The Tower Grave (20 page)

             
Not ignoring the threat, Jake backed away from Spence who grinned viciously as blood spilled from his mouth. He sheathed the knife and sat down quietly, only then turning to see the long bow held by the old attendant from his door. The old man showed surprising strength as he calmly held the fully-drawn arrow at Jake’s chest without a tremor. Jake acknowledged the threat with a nod and turned back to Courtridge emotionlessly.

“He’s my brother,” he said. “He has been set up and will be tortured.
I need answers and I need assistance. Please.”

             
Courtridge nodded appreciatively and turned to Spence.

             
“Did you, William? Did you do this?”

             
“No,” he lied.

             
“Did any of you?” Courtridge asked the room, receiving only shakes of their heads in reply as the men denied their involvement and looked on Jake with understanding.

             
“Lord Edmund, can we rescue him? I cannot do it alone,” asked Jake.

             
“Rescue him?” Spence spat. “You’ll be lucky. Edmund will have you killed for your insolence.”

             
“I will not,” Courtridge replied. “Jake you’ve proven your loyalty to me tonight and despite your brother’s misfortune, you have proven the details of the tunnel are correct. Your reaction is understandable, but I am afraid we cannot rescue him now.”

             
“Why?”

             
“Because we could lose the men that we cannot afford to lose. We would give away the tactics we need shortly afterwards, and I would use up the favours I need to keep for the task we are here for. I am sorry, Jake. I am.”

             
“We cannot let him rot away in a cell forever more.”

             
“We won’t, of course. We will be in that Tower in less than two weeks, remember? We won’t leave without him then. That is my final offer.” He hid his nerves from the angry warrior sitting quietly before him and sighed inwardly at the loss of a man. Jake watched him silently as he made his choice.

             
“Very well,” he agreed, reluctantly. “Until then? What will I be doing?”

             
“I have lots of jobs for you, Jake. But recover from this one first and get some rest. And some dry clothes.”

Nineteen

19
th
June 1483

             
“Charlotte, we’ll get him out. You know we will,” said David as he fed her from his own arms into Jake’s.

             
“Tell me what happened, Jake. Tell me again, how did it happen?” She asked through her tears.

             
“The same as I said before, Char. We got through the tunnel and they were waiting there. John went through and was caught. The hole was so tight I would’ve been killed trying to get through. I took out one who fell, and then John made me stick to the plan.”

             
“The plan?” asked David.

             
“If only one of us got caught, the other had to run. He said there was a better chance of rescue and of course you three had to be warned and moved or we’d all be dead. So I ran, and left him to be tortured. I can’t believe I had to leave him,” he said as he held his head in his hands with grief.

             
“You did the right thing,” said David. “We’re all with you, and we’ll do whatever we can to get him out.”

             
“That’s right,” Chris said. “We’ve gotten this far. We’ll get him out. No one is staying behind in this place.”

             
“Char?” Jake asked. “Are you ok?”

             
“Am I ok? It’s you who I’m worried about; you’ve been through so much tonight. You did the right thing, Jake, and yes we will get him out.”

             
“Do you think?”

             
“Of course.” She cupped his face in her hands, making David and Chris share a glance as they looked away. “I’m just so glad you’re safe,” she said and kissed him then, hard on the lips for the first time since their horse-riding mishap more than five hundred years later. The sudden soft contact of her lips took Jake’s breath away as something he’d wanted for so long happening so unexpectedly. As she slowly pulled away, she left his lips feeling bare and abandoned in contrast to the deep, soft warmth pressed against them before. He looked at her as she grinned down at him and jumped up.

             
“So,” she said through her excited grin. “There’s no point moping and being upset. How are we going to get him out?”

             
“Courtridge won’t help us. He said to wait until the raid and to get him out when we’re already in the Tower.

             
“That’s twelve days away. It’s a long time to be in the Tower dungeon, Jake.”

             
“I know, but what can we do? We can’t take the Tower of London by force. We need Courtridge to get us in there or use his manpower at least. Without him we just have to wait. What’s our intel base now?”

             
“It’s good,” Chris said. “Charlotte has been out practically every time you’ve been gone.”

             
“David and I have been networking,” Charlotte said, proudly.

             
“And Charlotte has somehow managed to follow and snap most of your crew as well as some of Courtridge’s associates in the Tower.”

             
“Nice, Char. Well done.” He checked the shutters from the window of their new rented room to the east of the City and looked out to the Tower in the distance as the sun rose behind him and ignited its walls in amber light. He blew through his cheeks and turned back from his moment of silence with renewed energy. “What have you got then, Chris?” he asked.

             
Chris went to work on a number of tablets and paper charts he had made, showing Jake maps and images as he went.

             
“Ok,” he said after listing their subjects. “I’ve drawn up an anacapa chart based on Charlotte’s...”

             
“An anawhatta chart?” David asked, baffled.

             
“Anacapa,” Chris replied. “It’s an analytical tool used to map links or associates as a chart. It has many uses but we use it in criminal analysis, which as far as I know is the most common. It’s also a volcanic island situated eleven miles off the coast of California but that’s irrelevant.”

             
David nodded, still baffled. “Thanks,” he said.

             
“Ok, Courtridge himself seems to be linked to almost everyone in this. They all go around in circles, but Courtridge has further associations in the Tower and most notably with this man.” He showed them a picture of a large soldier.

             
“Sergeant Robert Sykes,” Jake recalled.

             
“Exactly right,” Chris replied, “which is interesting in many respects. Now, if we look at his associations first...”

             
“Wait, what about Spence?”

             
“Well, Spence is almost the same as the others, except, he seems to have one more associate. We can’t identify him, but Charlotte managed to find their meeting place, and none of the other men have been near there.”

             
“It’s a real shit-hole,” Charlotte said. “It’s not that far from here, I can find it again. But it seriously is not nice. The whole area is dark and full of filth, even in daylight.”

             
“What happened, did you tail Spence there?”

             
“Yeah, I picked him up from the Barbican address after you were told of it that night. He literally walked for ages and kept checking over his shoulder. It was a tough tail. When he got there, he went in through this dingy hole and started throwing stuff about. Then he started talking.”

             
“Interesting, did you hear anything?”

             
“No. I couldn’t hear what they were saying, and I couldn’t see anyone. It was practically done in whispers, but Spence came out looking pleased with himself.”

             
“Brilliant. That’s got to be it then. That’s our lead.”

             
“What do you want to do?”

             
“Nothing yet, we can’t blow our only lifeline and we have to stay in the loop or we’ll lose the lot. No we’ll wait. We can get him out later when we’re in, but if we need to we’ve got a lead. If he can get in the Tower to stitch us up, then whoever this man is can help us get John out. Bribe or force, we’ll sort it.”

             
Sergeant Rogers chuckled from his stool as John slowly spun back to face him. His face was a grimace of pain as his toes finally gave up the scramble for the floor they would never reach.

             
“So you’re working alone, and purely to satisfy curiosity?” he asked, smiling.

             
John looked at him, though the sweat stung his eyes and blurred his vision. The arrogant soldier sat there mocking him, his pock-scarred face cold and unmistakably menacing. John didn’t blame him, of course. To him, he was nothing but a traitor out to kill his King. He only wished he had a less sadistic interrogator.

             
“That’s right,” whispered John, his voice weak. “Nothing you do to me can change the truth.”

“
Right and I suppose the person with you was there by coincidence? Gaoler...”

             
John sighed. He’d come to dread the word that had meant only pain in the thirty minutes since he was dragged from his cell for the first time. He watched nervously as the masked soldier adjusted his tools on a table next to a brazier in the torture room. He knew he’d been lucky so far. He’d been beaten and he’d been cut, but he expected the interrogation to get much harder. He had no idea of the purpose of some of the odd-shaped metal tools that the gaoler showed him but had no doubt of the intentions of the faceless beast as he chuckled and turned to his fire. He put on a pair of thick, leather gloves and drew a poker from the fire, its end shone a pale, threatening yellow as the heat roared off of it and distorted all in its vicinity.

             
John’s feeling of vulnerability was almost beyond his threshold for tolerance. His hands were trust tightly above him and he was suspended from them, completely devoid of strength as his toes continued to swing, inches from the floor. He tried to ignore his fear as he slowly continued to spin and ended up facing away from his torturer, his full nakedness never being more threatening to him.

             
“Who were you with?” demanded Rogers.

             
“No one!” he shouted back, desperately.

             
With a nod from his boss, the gaoler slowly stepped forward behind John and let the burning end of the poker brush against the bare skin of his ribs below his armpit.

             
He let out a howl of pain and gasped as his skin bubbled and curled away beneath the heat of the iron, sticking as it was then pulled away.

             
“I’m telling you it’s no one!” he screamed, gagging at the reek of his own burning skin.

             
“Who are you working for?”

             
“I swear to you I’m not,” he screamed, reduced to panic and barely containing his will to keep the names inside. He lived in the twenty-first century; he knew he was not built to withstand torture of that level despite being in painful situations as an undercover in the past. He cursed himself for ever putting himself there and he wished he could be home with his children.

             
At a command from Rogers, the heat again seared deep into his other side. He writhed in pain as the heat took his skin away in an instant and began to tear into his muscles beneath.

             
Holding up his hand, the Sergeant signalled to the torturer who replaced the poker back into the furnace and turned to await further instructions. He leaned in close as John’s hard and determined expression melted with his skin to show the fear clear in his eyes. John let out a barely audible cry as blood and pus leaked from the stinking wilts in his torso making the Sergeant who bullied the peasant chuckle.

             
“John,” he said quietly. “This will not go away. You are lying and I will not stop until I get the truth. I’ll rack you, I’ll cut you, and I will let my rats eat you. I’ll dip your limbs into boiling water. I’ll take out your eyes, break your bones and take off your cock with that hot poker. Why are you here John? Here in England?”