“You want to get out?” he shouted at the shadow. “To leave?”
The man did not move.
“Well, go on then,” snarled Latham, approaching him. “Go on—leave. All you have to do is open the gate and go.”
The man looked across the yard to the stables.
“If you run, you are going to have to run on foot. If you reach your horse in the stable—which will have been unsaddled by now—you will be trapped.”
“Don’t go near him. Call for the constable,” cried the woman, as the men who had been inside the hall came out. “Raise the hue and cry.”
At the same time, there was a loud knocking on the gate, and a man from outside demanding: “Who has barred my house against me? Damn your eyes, open up!”
The innkeeper’s wife ran across and started to pull back the drawbar. At that moment, sensing that the man might go to the gate, Latham reached for the knife at his own belt, drew it and rushed forwards. The man saw him coming and ran across the yard. Latham sprinted after him. Not far behind came the man he had seen eating cheese, closely followed by the lawyer. None of them had a lantern but all were grimly determined. The traveller with the hat joined them too. And then the boys from the stable appeared, one with a small lantern.
The killer swerved, and ran down a dark alleyway between the stable and the perimeter wall of the inn. Latham knew the man was trapped. Inns that depend on the security of their guests’ horses and possessions do not have easy access points behind stables. The Mowbray Arms was no exception. A moment later the man found himself in the near-darkness of a dead end, with four shadows blocking the only way out. And then the stable boy with the light joined them.
For a long moment, the man held out the knife in front of him, his hand shaking.
“Drop the knife,” shouted the traveller in the hat. “Drop it now! You will only make your punishment more severe.”
“He is going to hang whatever,’ said the lawyer. “The question is whether he repents first.”
Latham stepped forward. “Who are you?”
“Go to hell,” muttered the man. Then he said it again, louder. “Go to hell!”
Latham looked at the man’s shape in the dimness and held out his left hand, palm upwards for the knife, concealing his own blade. “Give the knife to me. There is nowhere else to run.”
But at that moment the man lifted the knife above his head and, with a loud cry, ran straight towards them. As he came to Latham he brought the blade down. Latham dropped to a crouch and threw himself at the man’s legs, bringing him to the ground. He whirled round with his own knife and stabbed the man’s thigh. Then he stabbed him in the groin as the others there also set about the felon with their day-to-day knives. It was hysterical, a frenzy of stabbing – men killing out of fear and revenge. Suddenly it was over. The killing moment was done.
“The beast is dead,” said the lawyer, his voice betraying his excitement and relief. The stable boy with the lantern held it close to the corpse.
Latham looked down at the bloody torso. It had been bad butchery: he could see a rib and pink organs. He felt sick. The man was dead – and these fellows were smiling and congratulating themselves. But what were they doing here? What was he doing here? Who were all these people around him, talking, laughing and shouting? Only when the innkeeper called for silence, and demanded to know the identity of the dead man did Latham catch the one strand of purpose left to him.
“He is a spy,” he gasped. “A Catholic conspirator.” As he spoke he knelt down and felt the side pockets of the bloody jerkin. Finding nothing, he started to undo the jerkin itself. His hands became smeared with the man’s warm blood, fumbling inside the gore-soaked linen of his shirt. And then he felt a folded paper. He took it out and slipped it into his own pocket. Standing up, he wiped his brow, leaving the others to drag the body away into the yard.
About the Author
James Forrester is the pen name (the middle names) of the historian Dr. Ian Mortimer. Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and winner of its Alexander Prize for his work on social history, he is the author of four highly acclaimed medieval biographies and the Sunday Times bestseller The Time Traveler’s Guide to Medieval England and The Time Traveler’s Guide to Elizabethan England. He lives with his wife and three children on the edge of Dartmoor.
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