The Prince of Lies: Night's Masque - Book 3 (41 page)

Mal’s own frustrations were of a less noble sort. He longed to curl up with his wife and forget his troubles for a while in the pleasure of her kisses, but would be impossible here. The best he could manage was to slip an arm around her waist under the thin blankets, and then only because the inn was so full that everyone was crammed cheek by jowl anyway.

“We’ll get proper accommodation in Cambridge,” he told both of them, as they set off next morning on fresh horses. “The town should be quiet, since most of the students will have gone home for the summer.”

“Do you know anyone there?” Coby asked, guiding her nag alongside his.

“It’s been a long time, but I dare say a few of the masters who taught me are still alive. One of them must surely be able to introduce me to someone who has met Shawe.”

“We should have spoken to that friend of his before we left London. Harry someone-or-other?”

“Thomas Harriot?” Mal shook his head. “He’s Northumberland’s pet. If he knows where Shawe is, I doubt he’d tell us, and he’d certainly tell Northumberland we’d been asking after him. And Northumberland will tell Prince Henry, you can be sure of that.”

Sandy spoke for the first time. “Jathekkil already knows where we are going. You left Renardi alive.”

“I could hardly murder him in cold blood,” Coby replied. “Anyway, even if I killed the doctor, Prince Henry would have guessed I spoke to him.”

“Henry may have warned Shawe, but we can’t let that stop us,” Mal said. “Cambridge itself should be safe at any rate. Shawe prefers remote manorhouses, the better to conceal his alchemical experiments.”

“So where is he?”

“Somewhere far enough outside the town for secrecy, but most likely not so far that he is cut off from his allies. The Fens are a lonely place; we should not have too much trouble finding him.”

“Like looking for a needle on a bare floor instead of among the rushes.”

“Exactly.”

They rode on for a while in silence, past newly harvested cornfields and orchards heavy with blushing apples. Despite the cold spring the year had been a good one, an unexpected blessing to counteract the horror of events in London.

“You and Sandy should put on your disguises now, before we arrive,” Coby said. “Best you get used to them.”

They drew aside into a copse of ash and maple, and Coby handed out the clothes. For Sandy, a serving woman’s gown with a linen coif to cover his hair and a broad-brimmed hat to hide his face; for Mal, a scholar’s black robe and cap. Sandy shaved his chin smooth with his obsidian razor, and Coby applied a little powder to cover the remaining dark stubble.

“Don’t you have a disguise?” Mal asked her.

She shook her head. “They’re looking for Lady Catlyn. I’m better off like this.”

“Renardi could have described you to our enemies.”

“We’ll have to take that chance. I will be of no use in a fight encumbered by skirts, and I have not the time nor skill to change my face.”

After Mal had drawn the robe on over his other clothes, Coby carefully painted extra white hairs into his beard and hair, to make him seem older.

“You look half a skrayling now,” Sandy jested. “Perhaps I should braid beads into your hair.”

Mal pulled a face. “Perhaps I should cut off your hair, make you look more like a skrayling woman.”

“Enough!” Coby stepped between them, her eyes bright with tears. “Kit lies captive, and all you can do is make merry?”

“I am sorry, my love.” Mal drew her aside. “We only lighten our hearts to stop us from weeping.”

She nodded as if in understanding, and Mal bent to kiss her brow.

“Mount up,” he said. “We have delayed long enough.”

“This is all your fault,” Sidney muttered as they bounced around in the back of the covered wagon.

The well-dressed man had tied them up after the failed escape attempt, and next morning there had been no breakfast. Now it was well past noon and still they had not stopped for a rest nor been given dinner. Kit’s stomach gnawed at his ribs, and his arms and legs hurt all over from being battered against the wooden floor and side of the wagon.

“We had to try and get away, didn’t we?”

Sidney gave him a sullen look and turned his back. Kit sighed. He was too exhausted to argue with Sidney anyway. He lifted his bound hands to his mouth and tried to chew at the rope some more, but the fibres poking out of it were like needles in his chapped lips and he soon gave up. Licking the metal-tasting blood from his lips he wedged himself into a corner of the wagon. If he sat bolt upright, his head rested against the canvas covering instead of wood and it was almost comfortable.

He drifted off into something that was not quite sleep but not quite wakefulness either, and the next thing he knew it was getting dark. The cart had drawn off the side of the road into a field and their captors were making a fire. The smell of food made Kit’s mouth water.

A canvas flap lifted, and one of the workmen peered inside.

“You lads hungry?”

Kit nodded warily.

“Tough. Master Waggoner says you’re to have nothing until the morrow, to teach you what happens to lads what disobey.”

Sidney let out a whimper that turned to a cough.

“Still, we don’t want you arriving half-dead,” he said, leaning into the wagon, “so you can have this between you.”

He pushed a tankard towards Kit, who grabbed at it with his tied hands. The man laughed and left them.

Kit lifted the tankard to his face. It smelt like the small ale they usually had at breakfast. He took a sip, hoping they weren’t drugging him again, then gulped about a third of it back.

“Here, save some for me!” Sidney launched himself across the wagon.

“Watch it, you’ll spill it!” Kit clutched the tankard to his chest. The lukewarm liquid splashed against his shirt, filling the air with its heady scent.

“Give it here, then.”

Kit passed the tankard to Sidney with shaking hands. Weak as it was, the ale was already going to his head. He lay back against the boards and fell asleep within moments.

Kit looked round dazedly as the wagon drew to a halt. The workmen hauled them out and untied their bonds, and Kit slumped down onto his hands and knees in the grass, head ringing.

“Come on, boy,” the well-dressed man said, hauling him to his feet by the back of his shirt. “Don’t you want to see your new home?”

Kit looked up, and his heart rose. In front of them stood a well-built house of pale grey stone with five gabled windows along the roofline and a tall chimney stack at each end. Diamond-paned glass glinted in the setting sun.

“Where are we?” Kit rasped. A small part of him still hoped that this had all been a horrible misunderstanding, and that the house before him was the home he had grown up in, rebuilt by his father after the fire.

“I don’t suppose there’s any harm in you knowing, seeing as you’re not leaving any time soon,” the well-dressed man said. “This is Anglesey Priory, a school for bright boys such as yourself.”

Kit swallowed past his disappointment. “A school? But what about Master Weston?”

“I will teach you things that small-minded pedant never dreamed of.”

Kit whirled to see a black-clad man standing at the lefthand corner of the house, as if he had appeared out of thin air. The man smiled and ran his eyes over the two boys, like a farmer sizing up sheep at the market.

“Perfect,” he said at last. “Come.”

He shepherded them towards the door.

“You’ll want to watch out for that one, sir,” the well-dressed man called out. “He’s tried to run off once already.”

“Really? We can’t have that, can we?” Cold hard fingers dug into Kit’s shoulder. “We’d better find somewhere safe to put you for the night.”

He turned aside from the door and took the two boys around the back of the house to an outbuilding. Most of it was overgrown with ivy and looked as ancient as the Bloody Tower, but the stonework around the door had been repaired and the door itself was of new oak studded with gleaming iron nails. Kit opened his mouth to protest that they were hungry, but one look at their new captor’s face told him this would only earn them worse punishment than simply being locked up for the night.

The schoolmaster unlocked the door with one of the keys from the bunch hanging from his belt, and pushed them inside. Kit glimpsed sacks and barrels stacked around the walls before the door closed, plunging them into darkness.

“My father will hear of this,” Sidney wailed as the key turned in the lock. “He’s the King’s cousin, you know.”

“I think he already knows that, clotpole,” Kit muttered.

He felt his way towards where he had seen some empty sacks. If they couldn’t escape right now, best to get some sleep and hope a better chance came along tomorrow.

CHAPTER XXIX

The storehouse door creaked open and Kit blinked against the light.

“Come out of there, both on yer!”

Kit clambered to his feet, expecting to see the schoolmaster again, but this was a different man. Clean-shaven like the other but younger, with long mouse-brown hair tied back from his face. He wore a plain brown doublet and hose, very neat and tidy apart from a ragged scarlet cloth tucked into his belt. He regarded the two boys with solemn hazel eyes.

“I’m Master Fox,” he said, as if guessing Kit’s next question before he had even thought it. His accent reminded Kit of his father and uncle. “Master Shawe sent me to fetch you two to breakfast.”

“Breakfast?” Sidney whimpered, stumbling out behind Kit.

“Aye. Now come along.”

“Are we in Derbyshire, sir?” Kit asked him as they walked back round the house.

“Nay. You see any hills round here, lad?”

“We came through some, yesterday.”

Fox snorted. “Pimples. Nowt like back home.”

The front door led directly into a large whitewashed chamber that looked like a cross between a classroom and a chapel. Fox showed them through a door on the far side and down half-a-dozen steps into a long gloomy stone hall with a vaulted ceiling like a wine cellar. A table ran the length of the room, and boys of varying ages sat along either side, the oldest at the far end. The scent of food met Kit’s nostrils and he breathed in deeply, feeling a bit faint.

“Breakfast’s on sideboard,” Fox said. “Help thysens and sit down.”

The two boys stammered their thanks and raced over to the trestle table, where baskets of bread and a vast tureen of pease porridge were laid out. Kit filled an earthenware bowl and took it to the end of the table nearest the door. Half the end bench was occupied by a couple of boys a bit older than him. Both had cropped hair and were dressed in blue-grey doublet and hose, as were the rest of the boys at the table.

“Excuse me? May I…” Kit inclined his head towards the seat.

One of the boys looked up from his breakfast with faraway eyes. Kit noticed he wore an earring in his left earlobe: a hoop of dull grey metal onto which had been threaded a bead of bright blue glass. It looked incongruously dandyish against his plain attire.

“You’re new,” the boy said slowly.

“Yes.” Kit put down his bowl and held out his hand. “Kit Catlyn, if it please you.”

The boy stared at his hand as if it were some exotic creature in a menagerie, then grinned up at Kit.

“Heron,” he said.

“I…”

“This is Shrike,” the boy continued, indicating his companion, who just stared at Kit with an unpleasant glint in his eye. He too wore a blue glass earring; was it some kind of badge of the school?

“Those are your names?” Kit asked.

Heron nodded. “We all have our brotherhood names. You’ll get one too, once you’ve been tested.”

Kit didn’t like the sound of that, but he took the introduction as permission to sit down. For several minutes he ignored his new friends and stuffed his face with bread and porridge as fast as he could without choking. No one commented on his manners or even seemed to notice him. He glanced up at Sidney, who had taken the seat opposite.

“What is this place?” he whispered across the table.

Sidney shrugged and popped another chunk of bread in his mouth, chewing it determinedly. Kit scraped the last spoonful of porridge from his bowl. Not a moment too soon; a bell rang and the other boys got up from their places and began filing towards the sideboard with their empty bowls. Kit followed them.

After they had deposited their bowls in a stack, the boys skirted the far end of the table, making towards a spiral staircase halfway down the room.

“Not you two,” Master Fox said, barring Kit’s way with a calloused hand. “Sit down.”

Kit and Sidney did as they were told. Fox went to a chest at the far end of the room and sorted through piles of clothing. At last he returned with two of the blue-grey suits, two pairs of shoes and a couple of changes of linen apiece.

“Well? Get ’em on, quick now.”

Kit stripped under the cold gaze of the… what was Fox, anyway? He didn’t dress like a schoolmaster but the way he ordered them round, he was no servant either.

Once they were both changed, Fox led them through a side door and round the back of the rear wing. Crumbling walls projected from the back of the house, as if it had once been part of a much bigger building. Master Shawe had called it a priory, which meant that monks had once lived here, before old King Henry, the prince’s great grandfather, had sent them all away.

They followed Fox through a kitchen garden, past more ruins to a low outbuilding that looked cobbled together from more of the priory’s old masonry, though its roof was of new red tiles. Its narrow windows were stopped with sheets of horn rather than glass. Smoke drifted up from the chimney, along with a few greenish sparks. Fireworks? Perhaps that was why all the ground around the building had been cleared and covered with a thick layer of crushed stone.

They crunched across the yard and Fox knocked on the door. Whilst they waited he turned and glared down at the boys.

“Touch nowt, understand?”

Kit nodded.

They were kept waiting for ages, but eventually the door opened to reveal Master Shawe. The headmaster was dressed in a long leather apron and tucked under his arm was a strange sort of helm with a visor made of glass. Kit took a step backwards, but Fox caught him by the scruff of the neck and shoved him over the threshold.