by Ann Swinfen
‘Good.’ I slipped down from my horse and began to lead him through the trees on our left, in the direction of the stream. We were hardly silent, crashing through the undergrowth, but there was no other way to reach it, out of sight of the house. All we could hope was that no one there was listening.
At the water’s edge, we looped the horses’ reins loosely over low branches, so that we could free them easily, then made our way, with rather less noise, back to the main track.
Thomas led the way round to the rear of the house and we crouched behind the unkempt bushes, examining it. There was a back door, probably leading to a kitchen and standing open to let in the welcome return of spring warmth. Somewhere a woman was singing, cheerfully if somewhat tunelessly. We might be making a terrible mistake. Perhaps this was no more than a farmhouse. Even if the house belonged to Godunov, there was surely nothing untoward happening here. I was opening my mouth to say we should retreat, and had turned to Pyotr, when he raised his finger to his lips and jerked his head toward the house.
Two men had just emerged from the door and leaned against a low wall surrounding what might be a well. They were relaxed, enjoying the sun. Both wore swords. They were not household servants. Where there were armed men, there must be something to guard. I could hear most of what they said, but they spoke in a thick accent, so I caught only a few words. One word I did catch, and I felt the sweat spring out on my palms. Anglichanin. Englishman.
I glanced at the others. They had heard it too.
‘Take them now?’ It was Thomas.
‘You are in charge,’ I whispered. I could trust him to know how best to act.
Quietly, he drew his sword, and so did we, then he nodded.
We burst from behind the bushes, yelling, as if we were part of a larger attack. The two men started forward, taken by surprise. Before they could even draw their swords, Thomas had punched one so hard in the face that he fell back against the wall, struck the back of his head, and slid to the ground. The other was coming for me. I met his sword with mine, a teeth-rattling screech of metal on metal. I am quick on my feet and well trained in sword play, but my wrist is not as strong as a man’s. Master Scannard, who had trained me in the Tower, always said that it was skill which triumphed over strength and I tried to remember that. ‘Read your opponent’s eyes,’ he said.
There was little doubt what was in this man’s eyes. He wanted to kill me. But I could see how he was assessing me, his eyes flicking for a moment to one side, to see what had happened to his companion. I took my chance and chopped down with my sword on his right arm. A stronger swordsman might have taken his hand off, but I did enough damage for him to shriek. I thought he would drop his sword, but he clung to it, although it drooped toward the ground.
Then he raised it and was coming for me, with murder in his eyes.
I raised my sword. I would try to hold him off, but he was taller than I, with a longer reach, and twice my weight behind it. As he came within sword reach, he stumbled and fell forward. I leapt back just in time to avoid being struck by his head as he collapsed. There was a dagger sticking out of his back.
Thomas was on the other side of the yard, smiling complacently.
‘Learned that trick off a Saracen prisoner,’ he said.
‘You threw from over there?’ I was incredulous.
‘Aye.’
Pyotr was tying up the unconscious man with a bit of rope he had cut from the well bucket.
‘Not very strong,’ he called, ‘but ’twill serve for the moment. Is he dead?’ He jerked his thumb toward the man lying at my feet.
I knelt down and took the man’s wrist between my fingers. There was a faint pulse, but he was bleeding badly. The dagger could have punctured a lung or some other vital organ.
‘He’s alive.’ Instinctively I looked round for my satchel, before I remembered that I had left it strapped to my saddle.
‘Come on,’ Thomas yelled. ‘Bring my dagger. There may be more on ’em.’
‘He needs help–’
‘God’s teeth, doctor, he would have killed you. Bring my dagger.’
‘Fetch it yourself,’ I said, running toward the door. I might have told Thomas to lead us, but I would not pull out the dagger. Almost certainly it would draw out the man’s life blood with it.
Then we were all three inside the house. As I had guessed, this was the kitchen. At first I thought it was deserted, then I saw two women crouched under a table and pressed back against the wall. An older woman and a girl, probably the girl Thomas had seen with the milk.
‘Other men?’ Pyotr shouted. ‘Are there other men with swords?’
The woman was grey with shock, incapable of responding, but the girl, her eyes wide with terror, shook her head.
‘The Englishman. Anglichanin. Where is the Anglichanin?’
Still the girl did not speak, but pointed with a trembling hand toward a place on the floor. I ran across the room to where a rough woven rug covered the stone flags and flung it aside. There was a trap door underneath.
‘Cellar,’ I said.
Of course this place was no castle or fort. They would have used the ordinary cellar, the place where households stored their dried, salted, and pickled winter food, anything which was not kept in the outside ice-house. The trap door was of wood, with hollowed depressions to serve as handles. I heaved, but it was heavy and Thomas came to help me. We pushed it to one side and peered down into the depths. Total blackness.
Pyotr was lighting a tallow candle he had found on a shelf. He handed it to me, then began tying up the women.
‘Is that necessary?’ I said.
‘I won’t make it too tight. They’ll easily get free once we’re gone.’
I forgot the women, leaning over the hole and moving the candle from side to side.
‘Gregory!’ I shouted. ‘Gregory Rocksley! Are you there? We’ve come to get you out.’
There was no answer, but a kind of listening silence.
‘I’m going down,’ I said.
Thomas nodded, ‘I’m after you. Pyotr, make sure those men in the yard a’nt able for to come after us.’ Then, as I began to climb down the ladder, awkwardly because I was holding the candle, he added ‘Best make haste. Those bastards following can’t be far behind us.’
Dear God, I kept forgetting them. I scrambled to the bottom and raised the candle to look around.
In the far corner, his feet tied and his bound arms clutched over his head to protect it, was a man. He was the right age, as far as I could tell. The hair was the right colour. His face and hands were filthy, his hair matted and crawling with lice, his clothes tattered. And he stank. Peering at him in the flickering light cast by the candle, I could not judge whether he was the man I had met only briefly before. But he did not speak. I ran over to him and knelt on the earthen floor to saw through the rope around his legs and arms with my dagger. It must be Rocksley, but there was no time now to question him.
As soon as the ropes fell away, Thomas seized the man and threw him over his shoulder.
‘You go first.’ I nodded at the ladder. If I followed, I might be able to take some of the weight, but Thomas went up that ladder as if the man weighed nothing.
Pyotr had finished tying up the women and was standing half in and half out of the door.
‘Is it him?’
‘Must be,’ I said, ‘but he can’t, or won’t, speak.’
Thomas tried to set the man on his feet, but he simply crumpled.
‘Been tied up too long,’ I said. ‘You take his shoulders, I’ll take his feet.’
‘I’ll manage,’ Thomas said, heaving the man over his shoulder again. ‘Down this way, we can reach the stream.’
He led us along the back of the house, down to the bank. Pyotr and I started to run along it to the trees where we had left the horses, Thomas following in a kind of shambling trot. I hesitated, waiting for him.
‘Go on. Free the horses.’
Of course he was righ
t. I ran faster, reaching them at the same time as Pyotr and gasping for breath. Four of us now, and only three horses. And one who looked incapable of riding.
I swung myself into the saddle. ‘Put him up behind me,’ I said. ‘I’m the lightest and this is a good horse. He can carry us both.’
Between them, Thomas and Pyotr managed to lift the man up behind me, so that he was sitting on the roll of my winter clothes.
‘Can you hold me around the waist?’
I twisted round so that I could look at him. His eyes were empty, as though everything about him was concentrated and held inwardly, shutting out all the world around.
I had seen that look before. On my mother’s face.
‘We’ll need to tie him, or he’ll fall,’ I said. ‘Have we anything?’
‘I have a spare belt,’ Pyotr began to claw through his pack, ‘as well as the one with my winter trousers. We can buckle them together.’
They both fumbled frantically with the belts. We needed to ride away from here as quickly as possible and their haste made them clumsy. At last they had the belts secured, passing round the man’s waist and then round mine. If the horse stumbled under our combined weight and we fell, one of us might be crushed.
The two men were mounted now. Pyotr walked his horse across the stream. It was fast flowing, but not too deep. As they scrambles up the opposite bank, I tried to follow, but my horse, alarmed by our panic and the increased weight on his back, baulked at the water. Thomas rode up beside me and grabbed my reins. Reassured by the other horse at his side, mine lost his fear and crossed to the other side.
‘As far as I can see,’ Thomas said, when we had gathered on the path he had found, ‘this leads back to that village. It’s a footpath, a shorter way than the main track. Watch for low branches.’
‘Wait,’ I said, before they could set off. ‘I think we should avoid the village. The women are just as likely to tell the men following us where we have gone as they were to tell us what they had seen. Why should they care?’
‘This side of the village,’ Pyotr said, ‘I saw there was a field with a belt of trees running along the boundary as a windbreak. We could cut through the field behind the trees and pick up the road north, beyond the village. I don’t think we will be seen, unless someone is particularly on the watch.’
Thomas and I nodded our agreement, and we set off along the path in single file. Everything in me shrieked to kick my horse into a canter, but the path was criss-crossed with roots, boggy in places. We were forced to go carefully to spare the horses. We must have been halfway to the village when I heard faintly, away to our left beyond the trees on the far side of the stream, the sound of horsemen riding toward Godunov’s house. Automatically Pyotr, who was leading, urged his horse to go faster, but was forced to rein him in again as he reached a patch of bright green bog grass.
At last we had come to the field. I was trying to calculate distances in my head. Would the horsemen had reached the house yet? Not quite, I thought. Pyotr turned his horse and headed up the field, breaking into a canter on the firmer ground. I followed, though the man behind me hung limp, sliding from one side to the other, nearly dragging me from the saddle. Thomas came alongside and reached over to push the man upright, but he slipped again at once.
I had a sudden hysterical desire to laugh. What if this was not Gregory Rocksley? He had not responded to the name. What if we were abducting someone else entirely?
No time to think now. Pyotr was pointing ahead to a way out of the field. As we broke out, down a bank and on to the road where we had been riding just a few hours before, I glanced back in the direction of the village. I could see the top of the roofs, for it lay in a dip beside the stream. There was no sign of pursuit yet.
Fortunately the road here must have lain over well-drained ground, for it was not churned up into mud. We gave the horses their heads and pounded up that road as fast as they could carry us. My poor beast laboured to keep up, but I was lighter than Pyotr and the man behind me was emaciated, his body pressed against my back felt bony and ill-fleshed. Together we cannot have weighed much more than the big Yorkshire man, but we were an ungainly burden, with my passenger constantly slipping sideways.
He continued to loll against my back, as an hour passed, and another. Helpless as a child’s cloth doll, but more verminous. I imagined I could feel his lice migrating to my own hair and clothes, so that I had an almost irresistible urge to scratch, but I could not spare a hand from the reins.
It must have been at least fifteen miles to the post station, the one where we had acquired these horses early that morning. By the time we had extricated ourselves and our luggage from the exhausted animals, the groom had fetched his master, who began to berate us for ill using them. His ire was directed at Pyotr, but I drew out our permits and passports and handed them over. I doubted the man could read, but he recognise Godunov’s seal and immediately began to bow and apologise. I could not follow all the words, but the tone was unmistakeable.
Thomas and I had managed to seat the rescued man on a bench outside the post station, then Thomas disappeared inside. He returned with a flagon of mead and cups, while Pyotr went off with the stable manager to select our fresh horses. I drank my mead quickly, but could not stop myself constantly glancing back down the road. Every minute’s delay set my nerves jumping. We needed to be on our way.
I turned to the man seated on the bench. He had drunk the mead and was sitting up straighter now. Clearly he was ill, underfed, and exhausted, and . . . things . . . had been done to him, but he was beginning to revive. Curbing my impatience I sat down beside him.
‘Are you Gregory Rocksley?’ I asked bluntly.
‘Aye.’ His voice croaked, as though it had not been used recently.
‘Thank God,’ I said.
He regarded me warily. ‘Who are you?’
‘We work for the Muscovy Company. We’ve been searching for you.’
His lips parted in a weak smile. I saw that they were cracked and bleeding.
‘Have some more mead,’ I said, refilling his cup. ‘Sickly stuff, but it will do you good.’
‘Got any food?’ He looked up at Thomas, who had returned from the post station again with a bag and a lidded basket.
‘We’ll eat later,’ he said. ‘Need to put a few more miles behind us.’
‘You must be careful,’ I said to Gregory. ‘If you have been starved. Small amounts, often. Don’t be a glutton.’
‘Master Kit here is a doctor,’ Thomas said. ‘Though you might not think it to look at him. Wanted to stop and physic one of those murdering bastards – would you believe it? – just because I knifed him.’
‘It’s what I’m trained to do,’ I said mildly. ‘Give him a little bread, Thomas, but that is all for now.’
Pyotr emerged from the stable, leading two horses. Behind him, the stable master led two more.
‘Will you be able to ride?’ I asked Gregory.
‘Have to, won’t I? I don’t think either of us could bear much more, two to a horse.’
I laughed. ‘I don’t suppose we could.’
As fast as we might, we secured our luggage and mounted, Thomas giving Gregory a leg up. I could tell by the way he adjusted his stirrups and gathered up his reins that he was an experienced horseman, but it was clear that he was terribly weak. What he needed was a bath, some simple food, and many days rest in bed. Instead, he must ride as fast as a government messenger at home in England, along these terrible Muscovite roads. He must endure, for there was no other option. I led the way, so that I would not have to watch how he suffered. Pyotr followed me, with Gregory behind him and Thomas bringing up the rear, to make sure we did not lose our man, now that we had found him.
I set as fast a pace as I dared. There was still no sign of pursuit, but we all knew it must be there. This was the only road we were likely to take. All they needed to do was to follow us.
At our second change of horses, we rested and ate a little of t
he food Thomas had bought. Gregory found a stream, where he managed to wash off some of the dirt. He borrowed a nit comb from Thomas, but the matting of his hair was too much for it. After he had broken two teeth of the comb he abandoned it.
‘I do not suppose one of you has scissors,’ he said.
‘I carry scissors,’ I said.
Of course I did. How did he suppose a physician could function without scissors?
He tried to hack off the lank clumps of hair that hung to his shoulders, but made a poor showing of it.
‘Give them to me.’ I held out my hand.
I trimmed all his hair close to the scalp, then treated the stubble with the potion against infestation I used on the dirtier Southwark children who were brought into St Thomas’s. For good measure I rubbed some into my own hair.
‘We’m had some queer looks at yon clothes,’ Thomas said frankly, eying Gregory’s rags.
‘Worn the same for a year, I suppose,’ he said dully. ‘What month is this?’
I had lost track again, having other things on my mind. It seemed the others had too.
‘Must be April,’ Pyotr said. ‘That gives us two, three months to reach St Nicholas and the fleet, easily.’
Thomas nodded agreement.
‘We must stop at Moscow,’ I said. ‘Thomas can return to his duties there, and I can report to Master Holme before the three of us head for the White Sea. But before that we need to find something for Gregory to wear.’
I untied the roll of my winter clothes and took out the baggy trousers.
‘You are only an inch or two taller than I am. These are over warm for this time of year, but they might serve.’
‘I have a spare shirt,’ Pyotr said.
Thomas provided a plain cloth doublet, but we could do nothing about footwear. Gregory used my scissors to cut off his hose below the knee. The lower parts and his boots were in better shape than the rest of his garments, for they had received little wear in the cellar. He carried everything off to the stream, to wash the rest of his body before he donned the relatively clean clothes, while we packed up the remaining food and readied the fresh horses.