Huddled over the table, in a thick jump jacket that had seen much of war and weather, was the Dutchman I had first seen with my father’s mercenaries at Sir Lewis Challoner’s. He was cleaning a pair of pistols.
‘This is Jan,’ my father said.
‘You were at Challoner’s,’ I said.
The Dutchman squinted up, then gave me a broad smile from which most of the teeth were missing. ‘Of course. I remember,’ he said, in guttural but perfect English, as if it had been a social occasion, and began loading the pistols.
‘I thought we might need an extra body to –’ My father’s expression changed as he saw Scogman approaching in the light of the door.
I smiled at him. ‘I had exactly the same thought, Father.’
Scogman’s eyes gleamed as he saw the fine metalwork of the pistols. He stretched out a hand to pick one up. Jan slammed his hand down on it, pointed the pistol he was holding at Scogman and cocked it. The brandy stopped halfway to the waterman’s lips and there was a moment’s silence, except for the steady lapping from the surging tide.
‘Come, gentlemen,’ my father said. ‘We are working together.’
Scogman stared down the barrel. ‘Italian, isn’t it? Like the people – all decoration and no firepower.’
‘Enough to blow your head off.’
‘Snaphaunce lock?’ Scogman shook his head disparagingly.
Jan gave him his toothless smile. ‘More efficient than the English dog lock.’
In a blur of movement, Scogman twisted away, pulling his pistol from his coat. ‘You think so?’
I brought my hand down on Scogman’s pistol. ‘We won’t get very far if we shoot one another.’
‘Well said, Tom.’
My father was as taut as I was. He looked a military man again, in bucket boots over his knees and a jump jacket of oiled leather. He was good with men, I had to admit it. He questioned Jake, the boatman, listening carefully to him, deferring to his knowledge of the river. But when Jake said it would take him five hours to get to Hampton in this weather, he laughed, felt the boatman’s rippling muscles and said: five for an ordinary boatman, four for you, Jake. Jake shook his head, but pinked with pleasure. By the time my father sent him to check the boat and the weather, he was convinced he was the best of the six thousand watermen on the Thames.
‘What does he think we’re doing?’
‘He doesn’t know. He doesn’t ask. Except about the money’
He poured brandy in one glass, tossed it down, filled it and passed it to me. I took a small swallow and was about to hand it to Scogman when my father stopped me.
‘Cold on the river. You’ll need a drop more warmth than that, Tom.’
I needed to keep my senses, but it was impossible not to return his smile, not to begin to feel that, now he had Highpoint, had what he had always wanted, our relationship had changed. I gulped down the rest. It burned my throat and stung my eyes. My father poured a brandy for Scogman.
‘I can see you’re a man who knows his guns, Scoggy. What are these prigs carrying?’
‘One is a sharp cove.’
‘Good?’
‘The best.’
‘Apart from Jan,’ my father put in.
The Dutchman gave him his toothless smile. I could feel even the cynical Scogman falling under my father’s spell. ‘He has a wheel-lock I’ve not seen before,’ he said. ‘The spring hangs out of the stock.’
Jan leaned forward. ‘Tschinke. Silesian. Backsight?’
‘Yes. How accurate is it?’
‘Five, six hundred yards.’
My father spread out the charts on the table. We crowded round him, watching his finger follow the snaking loops of the Thames. For the first time I appreciated how far we had to go. I saw the sprawl of Hampton Court Palace. It was surrounded by a moat.
‘They’ll never get over the moat,’ I said.
‘They won’t have to,’ my father said. ‘They can’t keep him cooped up like a common criminal. When the weather is good, the King rides in his park.’
I stared at the huge area, including a forest, surrounding the palace. ‘Where?’
‘It varies.’ It was a fleeting moment, but I thought I saw a quick exchange of glances with Jan. ‘Do you know where the prigs are heading?’
It was seeing the shape of the island on the map that jerked out of my memory another piece of Nehemiah’s conversation with the boatman. Beyond Richmond … Stag Island …
My father was waiting for an answer. I shook my head, determined to give him as little information as possible until it was necessary. After all, it might be only a duck shoot.
‘What do they look like, Scoggy?’
‘We’ll know them,’ I said.
My father sighed, giving me a tight little smile. The oiled paper over the windows flapped suddenly. A candle went out and another threatened to do so as Jake opened the door. He told us the good news was that the fog was beginning to clear. The bad was that it was an easterly wind that was sweeping it away, and if that got worse we would be in trouble in the treacherous parts up river.
The wherry had a canopy that gave us some protection, but I was glad of the warmth of the brandy. Jake pushed off and the streams of fog seemed to slide away from us down river. The tide was strong, and the strengthening wind was with us.
There was not a star in sight. Earth and sky were merged into a tunnel of impenetrable blackness, except when a pale, guttering moon filtered through, picked up in the oily ripples of our wake. Moored boats loomed up and vanished. Drops dribbled from the oars before Jake dipped them again. Fires lit up the shapes of tents and the tower of St Mary’s Church. Putney. Nehemiah and Bennet would be in position by now. I remembered how neat, well-organised and methodical Nehemiah was. Meticulous. I had helped to train him.
‘What time does the King ride?’
‘Early.’
Charles, too, was a man of methodical habits. A poached egg every morning, a glass of fair water, a stroll on the terrace to decide whether to ride or walk the endless corridors. Curious that he and Nehemiah were similar in many ways – stubborn, rigid. Each never questioning whether he was right. Soon Nehemiah would be in place. Somewhere near Stag Island. With Bennet. Waiting. Two or three hours later Charles would finish his poached egg, then wander out on to the terrace to see if the weather was fit to ride.
That was why, when I heard the first patter of rain on the canopy, I had such a sense of relief. I had been dozing. I came round not only to the sound of rain but to a different landscape. The sky was as black as pitch. We had just passed through Richmond. A sudden flurry of wind hit the boat, making us cling on to the pillars over which the canopy was stretched. One of the ropes holding it snapped and it flapped like a sail.
I had never been this far up the river and was totally unaware of the danger. Jake looked carved into the woodwork of the stern of the boat. The howling air filled out my clothes and cleared my head. I yelled into the wind, a boy again, doing what I had always dreamed of doing with Matthew, going to sea in one of the boats we had made, in search of treasure.
Jake’s mouth moved, but I heard nothing, admiring what I took to be his calmness, his strength, as the boat sped on. In truth, he was not rowing but steering, the boat driven by wind and tide. I only realised what speed we were going when a bank veered towards us, the dark silhouettes of wind-bent trees whipping away from us. Even then it merely exhilarated me more until I saw another boat, adrift from its moorings, careering towards us. Jake rowed desperately. The gale flung the rogue boat away from us. We were almost past it when it lurched back, striking our stern. The wherry slewed round, water cascading over us. Jake struggled to keep his oars, his deep voice booming frantically.
I caught two words: ‘Weir … canopy.’
I understood the latter. Stretched like a sail, the torn canopy made it impossible to control the boat. My childhood came back to me again, this time not as dreams but reality. As pitch boys we climbed the rigging of
ships as a dare. I stood up, slipping on the wet deck. My father grabbed my legs. I kicked off my boots, not just to get a better grip, but because bare feet know the surface in a way boots never can. Even in that moment I remembered how much I had hated boots when I first wore them.
I waited for a lull in the wind, scrambled up, found a precarious purchase and, holding on to the pillar with one hand, stretched across to cut the ropes holding the canopy. Jake was rowing frantically again, struggling to steer the boat back into the centre of the river. He shouted something about ‘currents’, which I did not understand. I pulled the knife out of my belt, almost dropping it as another burst of wind caught me, a corner of the flapping canopy lashing my cheek. I cut partly through one rope, then started on the other. Scogman seized me by the belt to steady me. Abruptly, one rope snapped, then another, the canopy fluttering away like a demented bird, flinging me backwards into the water.
I seemed to go down for ever, the wind cut off in a world silent but for the bubbling rush of water. If I had worn my heavy boots, I would have stayed there. The wind was back, pounding my ears. I gulped in more river than air, glimpsing the blur of the hull above me, a hand, an oar, before I went down again. Odd what came back to me – plunging into the Thames as a child, yelling: I can swim, I can swim! It had been a dog paddle at most. But perhaps the memory got me to claw off my coat, to kick frantically. The wind buffeted me. Through the water streaming from my eyes, a hand appeared. I clutched at it. Another hand. Voices torn by the wind. The swell took the boat away, the hands slipping away from me. I grabbed at the oar being held out to me and clung on.
‘The weir, Tom … I must row!’
I understood, more from the driftwood that collided with me than the words. Whole branches ripped from trees were being carried towards a weir, whose roar I could hear even above the wind. A hand was being held out to me, but I could not reach it.
‘I must …’
Jake pulled his oar away. I grabbed for the hand. Held it. The boat tipped over towards me. There was a confusion of yelling and shouting. I saw Scogman and Jan almost in the water as they threw their weight on the other side of the boat. My hand was slipping but another hand was on my arm. It felt as if it was being wrenched out of its socket. The river was thundering in my ears, sucking me down its throat towards the weir. I felt I must snap in two until, like a fish jerked from the sea, I landed in the boat, thrashing, coughing, spluttering, retching out water, gasping for air. I was dimly aware of Jake’s straining arms and legs above me, of the others bailing out with a pan, or their hats, of my father taking off my shirt, wrapping his coat round me and forcing the neck of a brandy flask between my chattering teeth.
‘Couldn’t lose you, Tom,’ he said. ‘Need you to take us to those fellows.’
‘Stag Island,’ I said, and saw Jan and my father exchange glances before I closed my eyes.
Two promontories jutted out from the island like the antlers of a stag. The wind had dropped but rain was falling steadily. I now understood the timing that Nehemiah had talked about. The tide was on the turn and on the last stretch Jake had to pull strongly.
‘Let’s not give them an easy shot at us,’ my father muttered. ‘We must seem to be poachers like them.’
We huddled down in the boat, peering into a scene of unredeemed grey. There was no sign of a moored boat. The rain seemed to have washed the colour from everything, the drab river merging into a sky of beaten pewter. Clumps of trees on the island were dark shadows.
Jan had a pistol cocked, staring with a marksman’s eye as the creeks and inlets of the small, uninhabited island gradually took shape. In his thick, guttural Dutch accent, he said, ‘They’d have to be on one of those peninsulas to reach it.’
‘Reach what?’ I asked.
Jan looked at my father, who replied, ‘It’s called King Henry’s Ride. He used to go hunting there. The forest was much bigger then.’
‘You’re sure he’s a marksman?’ Jan asked.
‘The best,’ Scogman said.
‘He’s only got one angle, one chance there. A sideshot,’ Jan grunted.
‘All he needs. And he can escape from this side of the island without anyone knowing where the shot has come from.’
The rocking of the boat, the amount of water I had swallowed and their macabre argument over the finer points of assassination, made me feel nauseous and I was glad when my father snapped at them to be quiet. The rain slackened a little, but had a steady, remorseless feel as we crept slowly round the island. I jumped as a duck whirred upwards.
‘He won’t ride out in this,’ I murmured.
My father didn’t reply. As we rounded the island he took out a spyglass and put it to his eye. Jan muttered that it had been invented by a Dutchman, Lippershey, starting yet another whispered argument with Scogman when he said the English couldn’t paint, make printing machines or glass. All they could do was rear sheep. Again my father motioned them angrily to silence.
As we navigated the island he stared, not at the banks, but towards the palace, whose towers and twisted chimneys came and went between dripping trees. I had never used a spyglass before and, like a child, begged him to let me see through it. He did not seem to hear me, putting it back in his pocket.
‘Oh, do let me, Father – please!’
I believe it was the first time he had ever really registered me calling him that. He flushed and gave it to me without a word. I stared eagerly through it, jerking the glass backwards when the banks leapt at me, afraid they were going to hit me. Disappointment filled me. I could see nothing but a leaden blur. I thought the glass was smeared, but no; then that it must be my eyes. I swung the spyglass upwards and shivered, awestruck. This was truly magic, the sort Matthew often claimed, but never produced.
I was a field away from the palace. I took the glass from my eye to make sure I had not been transported there. My father grinned at my enchantment. I could pick out the slime on the moat, the bricks on the walls, giddily sweeping up to land among the twisted chimneys before slithering down, coming to rest on some kind of terrace. It was further away, and the picture blurred, as it did when objects were too close. I was about to sweep back on to the roof when a figure appeared. He looked up at the sky, then walked towards me, becoming a little sharper. Frustratingly, he stopped, dipping away, becoming hazy again. He had dropped something. When he picked it up, all I could see was a smear of red, but, for a moment, his face became more distinct and I glimpsed his pointed beard and long hair.
‘The King! I can see the King.’
My father snatched the glass from me and stared through it, quite still. He shook his head. ‘It’s one of the Grooms of the Bedchamber. They all ape his beard.’ He put the glass back in his pocket. By this time we had scanned the island, becoming bolder as we saw no sign of life except a herd of forlorn-looking deer huddled in a copse.
My father grew suddenly agitated. ‘We must find them.’ Abruptly he darted a suspicious look at me. ‘That’s if they are here.’
I shrugged. In spite of my father’s coat, I was beginning to shiver again. ‘Perhaps they really have gone duck shooting.’
He seized me by the collar. ‘Are you telling me the truth? You heard them? You know them?’
‘Why would I lie?’
He released me. ‘Yes. Why would you?’
There was an exchange of glances between him and Jan. He pulled out the brandy flask, then offered it to me. I shook my head. The energy seemed to have drained out of him. He stared down river, flicking away drops of rain that had gathered in his bushy eyebrows. The boat creaked and swayed gently, Jake dipping the oars in just enough to keep it in the same position. Twigs, whole branches, torn off by the recent storm and rubbish from the palace flowed past us.
‘I’ll go up to the palace and warn them,’ I said.
‘And send them after me?’
‘Do you think I’d do that?’
Jake motioned us to be quiet. He pointed with a dripping oar towa
rds a willow trailing its branches into the water. It had shed its leaves, but the branches were so thickly entangled and the light so bad I could not see what Jake was pointing at. He rowed closer to the shore. Now I saw it. Among the willow branches was a jumble of dark green ivy, which, at a casual glance, looked as if it was growing up the tree. It had taken a boatman’s eye to detect that the edges of the leaves had begun to brown and wither. They were concealing the prow of a boat.
While we moored, Richard told me to investigate the other boat and Jan and Scogman to scout the approach to King Henry’s Ride. He seemed to know the area intimately: before the war, he whispered, he had hunted here. He pointed out where Jake would conceal our boat. I took one of the pistols from Scogman and made my way through the bushes to the hidden boat. It was empty, but had not been so for long. On the bank were fresh boot prints in the mud, already being filled and washed away by the tide. I scratched my head, as if merely puzzled by the boat’s presence, shrugged as if it was no consequence to me and wandered off the way I had come. And slipped into the bushes. And waited.
It did not take long. The boatman was desperate to escape. He made so much noise he did not hear me approach behind him. I waited until he crouched down to untie the boat. He was trembling so much and the rope was so wet, he could not loose the knot and took a knife to it.
‘Poaching is a hanging offence,’ I said.
He whirled round, coming at me with the knife. I ducked back, the knife ripping into my father’s coat. Absurdly, I felt that as keenly as if he had cut me. It was the only thing my father had ever given me, or at least lent me. I kicked the knife from the boatman’s hand and threw myself at him. He went down, striking his head against the base of the willow tree. I lashed his hands behind his back with his own belt.
At first I could not get him round, or he was pretending to be in a daze. Then, although I snatched up his knife and put it to his throat, he muttered with a sullen sneer that he knew nothing about the men, where they had gone or what they were doing. He was only a waterman, doing his job.
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