The Tower of London was silent but for the croaking of ravens and screaming of kites as they squabbled over the meagre pickings on Traitor’s Gate. There had been few prisoners here of late, and only one that Mal cared about.
He spared a glance for St Thomas’s Tower, where the skrayling ambassador and his party had lodged several summers ago, then turned left into the inner ward and climbed the long slope to the green. An L-shaped timber-framed house was tucked into the corner of the south and west walls, facing the five hundred year-old bulk of the central keep. Mal went up to the front door and knocked. It felt like a lifetime since he had first come here, perplexed and unwilling, to discover he had been chosen as the ambassador’s bodyguard. There was another Lieutenant of the Tower now; they were never allowed to stay in their post long, lest complacency made them corrupt. The Tower was reserved for the kingdom’s most dangerous wrongdoers, many of whom were rich and powerful enough to bend even the most honest gaoler to their will.
His knock was answered at length by a servant, who ushered him through the antechamber with its portraits of former custodians (including, Mal noticed, a new one, of the previous incumbent, Sir James Leland), through the dining chamber that Leland had favoured as his office and up a narrow oak staircase to the first floor.
“Sir Maliverny Catlyn to see you, sir.”
Mal bowed crisply, as befitted the situation, and straightened up.
“Sir Richard Berkeley?”
“The same.” The new lieutenant was a short, spindly-calved man of three score years or more. What remained of his hair was as grey as his full, pointed beard and curled moustache. Disappointing. They needed a ruthless ally in this fight, and Mal doubted they would find one in Berkeley.
“Has Selby confessed yet?” Mal crossed to the window, wondering which tower’s bowels contained the prisoner’s cries. He had given strict orders that no one except his tormentors was to be able to hear the man scream.
“You young fellows nowadays don’t beat about the bush, do you?” Berkeley replied. “Here, see for yourself.”
He handed Mal a sheet of paper. A list of names. Lots of names.
“Damn it!” The paper crumpled in his hand, and it was all he could do not to throw it into the fire. “I thought I told you to get the truth out of him, not a list of every peer of the realm. This is useless.”
“Topcliffe can be very… dedicated to his vocation,” Berkeley said, turning pale. “I regret I have not the stomach to supervise his work.”
“And Lord Grey? Has he been here since the prisoner arrived?”
“No, he has not. Should I have expected him?”
I would have. But perhaps Grey’s appetite for causing pain died when he was forced to suffer it himself.
“I think I had better go and see for myself.”
He shoved the wad of paper into his pocket, gave Berkeley the curtest of bows and strode out of the room without a backward glance.
Selby had been put in a small cell in the base of the Martin Tower; a filthy hole with naught but straw on the floor and a slop bucket in the corner. The prisoner was lying on a pile of straw like a discarded doll, evidently lacking the strength even to roll into a more comfortable position. If he could find one. England had only one torture implement in regular use – the rack – but Topcliffe had grown expert in its operation.
Mal’s gaze fell upon Selby’s arm, lying flung out towards the door as if in mute supplication. A heavy iron manacle with a few links trailing from its staple had been locked around his wrist, but it did not hide the cruel rope burns where Selby had been tied to the rack. A quick survey showed all four limbs in the same state. Mal looked again. The position of the burns suggested that the ropes could not have been tied in place whilst the shackles were around Selby’s wrists and ankles. If it had been done one at a time, that would have been safe enough. If not…
“Gaoler!”
The prisoner did not stir. Mal went back to the door.
“Gaoler!”
A skinny Tower guard in ill-fitting livery shuffled into view. “My lord?”
“Where’s Master Topcliffe?”
“Gone home, sir. Said he was done here.”
“What about…” Mal reeled off the names of his agents, plus a couple of commonplace surnames for good measure.
“Off duty, sir. They was up all night with the prisoner.”
He scratched a stubbly sideburn and flicked the results towards the prisoner.
“All?” Mal asked, trying to rein in his impatience. “Is no one here that saw the interrogation?”
“Yes, sir. Me, sir.”
Mal looked him up and down. “You were called in to help subdue the prisoner?”
“No need for no subduing, sir. He came quiet as a lamb.”
“Really.”
“Aye, sir. He even thanked us as we took off his shackles.”
“You took off his shackles. All of them?”
“Only for a moment, sir. Master Topcliffe said he couldn’t do the racking proper like, not in shackles, but Sir Richard told him he had to. So we took ’em off and tied him up, then put ’em back on again.”
Mal suppressed the urge to slam the stupid little man’s head against the wall. It wasn’t his fault after all. Thank God Berkeley had overruled Topcliffe. Still, it might have been enough.
“Leave us,” he told the guard. “And close the door behind you. I may be in here some time.”
“You’re not going to torture him, are you, sir? Only Master Topcliffe gets paid by the hour, and he won’t be too happy if someone else does his work for him.”
Mal slammed the man against the cell wall.
“You can tell Master Topcliffe,” he growled, leaning down so close he nearly gagged on the man’s foul breath, “that if he had done his job properly, I wouldn’t need to do it for him. Do you understand?”
The guard nodded. “Y-y-yes, my lord.”
Mal let him go and he scuttled out of the cell before he could be reprimanded further. When the door had closed, Mal turned back to the prisoner, whose eyes were now open.
“I gather you heard all that?”
“Most of it,” Selby rasped. “You were a fool to trust these feeble-minded creatures with such a task.”
“A mistake I will not make again,” Mal replied. He hunkered down, just out of Selby’s reach. Even in his present enfeebled state, the man might still be desperate enough for a last attack.
“Shall I tell you what I told my friends about you?” Selby said with a sly smile.
“Everything you’ve said here is a lie. I have no wish to hear more such.” Mal drew his dagger.
“I told them… Aaah!” Selby gasped as the dagger blade slid between his ribs. His smile faded to a look of hatred, then of panic as he realised Mal had not withdrawn the dagger.
“I’ll just leave it there for a while, shall I?” Mal said, getting to his feet. He retrieved the unused slop-bucket, turned it upside down and sat on it. “This time I want to make sure you are absolutely, certainly dead. For all time.”