Edmund Hoode was in such distress that he clutched at a wall for support. The fact that he did not know the name of the play’s author was irrelevant. Richard Topcliffe would search for it with a cruelty and relentlessness that were their own justification.
‘Go back to the Marshalsea now,’ said Topcliffe.
‘Back?’ gasped Hoode in relief. ‘I am released?’
‘For the time being. Reflect on what I have said and you will soon remember the name that evades you. This visit has simply acquainted you with my methods, Master Hoode.’ He gave his faint smile. ‘You have seen my instruments.’
***
The three men continued to question Emilia Brinklow about the nature of her brother’s work but the help she could give them was limited. She was sometimes allowed to view the results of his toil but he never discussed the means by which he made them. Privacy had been the major preoccupation of Thomas Brinklow.
‘What about his wife?’ asked Nicholas Bracewell.
‘Cecily?’
‘Was she taken into his confidence?
‘Even less so than me,’ said Emilia, ‘and that upset her deeply. She was always curious about the time he spent in his workshop but he never let her past that iron door. Cecily was locked out just as much as the rest of us. She protested bitterly but in vain.’
Nicholas thanked her for her help and asked if he could show his friends around the ruined laboratory. Emilia gave them the freedom of the house. She herself felt the need to pay an important call elsewhere.
‘I will to the church,’ she said. ‘Simon lies there. I want to offer up a prayer for the salvation of his soul.’
‘That is only proper,’ said Nicholas.
‘I feel ready to look upon him now.’
‘Prepare yourself first. It is not a happy sight.’
‘Duty bids me endure it.’
She gave him the key from her pocket and took her leave. They could easily have entered the ruin from the garden by stepping over one of its walls but it seemed sensible to approach it as its designer must have done. Lawrence Firethorn and Owen Elias both commented on the thickness of the door. When it was thrust open, they stepped into the wilderness beyond and marvelled. Nicholas indicated some of the apparatus at the far end of the workshop.
‘Here is his forge where he fashioned that knife-blade,’ said Nicholas. ‘Close by are two more furnaces.’
‘Was not one enough?’ asked Elias.
‘Not for a craftsman,’ explained Firethorn. ‘I grew up in a world of sparks and steel. My father was a blacksmith and taught me that iron is not simply a dull metal. If it is handled aright, it can come alive. My father knew how to make it hiss in the coals and sing on his anvil.’
‘How many furnaces did he have?’
‘Two, Owen. One firing will drive out some impurities from the metal. A second may refine it more and render it easier to handle. All depends on how much heat you apply.’ Firethorn enjoyed a rare lapse into nostalgia. ‘I watched my father for hours on end in his forge. Most of his time was spent in shoeing horses and fitting iron rims on cartwheels but he was a skilled metalworker as well. His wrought-iron screen still stands in the village church.’
‘Thomas Brinklow was no blacksmith,’ reminded Nicholas. ‘He had three furnaces to conduct his experiments, each one different in size and shape to the others. What does that suggest to you, Lawrence?’
‘It goes well beyond my father’s art. I’d say he found a way to alter the properties of the metal by the separate firings. Something may have been added in its molten state.’ He knelt beside one furnace and picked up a handful of small cinders. ‘Here is one clue, sirs. I would expect to find a forge like this burning charcoal. These cinders are the last remains of coal, a fuel that causes untold problems.’
‘Unless he found a way to cure them,’ said Nicholas.
Firethorn felt the cinders. ‘Or a new type of coal.’
‘From Wales, perhaps,’ said Elias. ‘We have mines.’
‘Or from even further afield,” added Nicholas. ‘Ships carry timber and other fuels into London every day.’
They continued to speculate for some time before Nicholas drew his friends down the garden to the middle of the largest lawn. He lowered his voice.
‘Here we may certainly talk in complete safety.’
‘Are we then overheard?’ said Elias.
‘There is a spy in the house. I believe I know who it is. She will not be able to listen to us out here.’
‘She?’ repeated Firethorn.
‘If I am correct.’
Valentine suddenly came out of the bushes some twenty yards away with his wheelbarrow. He gave Nicholas the most obsequious grin and ambled off in the direction of the house. The book holder’s companions were taken aback.
‘Who, in God’s name, is that?’ said Elias.
‘Valentine the gardener.’
‘A hideous face like that does not belong in a lovely garden,’ opined Firethorn. ‘It should be set on the side of a cathedral with the other gargoyles.’
‘Do not be misled by appearances,’ said Nicholas. ‘He is our friend. To business. I cannot tell you how it cheers me to have you both here. Three of us may contrive things that no one person could ever attempt alone.’
Elias grinned. ‘Tell us what to do and it is done.’
‘Then first, we must split up. I am known to be here in Greenwich, you are not. That gives us an advantage. One of you must go to the palace to see what may be learned there.’
‘That will I,’ volunteered Firethorn.
‘They may not even admit you,’ said Nicholas, ‘but much may be gleaned if you hang about the quay. Ask what comes in and out by boat. Find out about the workings of the palace. Pick up even the tiniest scrap of news about Sir Godfrey Avenell. His face must be well-known to all. Ask why the Master of the Armoury spends so much time down here in Greenwich when his office is in the Tower.’
‘I’ll find out all that and more, Nick,’ said Firethorn.
‘What of me?’ said Elias.
‘Haunt the taverns here, Owen. You met with good fortune in the stews of Bankside. Try your luck in Greenwich.’
‘What must I seek?’
‘Any rumour, tale or idle gossip about Thomas Brinklow. Secretive about his work he may have been, but someone must have supplied him with materials. Who delivered the coal, for instance? Who built his equipment and machines? Who kept them in a state of repair? Someone must have got in here.’
‘Drink and listen,’ said Elias. ‘Fitting work for me.’
‘About it now.’
They arranged a time and place to meet up later. As they strolled back down the garden together, Firethorn remembered what Nicholas had said a little earlier.
‘You are known, but we are not?’ said the actor.
‘Yes, Lawrence. Word of my presence here will already have been sent to the palace. I am hoping that it will flush out some of the game.’
‘We have been in the house awhile now. Has not the same person reported as much to her spymaster?’
‘No,’ said Nicholas. ‘I set my own informer to watch her. Valentine may seem to be about his work out here but he is also keeping his eyes peeled. If a certain maidservant tries to leave the premises, I will be told.’
‘You are a stage manager to your fingertips!’
‘He is too comfortable here in Greenwich,’ said Elias with a wink. ‘How will we ever drag him back to London when he has a beautiful woman to care for him and an ugly gardener to act as his eyes and his ears?’
He and Firethorn went off laughing happily together but Nicholas did not share their mirth. The teasing remark had contained a grain of truth that almost embarrassed him. The book holder was becoming slowly drawn to Greenwi
ch and the kind of life that it might offer him. More particularly, he was drawn to Emilia Brinklow. She was much more than a grieving young woman who needed his help at a difficult time. She had qualities that he found quite entrancing and his admiration for her had soared since her authorship of The Roaring Boy had been revealed. What impressed him was not just the extraordinary skill she had shown for a novice playwright but the way in which her writing had so carefully disguised her gender.
The moment alone together in the middle of the night had a profound effect on him. It was some time since he had shared a bed with a woman and, although they did not sleep in each other’s arms as lovers, there had yet been a bond forged between them. Trust, affection and need had brought Emilia to his bedchamber. It was an open question whether or not they could mature into something more permanent.
As soon as he caught himself even considering such a possibility, he expelled it from his mind. Emilia Brinklow could never be his. She was a rich young woman with a large house and a recognised place in Greenwich society, while he was a humble book holder with a theatre company which did not even have a venue in which to perform. Emilia could offer him so much but he could never bring an equal portion of money or property to the match. On the other hand, there were deficiencies in her life that he could repair. Nicholas could provide the strength which her brother had obviously supplied and the love which hitherto had come from Simon Chaloner. Would he, however, simply be taking the place of others? To be at all worthwhile, he knew, a friendship had to be a merging of true minds.
With a conscious effort, he shook himself free of her for the second time. Emilia Brinklow did not intrude upon his concentration again because someone distracted him. It was Valentine, giving a pre-arranged signal to him that Agnes was about to leave the house for some reason. Nicholas could guess what her errand might be. With her mistress out of the house at church, she had the opportunity to slip out and send some sort of message to the palace. There was no chance of her going there and back on foot so he surmised that she must have an intercessory in the village.
Nicholas moved swiftly. Screened by a line of trees, he worked his way towards the house and was in time to see the maidservant letting herself out by the rear door. She looked furtively around before darting behind the bushes. Nicholas cut around the other side of the house so that he would be at the front when she got there. Agnes knew how to conceal her movements. Only the faintest disturbance in the bushes showed her progress. She emerged near the front gate and tried to scurry through it.
The solid frame of Nicholas Bracewell blocked her way. ‘Where do you go on Fridays?’ he asked.
She let out a gasp of fear, then burst into tears.
***
Sir John Tarker was an arrogant man who had been utterly humiliated. Somebody now had to pay for that humiliation. Sir Godfrey Avenell had administered it but the real cause of it was Nicholas Bracewell. The book holder’s name had cropped up time and again to irritate and confound him. After being soundly beaten at the Eagle and Serpent, he somehow had the resilience to bounce back. Tarker had gone to great lengths to effect the destruction of The Roaring Boy and the damage that had occasioned Westfield’s Men was an incidental bonus to him. An affray, an arrest and an injunction had virtually killed the theatre company.
Yet its members still kept up their pursuit of him. He was certain that two of them had run Maggs to earth in the Isle of Dogs but the organising force behind them was Nicholas Bracewell. And the latter was back in Greenwich.
‘I want him!’ he barked.
‘Leave him to me,’ said a heavy-set man with a guttural accent. ‘I’ll break his back for him.’
‘No, Karl. This man is my quarry.’
‘Will you run him through with a lance?’
‘It would be too kind a death for Nicholas Bracewell.’
‘How, then, will you kill him, Sir John?’
‘Slowly.’
The armourer grunted in approval. They were alone in one of the workshops at the palace and Tarker was venting his spleen. Nicholas Bracewell had helped to lose him his position, his pride, the finest suit of armour he had ever possessed and the invaluable friendship of the man who had bought it for him. Unless he could somehow cut himself a path back into the favour of Sir Godfrey Avenell, Tarker faced bankruptcy, forced retirement from tournaments and certain elimination from Court circles.
‘How soon will you do it?’ asked Karl.
‘Tonight.’
‘Is that not too dangerous?’
‘Why?’
‘We left Master Chaloner’s body there but yesterday. The crime has been reported and law officers are looking for us. Will they not be lurking near the house still?’
‘What matter if they were?’ said Tarker. ‘If some imbecile of a constable were guarding the house, he would point us the way to Nicholas Bracewell’s bedchamber without a qualm. You would have to murder a man in front of their noses before the Greenwich constables would take notice.’
‘Tonight, then.’
‘It may be the last time my prey is still here.’
‘The message said that he would stay until the whole matter was over,’ said the German with a smirk. ‘And my messages are usually correct.’
‘The whole matter will be over tonight,’ affirmed Tarker. ‘When this Bracewell is removed from the scene, the rest soon collapse. They are cut adrift without him.’ His eyes narrowed to pinpricks. ‘And she is cut adrift as well. No brother to protect her. No Master Chaloner. No Bracewell.’
Karl chuckled. ‘You will call there as often as I do.’
‘Tonight we will both pay a visit.’
‘What must I do?’
‘Ensure that he is indeed in the house.’
‘And?’
‘Find us the means to get to his bedchamber.’
‘Will a key to the front door be enough?’
‘Can you get such a thing, Karl?’
‘Of course,’ boasted the other. ‘I can get whatever I wish from her. She will deny me nothing.’
***
Nicholas Bracewell did not mince his words with Agnes. After taking her back into the kitchen, he sat her down and told her the consequences of what she had done. The maidservant blubbered all the way through and needed several minutes before she could even speak. She had been caught, trying to sneak away from the house with a message concealed up her sleeve. Nicholas had broken the seal, read the missive and seen its warning of the arrival in Greenwich of Lawrence Firethorn and Owen Elias. Agnes was an efficient spy.
‘What have you got to say for yourself?’ he demanded.
‘Nothing, sir.’
‘I, at least, will hear you out,’ he said. ‘If I hand you over to the law, they will lock you up for months until a trial can be arranged. They may even put you in a cell and forget that you are there, which would be no more than your wickedness deserves. Is that what you want?’
‘No, sir!’ she implored. ‘I could not bear it!’
‘Then tell me the truth.’
‘I was not involved in the murders, I swear it!’
‘Yet you supplied information to the murderers.’
‘They said they were only after his papers.’
She went off into another paroxysm of weeping. Nicholas could see that her remorse was genuine. The woman had enough guile to act as an informer but no capacity for defending herself now that she had at last been exposed.
Nicholas took her by the shoulders to calm her down.
‘Begin at the beginning,’ he said. ‘What is this about papers? Did they belong to Master Thomas Brinklow?’
‘Yes, sir. He always kept them locked up. His wife could not get near them and she was nosey enough. I was told to borrow some of them but I could never even get inside his laboratory. Clever thieve
s were needed for that task.’
‘Freshwell and Maggs?’
‘That’s what I thought they were. Thieves, not killers.’
‘They were paid to be both.’
‘Nobody told me,’ she protested it. ‘I was to leave the key for them to get into the house and steal the papers. That was all my part in the business. I went off to bed that night and slept soundly. The next thing I know, I am wakened by the master, yelling that he is being attacked by villains. I raised the alarm at once.’
‘Too late to save Master Brinklow.’
‘Would I have come running down the stairs if I had been a party to murder? I helped to put Freshwell and Maggs to flight. Because of me, they did not steal those papers. When they came back, the workshop was in flames.’
‘Who set it alight?’
‘Nobody knows.’
‘One of the other servants?’
‘They would have no cause.’
‘What did you feel when you saw your master dead?’
‘As if I had hacked him down myself,’ she said as she relived the horror of it. ‘Master Brinklow was kind to me. His sister has a sharper tongue at times but he was always very courteous with us. I was overcome when I saw what they had done to him. My conscience would not let me sleep for many weeks afterwards.’
‘Yet you went on helping those who killed him.’
‘No, sir!’
‘You let two innocent people go to their deaths.’
‘I could not stop them,’ she argued. ‘Who would have listened to me? When they caught the two of them together like that, their guilt seemed crystal clear. My testimony could not save them. What weight can you place on the word of a common maidservant?’ A coldness came into her tone. ‘That is what Mistress Brinklow always called me.’
‘Emilia Brinklow?’
‘Cecily, her sister-in-law. She had no time for me.’
‘So you got your revenge by letting them drag her off to the gallows with Walter Dunne. Is that how it was?’
‘No, sir, it was not. I was sorry to see them hanged but they had done wrong in the eyes of God.’
The Roaring Boy Page 23