He went to the barred window and examined the bars. The nitric acid he’d been given would burn through the two middle bars. He kept it on his person at all times. The governor conducted regular searches of his prisoner’s chamber but had not yet had the effrontery to search the royal person. The rope that would take him over the wall was cleverly concealed within the bedropes that formed the frame of his bed.
He had become aware of increased security in the last several weeks, and this evening, when Hammond had escorted him to his chamber and bidden him good night, the king had sensed a new watchfulness. Did they know something? Or just suspect?
This would be his last chance, the king knew. One more failed attempt and they would move him from the relative comfort of his island prison to somewhere as secure as the Tower. The Scots were ready to cross the Border in his support. If only he could reach France, then the movement to return him to his throne would produce a groundswell that would topple Cromwell and his Parliament like sheaves
What was Edward Caxton? This man on whom the future of a country’s sovereignty rested. A mercenary. An actor. Not a pleasant man, at least not in the king’s estimation. He found Caxton’s twisted smile disconcerting, and the cool gray eyes seemed to see so much more than his mere surroundings. And the indolent, foppish manner concealed a power, a cynicism that chilled the king. He couldn’t understand how other people didn’t notice it, but then, they didn’t know Caxton was to be the king’s savior. They weren’t looking for something beyond the surface the fawning courtier chose to present.
But was this cynical, cold side to the man the real Caxton? Sometimes the king had glimpsed something else. A flash of genuine humor, a merriness in the deep-set eyes, a lightness to his step. He was a warm and attractive man then.
Not that it mattered what kind of man he was. It mattered only that he should succeed. The king sat down beneath his barred window and listened to the wind of freedom, the shriek of the gulls circling the battlements. The clock in the chapel tower struck one.
In just twenty-two hours he would make his bid for freedom.
Goodman Yarrow and his wife stood in the base court of Yarmouth Castle. It was full dark and they’d been left there unattended for hours it seemed, ignored by the soldiers who hurried up and down the stone steps leading to the earthen gun platform above. They could hear the sea crashing against the walls, and Prue shivered in the dampness of this cold, gray, square fortification.
A soldier appeared from the gateway. He shouldered his pike as he marched across the courtyard, and his step slowed as he passed them. He spoke out of the corner of his mouth. “Keep a good ‘eart.” Then he continued his march to the gun platform.
“What’s ‘e say?” the goodman demanded, cupping his ear.
“Told us to keep a good ‘eart,” Prue whispered. “Reckon he’s one of us. Fer the king, like.”
The goodman clapped his arms around his chest. “Much good that does us.”
“ ‘Tis a comfort,” Prue said grimly. “You jest keep a still tongue in yer ’ead, man. Don’t say nothin‘ at all. You may not think summat’s important, but it could be. I fer one’ll be silent as the grave.”
There was a bustle at the gatehouse and Giles Crampton strode into the base court. “Sea’s pickin‘ up. Reckon it’s goin’ to storm,” he observed as he came over to them. “ ‘Ope it wasn’t too rough for ye.”
Goodman Yarrow spat his disgust at such an implication; Prue merely regarded Giles with disdain.
“Island folk, o‘ course,” Giles said easily. “Well, why don’t ye come inside in the warm.” He gestured to the door to the master gunner’s house. “There’s a fire in the range.” He swept them ahead of him into the house.
Prue looked around in disbelief. She’d expected a dungeon, not an ordinary domestic kitchen.
“Mary, ‘ow about a cup of elderflower tea fer the goodwife,” Giles called cheerfully to a plump woman tending a bread oven.
“Right y’are, Sergeant.” In a minute she bustled over with a tin cup and set it on the table.
Prue drank gratefully, but the kindness did nothing to lull her suspicions, which came to full fruition when Giles said, “Ye’d prefer a pot of ale, goodman, I’ll be bound,” and led her eager husband into the pantry at the rear of the kitchen.
Her man would babble everything under the influence of ale, she thought despairingly. The sergeant had read his prisoners correctly, and he knew where to put the pressure and what incentive to use.
“That was a right good drop o‘ tea, mistress. I thankee kindly,” she said. “Ye want some ’elp wi‘ the bakin’?”
“Oh, aye, if’n ye’ve a mind,” Mary said. “I’d count it a kindness. Can’t ‘ardly keep pace wi’ the men’s bellies these days.”
In the scullery Giles chatted gently to Goodman Yarrow about the man Giles knew as Edward Caxton. Emboldened by the ale, relieved by the absence of threat, the goodman roamed far and wide over his limited knowledge of the man the islanders called the master. But he was slyly aware as he talked of how unimportant was the information he was providing.
“Master of what?” Giles refilled his tankard.
“A frigate,” the goodman said proudly. “Pretty a ship as ye’ve seen.”
“And where’s her anchorage?”
The goodman shook his head mournfully. “That I don’t know, sir. I’m tellin‘ ye the truth. There’s few folk on the island what knows that.”
“Tell me who might know.” Giles regarded him steadily over the rim of his own tankard.
The goodman looked uncomfortable. “ ‘Tis ’ard to say, like. Those what ‘elps the master only knows a few of t’others. An’ Prue an‘ me, like, we don’t know nothin’ very much. The master, ‘e jest comes and goes.”
He could see that the sergeant was not very impressed, and hit upon a name. “There’s George at the Anchor in Niton. ‘E might know summat.”
Godfrey Channing had already put them on to George. Giles had sent men to have a word with the landlord some time ago.
“So what does this
The goodman buried his nose in his tankard. This he did know. And it was information that could condemn the master.
“Come on, man, out wi‘ it!” Giles leaned forward across the table and now there was menace in his eyes. “Go easy on yerself,” he said softly.
Goodman Yarrow glanced around the pantry. It was an unthreatening place, but he could hear the slosh of the moat washing against the south wall under the rising wind. This was a fortress. A moat on two sides, the sea on the remaining two. He could die in its dungeons and no one know.
Goodman Yarrow was not a brave man.
“Smugglin‘, an’ a bit o‘ piracy, I ’eard tell,” he muttered.
“Piracy, eh?” Giles nodded. “An‘ what is it that he smuggles? Goods… or summat a little more interesting, maybe?” His eyes narrowed as he watched his prey wriggle like a worm on the end of a hook.
“I dunno. I dunno.” There was desperation in the goodman’s voice. He knew nothing, but there were rumors.
“For the king, is he?”
The goodman lowered his head. But it was enough for Giles. He had his confirmation. Caxton was a smuggler and a pirate. A mercenary with Royalist sympathies. A man who could blend into the king’s court, but who also knew how to slip in and out of secret anchorages, to plot a course to France, to evade and outdistance pursuit. They had their man.
“This frigate, she ‘ave a name?”
Goodman Yarrow shrugged helplessly.
Giles nodded, observing, “Pretty name.” So far he was doing well with Goodman Yarrow, but maybe there was still more he could get out of him, some little nugget of information, something that the goodman didn’t even know was important.
“Y’are an island man. Where would you find deep channel anchorage fer a frigate?” He refilled their tankards once again.
The goodman seized his eagerly and took a deep draft before saying, “In a chine, o‘ course.”
“Which side o‘ the island?”
Goodman Yarrow shrugged again. “Them’s all down the coast from Yarmouth to Shanklin. Some deep, some not.”
“Give me a name, man. Somewhere to start lookin‘.”
“Why you so interested in the master, anyways? There’s smugglers aplenty along these coasts.” The goodman, emboldened by ale, felt the first stirrings of rebellion.
Giles pushed back his stool with a scrape on the flagstones. “ ‘Tis up to you,” he said carelessly, rising to his feet. Then he bellowed with shocking suddenness,
The hurried tramp of booted feet resounded from the courtyard beyond the scullery door.
“Puckaster Cove,” Yarrow blurted as the door burst open. “Somewheres around there, I’ve ‘eard tell.”
Giles sent the men away with a flick of his fingers. “Well, thankee, goodman.” He strolled to the courtyard door that still stood open. “We’ll ‘ave to keep ye and the goodwife fer a spell, but ye’ll not be too uncomfortable, I trust.”
Soldiers came in soon after the sergeant’s departure and escorted the Yarrows to a small barred chamber beneath the gun platform.
“Well?” Prue demanded. “What did ye tell ‘em?”
“ ‘Twas man’s talk, so keep a still tongue in yer ’ead, woman!” the goodman snarled.
“If’n ye betrayed the master, there’s those on the island who’ll not forget it.”
“What was I supposed t‘ do? After gettin’ the thumbscrews, ‘e was,” he muttered, flinging himself on the pallet.
“There’s those on the island what wouldn’t ‘ave told whatever ’appened,” Prue said softly.
Giles rode back to Carisbrooke, but when he arrived it was late, the king had retired, and Lord Granville had returned to Chale with his wife and daughter. The men Giles had sent to question the landlord of the Anchor had little to report. George knew of no Edward Caxton. He referred familiarly to a man he called “our friend,” and was coaxed into admitting that the same character was also known as the master. He could always be relied upon to supply contraband, and when he made contact he was always in fisherman’s guise. Other than that, no one asked questions and no one volunteered information.
Giles rode to Chale and was informed that Lord Granville too had retired. If the sergeant had truly urgent information, they were to wake his lordship, otherwise the sergeant should report to him at dawn.
Giles debated whether his information warranted dragging his lord from his wife’s bed. He could hear the wind getting up, great swirling eddies as it whipped off the sea and across the cliffs. No sane man would attempt to rescue the king on such a night.
He took himself to his own bed and lay visualizing the island’s coastline. Puckaster Cove lay just below Niton. Niton was where George and the Anchor had their being. There had to be a
