Triumff: Her Majesty's Hero (35 page)

    “Touché,” said Gull, returning to the en garde position casually.

    “You fight with vigour and determination, seńor. Me sorprende I have heard many tales of your ability with the rapier, but I believed few of them. Tell me, is it really patriotism that fires your passions so?”

    “A man can be inspired by a love of his country. Isn’t that what spurs you on, Regent?”

    De la Vega shook his head. “This country?” he asked. “No me interesa. My beloved Castile, however Oh yes.”

    “Is that what this is all about? This treason that you’re clearly part of. Is it the age-old complaint of underling Spain, out to spill blood to right itself at Court?”

    De la Vega licked his lips and gestured ambivalently. “Nothing so simple, or so singular,” he said. “Tonight, there is afoot such business as will make the stars in heaven shake.”

    “Business set in hand by you and Jaspers, I’d wager,” said Gull, “though not alone. There must be others, but I have no doubt that Jaspers is crucial to your treason, or you wouldn’t have risked exposure by coming here to silence my suspicions.”

    De la Vega returned his gaze, but said nothing.

    “So, will you put up your sword while I summon the guard?” asked Gull.

    De la Vega took a deep breath and straightened up. “Todavía no he terminado. The fight is in its infancy,” he said.

    “But, you’re bleeding,” said Gull.

    “So are you. A mi no molesta en absoluto.”

    “If that’s the way you want it,” said Gull. “En garde!” 

* * *

The fifth fight underway in the minutes after ten that evening was taking place in the dark, smelly arena of the Palace undercroft, and, in its way, it was every bit as fundamental to the future of the Unity as the dazzling swordplay in progress in the processional ante-room.

    Drew Bluett just had time to draw his heavy-bladed Venetian storta and bellow, “Get behind me!” to Uptil and Agnew before O’Bow was on him. The first sweep of O’Bow’s huge hand-and-a-halfer slid the entire length of the storta’s blade as Drew deflected it, and only the finger-ring and knucklebow prevented it from shearing the digits of Drew’s sword hand.

    Drew was stronger than the average man, and his bulk counted well against most ordinary opponents, but there was nothing ordinary or average about Tantamount O’Bow. He was no great swordsman, but he swung the huge blade as easily as if it had been a smallsword or a light estoc. Drew was a reasonably accomplished swordsman, if a little out of practice. However, even a swordmaster like Roustam de la Vega would have thought twice about trying his luck with O’Bow. With the sword whirring around his head, he was about as easy to attack as a sharpened windmill in a force nine gale.

    “Who are you? You’re not Palace Guard!” yelled Drew as he fended away the rain of metal. “Why are you doing this?”

    “Needs musk when the devil dives!” O’Bow answered, rather mysteriously. “I am on a mission of grating portents, and must mortally slay any who hinder me, what-so-whomever.”

    “I wasn’t hindering you!” cried Drew, backing away across the dirty undercroft.

    “I’ll be the jug of that!” exploded O’Bow, and fetched Drew a massive crack across the side of the head with his sword. Drew cartwheeled back through the damp air, demolished a small stack of very rotten barrels, and lay still in the debris.

    O’Bow crossed over to him and knelt down, laying the point of his sword at Drew’s throat.

    “Become informatory, and I’ll let you live,” he said. “I seek a Frenchie looter, named Looey Cedarn. Name his whereabouts.”

    There was silence. Drew Bluett was profoundly unconscious with a deep, bloody gash across his scalp, and he wasn’t about to name anything.

    “O’Bow,” said a voice behind him. The giant turned and stood up to find Agnew facing him. Uptil was paused undecidedly in the shadows behind the manservant.

    “You know me?” asked Tantamount O’Bow.

    “I know of you, sir. My master, Rupert Triumff, has told me of you on several occasions.”

    “I see my repudiation proceeds me.”

    “It does. Now it seems to me you mean to kill us, but you also seek a man named Cedarn. Might it not change your attitude to us if I told you we too were seeking the knave?”

    O’Bow nodded slowly. In the dim light, his terrible scars looked like pleated pink silk.

    “And why-for would you be of finding the fellow?” he asked.

    Agnew stared into O’Bow’s blue eyes without a flicker. “To kill him,” he said.

    Uptil stiffened, and tapped at Agnew’s elbow. Agnew ignored him.

    “You too, eh?” asked O’Bow, lowering his sword. “And what’s your despot with him?”

    “He’s a Frenchie looter, as you say,” said Agnew. He’s caused us many problems. We’ve been hunting for him for several days.”

    O’Bow cracked his knuckles, and crossed to the door of the undercroft.

    “It seems we have adjoining courses,” he said. “Best we should belabour together til we smoke him out.” He looked across at Drew’s crumpled form. “My apology for dinting your companion. My attack on him, it now seems, was most prehensile.”

    Agnew and Uptil crossed to Drew’s side.

    “See what you can do with the door,” said Agnew. “It’s stuck fast. We’ll tend to our friend.”

    “What are you doing?” asked Uptil in a tight whisper as they crouched together next to Bluett.

    “Do you have a better idea?” asked Agnew. “He’s laid poor Bluett out. Unless we can divorce him from his sword, we don’t begin to stand a chance against him. I had to do something to stop him killing all of us.”

    Uptil sighed and looked down at Drew.

    “Nasty head wound,” he said. “We need to get a surgeon to him as soon as possible.”

    “First chance we get,” Agnew concurred. “I’d love to know what this monster has got against Sir Rupert. Just how many people has he managed to offend since we last saw him?”

    Drew stirred and groaned. He looked up at Agnew.

    “Mr Bluett. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

    Drew nodded, blinking.

    “We have managed to converse with Mr O’Bow, the gentleman that struck you,” said Agnew. “He has agreed to join forces with us, as he too wants to eliminate the Frenchie looter Cedarn. Is that clear?”

    Drew nodded again. Dazed and in pain though he was, his years of espial training helped him to sift out the pertinent truth behind Agnew’s bald statement.

    “Help me up,” he said. He was unsteady, but his eyes burned fiercely. Agnew tore a strip from his coat and made a makeshift bandage for his head.

    “Upon your feet again, I see,” said O’Bow from the doorway. “It gladdens my heart. I must extrude great hominids of apologism to you for my crudities.”

    “Your hominids are gratefully accepted, Mr O’Bow,” said Drew, leaning on Agnew for support. “That door’s locked, is it not?”

    There was a deafening crash, and O’Bow removed the entire door from its frame. He held it up in front of them and tried the handle.

    “It is indeed,” he agreed.

    The ill-assorted quartet entered the next chamber, a huge, echo-booming, dark kitchen. The space was cold and empty. Bizarre, haunting sounds murmured into the room. They were coming from outside, noises from the huge party, filtering down through the enormous chimney places above the dead grate.

    “They must be using the kitchens in the west wing to provide for the Masque. How’s the door?” asked Agnew.

    The door out of the kitchen was an even heavier oak section than the one in from the undercroft. O’Bow stepped away from it, shaking his head.

    “Locked too,” he noted. He cracked his knuckles again, and flexed the muscles of his shoulders with a Hercynian shrug.

    “Wait! We can’t go through the Palace tearing every door we come to off its hinges,” said Drew.

    “Do you have an alternating presumption?” O’Bow asked him.

    “I do,” said Uptil. He gestured towards the huge fireplace. “We could climb.”

    O’Bow showed far too many teeth. Uptil thought for a moment that he was going to bite him.

“A very fine presumption indeed!” he exclaimed.

“Let’s go,” said Drew.

    They climbed onto the hearth block, and looked up into the flues. Blackness stared back.

    “Tell me, Mr O’Bow,” said Agnew, matter-of-factly, “what is the nature of your dispute with Cedarn? Is it personal?”

    “It is now,” said O’Bow. “At the original, I was hired to do him away, but he was deviate, and gave me a slip. That made it a matter of distinctive personality.”

    “Hired, indeed?” put in Drew, testing the bricks of the flue wall. “By whom?”

    “That mister Dung Tongueford. Bournevile Dung Tongueford. He has me for errands, some off times.” O’Bow said, reaching into the flue and pulling himself up out of sight. Loose bricks, mortar and soot trickled down.

    “What’s the matter?” asked Uptil quietly, noticing the look on Drew’s face.

    “I knew a man, a Bonville de Tongfort, back in the old days of the Circus, when Milord Effingham was running Intelligence,” said Drew. “He was a rat of a man. I thought he might have perished in the Purge. I might have hoped he had. He crossed me more than once.”

    “This is the same man?” asked Uptil.

    “I’ve no way of telling,” Drew replied, “but the de Tongfort I knew was in the dirtiest of Dirty Tricks. You could always trust him to procure the lowest jakes-scum for a sleazy mission. O’Bow’s just the sort of element de Tongfort cultivated. Oh, but this affair stinks more and more as we go along. If it is the de Tongfort I know, I’ll be happy to have a reckoning with him.”

    “Are you going to attend on my behind?” O’Bow called back down the flue to them.

    “Let’s follow him,” said Drew. He caught Uptil’s arm, and said, “If I can get his sword away from him, do you fancy your chances, mano-a-mano?”

    Uptil nodded. He knew that of the three of them, he had the best hope of laying the huge thug out. Uptil was a cultured, refined soul, who disliked physical violence, but he kept himself fit, and his musculature testified to his strength. Besides, he had more than enough reasons to bury his knuckles in O’Bow’s twisted face.

    “I’ll give it a go,” he replied.

    They scrambled up the chimney, the noises of the great party washing down around them, like the voices of ghosts.

Above and outside, the revelry was reaching its peak. On the stage, the players were in the middle of a sophisticated comedic interlude, involving five clowns and some buckets of porridge.

    Doll watched from the wings, minutes away from her grand entrance.

    In the Royal Pavilion, overlooking the stage, Cardinal Woolly sat three places to the left of the Queen. He was oblivious to the laughter and applause around him. Tense worry gnawed at him.

    A row behind him, Lord Slee sat and observed with equal concern. De la Vega had been missing for twenty minutes. It wouldn’t be long before the Queen noticed, and asked for him. If there was some trouble some hitch

    Slee took a sip of water to clear his mouth and his head. He nodded, and joined in the laughter as his immediate neighbour drew his attention to the antics on stage. His eyes weren’t on the clowns, though, they were fixed, hawk-like, on the VIP tent facing the Royal Pavilion across the apron staging. He could see Salisbury and Jaspers, distant faces through the smoky taper-light. As if cued by some invisible nudge, Jaspers looked back and made eye contact. He nodded across the lawn to Slee, and held up an open hand just over the table. Five minutes more.

    Slee’s mouth was dry again. He glanced at the Court personages around him, and watched the way the firelight glinted like stars off the Queen’s tiara as her head moved in laughter, like stars.

    There is fortune in stars, and the greatest fortune of all was spelled out in those that danced around the Gloriana’s vulnerable head.

    In the musicians’ marquee, Louis Cedarn scratched at his chin. His stubble was beginning to grow back. It itched. His whole life itched. If he didn’t scratch it soon, he’d go mad.