Prophecy - Страница 71

‘Enough now, William.’ Douglas brings his hand down flat on the table. ‘We need to finish this business.’

‘There’s a bar full of people the other side of that door,’ I say, raising my voice; it wavers a little mid-sentence. Douglas tilts his head and grins.

‘Do you not know where you are, Bruno? The Liberty of the Clink, this ward is called. Half a mile to the south-west, we’d be under the jurisdiction of the High Sheriff of Surrey. Half a mile north, across the river, they abide by the laws of the City of London. But this little patch of ground is governed by the Bishop of Winchester, and he doesn’t care. We’re all outside the law here, son. We could leave your body in the street outside a bawd-house and people will just step over you as you rot.’

Fowler adjusts his grip on the sword; I have barely the space of a heartbeat to make my decision. Before he can respond, I grab the oil lamp from the table and hurl it at him; he tries to jump back but the flame catches his sleeve and he lowers the sword as he bats at it with his free hand. Just as Douglas lunges at me from the other direction, I lift one end of the bench beside the table and push it at him; furious, he throws it aside but he is obstructed for the instant it takes me to pull myself to the window sill and hurl myself out. I land with a clatter among milk churns in a muddy storage yard; on the far side a gate leads out to a side street. Douglas jumps from the window just as I slam the gate behind me and take off blindly through the misty streets with no notion of where I am heading.

All I can do is run now, into the opaque night. I hear him — or both of them — close behind; several times I think I hear their breathing, or perhaps it is only my own, disappearing into the white mist as my heart hammers in my ears. The streets are no more than lanes here, ungravelled, churned by hooves and cartwheels; as I run, the cold air makes my eyes stream, but from the sounds and the drift of the mist I think I am running towards the river. Around a corner I collide with two men who bellow their indignation but are too drunk to do anything more; I disentangle myself and pray that they trip up my pursuers. At the end of this narrow street the houses give way to open ground; the mist is thinner and I can make out the shape of trees to my left. But there are pounding footsteps from behind and I plunge on, away from the buildings; a few yards ahead the ground appears to give way and I almost fall into an inlet, one of the channels cut inland from the river bank. A fierce stink of refuse and sewage comes off it; I skid to a halt and run along its bank instead, looking at the ground, until I find a narrow wooden bridge built across.

I keep on running, my chest aching fit to burst, determined not to glance behind me as a large building looms out of the mist on my right, like a high circular tower with walls of flint. A thick, sharp scent of animal excrement and blood rises from the ground, where straw is trodden into the mud underfoot. Of course; I must be at Paris Garden, the Southwark bear ring. This might afford me a place to hide. Keeping close to the wall, I scuttle around until I find a low double gate where the animals are brought in from their enclosures. This is easy enough to climb over, and I emerge into a broad ring, hung with skeins of mist. In its centre, a sturdy stake fixed into the ground, with chains wreathed limply over it, and in a circle all around, three tiers of wooden seating with a canopy overhead. Exhausted, I haul myself over the brick wall dividing the arena from the stalls and throw my aching body to the floor beneath the first row of benches. Face down, I listen to my ribs heaving against the floor, my ears pricked for the slightest sound.

It seems only a moment before I hear the timbers creak somewhere on the opposite side of the ring. Then the low murmur of voices, seemingly from the entrance behind me, though the mist distorts my perception.

‘That side.’ Douglas’s voice, low and urgent. ‘I’ll take the other.’ I hear footsteps on the wooden steps behind me; I decide that keeping still will help me more at this stage than trying to crawl away on my belly. The tap of steel on wood; the boards creak as he approaches, feeling with the point of his sword under the benches to either side. This must be Fowler, then. In a fair fight, man to man, I think I could overpower him, but he has a sword and I have only my short-handled dagger. Only the sons of gentlemen were taught to duel with swords where I grew up, nor was it part of my training as a Dominican novice; learning to fight with my fists and a knife became part of a necessary education when I lived as a fugitive in Italy, but it would be no match for a good swordsman with a sharp blade.

A bead of orange light bobs through the milky air; as the probing sword taps its way along the boards, I pre-empt my discovery by rolling out and kicking swiftly upwards, aiming for the lantern. I catch his arm; he curses, but keeps hold of it. I scramble to my feet and dart away over the wooden benches, climbing up to the next tier.

‘Over here!’ Fowler calls, and I see a second point of light pause in the stands opposite, then start a descent. But the scuffling I heard earlier came from above, on this side. There is no time to think about this now; Fowler moves nimbly over the benches and more than once I feel the whip of air as his sword shreds the mist only inches behind me. I climb downwards again until I reach the wall, meaning to roll myself over it into the arena. I have trapped myself here, I realise, cursing my own stupidity; I will be forced to fight the two of them like the bears that usually take to the ring here, backed up against the stake with a mob of baying dogs snapping at them from either side. I place one foot up on the barrier to jump over, but a hand catches my cloak and yanks me back; I lose my footing and fall over the side into the arena, landing hard on my side. The ground is sand and though I am winded I roll over as he jumps the barrier and lands a mere two feet from my head; he raises the sword, I cross my arms in front of my face and, in that moment, as I wait for the blade to fall, I find my mind grown suddenly lucid; in that moment I know for certain that the myths of the priests and the preachers are so many stories for children; that death, when it strikes, will not come as judgement but as liberation; in this moment I see myself standing as if on a threshold between worlds, on the brink of the known universe, ready to ascend through the orbits of the planets in their spheres, out to the infinite universe beyond with its million suns, that Hermes Trismegistus called the Divine Mind. I see my life briefly illuminated, and my body relaxes to receive the blow, when this trance-like state is pierced by a sharp whistle, a motion so fast it blurs past my eyes, and a blood-curdling howl from Fowler, whose sword falls from his hand, grazing my leg as he topples sideways, clutching his arm.

My instinct returns; I throw myself on him and pin him down; a crossbow bolt protrudes from his shoulder. He bellows for Douglas but the only response is a frantic scrabbling of feet towards the entrance. The other lantern lies motionless on the ground where it was dropped. Fowler struggles under me, moaning softly and clutching at his shoulder, but I draw my knife to his throat and he falls limp. There are footsteps in the seats overhead and then the thud of someone landing in the arena. I look up and flinch, as a tall young man in a leather jerkin crouches beside me and examines Fowler.

‘I went for the lantern. I was afraid I might hit you, though, sir.’

‘Who are you?’ I hardly dare breathe out, my knife still at Fowler’s throat. The mist softens the stranger’s features, making him look younger still; he is perhaps in his early twenties, with a broad jaw, his beard still sparse.

‘Tanner, sir, Joseph Tanner. At your service.’ He sweeps off his cap and bunches it in his fist. ‘I was sent to look out for you, sir. They said folk were trying to kill you. They were right and all.’ He nods at Fowler, then picks up his sword from the sand and weighs it in his hand with the appraising glance of a connoisseur.

‘You serve Walsingham, then?’ Exhaustion floods me and I am suddenly freezing.

‘I serve Sir Philip Sidney, sir,’ he says, still twisting his cap. Fowler produces a strangled howl of pain through his teeth; I dig my knee into his ribs.

‘Sidney sent you? How long have you been following me?’

‘Since the night you came to Barn Elms, sir, after you was attacked on the road. Sir Philip said I was to mark who tried to follow you and make sure you was never left unguarded. But only to act if I thought your life was in immediate danger.’

‘Why didn’t you make yourself known to me?’

The young man looks awkward.

‘Sir Philip said you mightn’t like the idea, sir. He said you were proud.’

‘Did he.’ I smile; half of me does not like it all, the idea of Sidney deciding behind my back that I couldn’t look after myself and required a bodyguard. The other half must concede that, without the intervention of young Tanner, I would now have Fowler’s sword through me.

‘He also said it’s no more than he would do for you himself, sir, if he didn’t have other duties. Watch your back, I mean, like a friend should.’

‘I will thank him for it.’ I glance down at Fowler, whose face, even in this meagre light, has turned very white. A dark stain spreads over the cloth of his doublet where the crossbow bolt has pierced his shoulder. ‘This man needs a physician, Joseph. We must take him to Whitehall.’

Fowler struggles briefly, but I can feel he is growing weaker. He must not bleed to death here, or too many questions will be left unanswered — not least the matter of whether the Accession Day assassination plot is still active, and who might have been charged with carrying it out. Tanner nods.