The Silent Murder (Master of Defence Book 4) Read online

  ‘A thought quite worthy of you, apprentice mine.’

  ‘But who would want to murder Agnes Danforth?’

  ‘Someone she had seen doing something of terrible danger or deadly moment...’

  ‘Yes! She saw St Just and the Baron with you in the boat yesterday. In it and out of it, by all accounts – perhaps even more clearly than you might have done yourself, if my observations this afternoon were anything to go by; and she had famously sharp eyes, did Agnes Danforth.’

  ‘Well, there you are, Ben.’

  ‘But why take a dead woman, dress her in a robe and hang her in a church tower?’

  ‘To do what has been done, Ben: to stop us asking Who would want to kill Agnes Danforth? And to keep us like chickens following a line drawn on the ground, only ever asking Who wants to harm the Lady Margaret?

  ‘And to stop us asking Why? Why? is the most important question of all and yet we have hardly asked it in a week. For there is no need to ask Why? in the madness of such a creature as our sin-worm.’

  ‘So,’ said Ben slowly, ‘the sin-worm is a creation? A madness assumed to mask some deeper stratagem? Is that what you are saying? Our murderer comes amongst us like Ulysses returned, in disguise until he can perfect his terrible revenge?’

  ‘Perhaps,’ said Tom thoughtfully. ‘Or perhaps matters run even deeper than that. Consider a creature given to such predilections, but with cunning enough to use his own vices as a mask to cover something deeper or darker still. What would we make of that, Ben? What would we ever make of that?’

  ‘‘Tis a horror beyond imagining,’ said Ben: ‘a madman able to use his madness as a vizard over his evil cunning. Such a thing cannot exist outside the bounds of Hell itself – Can it, master?’

  ‘Perhaps,’ said Tom weightily, ‘the Good Lord might allow the circumstances to exist where such an abomination walked amongst us.’

  ‘And watched the Lady Margaret ever, planning to do her nameless ill?’

  ‘We are come full-circle, Ben, are we not? Now all we can do is prepare to face it in all its cunning and sinful evil when the mask comes off.’ He threw his naked bone aside and rose. ‘Come on, apprentice mine, let’s to the armoury.’

  The armoury was dark but there were candles enough to give them some brightness. Although the walls were cluttered with cabinets and cases, overhung with weapons both ancient and more modern, the midst of the room was clear. A well-polished piste had been made here, where the edged weapons on the walls at least might be tested out. Tom brought Ben here and here they fell to practising. Tom took off his Solingen rapier and they used the short falchions from the walls first, while Tom instructed Ben in the basics of attack and defence with the edge, as though one or the other of them needed to be ready to face St Just; just the swords at first, then basic sword- and dagger-work – then sword and buckler. After more than an hour of this wide-swinging, shoulder-wrenching exercise, Ben felt the need to enquire, somewhat breathlessly, ‘But what of my Toledo rapier, master? Why do we work with the edge like bumpkins when we have the lethal point at our command?’

  ‘Fetch it,’ ordered Tom. ‘I will remain and exercise here until you return.’

  With Ben gone, Tom took out his rapier and began to work up and down the piste, as though he needed to re-accustom his arm and eye to fighting along a line; and indeed, the change was considerable. The stance was much more sideways-on. The wrist replaced the shoulder as the power-house of the strokes. A twitch of finger and thumb made more momentous difference than a twist of forearm with a falchion. Impetus from ankle replaced heave of hip and back. Bodyweight and speed replaced armweight and power.

  If Ben understood any of the subtleties when he returned and fell into the new style, he said little. He was given scant opportunity, to be fair, for he was plunged immediately as far out of his depth in the matter as Tom had been in Whitsand Bay yesterday afternoon. Nothing he could do, even under Tom’s most careful tutelage, could keep the Toledo blade on line or even in his grasp; and he was fortunate indeed that the Spanish swordsmith who made both blade and basket had left the grip simple. Had he been possessed of a complex basket hilt like Tom’s, which seemed to fit around his whole hand like a glove, Ben began to suspect, as his sword spun across the room for the third time, that the glittering steel would have taken his fingers away with it.

  After a further hour, Tom stopped, much to Ben’s relief. For the last half-hour at least, by the young man’s computation, his master had been elsewhere in any case, his face closed and his body working while his spirit quested far away from this place – far from the armoury, but still well within the castle walls, reckoned Ben.

  ‘Back to our room,’ ordered Tom abruptly.

  Once there he crossed to his saddle-bags and opened one. ‘Ben,’ he said, ‘keep your rapier handy. It is yours and you should guard it; but do not use it. I will find a falchion better suited to your style and we will complete your mastery of the point when we return to London. In the meantime...’ Tom turned and Ben realized that he was holding one of the deadly little dags he had taken from Green, the footpad in Farnham. ‘In the meantime, keep this primed and ready. It will serve you better than any blade; and I will tell you who to use it on tomorrow.’ He looked out of the bedroom window and judged the time by the height of the moon. ‘Tomorrow at this very hour,’ he said. ‘For if I judge right, it is close to midnight. Within the hour, therefore, it will be Lady Margaret’s feast day. And all too soon after that, the castle will be lost in the madness of its own peculiar Feast of Fools.’

  Twenty-six: Traps and Tunnels

  Tom again stood guard through the final hours of darkness, as he had the first night, on the balcony beside the culverins outside Lady Margaret’s chamber. It was here that Ben found him next morning so deeply asleep that he was oblivious even to the feeding gulls; but he did not stay sleepy for long, for the apprentice came with news that was as welcome as it was unexpected.

  ‘There’s a Dutchman at the great gate asking for you,’ said Ben rather breathlessly in the first light of the momentous feast day. ‘He says he’s a friend.’

  Ugo was more than a friend: he was something of a saviour. He led a laden packhorse whose bulging saddle-bags would have tempted many a footpad on the Portsmouth and Plymouth roads – had Tom and Poley not disposed of most of them along the way; though, to be fair, had any footpad attempted to relieve him of anything he carried, the result would have been as final as anything Tom could have delivered. Even seated apparently at ease by the great gate, Ugo held a short-barrelled dunderbus across his horse’s withers, and he did not put this aside until he had given both his charges safely into the hands of a sleepy stable-lad.

  Up from the stables Tom, Ben and the taciturn Ugo carried clothing – for both of them, by a miracle; more weaponry – both bladed and barrelled, for Ugo was a famous gunsmith; personal items, such as soaps and perfumes and a letter from Kate Shelton; money – very welcome, for the tobacco-slashed doublet had used the last of Tom’s travelling funds; and, most carefully of all, a great square bundle wrapped in clean sacking and bound with hempen rope.

  Up in Tom and Ben’s room, as the two of them packed their necessaries away and Ugo swilled the dust of travel from his hands, face and throat, they fell to talking.

  ‘Plymouth’s all a-bustle,’ said Ugo. ‘Poley’s there, so I heard, though I didn’t see him. Has this anything to do with you, Tom?’

  ‘I’d wager it does, though Poley’s being secret and I haven’t fathomed all of it out for myself as yet. They say he has a smuggler’s wench in tow.’

  ‘So they say.’

  Tom shook his head. ‘I cannot see it, Ugo. Poley’s a spy not a Custom House man. He works for the Council and the Star Chamber, not the Revenue or the Exchequer.’

  ‘Perhaps they all lap over each other,’ suggested Ben.

  ‘Lord Burghley signs both the Exchequer warrants and the Council orders,’ admitted Tom thoughtfully. ‘But still and all, th
is does not feel like a matter of smuggling, though I dare say there’s smuggling being done, right at the very heart of things – right here, for instance, at Cotehel itself.’

  ‘What could that have to do with the Lady Margaret and young Hal?’ demanded Ben. ‘With all the killing and the rest? Especially as so much of it was done in Kent and in London?’

  ‘Oh I don’t think we should ever underestimate how important Kent and London are in this particular puzzle,’ said Tom. ‘Though as we said when we were in Plymouth ourselves, Ben, all the players seem to be down here with us now; and preparing for the final contest.’

  Ugo glanced across at the frowning Ben and a ghost of a smile crinkled his long, lined face. ‘Don’t worry if his riddles seem obscure, lad,’ he said in his flat Dutch tones. ‘They’ll be clear as day soon enough.’ But having said that, he glanced at the distracted Tom and fell to sorting out the little armoury of guns he had brought with him.

  And so the day proceeded. Lady Margaret, though distracted by a dozen calls in every moment, was gracious enough to receive Ugo herself – for, like Tom, he was known to her and appoint that he be given bed and board. Consequently a trestle was brought into the little room Ben and Tom were already sharing, which, though crowded, was convenient enough.

  Lunch was little better than dinner last night had been, and was taken on the run in the servants’ hall beside the kitchen, for the great hall was nearing perfection and must not be put at any risk at all.

  Soon after lunch the castle was declared ready. Everyone of consequence within the walls withdrew into their private quarters to ensure that they were equally ready, for in one way or another, this was the high-point of their year; and through the afternoon the guests began to arrive. They had all come a good distance, and none of them were travelling in their best attire. So as they arrived – with or without their own body servants – they disappeared into their assigned quarters according to the plans laid down by Martin Danforth and his late sister, and began to prepare in turn. The castle filled rapidly and soon it became obvious that even three to a room was something of a luxury tonight. A dozen pairs of guests brought the better part of fifty servants with them, from footmen to wardrobe girls, from postillions to ostlers. Local people travelled lighter, and those who knew the castle better were generally content to use Lady Margaret’s staff, who consequently bustled about breathlessly from one chamber to another, seemingly at everyone’s beck and call.

  Tom hesitated at the end of the bed, casting a thoughtful eye over the finery, the selection and packing which Kate had overseen at Ugo’s side. As none of it included new boots, Tom must perforce wear the stretched and wrinkled ones he had gone swimming in. Therefore the galligaskins from Black Friars were useless and the wide-bottomed breeches from Plymouth would have to do. He was able to discard the tobacco-slashed doublet in favour of one with a boat-bottomed belly, however, of black velvet slashed with crimson silk – together with the black boots and breeches; and a modest belt to carry one sword at his left hip, as etiquette demanded even at dinner on such an occasion, balanced by a long, lean dagger at his right. Then, with the rubies he habitually wore in ear-lobes pierced clean through during his first duel with a rapier, he was complete and, as he ever strove to be, right at the very pinnacle of fashion. The only thing he added, before he dived into the swirl outside, was a pair of Ugo’s best dags, primed and ready to cock one in each of the so conveniently loosened boot-tops.

  Ben, in his brown bricklayer’s breeches, cut a much less courtly figure – until Tom recommended the tobacco-slashed doublet he no longer needed himself; and, for a miracle, it fitted perfectly, even allowing room for one of the late footpad Green’s guns tucked secretly under its short skirt, into the belt, which bore the all but useless Toledo sword. Ugo favoured plain black broadcloth with a simple white linen collar and ended up looking even more priestlike than the Reverend Joses Wainscott, though the reverend vicar of St Michael’s Within Cotehel was probably not armed to the teeth beneath his jacket.

  The three of them had no duties to perform, of course. They had no guests to greet, and were not due to be introduced to any until the official start of the feast at six. They were content to vanish into the whirl of activity, therefore, hoping to remain unobserved amid the distracting frenzy, like cunning salmon running deep beneath a river in spate. Ben had thought that Tom would first lead them down to the cellar where Agnes Danforth lay, to explain to his friend his theories about her murder – but no. Instead he took them out of the castle keep altogether into the last place Ben would have thought of: the powder store. Here Tom led them into the dark recess of the cold room, behind the piled barrels, to where a trap-door was set in the floor. Without a word, Tom reached down and raised this. If Ben had expected anything of the rooms beneath, he would have supposed a cellar of Stygian gloom where the need for light would ever be at war with the danger of a spark – but again, no. The room beneath the powder store was long and low, and, for a wonder, well lit.

  ‘It runs to the first ledge of the way down to the bay,’ said Tom to Ugo as they climbed down. ‘There is a door at the end here which opens out on to the cliff-side and into this very room. It is strong and iron-bound, but it lets in light in surprising amounts. Even when securely locked,’ Tom concluded.

  ‘A safe and secret place,’ said Ugo, looking around.

  ‘Not that safe,’ inserted Ben, pointing at a line of unevenness in the floor. ‘It rests upon an overhang.’

  ‘You noticed that too? Well done, my apprentice bricklayer; but more than that,’ said Tom grimly: ‘it is the beginning of a series of stores and tunnels that interlink and lead all about as though the whole ground between the top of Rame Head and the bottom of the castle keep had been mined and engineered by moles and rabbits.’

  ‘Like the walls of Elfinstone, indeed, from what your message said,’ observed Ugo dryly. ‘Were there rabbits there?’

  ‘Rabbits need no lanterns,’ said Ben, catching up a dark-lantern that stood right at the bottom of the ladder to the powder store.

  ‘No,’ allowed Tom, ‘but we shall. So, well found, boy. Let us explore. And do not fear for your finery,’ he added, seeing Ben hesitate; ‘there has been many a tall and lusty lad through here of late. They’ll have swept away the dust and cobwebs for us, I’ll be bound.’

  They found the truth of this assertion in the third chamber they came to, for the place was piled with small bales and little barrels. Under the light of the dark-lantern, its shutters set at their widest while he worked, Tom inspected these.

  ‘Who knows?’ he ruminated, apparently thoughtlessly as he worked. ‘Perhaps Poley is working for the Exchequer after all.’ He pulled some of the contents loose, ‘It is tobacco,’ he told Ben, who had never seen the leaves withered, dried but complete before. ‘It does not seem to have been here long,’ he added, ‘and that makes the packaging of interest too; for see, Ben, it is as clean as your own tobacco doublet. These passages have been well used over a long time – certainly since the winter gales died down. I dare say Martin Danforth could confirm how calm the weather has been this month and more, were we to ask him – calm enough to allow a ship to run up overnight from the Scillies; or from Spanish Flanders, whence these wares come. But still,’ he added, rising, ‘I doubt all these smuggled goods are as important to our affairs as is this.’ He gestured to the lantern. ‘It has such a peculiar odour, does it not? Let us take it and proceed.’

  Ben did as he was ordered, but thoughtlessly, his mind wrestling with the relevance of what Tom had shown them – and what he had said to them. Because he was paying scant attention to what he was doing, Ben caught up the handle of the lantern and straightened – which was a mistake. For, even with the shutters wide, the heat of the lantern still came rushing up the metal chimney of the thing and all but consumed his fingers there and then. All the little hairs on the back of his hand caught fire and before he could put the thing down and nurse his hurts with a curse or two,
he had added his own particular savour to the tell-tale stench of the thing.

  Five minutes later, Tom led them through a narrow doorway into Agnes Danforth’s temporary resting-place. They did not linger here, but went upwards into the lower chambers of the keep’s more public areas. Here they had some distant sight of servants hurrying about their business, but Tom kept them clear of the bustle as he guided them past the working areas and into the maze of passages immediately beneath King Henry’s new additions of curtain-wall and gun-placements. The closest they came to being swept into the preparations was when they passed the kitchens where a whole ox was being turned slowly on a spit above the blazing fire, and giving off – to Ben’s sharp senses at least – a tastier version of the odour his hand and the dark-lantern seemed to be emitting.

  ‘Leave that here,’ ordered Tom as he led them up into King Henry’s workings. If Ugo was surprised by the ease and speed with which they could rise from one balcony to the next, passing the long-barrelled culverins as they glowered out across the calm of the Channel, then he said nothing. Soon the repetition of the design fell into a predictable pattern and Ugo was content to take the lead until Tom’s hand fell upon his shoulder and the three of them stopped. They were halfway up the outer wall now, and their view south was clear and uninterrupted in the calm of approaching evening. Away on the horizon, several sets of sails gleamed pale gold with tobacco shadows in the sunshine.

  Ben glanced at them as the other two turned inwards. ‘We’d need Agnes Danforth and her sharp eyes to make anything more of those,’ he said.

  ‘Indeed,’ said Tom dismissively. As he spoke, he opened a trap-door at the back, beside the inner door that led into whatever room of the original keep stood behind and below them. Ugo looked down the trap and Ben peeked over his shoulder, down into the throat of a long, dark corridor with a dead end at its head, except for the trap. Then Tom let the wood drop and it slammed shut noisily. ‘A long drop there,’ he said. ‘Or a short flight of steps here.’ He knelt by the door, picked the lock with his dagger, opened the way and led them down. As Tom waited, Ben glanced through the inner window as he followed and was surprised to see not Lady Margaret’s quarters but the armoury.