similar messages for His Grace in the past six months. He frowned. Had he been summoned from his quarters by Albert St John for this? The duke could perfectly well have given the message directly to Mullins, his chief clerk. There was no need to have Holcroft do the straightforward coding, no need at all, although he knew that he was vastly quicker at it. It occurred to Holcroft that the duke might have intended that he discover him at his gross rutting; that he might be sending him some sort of message by this unnatural summoning. But he had no idea what the message might mean.
‘You won’t tell, will you?’ said a tiny voice by his elbow. Holcroft looked down at a pale, anxious face and russet mop.
‘Did he force himself on you?’ said Holcroft.
‘No, no, nothing like that. He was kind to me. He said he cared for me. But you won’t tell anyone, will you? I know it is a sin. But, worse than that, I’d be teased, mocked by Westbury, by everyone. I couldn’t bear it. Please don’t tell.’
‘I won’t tell,’ said Holcroft softly and he looked down at the piece of paper in his hand, shame running fiery hot in his veins, until he heard the door click closed behind the departing back of little Henri d’Erloncourt.
It did not take Holcroft long to encode the Dutch shipping message, even writing it out three times. When he had finished, he put away the ink and quills and sanded the sheets dry, but instead of taking them to Mullins, he continued sitting at the duke’s desk, thinking, trying to puzzle out the duke’s message to him. He would have to ask Aphra – or Jack, when he saw him next, if he ever saw him again.
Glancing casually over the desk he saw something that made him pause: it was the end of a gold chain half covered by a sheet of paper. He knew what it was but for a moment he resisted the urge to pick it up. Could he be mistaken? There was only one way to find out. He gently tugged the gold chain out from under the paper and saw that there was a small golden key on a ring at the end of it. He had seen that key a thousand times but had never held it in his hand. It was the key on the end of the chain that the duke wore across his belly, tucked into a pocket on his waistcoat. It was the key that opened the desk’s central drawer, where the duke kept his private letters. It must have snapped and fallen off while the duke was on Fox Cub.
Holcroft knew that the duke kept secret papers in that drawer. He knew too, that if the duke kept it locked then he did not have permission to open it. And yet the chain of loyalty, like the little golden chain in his hand, had been broken. He was quite alone in the study, he could hear nobody in the corridor outside and he did not expect the duke back from his card game with Sir Thomas Littleton for many hours yet.
Holcroft inserted the key, turned it and opened the drawer.
Inside the drawer was the blue note written by Aphra, the one that purported to come from James Pratt; there were some confidential reports with which Holcroft was already familiar; a passionate love letter from someone calling himself or herself Narcissus; a heavy leather purse of golden guineas, which Holcroft weighed in his palm but decided not to broach; and, lastly, a single sheet of thick yellow paper written in the usual code. Holcroft looked at the piece of paper in his hand. His eyes jumped to the bottom of the page, to the sign off, and he read:
6’ 4’ 5’ 5* – 4’1 2’ 3 3’ 2’ 2* 7* – 6* 2’ 5* 5’ 1’ 2* 7* – 7 5’ 3* 4’ 2*
Which he instantly knew to mean: ‘Your obedient servant, Jupon’.
His eyes flicked to the top of the page and he read the whole message with a growing sense of wonder, and then with a hot feeling of betrayal and disgust. The paragraph that disturbed him the most, and which he read three times just to be sure, began:
7* 6 2’ – 8 3’ 2* 5 – 4’ 4 – 2’ 2* 5 9 1’ 2* 3 – 5’5’ 3’ 9 9 – 1* 1’ 8 2’ – 1’ – 3* 5’ 1 9 3* 2 – 3* 5* 4’ 4 2’ 6* 6* 3’ 4’ 2* – 4’ 4 – 7* 6 2’ – 2 1’ 7* 6 4’ 9 3’ 2 – 4 1’ 3’ 7* 6 . . .
Holcroft took a quill from the stand, cut it carefully, selected a fresh piece of paper, dipped his nib and, very carefully, he began to copy out the letter from Jupon in its coded form.
*
Tom ran full pelt past the western side of the White Tower. He could hear the pounding feet of his comrades behind him, Hunt on his left shoulder, Parrot panting behind him and his father coming last of all hallooing and shouting: ‘They went that way, the dirty traitors – after them. Stop those damned thieves! Stop them!’
They all but jumped down the steps and tore towards the Bloody Gate. A musket cracked behind them and there was more shouting from a distance. The two sentries at the Bloody Gate were standing under the teeth of the portcullis, their muskets at port. They looked confused, scared even. Tom snatched a glance behind him; there were more buff-coated soldiers, a score at least, behind them, with the young scarlet-clad officer from the Irish Tower, blood on his face, waving his pistol and urging them onwards.
‘Halt!’ shouted the right-hand sentry, pointing his musket. Out of the corner of his eye, Tom saw Hunt level his pocket pistol, still running at full tilt, and fire. The sentry dropped his musket, clapped his shoulder and spun away. Parrot gave an animal-like roar and charged at the remaining sentry. He had a foot-long, needle-tipped dagger in each hand and he came like a falling mountain on the second man, who hurled away his musket, and ran like a rabbit through the Bloody Gate, disappearing into Water Lane beyond.
Once they were all through the gate, Blood said: ‘This way!’ and pointed left beyond Traitor’s Gate to the Water Gate where there were two more sentries – this time alert, sober, braver men, now determined to stop them. They levelled their muskets. One shouted: ‘Halt or I give fire!’
Blood said: ‘They couldn’t hit a barn door. Come on!’ But Tom found he couldn’t move towards the man with the aimed musket – it looked as big as a cannon to his eye. Blood pulled out one of his pocket pistols, cocked it, aimed and fired at the sentry twenty yards away. He missed. The man fired back, the lead ball cracking into the cobbles behind them. He began to reload his piece. Then the second sentry stepped forward, hefting his musket.
‘Just go straight through them,’ bellowed Blood. He seized Tom’s shoulder, shook him. ‘You want to go back to the Marshalsea?’ Tom looked at him in horror. ‘Then go,’ said Blood and pushed his son forward. The second sentry pulled the trigger, the musket spat fire and Parrot gave a wild cry. Tom stumbled forward. But Hunt was within twenty feet now. He lifted his second pocket pistol, aimed and shot the second sentry through the forehead, the lead bullet exploding the back of his skull and splashing the steps of the Water Gate with his blood and brains. The first one abandoned reloading, snatched up his musket, cartridges and rammer and ran through the opening and on to the wharf.
Another musket barked from behind them. Blood whirled and saw a dozen buff-coated men tumbling through the Bloody Gate, Wythe Edwards to the fore. Blood looked back at the Water Gate, saw Hunt disappearing through it, with a bloody Parrot on his heels. Tom was nearly there too.
Blood made it to the Water Gate in a dozen strides, and stopped there. He grabbed Tom by the arm: ‘Give me your pistols, son.’
‘What?’
‘Give them to me! I’ll hold these gentlemen for a while.’
He took the heavy horse pistol and the small pocket gun from Tom and pushed him on to the drawbridge. Tom gave him one long look and fled, chasing after Hunt and Parrot, who were already halfway along the wharf.
Blood shoved the horse pistol into his waistband, cocked the other, extended his arm and fired into the crowd of soldiers. He heard the tinny ping as the ball struck a steel breastplate, and the frightened shouts of the enemy. He put his b
ack to the stone wall, pulled out the horse pistol. He could hear the officer bawling at the men to advance. He spun around into full view of the Tower guards, standing in the centre of the Water Gate – a musket exploded, the ball cracking past his ear. He lifted the heavy pistol, aimed carefully at Wythe Edwards, squeezed the trigger. The pistol barked. The soldier beside the young officer screamed and spun away. Edwards had his sword out now and was using it to beat the back of the nearest redcoat.
‘It’s one man, you cowards, charge him, charge!’
Blood dropped the heavy weapon. Another musket spat fire at him. Blood took out his last remaining pocket pistol. The soldiers were finally advancing. A dozen men only twenty yards away. He cocked the small weapon, extended his arm and shot the foremost soldier through the neck. Then he dodged back into the cover of the Water Gate wall, put his back against the stone and stripped the sheath from his wolf’s head walking cane, tossing it away and exposing the slim steel of the three-foot blade beneath. He looked up the wooden decking of the wharf and saw with satisfaction that Tom and the others were nearly at the Iron Gate where, God, Mary and all the saints be willing, Smithy would still be waiting with the horses.
A musket bullet blew a chunk of masonry from the wall beside his ear, the stone chips stinging and cutting his cheek. He counted to three, his back against the stone, then spun round the corner again, the blade of the sword-stick lancing out and punching through the open flaps of the buff coat of the leading soldier and into his groin. The man yelled, flailed and fell. A jet of gore arced through the air. But Blood was already moving away. He sprinted across the bridge to the wharf, and began to run towards the Iron Gate. His comrades were so nearly there. And he had only fifty yards to go. They would make it. They might all actually make it. Once a-horse, they could lose the soldiers in the crowded streets. There was no stopping them now. By God, he felt good. Never felt better. Heart pumping, blood singing.