‘Whereas I expect nothing from you, Wildmoor, at all.’ Percy shook his head. ‘Exactly the type I saw every day in London. Thieving ne’erdo-wells who care naught for anything save themselves and the coin in their pockets, even when there is a cause to fight for that would see their lives improved.’ He scoffed. ‘Or perhaps, the coin in other people’s pockets.’
‘Do not speak to my manservant that way,’ bristled Mercia. ‘There is more in him than in either of you.’ Of a sudden she was taken by a violent nausea, a powerful rage swelling inside. ‘You bastards! You killed Clemency! You talk of people who care for naught, and yet you slaughter an innocent woman who cared only for helping others!’
Without thinking, she started forwards, the intensity of her feeling forcing her to acts her rational mind would never have countenanced. She brought up her hands, and for that savage instant she wanted to wrap her fingers around Percy’s throat, to make him suffer as Clemency had suffered in the rope. But then she heard a voice, Nicholas calling from the ground.
‘No,’ he cried. ‘You don’t want to end it, not like this.’
His urgent words were enough to break the enchantment, and she stopped her advance, subdued. She had only covered three paces, but the horror of what she had hoped to do caught her short. She swallowed and stepped back.
‘I am sorry, Nicholas. I do not know what happened.’
‘I do.’ His green eyes stared up at her. ‘Believe me, I do.’
She looked around. Amery was lowering his gun, but she could see his hands were shaking, the flames of the torch in his left hand as unsteady as his pistol in his right. Percy had paled, seemingly taken aback, but then he smiled and held up his palms.
‘No matter, Mercia, I know you are upset.’ His taut shoulders relaxed. ‘To speak true, I had hoped you would not find out the truth, that you would join me in ignorance as the rest of the town joins us now. But you are the daughter of Sir Rowland Goodridge. When I explain, you will understand me, I know.’
‘How?’ A heavy sadness descended on the clearing, replacing her vanquished fury; even the rush of the water away to her side could not penetrate its gloom. ‘I thought you were my friend, Percy. But – Hell’s teeth!’ She looked away, striving to master her angst. ‘No reason can explain what you have done!’
He waited for her to look back at him, a puzzled frown marring his forehead.
‘I am your friend. And you are mine. You said so at the bonfire.’ He pulled at the seam of his cloak. ‘Shall we set a fire here? At least we can have comfort as we talk.’
Her mind numb, she waited as Percy gathered kindling and wood, taking Amery’s torch to light the tiny pile: a pitiful comparison to the bonfire at the palisade, its wavering flames were nonetheless more illuminating than the torch. Close by, Amery kept his gun trained on Nicholas, his knuckles white as he gripped the well-fashioned handle. To Mercia it seemed an age since she had last sat amongst these rocks, when Silence had still been alive. The memory smelt as sour as the burgeoning smoke.
‘I know how you like it here,’ Percy said at last. Shedding his cloak, he rose to his feet. ‘I know how it calms you, makes you able to think.’
‘Tonight has made it somewhat tainted. Like your ideals.’ Disdaining his attempts to set her at ease, she turned to his companion. ‘A fairer world of freedom and hope, Amery, was that how you described it before? I see little of fairness here.’
‘Fairness?’ Amery stared, his eyes as wild as the woods around them. ‘This is all about fairness. It is about leaving tyranny behind and forging a fair life for us all.’
‘Very grand.’ Nicholas laughed. ‘Is that what you told the people you killed?’
His pistol slipped at his side. ‘I realise some of our methods are not—’
‘Amery,’ said Percy. ‘Keep that pointed at him. He cannot understand us, that is certain.’ He peered down at Nicholas. ‘I told you to stay quiet.’
‘Yes.’ Amery steadied his gun. ‘Yes, of course.’
Mercia looked from the one to the other. There was a definite anxiety permeating Amery, his eyes looking this way and that.
‘Is this your idea of a fair life?’ she ventured. She glanced at Nicholas, nodding imperceptibly as a signal to obey Percy’s instruction. ‘Being told what to do by this man?’
‘There must be an order, Mercia. A hierarchy of sorts.’ The uncertainty in Amery’s gaze morphed into shimmering enthusiasm; endearing in other circumstances, tonight it was out of place. ‘’Tis only when the shackles of tyranny are cast down that we will find those prizes that elude us. The philosopher’s stone, the alkahest … the ultimate elixir, you remember? When we uncover its glory, nobody will die again. But I have learnt that unless the land is made pure through hardship, its splendour will forever be denied us.’
‘Did Percy tell you that?’ She shook her head. ‘I doubt alchemy is what he has in mind. Sedition seems more to his taste.’
‘So be it,’ said Percy. ‘If sedition will allow me to throw off the Royalist chains that stifle us.’ He took a step towards her. ‘I speak of the future, Mercia. A new future, in which I offer you a choice. Either stay and join us.’ He looked at her keenly. ‘Join me.’
‘Or?’
‘Or …’ He smiled. ‘But that will not happen. You must see what I do here is for the common good.’
She had to fight to control herself. ‘I found Clemency hanging from her bedroom eaves. Hopewell carrying his stomach across the fields. And Silence – cut into four, his head nailed to the gate?’ The memories made her sick. ‘How is that for the common good?’
Percy lowered himself onto the same flat rock she had enjoyed with Clemency those few weeks before. ‘Have you tried to rouse the people, Mercia? Do you know what it takes?’ He drew up his leg, folding it underneath his other. ‘But then, I know you do. Your father certainly did.’
She narrowed her eyes. ‘My father would be appalled by what has happened here.’
‘Perhaps. But perhaps he would also say, that the means are justified if they achieve the desired end. Do you think he was bloodless in the war?’
‘He commanded men. He had to make decisions that led to lives being lost, I know that. But killing for a game, no. That is beneath anyone like him.’
‘It is the reality of life.’ He straightened a crease in his breeches. ‘War and death, panic and fear … they are what stir the people. Scare them and they will follow. Try to persuade them by rational argument and you are doomed to fail.’
‘And so this is your explanation? That you killed all those people to scare the rest into obeying your will? Sowing panic besides, through scattering those monstrous codes?’ A faintness passed over her. ‘You are sick, Percy.’
‘No. But my country is, and I am the doctor who can cure it. By country I mean here, of course. America. I have tried to tell you so often enough.’
‘It is a beautiful place. It must feel sorrow at such pointless death.’
‘It will be free.’ He looked into the flames of the fire. ‘I went to England once, you know that. I served Cromwell, a minor part only, but I knew with industry and hard work I would rise to his council, and I would help England and America become the power they should be.’ He jumped up, staring over the edge of the falls. ‘How powerful could England be with all this land at its disposal? But I will not let England have it if England is to be ruled by kings and the enemies of we Elect.’ He swivelled to face her. ‘No, God has shown us this land, and He means it for us. It was our forefathers who arrived on the first ships, stepping onto that shore to found Plymouth. And now we, their children, will break from the motherland, and we will free the people to live as they should, by our own laws and morals. Any who do not wish it can return to England where they belong.’
‘A high cause indeed.’ Her voice was emotionless; it would have been impossible to divine her thoughts. ‘With murder its sordid call to arms.’
‘It was necessary.’ For a moment he seemed to falter,
but he quickly composed himself. ‘Nothing else worked. All the times I spoke of our freedom, they counted for naught. Even in Boston my speeches largely went unheeded.’ Sorrow played down his cheeks. ‘And I understood. Life is hard here. People were too concerned with their own lives, with their families and their farms, to be able to care. But I did care, deeply, and I realised it would take sterner persuasion to make the people see where their future truly must lie.’
‘The people will be free, Mercia,’ said Amery. ‘Pure. God will grant us the wisdom of His secrets so we can live as in Eden. Heaven, here on Earth.’
A light spray from the falls settled on her brow. ‘A fine marriage of alchemy and power,’ she scorned. ‘And yet I think, Amery, an unequal partnership. There is more of one than the other in this scheme.’
Amery blinked, looking sideways at Percy, but he merely continued unheeding.
‘The invasion fleet you arrived on was the catalyst. Ever since the King reclaimed his throne, we all knew it would come. And so a fear was already there, dormant in the people. If I could but harness that fear, make them panic their own lives could be forfeit, then I knew they would yearn for a reasoning voice to tell them what needed to be done.’
She would have laughed, if she could. ‘A voice such as yours?’
He nodded, seemingly oblivious. ‘The murders were no mere whim, Mercia. They had a purpose. To make the people listen, I had to convince them that my enemy … that our enemy, was prepared to commit any act. That the King would do anything in pursuit of his relentless task.’
‘His task to find the men who killed his father,’ she said. ‘The regicides.’
‘Indeed!’ Percy’s fingers clenched and relaxed in his excitement. ‘Finally, the people are outraged! Discovering that the King’s men – that Thorpe – were responsible for killing their fellows, solely to scare them into renouncing Whalley and the others, their very heroes?’ He cast down his gaze. ‘It pained me I had to feign their guilt through the codes. But the key in their hiding place was so obvious a fake, the loose means I needed to convince the people they were innocent.’
She frowned. ‘But to do that the key had to be found. How did you know I would search for it?’
‘I didn’t. I intended Thorpe to find the key. I planned to lead him unawares to the cave once I had been able to leave it. But you got there first.’ He sighed. ‘I was saddened, Mercia. That you would suspect those men in that way.’
She sucked in his disappointment through her teeth. ‘That was you in the cave.’
‘I went straight after the discussion with my father. But I should have known you would ponder Thorpe’s words and come yourself.’ Once again, his eyes flicked away. ‘I never wanted to use you as a pawn, Mercia, for you to be the one to bring the key to Meltwater. But you put yourself in that position through your diligence.’ His cheeks reddened. ‘Then this evening you came to me with the truth I already knew. You are a clever woman, Mercia, an … equal, I hope. But I have always been a little ahead. By the time you found me, I was already about to set things in motion.’
‘With a note smuggled into Thorpe’s house to prove your claims, no less.’
‘But the monas, Percy?’ Still standing over Nicholas, Amery’s brow had been steadily furrowing. ‘We put that in the codes as a confession of our own, I thought? A symbol of alchemy to explain to God our intent?’
‘Oh, come, Amery.’ Percy waved a dismissive hand. ‘That fool’s pursuit is as nothing compared to our true purpose.’
‘See what he thinks of your alkahest, Amery?’ She folded her arms. ‘He used the monas to make the people afraid, that is all. They worry it is a symbol of devilish magic. All he wanted was to scare them into handing him power.’
‘This is not about power.’ A brief shadow crossed Percy’s face. ‘Or about me. I have been … the match that sets flame to the cannon, no more. I have kindled the anger that was already there, made certain the uprising has begun.’ His darkness erupted into rapture. ‘What happens in Meltwater tonight, we take to Hartford tomorrow, then to Springfield, New Haven, and Boston itself. There is little love in America for the King. We will expel his rule and we will prevail.’
‘Percy, how can you hope to?’ She laid her head in her hands. ‘There is an army of the King’s soldiers just landed in New York. You think they will sit back and let you revolt?’
‘This is our home, Mercia. We number in the thousands. We will fight for it to the last drop of blood.’ His eyes gleamed in the firelight. ‘Despite your firing the mortar, Richard is still captive. He will confess, or he will die. Either way I have my murderer, and the people will rise.’
‘And yet Sir William is free.’
‘Hardly troubling. We both know his presence here is an unforeseen occurrence.’
She looked at him. He was breathing fast, his face aglow. His mouth was upturned into a childlike smile. In contrast Amery was staring towards the falls, his face set, his hold on his gun slackening by the minute. She dared a glance at Nicholas, and she could see he was watching more carefully than she had thought. He met her gaze, and his right eye fashioned an almost imperceptible wink. Quickly, she turned her attention back.
‘I do not doubt your ardour, Percy.’ She meant, madness. ‘Maybe I could agree with your aims of a life free from oppression. But you cannot kill the innocent to achieve it.’ She took a step forward, but Amery found the wits to shake his gun. ‘Why Clemency, Percy? Why a kind woman who helped you hide those men you claim to cherish?’
Her words cut through his trance. ‘For that reason, Mercia. Because she knew of them, and they have to be safe. And because she was friends with the Indians, as Hopewell was. To give them reason to attack when it was needed.’
Startled, she threw back her head. ‘Do not tell me you planned that assault?’
‘Father may have tried to destroy the codes, but I was always in control. I knew that if I waited to talk of them all at once, to reveal their strange nature, then the town would be consumed with fear. An Indian attack could only inflame that.’ He shrugged, but his haughty eyes betrayed his arrogance. ‘And of course, at least one of Whalley or Goffe had to reveal himself, so the people – so that Thorpe – could know for certain they were near. Only such a threat would persuade them out of hiding.’
Her mouth was open in shock. ‘But Whalley only came because Godsgift was injured. How could you possibly have foreseen that?’
Did he roll his eyes? ‘Because I do see things, Mercia. I knew Standfast and the Indian woman were searching for Godsgift, and I helped them. I encouraged Standfast to lure him to the wood. To say true, I thought she would kill him. But incapacitating him was enough.’
She barked an incredulous laugh. ‘And Silence?’ To her right, Nicholas set his palms on the ground. ‘George Mason, the minister?’
‘Mason would have rallied the town if he were alive, as the powwow would have counselled his tribe towards peace.’ He waggled a finger. ‘I was not sure what the Indians would think of the code we left on him. But they are not foolish, whatever some of my fellow townsmen like to pretend. Once they learnt of the rest, I knew they would share it. As for Silence, well. He was on the edge of my group, and – somebody had to be quartered. Else why bother with the hanging and the drawing?’
‘Why bother?’ In the corner of her eye, Nicholas gave her a gentle nod. ‘Percy, you are truly crazed. You have used me, as you have used everyone else. But perhaps … you are not so much in control as you think.’
Of a sudden Nicholas pounced, straight into the path of Amery’s loaded gun.
Chapter Thirty-Five
‘Nicholas!’ she cried. ‘No!’
She need not have worried. Amery dithered, allowing Nicholas to draw close before he could pull the trigger. With a harsh cry he knocked the pistol from Amery’s hand. It tumbled towards the fire, and Nicholas sprang fast, sending them both careering to the ground. But then somehow Nicholas was off him, rolling on the earth alone, as Amery s
truggled to his feet, picking up the pistol before Mercia had chance to run in and grab it. Aiming at her chest, he watched, anxiety on his face, as Percy pulled Nicholas round, striking him with a powerful blow she would never have thought he could muster. Although Nicholas was the stronger, Percy’s unexpected attack caught him off guard. Blood trickled from his mouth, and he fell backwards, insensible.
Shaking out his fist, Percy stood. ‘You will have to keep him in check, Mercia. I do not want to hurt him again.’
‘You killed all the others. Why not him too?’ She looked at Nicholas and felt a deep resentment. On the borders of unconsciousness, his chest was nonetheless rising steadily. ‘Why not me?’
‘Because I—’ He looked away. ‘Do you think I devised this for pleasure?’
‘I do not know.’ She was seething, Nicholas’s failed attempt the outlet for her rage to find its release. ‘But I do know your aims are not so noble as you espouse.’ She glanced at Amery. His eyes were wide, repeatedly flitting to Nicholas lying prostrate on the earth. ‘Naught to do with purity.’
Percy’s face twitched. ‘What do you mean?’
‘We both know what this is truly about. It is about a young man.’ As she spoke, a heat flooded her cheeks, but she found the indignation to continue. ‘A young man who went to England to seek power, but who had his hopes torn asunder at Cromwell’s death. A young man, who longed to surpass his father, but who was forced to return with his dreams unfulfilled. A young man burning with injustice, with stopped ambition, who plotted and planned and addled his mind to try to achieve power here in its place.’ She bored into his eyes. ‘But you are wrong, Percy, and there is no way I could ever join you or condone you.’
‘No!’ He pounded his right hand into his left and winced. ‘You are the daughter of a great man of Parliament! You must understand me!’
‘A young man,’ she pursued, ‘who played on his friend’s alchemical ideals, but who enslaved his own thoughts to his deepening vanity. Whalley, Goffe, Dixwell? My father, Cromwell … me? You think any of us could approve this?’ She stepped forward, unafraid, bringing her face close into his. ‘How did it feel to put the rope around Clemency? How did it feel to watch her life slip away?’
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