In what appeared to be an almost involuntary action Quick pressed down on the bellows and momentarily excited the coals in the forge. “Silver might help a man remain at liberty,” he said, watching the flames die away before pressing down again. “It will fix safe passage at sea or secure victuals enough for the voyage, but it will not buy back liberty once lost, at least not when the shackles have been fastened around the limbs of a failed assassin of the king.” He pressed the bellows once more before stepping towards the anvil. “But I am afraid there is another reason why your friend’s captors will not be receiving their thirty pieces of silver.” With that he removed the bag from Owen’s caress. “The coins are coming with me.”
Owen took a step back as though offended. “But my instructions were to ensure that the money be put to the service of our cause.”
“That cause is lost.”
Owen looked confused. “We do not know that. Others may have made good their escape. We should decide together to what use the money could be put.”
“Believe me, Mr Owen, the cause is lost. I saw some killed and others taken at Holbeach House, and today the same is going to happen here. As you said, this money was to finance a rebellion. With the survival of the king there will be no rebellion, and so the money will go along with me.”
“Without authority such an act would be thievery. Is that what you are, Mr Quick, a common thief? You arrived in our company late and seemed to be a stranger to all. Did you join us merely so that you might profit from the failure of the exercise? There is money enough there to make you a very rich man, Mr Quick.”
“If I was a thief, I would have killed you before now.”
“I do not believe you would have, sir, not while you needed me to get you out of the house.”
Quick recalled the lengths to which he had gone to keep the searchers away from Owen. “Let us not debate who got who out of the house. I have been tasked with the recovery of those coins. They are to be returned to the donor unspent, that is all.”
“So you are an agent of the Spanish?”
“Yes, but not those of whom you are thinking.”
“I do not understand. The Spanish provided the funds for the rising. Those are silver reales in that bag. How can you talk of — ”
There was a noise from the yard. Quick guessed it to be the scrape of a spur against a cobblestone. He put his forefinger to his lips and gestured for Owen to conceal himself beside the brick chimney. Dashing to the window he looked out to see two soldiers, muskets canted over their shoulders, wandering in a casual fashion across the yard. They were checking the buildings for fugitives; one would wait by the door while the other entered briefly, before returning with a shake of the head. A glance at Quick’s face as he moved away from the window was all Owen needed to know that their prospects had taken a down-turn. Any uncertainty about how bad things were was immediately dispelled when he was ordered to reopen the trapdoor.
“We are to return to the house?”
“We can hide in the tunnel while they search this place.”
“But we won’t be able to properly conceal the lid from below,” said Owen, as ever the perfectionist.
“It is a risk we must take, now get the cursed thing open.”
With his feet on the ladder Owen began his short descent, but his head had barely disappeared from view when, like a Jack-in-a-box, it popped back up into the room. “There are men in the tunnel!” he gasped, as he cleared the hole.
“Noyce,” spat Quick. “He has found the entrance. The man lives up to his reputation, damn him.”
There could be no doubting it. Quick, who was now lying on the floor and peering into the tunnel, could see a lantern moving towards them, perhaps half way along the tunnel. His head was barely clear of the void when a shot rang out. With the trapdoor slammed shut he dashed to the anvil. Owen saw his intent and, without bidding, joined him to lift the heavy lump of iron. With the anvil lowered on to the closed trap door both men, anticipating the arrival of men below them, stood back. The move was a wise one, for, moments later, a ball exploded through the timber and embedded itself in the roof.
“One door closes,” said Quick, as he returned to the window.
“And another door opens; isn’t that how the proverb goes? I see only one other door. Are you really intending to go out there?”
“We have no choice. There are still very few men nearby. But we have to move quickly; news will be on its way out from the tunnel.” Quick checked his weapons — the pair of horse pistols he had been careful to carry from the house. As he prepared them for firing, the door bowed inwards, the impact pushing out clouds of dust from between the boards. But it didn’t give.
“Break it down,” barked a voice from the outside.
There was a flash and a crack from Quick’s pistol and a cry of pain from the man in front of the door, followed by the receding clatter of boots on cobbles. The return of fire was not long in coming. Musket-balls thudded into the outside wall, some of them punching narrow shafts of light into the building before bouncing off the back wall.
It was clear from the volume of incoming fire that more men had arrived in the yard. Quick let go another shot and made to reload his pistols, only to discover that there were just two more lead balls in his pouch. If their chances of escape were poor before, they were almost non-existent now. He returned his attention to the contents of the smithy.
“There is a crucible over there, which means there must be a shot-mould also.”
Owen began to search a bench and its attendant shelves, rooting through tools and all manner of smithing paraphernalia. “Here it is, and also some lead,” he said, handing over a fist-sized ingot.
With one hand working the bellows — forcefully this time — Quick continued to observe the movements of the men in the yard. There were many more of them now, some of them probably from the tunnel, from which there was little sign of activity. His next instruction came as a shock to Owen, even in their extraordinary circumstances. “Empty the coins into the crucible and put it on the coals.”
“But you mean the lead sir, surely?”
Quick threw him a determined glance. “No, the coins, put the coins in the crucible. Do it now!”
“You have seen the devil out there, is that it. You need a silver bullet to kill him?”
“Something like that, now do it.” Whether the unflappable Owen had spoken in jest or not, the reality wasn’t that far from the truth, for Quick had just seen Noyce arrive with his men.
Owen reluctantly righted the upturned crucible and commenced to empty the coins into it, there was just a trickle at first, as though someone had cut a hole in a purse.
“All of them,” yelled Quick.
The choke on the bag was released and a shower of silver fell into the bowl. Using a pair of tongs, Owen manoeuvred the heavily laden vessel into the coals, which were now glowing like the interior of a volcano thanks to Quick’s continued effort with the bellows.
A second shot was delivered from the window, leaving Quick no option but to abandon the bellows while he reloaded with his last remaining shot.
“You said you were an agent of the Spanish,” said Owen, picking up on their interrupted conversation.
“I am an agent in the service of his Catholic Majesty King Phillip of Spain,” he said, dropping in a ball and ramming it down on to the powder. “His Majesty has no connection to those financing your rebellion.”
“But surely they were members of the Royal court? I heard Sir Robert say as much.”
Quick shook his head. “The men with whom your friends had dealings are a rebel group acting outside of the court.” He took another shot with the pistol and grimaced as a ball passed through thin timber close to his head. “They are nobles who lost riches and influence when England and Spain signed a peace treaty not two years past. Their intention was to implicate the Spanish court in the plot and, in so doing, bring about another war.”
Owen was stirring the half-melted coins with a knife, pushing the mass around the crucible as though it were thick gruel in a cooking pot. “And what then is your role in all of this?”
An hour ago Quick had no intention of explaining his mission, but the prospect of shared death draws men closer together than even the smallest of priest holes. “I have orders to remove all physical evidence of the plotters’ dealings with the Spanish. At Holbeach House I destroyed the documents, and here,” he waved a pistol towards the crucible, “you have just destroyed the last of that evidence.”
Owen stared into the crucible, where the silver was now fully liquefied. “Of course, the coins. They are Spanish!”
