Death in St James's Park (46 page)

‘What?’ Chaloner itched to shake the information out of him. He could hear shouting in the distance, and was seized with the fear that the trouble might have started – and that once it gained momentum, it would be impossible to stop.

‘That Fry, Oxenbridge and their masters will stage a great revolt today, and that the whole country will reel from it. Freer said it was nonsense, but now I see that Ibson was right.’

‘Their masters?’ echoed Chaloner. He gripped Gery’s shoulder in an effort to make him understand the urgency. ‘Who are they? O’Neill? Le Notre?’

‘It will start in Post House Yard.’ The light was going out of Gery’s eyes.

‘Wood?’ Chaloner swallowed hard as a dreadful thought occurred to him. ‘Not Storey, and the business with the birds was a ruse intended to mislead us?’

But Gery was dead.

Shouting for Speed to look
after the marshal’s body, Chaloner turned and sped back towards the General Letter Office, his heart pounding with tension as he remembered that the Earl was in it, and perhaps so was Williamson by now. It was even possible that Thurloe had arrived, too. He tried to run harder, but snow was falling thickly, and the ground underfoot was treacherous. He stumbled badly in one pothole, but hands were there to steady him when he started to fall. He struggled away from them when he saw it was Stokes, and that the old soldier still held his gun.

‘I do not have time—’ began Chaloner.

Stokes cocked the firing mechanism, and Chaloner could tell from his pale face that fear and panic had rendered him unpredictable. When the veteran indicated he was to step into a shadowy alley, Chaloner did not dare refuse, sensing it would take very little to send him over the edge.

‘Cliffe does not deserve to hang for killing that man,’ said Stokes unsteadily. ‘I cannot let you reveal his part in what happened. I am sorry, but he is a comrade-in-arms, and I owe it to him.’

Chaloner did not want to listen to another self-justifying monologue. ‘London is on the verge of a crisis and I must—’

‘Yes, London is on the verge of a crisis! The gun wobbled alarmingly. ‘And it is Palmer’s fault. He brought us to this. We should have killed him today, but God was not with us. We came much closer the first time. Indeed, I thought we had succeeded when he was flung back by the blast.’

Understanding dawned in
Chaloner’s mind. The gunpowder had not been intended for Copping, but for Palmer. And there was Mother Greene’s testimony – that the Yeans had been hired by ‘military fellows’.

‘But it went wrong,’ Stokes continued. ‘One lad was supposed to engage Palmer in conversation, while the other lit the fuse. Then both would run away, leaving Palmer as the sole victim. But Palmer declined to be waylaid, and when the Yeans saw they would fail, they tried to pinch out the fuse. It was a disaster.’

Chaloner was shocked as well as disgusted. How could Stokes have expected a Yean to keep someone like Palmer entertained? Of course it was a disaster!

‘They said they could do it,’ objected Stokes defensively when he saw Chaloner’s expression. ‘And we paid them well. It was not our idea, anyway. John Fry said it would be a vitally important part of a great uprising, which will rid us of corruption and immorality for ever.’

‘Were you going to kill him the night he was in St Dunstan’s Church?’ asked Chaloner.

Stokes nodded. ‘But he had bodyguards, and then you arrived … We had to invent a tale to explain what we were doing there. Fry was angry with us for failing.’

‘You have met him?’ The germ of a solution was beginning to unfold at the back of Chaloner’s mind, but would he be in a position to act on it?

Stokes pulled a sheaf of letters from his pocket, and shoved them into the spy’s hand. All had been sealed with purple wax. ‘He wrote. Read what he says yourself. He will lead us to victory today. There will be some bloodshed, but we shall emerge as a gentler, more ethical society.’

Chaloner wondered how to reason with such lunatic beliefs. ‘It—’

‘But now I find myself
uncertain.’ Stokes glanced down at the gun. ‘Although Cliffe deserves better than to be hunted down like an animal for trying to do what was right.’

‘I doubt anyone recognised you,’ said Chaloner quickly. ‘If you leave London today—’

‘Turn around.’

Chaloner shook his head, loath to be shot in the back, but Stokes grabbed him roughly and he lacked the strength to resist. He heard Stokes step into position and tensed, but nothing happened. Slowly and carefully, he looked behind him. The old soldier had gone.

Chaloner resumed his journey on unsteady legs, trying to devise a plan should the Earl – and Thurloe and Williamson – be in trouble. Nothing came to mind, and all he could do was hurry to the Post Office and hope that something would occur to him once he had assessed the situation.

People seemed to be reading letters everywhere he looked, huddling in doorways to escape the bitter cold, and conversing in low, urgent voices. Some were laughing, which he found more disturbing than sullen resentment. It suggested a dangerous distancing from reality.

‘It is strange that there is post today,’ he heard one man say. ‘I thought all the roads were closed with snowdrifts.’

‘John Fry found a way,’ came the proud reply. ‘Bad weather will not keep
him
from his noble work.’

Chaloner’s legs burned from
fatigue when he finally reached Dowgate Hill, and his breath rasped painfully in his damaged throat. He crept cautiously down the lane that led to Post House Yard, only to find the square empty. Footprints in the snow trailed to and from the General Letter Office, and there was evidence that Wood’s household had also been active. But nothing stirred now, except two sparrows that hopped along Storey’s doorstep in search of crumbs.

Had Gery been wrong to say the mischief would start in Post House Yard? The marshal had not been clever, and may have misunderstood what he had heard or been told. He also could have been fed yet more false information by Freer. Was Fry’s plot swinging into action in another part of the city, even as Chaloner loitered uncertainly?

He listened intently. He could hear shouting in the distance. It sounded jubilant, and there was some wild laughter. He did not like to imagine what had precipitated it, and visions of lynching and murder were sharp in his mind.

Because he did not know what else to do, he broke into Storey’s house again, every nerve jumping with tension. He aimed for the parlour, where he stared through the window at the disused wing. It seemed deserted, and there were no lights. He climbed out and crept towards it, entering the building through the same shutter that he had forced open the last time. Once inside, he stood still to listen again. The only sound was the thudding of his heart.

With a wave of despair, he saw he had been wrong to go there. Clarendon’s raid must have warned Fry that it was an unsuitable place from which to launch an uprising, so he had moved elsewhere. And the Earl? He would have gone home, and ordered the Major returned to the Tower.

A creak made him spin around in alarm, and he found himself facing Dorislaus.

‘Good,’ whispered the Anglo-Dutchman. ‘I was starting to think I might have to do this alone.’

‘Do what alone?’ Chaloner
could manage no more than a croak.

‘Rescue Clarendon. Palmer was not the real target today – he is. John Fry sent two fools to shoot Palmer and distract everyone, but Palmer is irrelevant. What is wrong with your voice?’

Chaloner had no idea whether to believe him. ‘Where were you when the Earl arrived with his soldiers earlier? You were supposed to intercept him.’

‘There was no need,’ replied Dorislaus. ‘He had more than enough men to catch dishonest clerks, and I was worried about Thurloe, so I left.’

‘You have found him?’

‘No. I went to Lincoln’s Inn, but he was not there. So I came back and—’

‘Why were you walking arm-in-arm with him last night?’

Dorislaus raised his eyebrows. ‘It was his way of keeping me close so that we could discuss the case without raising our voices. Surely he has done the same with you?’

‘No.’

Dorislaus regarded him coolly. ‘Then perhaps you are not the trusted confidant you imagine.’

Chaloner did not know what to think, but he had had enough of Dorislaus. He grabbed his arm and dragged him to the secret room in the disused wing, where he shoved him inside and locked the door. The cloth-lined walls muffled the immediate medley of cries and thumps, and would not be audible to anyone in the main building. He put Dorislaus from his mind, and began to prowl.

It did not take him long to
locate signs of life. They were in the Letter Hall with its cathedral-like pillars and echoing marble. The window shutters were closed, but although two lamps had been lit, their feeble glow did not penetrate the shadows around the edges. Confident that he would not be seen, Chaloner eased forward, and took up station behind one of the columns.

The Earl was sitting on a chair with his hands bound in front of him. He looked vulnerable and afraid, although he was doing his best to conceal it. Three men guarded him. First, Freer, nervously eyeing the door. Second, Rea, leaning against a wall and affecting nonchalance. And third, Gardner, pacing like a caged lion; his fair, bushy hair was uncovered and his pink face was marred by a savage cut. Chaloner knew exactly how he had come by it: at Knight’s burial, when he himself had slashed him with a knife.

He regarded them dispassionately. He could not fight all three at once: Gardner and Rea were experienced brawlers, while Freer, although he had been reluctant to tackle Gery, was still a soldier. Yet it was clear that the Earl was living on borrowed time, so Chaloner would have to act quickly if he wanted to save him. He could expect no help, of course: Williamson would have arrived by now if he was coming, and so would Thurloe, while Gery was dead. He tried to think of something that would give him an edge, half listening to the discussion that was taking place.

‘You took a risk coming here, Gardner,’ Rea was saying. ‘Fifty pounds is a lot of money, and there are those who would sell their children for that kind of reward.’

Gardner scowled at Freer. ‘It was a stupid idea, even if it has kept Williamson busy. And if I
am
arrested, I shall expect you two to rescue me. Our leaders will not bother.’

‘How much longer will
they be?’ asked Freer, clearly the most uneasy of the trio.

‘You will not get away with this,’ warned the Earl, as Chaloner wondered who they were expecting. Oxenbridge and Fry certainly, but who else? ‘Chaloner and Gery will come back soon, and they are more than a match for you.’

‘They are dead,’ said Freer dispassionately. ‘Torn to pieces by a mob.’

The Earl looked stricken, although whether at the loss of two retainers or the news that he would not be rescued was difficult to say.

‘I do not understand any of this,’ he said miserably. ‘What will you gain from setting London alight with bitterness and resentment? And why kill poor Mary Wood and the King’s birds?’

‘Because I was paid to,’ replied Gardner shortly.

‘Who paid you?’ pressed the Earl.

‘Why, John Fry, of course.’ Gardner’s smirk pulled the cut on his face, causing him to wince and raise a tentative hand to touch it. ‘He knows what is best for the country.’

‘Murdering women in their sickbeds is good for the country?’ asked the Earl, struggling for defiance, but managing only to sound fearful.

‘She was not as ill as everyone thought,’ said Gardner ruefully. ‘She put up quite a fight.’

‘Did you kill her servant, too?’ asked the Earl in a small voice. ‘Joyce?’

‘Stokes and Cliffe took care of that, albeit unintentionally. You will die soon, too, and so will that meddling Wiseman. I know he has been helping Chaloner and when I dispatched his cat—’

Gardner stopped speaking when shouting
was carried on the wind, possibly from Thames Street. The trouble was spreading, and perhaps it was already too late to stop it.

Chaloner took a deep breath and forced himself to think. What he had to do was obvious: attack quickly and free the Earl before Oxenbridge and his cronies arrived. Gardner, Rea and Freer were not expecting him, so he had surprise on his side. He also had speed and shadows. And he could not dally, because once the trio were joined by their masters, Clarendon would die. Moving carefully, he took the daggers from his boot and sleeve, and eased into position.

Without knowing it, the Earl provided the perfect diversion by starting to ask another question, and in an entirely unnecessary burst of violence, Freer slapped him, knocking the wig from his head. Chaloner’s first dagger thudded with neat precision into Freer’s chest. The soldier gaped at it in disbelief before his knees buckled and he slumped to the floor.

Chaloner’s second blade took Rea in the shoulder, and he had drawn his sword and raced towards Gardner almost before it had landed, aiming to incapacitate the clerk before he realised what was happening. But Gardner was no stranger to skirmishing. He met Chaloner’s attack confidently, although the force of it sent him staggering backwards.

‘Chaloner!’ cried the Earl in relief. ‘I knew these vile devils would never best you!’

Chaloner found the remark touchingly
encouraging, and he went after Gardner with renewed vigour, gratified when the clerk was forced to retreat, face white with alarm. He was on the verge of disabling the man permanently when the door opened and Oxenbridge entered.

‘Hah!’ Oxenbridge’s button-black eyes glittered triumphantly in the lamplight as he hauled his rapier from its sheath. ‘I am glad you are here. I have a score to settle with you.’

Chaloner sagged, knowing that Oxenbridge’s arrival meant the end for him and the Earl. He could not fight him and Gardner together, not even if he had been fresh. Rea was lurching upright, too, and while he would not be joining a skirmish, he was still a threat. Oxenbridge swished his sword through the air, testing its balance, as Gardner advanced on Chaloner from the opposite direction.

‘Wait,’ said the Earl quickly, struggling to his feet. ‘I know you mean to kill us, but will you answer some questions first? You can call it a dying man’s last request.’