him and, with his left hand, patted his ample belly and scratched his stones, like any man stepping from his chamber at dead of night. He mouthed the word “piss” to Diego and strode toward him, his sword and dagger held close to the back of his thigh in his right hand, just out of sight.
Diego was squatting on his haunches with his back to the cabin door. He rose to his feet with a wide smile as Harper Stanley approached. “Captain Stanley,” he said in a low voice.
Stanley was just three steps away from his prey. His hand tightened around the hilts of sword and dagger. “How goes the night, Diego? I needed a piss and had no pot.”
Diego laughed. As he did so, Stanley pulled back his right elbow. The blades glinted in the candlelight. Diego’s eyes seemed to widen and his hands went out in front of him, trying to defend himself Stanley lunged forward, thrusting the razor-honed blades toward Diego’s chest and heart. Diego slid aside easily, laughing out loud as he did so. The sword stabbed into the hard oak of the cabin door, the dagger clattered to the ground, and Diego’s arm went out, clutching Stanley by the nape and pulling his head forward, taking the wind from him as he pushed him hard into the hilt of his own sword.
Boltfoot was behind Stanley, tripping him, pushing him into a heap, curling his arm around from behind and slipping his own poniard up into Stanley’s fleshy abdomen, just as he had once killed the sea monster on the banks of the Thames. Only this was easier. He had felt a kinship with the sea beast; he had none with this traitor. His death would bring no regrets.
Harper Stanley grunted and exhaled a long gasp. Boltfoot held the blade in place, deep inside Stanley’s body, its tip piercing his heart, just as Stanley had intended to do to all of them.
“Well, sir, Captain Stanley,” Boltfoot whispered into his ear. “It seems you were wrong. The ocean wave was not so safe and the Vice Admiral was in need of protection.”
Stanley’s eyes were already dead. A trickle of blood seeped from the small wound in the abdomen where the blade still held him impaled. There was no rush of gore for Boltfoot to contend with. It was a clean kill.
“What now, Boltfoot? Do we wake Sir Francis?”
“I do not think the Vice Admiral would wish his lady to be disturbed, Diego. Let us send Captain Stanley to a mariner’s watery grave. The world shall think he killed himself. It is a common enough occurrence. Stepped overboard in a panic, frighted by the Spaniard, no doubt. If anyone is at all interested, that is. Which I think unlikely.”
Boltfoot slid the blade from the dead body and wiped the blood on his kerchief. “Come, Diego, look lively. You take his legs. I’ll take his arms.”
The dead man was heavy but they were strong and hauled him without difficulty to the poopdeck. Diego dropped his end of the body with a dull thud onto the timber and walked out on deck. The watch was some way distant. He signaled to Boltfoot, then returned to pick up Stanley’s legs. Quickly they hoisted him onto the deck, then up and over the stern bulwark. With a final push, they sent him into the waves like a stone. They scarcely heard a splash.
“Fish food, Boltfoot.”
“I fear he may stick in their craw, Diego. I could not eat traitor pie with relish.”
The fog was dense, slowing John Shakespeare’s progress to a crawl, yet he plugged on, feeling his way along what he took to be the highway. Only when the fog swirled away briefly could he break into a trot. Occasionally he passed a cart or another horseman going eastward toward London, and it encouraged him to discover he was still on the right road. Yet no one could give him any news of a lone rider answering the description of Herrick. The trail had gone cold.
From the milestones he encountered, he estimated he was halfway to Plymouth by midday. His back caused him pain and his thighs were rubbed to great soreness from the saddle, but he would take no break. He felt he had to make up for lost time, that somehow his quarry was slipping through his fingers, like a wraith or will-o’-the- wisp.
On he rode. At nightfall he was determined to continue, but couldn’t. It was simply impossible to make out the road. Better to rest up, replenish his body, then move on. He had passed a large post tavern a mile back and found his way back to it. The building was well lit and welcoming to a weary traveler. The money the landlady of the White Dog had lent him was just enough for one night.
After a good supper of roast fowl and vegetables, he locked himself in his small second-floor room, prayed, then closed his eyes and slept until dawn.
When he opened his eyes, he knew immediately that the fog had lifted. It was a clear day with a few white clouds. By nightfall, he reckoned, he could be at Plymouth. God willing, he would be in time.
Thomas Woode had resigned himself to death. In the quiet moments between sessions of torture, he made his peace with God and prayed for his children.
Topcliffe had learned nothing from him. He had always believed he had not the stuff of martyrs in his veins, yet he had not been broken by the rack or manacles. What could he tell them, anyway? That a Jesuit priest called Cotton and another called Herrick had stayed at his home in Dowgate? He could tell them no more, for he no longer knew where they were. The tortures now were pointless and driven by malice alone. When Topcliffe or his foul apprentice, Jones, taunted him or threatened him with death, he greeted the prospect with equanimity bordering on joy. Anything to end this torment would be welcome.
He had always imagined the rack to be the worst torment devised by man, but in truth he found it easier to abide than the manacles. It seemed to him that the pain he suffered hanging against the wall must have been almost of the magnitude endured by Christ, and then chided himself for such unworthy thoughts; who was he to place his own suffering alongside that of the Son of God?
He would die here and that did not concern him. It was Grace and Andrew that made him fearful. How would they survive without him? His will contained instructions for them to be put in the guardianship of Catherine Marvell, but what if his estate were to be attainted-made forfeit to the state and let fall into the hands of such as Topcliffe? For this alone, he had to remain silent. He must not sign any confession, whatever the pain.
The stench of the cell no longer caused him any concern. He lay in the filthy straw unable to move. He could not lift his arms to feed himself, so he hardly ate or drank. Nor could he move his legs, which meant he had to defecate where he lay.
Margaret came to him as if in a dream one day. He knew not whether it was light or dark outside, for nothing of the world came into this cramped cell in Topcliffe’s house of death. His wife was there with him, burning bright in a haze of gossamer, as light as mayfly wings. She dipped a cloth into cool water and mopped his brow. She kissed his lips and, though no sound came from her, she seemed to say that everything would be all right. Only endure, and all will be well. Sleep, Thomas, sleep and all will be well. We will be together soon.
Topcliffe was pacing. He had just come from the Queen’s privy chamber and she had asked him, casually, about the Jesuits. “I had thought to have seen them in the Tower before now, Mr. Topcliffe, especially Lord Burghley’s cousin Southwell! You did tell me a month since, and I recall it well, that he was as good as taken.”
The key, he knew, was the woman Catherine Marvell and the children of Woode. If Woode saw them threatened with torment or death, he would talk like a goodwife outside church of a Sunday. Woode was Southwell’s familiar; he would lead the way to the Popish nest of hornets.
“Tell me again, Dick, do you really believe she was not there, that she has gone to York?”
Richard Young sat at a window seat in Topcliffe’s hall. The room was full of the fug from Topcliffe’s pipe of sotweed. “I don’t know, Richard. I believed it then. Now I am not sure. The maidservant may well have been lying.”
“Should we bring her in?”
“On what charge? There is no evidence that she is even a Papist. She is well known at the parish church as a faithful servant of our Church.”
Topcliffe drew deeply on his pipe and strode back and forth, back and forth. The Queen had spoken half in jest, but the other half was what counted, the half that said: I am deeply disappointed in your failure in this matter, Mr. Topcliffe; my patience is running dry.
“Is the house watched?”
Young nodded. “I left my sergeant there and sent another as relief. It is a small house. It is easily watched and would not be difficult to search. If the Marvell woman should venture out, she will be apprehended on the instant.”
“Good.” Topcliffe had to find the Jesuit, therefore he had to make Thomas Woode talk. Catherine Marvell,
