Silent Court (6 page)

‘Who in Hell’s name is that?’ he grated to Allys. ‘He could have killed me.’

Allys, having freed his foot, turned round to face the newcomer. It was true that she herself had been berating her husband moments before, but now that someone else was putting him at risk, she was like a wildcat defending her young. The man now visible round the corner of the lane was well known to her and she walked up to him and swung a mighty slap around his head which made his ears ring. Taken off guard, he fell to his knees.

‘Are you some kind of idiot, Robert Scoggins, to go round the countryside shouting like that. Look at my husband!’ Allys pointed a dramatic finger to where the Constable still lay in the dirt. ‘He could have broken his back.’

The man looked from horse to man and back again. ‘Why is he riding the Wasp?’ he said. ‘Nobody ever hires her, everyone knows that.’

Allys looked at him with narrowed eyes. ‘That has nothing to do with it,’ she said. ‘It was your shouting and hallooing from miles away that made her skittish; Joe was doing well enough until you came up the lane behaving like a fool.’

‘No.’ Robert Scoggins shook his head. ‘The Wasp is a mad ’un. Old Hobson only keeps her for loaning to any idiot that’s fool… enough…’ His voice trailed away. Joe Fludd’s wife had been boxing his ears since they were children together but then he suddenly remembered why he was there. ‘Gammer Harris’s been murdered!’ he said, raising his voice again as the news seemed to warrant. ‘Lying stiff and cold and all blood bespattered and beaten in her own kitchen. And no sign of old Harris, her husband. You know, the hedger. We reckon he be dead, lying in his own blood somewhere we haven’t found him yet. It’ll be the Egyptians, now that’s for sure.’

Fludd raised himself up on one elbow. ‘Robert Scoggins,’ he said severely. ‘This won’t be the first time you’ve come shouting up the lane with some tale that wasn’t true.’

Scoggins looked down and scuffed the dirt with his toe and muttered something indistinguishable.

‘Well may you mutter,’ Fludd said, getting up with a wince. ‘I called my constables out to prevent a murder last Plough Monday and all it was was Butcher Nevitt killing a pig.’

‘It sounded like screaming,’ Scoggins said, hotly. ‘And I could smell the blood.’

‘Yes, pigs do scream,’ Fludd said, brushing himself down, ‘as no doubt you’ve noticed before and since. And they do bleed when the butcher is at his work. Now, if I send a Constable to the Harrises, will they find old Mistress Harris sitting in her chair by the fire knitting with some nice red wool for some winter stockings?’

‘No!’ shouted Scoggins. ‘She is dead. Dead as a nit. I swear to you, Constable Fludd. Dead of them Egyptians, as I stand here, she is!’

Fludd prepared to get back on the Wasp, just to show he could, but stopped as the sound of shouting came up the lane. Once bitten, twice shy, although so far about the only thing the animal had not done to him was bite and he was sure that was only a matter of time.

‘Constable Fludd, Constable Fludd,’ called a voice. ‘Come quick, we’ve found…’

‘. . . old Gammer Harris, dead as a nit and covered in blood,’ the Constable completed the phrase.

‘I think dead as a nit is a little tasteless,’ said his new informant. ‘But the poor woman is weltered in gore, I would be the first to concede.’

‘Sorry, Reverend Mildmay,’ Fludd said. ‘I’m having a rather trying day.’

The Reverend Mildmay was a nice old boy, not given to the Gospel craze that marked a cleric as a Puritan and his frumpy old wife proved that he was not of the Catholic persuasion either. He helped the great and good of Trumpington in and out of the world; nobody could ask more of him.

‘You’re very muddy,’ the vicar said. ‘Have I interrupted anything?’

‘Not at all,’ Fludd said. ‘I am about to leave Cambridge on an urgent errand and from what I hear it may not be unconnected with your own. As I pass the castle I will alert my men and they will come and see what is to be done. I’m sorry I can’t stay, but I have wasted enough time already.’

He leapt on to the back of the Wasp with a flourish that surprised everybody. The animal galloped madly away down the lane, with Fludd clinging to her mane and desperately trying to get his other foot into the stirrup.

‘But surely,’ the vicar remarked to Allys and Scoggins, ‘the Constable will not be passing the castle going in that direction. Should we perhaps…’

But he needn’t have worried. After a series of furious oaths from down the lane, the sound of galloping hoofs gained in volume again and Fludd and the Wasp hurtled past them, heading for the town. Fludd had many thoughts sleeting through his head as he dashed headlong down Silver Street and across Magdalene Bridge, but foremost among them were the choice phrases he would be using at Hobson’s Stables when he went there to exchange this nightmare for a horse a man could actually ride.

The golden Lion of Nassau flapped in the wind above the cupolas of the Prinsenhof that Tuesday as it had done since William the Statholder had taken the town when Kit Marlowe was still a pot boy at The Star in Canterbury and gentlemen threw him a farthing to hold their horses.

The wind, like everything else in Holland, blew in over the flat land, bringing rain as the darkness descended. All day William had sat in his robing room, the vaulted chamber where the nuns had worked on their altar cloths before the ideas of John Calvin had changed their lives for ever. Most of them had left the town years ago, although a few still worked and prayed in the Papist Corner. One of them even prayed for the soul of the Statholder, although he didn’t know it.

William was tired. He’d spent the morning with his generals, looking at the troop dispositions he’d have to use against Parma. Why, he had asked himself for the umpteenth time, had God placed him across the barricades from the greatest soldier in the world? He took his meals with his men as they clucked around the models and the maps. They reminded him time and again that he wasn’t facing the Duke of Alba now and that hit and run tactics would not suffice. What use were the sea beggars against a man like Parma? And what use were they anyway – the murderous bastards killed friend and foe alike. They were not patriots, not Dutchmen worthy of the name. They were murderers pure and simple. Ditch them and move on.

It was well and truly dark when their business concluded. They saluted him as their Statholder and commended his soul to almighty God before taking their leave. They bowed to the Statholder’s wife as she swept into the chamber, muttering their goodbyes.

She smiled at her husband as she crossed the floor, still strewn with the planning of a campaign.

‘Charlotte of Bourbon-Menpensier,’ he croaked, his voice, like his body and brain, tired and old. ‘Did I ever ask you, Lottie, what you saw in an old husk like me?’

She laughed and poured him a brandy from the ewer on the sideboard. ‘I saw a rebel,’ she said. ‘A man who stood in the dykes and said “No”. When Philip of Spain clicked his fingers and said “Jump” most men asked “How high, Your Majesty?” You –’ and she kissed the top of his head as she reached his chair – ‘just said “No”.’

‘“No”.’ He smiled ruefully, sipping his drink. ‘And how many Dutchmen have died because I said “No”?’

‘They died free men,’ she said, smoothing his temples with her fingers.

‘Ah, not yet.’ He frowned. ‘And there’s the pity of it. Hence –’ he gestured to the scrolled papers – ‘all this. I say “No” and they send the Iron Duke against me. No sooner has he gone, they send Don John of Austria. And now Parma, the anti-Christ himself.’

‘Parma is a fine soldier,’ Charlotte said. ‘I’ve heard you say so yourself.’

‘Oh, he is.’ William nodded. ‘He’s an Italian prince of charm and diplomacy; but the man is as rabid a Papist as you’ll meet in many a long day.’ He looked at her sideways, a glint in his eye. ‘As were you, once upon a time.’

She pursed her lips and then laughed. ‘Was I?’ she asked.

‘A nun, no less,’ he whispered, looking round to make sure there weren’t any still lingering in the darker corners of their old convent. ‘A bride of Christ.’

‘It may be blasphemy to say so, William,’ she said, pouring wine for herself, ‘but it’s rather more fun being married to you.’ And they laughed together, touching heads.

‘I beg your pardon, my Lord.’ An official in state robes stood in the archway that led to the chamber. ‘I can come back if this is not a good moment.’

‘No, no, Hans. What is it?’

‘The petitioners, my Lord. They have been here all day.’

‘Oh, my God, yes of course. I’d forgotten. Lottie…’

‘I know,’ she said. ‘Kiss the children for me.’ She whispered in his ear, ‘But you promised Emilia the Pied Piper story tonight.’

‘I did,’ he remembered. ‘I can tell her or anyone else that story in my sleep.’

His wife laughed and kissed the top of his head, running her hand down his neck lovingly. ‘It’s her favourite,’ she said.

‘I know.’ Her husband smiled. ‘Just go and tuck her in and I’ll be along presently.’

Charlotte of Bourbon-Menpensier had heard that one many times before. If only the Duke of Alba and John of Austria and the Duke of Parma and even that mad old bastard Philip of Spain could see her William telling Emilia her favourite bedtime story, perhaps they would all just go away. Perhaps they would see the Low Countries as a land full of people, good people just like themselves and stop just thinking of it as so many miles of soil to be won. Perhaps they would just go away and leave the Dutch alone, to their endless battle with the sea. At least the sea played fair and used no mercenaries but the wind and the tides.

‘I know you will,’ she said, and kissed him again before leaving to be with her children.

Hans, like the good steward he was, waited until the Princess of Nassau had left the room before ramming his staff of office down on the polished floor. A servant was rolling up the maps and lacing them together. Another was lighting all the candles and a third drawing thick velvet curtains against the lashing rain and the threatening night. Not a night to be out. A night to be in, in the warmth of the fire crackling in the huge grate. A night to be safe.

The first petitioner crossed the floor and knelt before the Statholder.

‘Who are you?’ William asked.

‘Jean Jaureguy, my Lord,’ the man answered.

‘You’re a Frenchman?’ the Statholder wanted to know.

‘A Fleming, sir.’

William nodded. ‘And what can I do for you, Monsieur Jaureguy?’

The Fleming suddenly stood up and flung back his cloak. ‘You can die!’ he shouted and levelled a wheel lock at the Statholder. The gun barked and flashed in the man’s hand and a gash of scarlet sprayed out from the Statholder’s head as the ball crashed through his skull.

Helene Dee was sitting by the fire, frowning a little as she turned the heel of a stocking. Her husband was not so busy, but he was concentrating just as hard, gazing at her beauty from the other side of the fireplace. His eyes, which had burned into many a soul in their time, were burning now into her temple but she didn’t seem to notice. He upped the psychic pressure and eventually she responded.

‘John,’ she said calmly, not looking up. ‘Are you just practising or are you… one, two, three, slip one knit one, carry slip stitch over… trying to attract my attention?’

Dee immediately looked away. ‘Hmm, sorry, my dear,’ he said. ‘I was miles away. What did you say?’

‘I said, you old fraud,’ she said, with no malice, ‘are you staring at the side of my head because you are practising a bit of magic, or are you trying to attract my attention?’

Dee sighed. Helene was beautiful and that was why he had married her. A lovely young wife gave an old magician a credibility that no phantasms of the living and dead could bring. The men of the court, seeing her beauty, believed that he had used the strongest magic to bind her to him; they couldn’t see any other reason why such a lovely thing would shackle herself to such a dried out man when they, in all their youth and vigour, were available. The women knew why she was married to Dee; clearly he had magic powers which could bring pleasure to a woman beyond her wildest dreams. He could conjure incubi by the score and so when he was unavailable or unable, she could while away the midnight hour in ways no man could match.

They were all wrong. Helene Dee was married to the magus because he had rescued her from a life as a hedge witch, with only stars for her roof and ground for her bed. She had been unkempt and filthy when he found her, her beauty hidden to all. But he saw her inner beauty and it was a happy extra for him that when his cook and valet had washed and polished her, she shone like the stars she had once slept under. She was grateful. He was undemanding and so they rubbed along. But he should have known that a witch, even a hedge witch who made a living with potions and charms, would be more or less immune to all but his most complex conjuring and the outcome of a simple staring match would never be a foregone conclusion between the two.

‘I was trying to attract your attention,’ he said. ‘I was also wondering…’

Helene did not help him by finishing his thought for him, although she easily could have done so. She held up a finger. ‘I’m counting stitches,’ she said. ‘Wait.’ She muttered the numbers under her breath and when she had finished the row, she laid her four needles in her lap, the filmy stocking knitted in the finest linen thread bunched beneath them. ‘Now –’ she smiled at him dazzlingly and her blue eyes danced – ‘what were you wondering, my lord?’

He smiled back at her. All men smiled back when Helene Dee was smiling. Then, his face became serious. ‘Let’s see if you still have the knack,’ he said. ‘Come here and kneel, Nell. Look into my mind.’

‘Oh, John,’ she said, laying aside her knitting. ‘Do I have to?’

‘Humour an old man,’ he said. He clapped his hands lightly and extended them, open, towards her. He shifted in his chair and opened his knees, patting down his gown between them, so she could come in close. When she still hesitated, he clapped his hands again and patted the insides of his thighs.

With a sigh, she got up and with languid grace knelt between his knees. She put two fingers of her right hand on his brow between his eyes and two fingers of her left hand on her own forehead. She muttered a low incantation.