CHAPTER XXVII
The first challenge was to get to the bolthole unnoticed. On a warm summer’s morning they would be more conspicuous hooded and cloaked than with their faces uncovered, but on the other hand the twins stood out in any crowd.
“We’ll wear our plainest clothes and go openly,” Mal told them. “If we look like we’re going about our lawful business, we’re less likely to be noticed.”
He led them through the quiet streets towards Bankside, crossing Long Southwark well away from the Great Stone Gate that guarded the southern end of London Bridge.
“Try to look less furtive,” he hissed to Sandy, taking him by the arm. “We’re just a trio of hardened carousers looking for an early start to our pleasures.”
By way of demonstration he forced a laugh, as at a ribald jest from his companions. A Southwark matron sweeping her doorstep rolled her eyes at them and brushed the dirt more aggressively in their direction.
“I could cloud the memories of anyone who recognised us,” Sandy said.
“You’ll do no such thing. We might as well send out heralds to cry our names and whereabouts through the streets.”
“Jathekkil and Ilianwe would not even notice, if I did it skin-to-skin–”
“No.”
At last they came to the house Mal sought, in an alley not far from the courtyard where he and Percy had been ambushed. New and hastily built, its timbers were already warping in the damp English climate, and it leaned out so far there was scarcely an arm’s length between its upper storey and its neighbour across the alley.
He knocked on the door thrice, paused and knocked again. The door opened to reveal a girl of about sixteen, beggarly thin apart from a belly swollen with child. Mal ushered the others inside.
“Upstairs, back room,” he told them, slipping the girl a coin.
“What is this place?” Coby whispered. “A whorehouse?”
“Not exactly.”
He followed Sandy and Coby upstairs, into the dingy bedchamber. Its shutters stood open, though the sun was not yet high enough to clear the roofs. Lines of laundry hung from the sill, crossing the courtyard behind the house. Coby pulled back the bed-hangings and wrinkled her nose.
“This is a whorehouse.”
“It’s where the whores come for their confinements,” Mal said. “I pay them a small stipend, and they keep this room for me when I need it. What they do with it the rest of the time is none of my business.”
He did not add that some men found pregnant women arousing, and thus there was a little truth in his wife’s assessment. No point in sowing doubt in her mind, not when the breach between them was so recently healed.
The chest was under the bed where he had left it. He pulled it out, disabled the poisoned-needle trap and unlocked it.
“Now I believe you,” Coby murmured, squatting down next to him. “Isn’t that the box from Paris?”
“The very same.” He lifted out a tray full of documents and set it aside. Underneath was a pouch of money and another, slightly larger bag, which he handed to Coby. “Steel shot. I had some made up, when I first returned to England. Hoped you’d never have to use it.”
She grimaced. “I hope I don’t have to, either.”
He locked and rearmed the box and put it back in its place. There was nothing to do now but wait. He sat down on the edge of the bed and Coby drew a three-legged stool over and sat at his feet, leaning against one of his legs. He stroked her pale hair, schooling his heart to patience, though he wanted nothing more than to run through the streets in pursuit of his son’s abductors. He was no use to Kit dead, he reminded himself again and again.
The sun had crept above the rooftops and was just casting a tentative beam over the windowsill when Mal was jerked out of his reverie by the sound of knocking downstairs.
Coby jumped to her feet. “Surely no one knows where we are, do they?”
Mal opened the door and stepped out onto the landing. Muffled voices in the street, and another knock, urgent and demanding.
“Both of you, this way!” he hissed at his companions. “Bring the saddlebags. Hurry!”
They crept down the stairs as fast as they could, Mal leading the way. At the bottom he signalled silently to Coby, who nodded.
“Hold fast there!” she shrieked in her best Bankside accent, “I’m on the pisspot.”
“I don’t care if you’re on your deathbed, woman,” a muffled voice came from beyond the door as they fled down the passageway. “Open up, in the name of the King!”
Mal pushed through the end door, through a dark and smoky kitchen and out into the courtyard. Another alley led westwards. Mal edged down it and peered out into the street. No soldiers here yet. He waved his companions across the road into another alley that ran behind the Rose Theatre. Not far to the Globe now.
Coby slipped through the gates after Mal and allowed herself a sigh of relief as the familiar smells of the theatre yard enveloped her: sawdust, stale beer and the fear-sweat tang of nervous actors. Or perhaps that was just her imagination. Her heart was still pounding from their flight through the back alleys of Bankside.
“Why is the wagon not loaded yet?” Mal said to Gabriel, gesturing at the stack of chests and crates in the yard.
“We still have to get you lot past two sets of gate guards,” Gabriel replied. “And in truth, I do not trust the other actors not to give you away. The fewer who know you are with us, the safer you will be.”
He opened one of the chests, which proved to be empty but for a bit of sacking in the bottom. Coby dumped her saddlebags into it and stepped in after them. The last thing she saw as she folded herself down into the box was Mal arguing quietly with his twin. Sweet Jesu! Could Sandy never do anything without complaint?
Gabriel brought an armful of costumes and dumped them on top of her, then shut the chest. She could hear the straps being buckled tight, and wondered how she would get out if no one came to free her. Would she be able to lift the lid high enough to saw through the leather with her belt knife? She drew a slow breath to quell her rising panic. She was with friends and loved ones. She was doing this for Kit. Whatever happened, it was worth it.
Her hiding place was lifted into the air and carried some distance before being thrown down onto a hard surface with a jolt. She pressed the back of her hand against her mouth to stifle a cry of panic. Someone pushed the chest so that it slid across the wagon bed and bumped up against something, sending her crashing into that same end, shoulder and head knocking painfully against the inside wall. Scarcely had she recovered from the shock when her feet and knees felt the impact of another chest pushed up against hers. Mal, perhaps, or Sandy.
It seemed like an age before the loading was completed and the wagon set off. Bouncing around in the bottom of the crate, Coby wished Gabriel had put the pile of costumes beneath her instead of on top. She would gladly risk discovery in return for fewer bruises.
Some distance further on the wagon turned, then turned again, and slowed to a halt. Was this the Great Stone Gate? She held her breath, hearing voices from the driver’s seat that lay only inches beyond her head. The faint, demanding tones that must be the gate guard, followed by the more mellifluous voice of the actor Richard Burbage. She thought she heard Prince Arthur’s name mentioned, and imagined coins changing hands. At last the wagon lurched into motion once more, juddering over the cobbles of London Bridge and into the city itself.
Mal twisted in his confinement, trying to get comfortable. His legs were too long: even with his feet braced against the far wall of the crate, his knees were practically by his ears and his joints burning with the strain. It brought to mind the scavenger’s daughter, a cruel device used to crush men until their ribs cracked and blood spurted from their nostrils – or so the ballads said. A prayer came unbidden to his lips, from the times long ago when he had woken often from nightmares of blood and death.
“Sancte Michael Archangele, deduc me per tenebras. Ferro tuo viam illumina…”
By the time the wagon finally halted and he heard the scrape of the other crates being unloaded he was ready to weep with relief, but he only kissed the pommel of the dagger he had been clasping between his sweat-grimed hands and offered up a final thank-you to Saint Michael. Even the bone-shaking impact of the chest being dumped on the ground felt sweet as a release, until another prospect occurred to him and his heart lurched in fear. What if this was not the inn outside the city walls, but Aldgate? He braced himself for discovery, prepared to come out fighting.
Scrape and rattle of buckles being undone, then a flood of blinding light as the chest was opened and the concealing costumes pulled aside. Mal looked up but could not make out the figure standing over him, only a glare as of light reflecting off a steel helm. As he prepared to draw the dagger, the blur resolved itself into the shape of a man, bare-headed and haloed in light.
“Here, let me give you a hand,” Gabriel said.
Mal accepted the offer gratefully, levering himself up on his elbow whilst Gabriel hauled on his free arm. Cramped muscles screamed at him and he staggered and nearly fell, but the other man caught and steadied him. Mal took a deep breath and sneezed in the dry dusty air. They were in a barn, bright speckled shafts of sunlight picking out the gilding on the actors’ wagon. Coby ran over and flung her arms around him.
“We’re not out of the woods yet,” he murmured, brushing her hair back from her cheek with the edge of his thumb.
“I know.” She turned her head and kissed the palm of his hand, sending a delicious shiver all the way down to his balls. He gently pushed her away; now was not the time for distractions.
“Is this the Three Horseshoes?” he asked Gabriel.
“Aye, just as you asked.”
“You’re hoping for news of Shawe?” Coby said.
“It seemed worth a try.” He clapped her on the shoulder. “Speak to the landlord. Find out – discreetly – if he has any deliveries for Shawe. I’d go, but he might recognise me from last time and inform our enemies.” He turned to his brother. “Stay here with the wagon. I don’t want the landlord seeing you either.”
Satisfied that everything was under control, he headed out into the street. There must be a livery stables around here somewhere. Of course Henry or one of his allies might have had the wits to send out warrants to all the stables and inns with descriptions of Mal and his brother, but he had to chance it. They had already lost a morning just getting out of London; God only knew how far ahead of them Kit might be by now.
The actors settled down to a lavish dinner of chops, pies and boiled meats whilst Coby approached the landlord, a balding man with a belly that proclaimed his trade as blatantly as the sign above his door.
“What can I do for you, lad?”
She thought quickly. “Master Burbage would like a jug or two of beer for the road.”
“You one of them actors, then?” He looked her up and down. “I must say, you boys look a lot more convincing as women from a distance.”
“Yes, I’m sure we do,” Coby replied, not sure whether to be insulted, or grateful that he hadn’t seen through her disguise. “Now, if you please, sir, the beer. We’ve a long way to go and it looks set to get even hotter this afternoon.”
“You’ll want to stop in Waltham Abbey, then, if you’re heading north. Should get there by sunset, this time of year.”
She peered past the landlord into the shadows of the storeroom behind him. A row of crates were stacked just inside the door. Could they be for Shawe? “You know, if you have any letters or packages you need delivering to Bedford or Cambridge or… or Lincoln, we’d be glad to take them.”
The man frowned in thought and stared up at the rafters as if the information were written there in the soot.
“Can’t say as we do, but I’ll ask around.”
Coby thanked him again and went to bid farewell to Ned and Gabriel, who promised to be in Cambridge within the week.
“Won’t Burbage want you to play every tavern between here and Norwich?” she asked.
“He’s not Naismith,” Gabriel said. “The Prince’s Men don’t play for just any rabble. I’m more worried he’ll want to stop at some country house for the summer.”
“You mean like Lord Burghley’s new place?” Ned said. “I hear it’s fit for the King himself, God speed him to good health.”
“Burghley House?” Gabriel looked thoughtful. “Now there’s somewhere to aim for. It’s north of Cambridge, so perhaps we can persuade Burbage to press on to the town itself first.”
She bade them farewell again and ran out into the yard, just in time to see Mal arriving with the hired horses. Under cover of strapping their belongings behind the saddles, she told him what she had seen.
“Crates?” he said. “You’re sure?”
“No, I imagined them. Yes, I’m sure. What do we do?”
He sighed. “Even if they are for Shawe, I doubt our enemies would conveniently label them with his place of residence. We’ll go to Cambridge, and track him from there. That was the plan.”
“When have our plans ever gone the way we intended?”
He squeezed her hand where it rested on the saddle’s cantle.
“Don’t think like that. We have to get him back.” He patted the horse’s rump. “Wait there. I’ll go and fetch Sandy.”