There was an unnatural stillness in the little room, as if the world held its breath to see what would happen next. And into the silence a voice from outside called softly, ‘Chief? You in there?’
Theo had the door open in a second, and Jarman Hodge fell into the room. Straightening up, he looked round at all of us within, and nodded as if our presence confirmed his expectations. Turning to Theo, he said, ‘I followed Fox and Ashe. They were hunting for one of their number, a man called Bryce, concerned because he’s missing. I couldn’t get near enough to hear everything they muttered to each other, but seemingly there were six of them. One died in the barn, two went to St Luke’s and are now following the Company’s wagon.’ He paused, chewing his lip. ‘I reckon this Bryce was staying at the Saracen’s Head. One of them must have been, for without a doubt they had eyes inside the inn. Must have done,’ he added. He was frowning.
‘You did well,’ Theo began, ‘you—’
But Barnaby interrupted. ‘If I may, Master Davey?’ he said courteously. Theo waved a hand. ‘Thank you. Your man here is quite right: we had taken note of Bryce – that’s his name – early on.’
‘What does he look like?’ I asked.
‘Wears a dark wool cap, under which he’s bald. Small in height but very powerfully built, with a body like a barrel. Light eyebrows, almost colourless eyes, wears even fine garments as if they’re rags.’
He had just described the man I saw appear and disappear in the inn yard.
‘He’s been busy these past days,’ Barnaby went on wryly. ‘He poisoned Francis with belladonna in a jug of ale, and when poor Oliver Dauncey spotted him in the scullery behind the taproom washing out the jug, he punched him so hard that he dislocated his jaw, threatening much worse if Oliver didn’t hold his tongue. However, he didn’t manage to find the underground room and the tunnel down to the cove. We already knew the tunnel was there, of course – I found it when I was down here looking for locations where we could perform, and it was perfect for our purpose. This time, we’ve always been so careful to keep the old door locked, and when it’s closed it’s virtually invisible.’ He stopped, his face creasing in pain; warning signs. I thought, that something grim was coming.
‘But then bloody Bryce started shadowing Raphe Wymer all the time, and he must have followed him through the door. Seems he extracted from the poor lad the information he wanted: where the four of us kept slipping off to. Wouldn’t have been hard,’ he added bitterly, ‘Raphe was soft as putty, and the vicious bastard didn’t need to kill him.’ He drew a couple of breaths, then continued. ‘Bryce emerged on the shore beneath the headland. He was looking round for the hovel – Raphe wouldn’t have known exactly where it was, he never came here – and he was down on the shore eyeing the narrow track leading up inland when we jumped him.’ He glanced at Humphrey Brewiss, then the four of us. ‘We’d been keeping a watch,’ he said. ‘We took him by surprise. Humphrey said, “I know you! You’ve been hanging around at the inn!” and Bryce’s face twisted in a sneer and he said something about us being the easiest band of foolish fops he’d ever had to deal with. Told us what he’d done to Raphe. That was too much. I was behind him, he’d totally ignored me, so when I hit him with a rock it came as a complete surprise. He wasn’t dead, so we rolled him down to the sea and held him under till he was.’ He looked at Theo, mouth twisted down. ‘Another one for you, Master Davey.’
Jarman had been listening intently. Now he said, ‘That Bryce isn’t the only one to have found your hidden way. Fox and Ashe have just discovered the door too. I saw them go through, and it’s pretty plain they’ll be following it all the way to the bay. I reckoned I could get here more quickly overland, and seemingly I was right. But they won’t be long.’
And, like actors striding on stage as they hear their cue, the door burst open and Robert Fox and Martin Ashe appeared on the step.
They would be expecting four. Now their eyes roamed round the cramped space and took in eight of us.
‘The odds are not in your favour, Robert Fox,’ Theo said.
The shock of finding the four men they had surely come to kill in the company of four others had made Fox’s long, lean face go pale. Now, hearing himself addressed by name, his thin lips tightened until they were almost invisible.
‘There are more of us,’ he said coldly.
‘If you mean the barrel-shaped bald man, don’t count on him,’ Barnaby said. ‘Several tides have risen and fallen since he went in the sea, and his body will be some way up the coast by now.’
‘Bryce,’ muttered Fox. ‘No matter. He had served his purpose.’
Your spy in the inn, I thought. Who poisoned Francis’s ale. Something fell into place in my head. Possibly it was thinking about the belladonna in the jug of ale: suddenly I knew what had killed Francis Heron and how it had been done. ‘He got his hands on the silk handkerchief that Raphe gave me for Francis’s headache,’ I said. ‘He soaked it in a very potent and highly effective potion that slowly and inexorably brought about death.’ And the most realistic visions and horrific illusions, I might have added, remembering.
Fox’s only response was a shrug. But he hadn’t denied it.
‘I’ve been wondering how you came by the potion?’ I asked, looking at Fox.
He looked at me coldly. ‘We interrogate any number of witches,’ he said dismissively. ‘They talk. Some of them try to buy off their interrogator by offering to give him his heart’s desire, whether it’s sex, a love potion or a subtle poison to rid you of your enemy. Most men take the bribe and kill the dark-hearted bitch anyway.’
‘And naturally,’ I said, ‘when the nature of this potion came to light, all of those believed to be implicated in its manufacture and its employment would be arrested on the very gravest charges.’
Fox gave another shrug.
The room seemed to grow colder.
With difficulty, I recalled what we had been talking about.
‘Another of your number lies dead in the coroner’s crypt,’ I said. Staring into his intensely dark eyes, I realized something else: I knew how the spade-bearded man in the barn had met his end. ‘Two of the young players believe they were responsible, but I have no doubt they’re wrong.’
‘No bloody use to us with a broken ankle,’ Martin Ashe said. ‘He’d have slowed us down just when we needed—’
‘Be quiet.’ The two words were softly said, but Ashe shut his mouth like a trap closing. If we hadn’t all realized it already, his expression gave away the vicious cruelty of his superior.
Robert Fox turned to me. ‘You are helping these four men.’
‘Yes.’
He sighed. ‘Like all the simpletons who gaze open-mouthed at their antics on the stage, you have been taken in,’ he said. ‘They have spun you a tale of intelligent men drawn into a secret society where they feel safe discussing their ideas with like-minded companions. You believe them when they tell you they yearn for freedom of thought, for a place where it is safe to discuss matters which right-thinking men regard as heresy and treason. Of course you want to help them, Doctor.’ His eyes raked over Theo, Jarman and Jonathan. ‘The coroner and his man know no better than you, but I’m surprised to see you in this company, priest.’
Jonathan met the sharp steel of his gaze. He raised his eyebrows. ‘Are you?’
Fox laughed, a sound as harsh and cold as a blade being sharpened. ‘Jonathan Carew,’ he said softly. ‘Oh, we haven’t forgotten you’re down here.’
‘Indeed I am,’ Jonathan replied. Then his voice changed. ‘And you may tell the men who sent you that the stagnant backwater that was meant to make my brain atrophy within six months and have me dead of boredom and despair in a year has failed in its task.’
They held each other’s eyes for a few moments. Then Fox turned away.
Theo said, his strong voice cutting the tension, ‘What are they really up to, then? They’ve fooled us, you said. Taken us in. So why are they running away? What’s this secret they’ve brought out of London, that’s so vital that six of the State’s spies have come haring after them to confirm what they know and make sure it goes no further?’
Fox turned to Ashe, but Ashe had nothing to say. Facing us again, Fox said, ‘Our function is that of our predecessors, who learned their craft from the very best. Just as Walsingham’s men were for their Queen, we are the watchmen; we search out plots against the King. We have been accused of killing first and verifying the details afterwards, but we take the view that what worked for a queen will work as well for a king. Men have died here, of course they have.’ Suddenly there was passion in his voice. ‘One – no, two of ours’ – he shot a poisonous glance at Barnaby – ‘or, indeed, three, for the man you knew as Daniel was ours, sent to pose as a supportive friend for Francis Heron as he made his escape, while in fact keeping us aware of all that happened. And’ – the thin lips moved as silently he counted – ‘three of the Company. Six lives. A small price, when set against what is at stake.’
‘Which is?’ It was Theo’s voice.
‘Oh, not much, you might say, to make the State’s finest set out on their long journey. Not much, to lead to the deaths of half a dozen men. But it is our job. It is what we train for, what makes us willing to do what we must to ensure the safety of the man we serve. There was a whisper, you see; just a whisper. A house had been let, the whisper said, hard by the very epicentre of power in the realm. A plot, the whisper went on, that would see an end to the King, his family, his government and every man of power, wealth and influence in the land. Fantastical, you might say? But Ashe and I, we know. We know this whisper speaks the truth, and when we have finished dispatching the rats who evaded the trap’ – he stared hard and long at each of the four players – ‘we shall return to London and see to the rest of them.’ He glared round at us all, and now it seemed as if the dark eyes were full of fire. In a voice like a snake’s hiss he said, ‘Do you still wonder that we acted as we have done?’
I had no idea what would happen next.
Fox had traced his whisper, found his whisperers, and surely he would not leave the four who remained alive. But their ship was due tonight: they had so nearly made it. Perhaps Theo had the same thought; he said calmly, ‘We are now eight, Master Fox, and you are but two. You tell us you act for the State, yet what you just told us sounds preposterous and highly unlikely, and I for one am disinclined to believe you. These four, however’ – he indicated the players – ‘have told us a far more convincing tale.’
I turned to Robert Fox, my hand on the weapon at my belt. ‘Are you going to kill us all?’ I asked softly.
He held my eyes for a moment, then he looked away. ‘Come,’ he said curtly to Ashe. As they turned to leave, he fixed me with a long, steady look. ‘I know you now,’ he said very quietly. ‘We have long memories, Doctor Taverner.’
It happened in a flash. One moment, two men in dark cloaks emerging silently into the night. The next, a cry, a flash of steel, a big, athletic, dark-complexioned figure who moved like a dancer and wielded his sword – no wooden model now – as if it were an extension of his own arm. And two bodies on the track, one with a deep cut in his throat, one with a bloom of scarlet on his chest. Both of them dead.
And Harry Perrot – Othello, Oberon, Mercutio, Aaron the Moor – said in a voice breaking with grief, ‘He’s dead. Raphe is dead. He was gentle, and I loved him. They did not have to kill him.’
It took several days for Plymouth to fall back into its usual ways after the Company had gone. The townspeople, of course, had no idea of what else had been going on, and they missed the simple excitement of having a group of players among them. The chatter in the taproom of the Saracen’s Head was of little else for some time, and there were regular and quite heated arguments over who had performed best, which was the most entertaining play, whether comedy was preferable to high drama or extreme violence. The remaining players arrived safely in Exeter, we learned, put on a reduced programme of three very minor plays – they were, of course, missing many of their major actors, and it was quite a surprise they had managed anything at all – and then set off back to the capital.
My sister, my friends and I took longer to put that extraordinary week behind us. We were all relieved and happy that Thomas, Barnaby, Humphrey and poor sad old Gerard had got away. The ship they were expecting turned up as arranged in the cove under the headland, we saw them aboard, Theo, Jarman, Jonathan and I, and they said farewell to us with heartfelt thanks. My three companions had gone on ahead, but I waited on the shore until the ship was out of sight. I still had misgivings, but I was trying to let hope outweigh them.
At home, I watched with secret pleasure as the new bond between Celia and Jonathan grew stronger. Something had happened during the hours they worked on the code, and I thought it was surely something good. But it was none of my business, so I didn’t ask. Not that my sister would have told me anyway.
Judyth and I at last had our quiet supper together, in her sweet-smelling little house down by the old quay. What happened that night, I shall keep to myself.
I found the occasion to speak to Theo in private about the extraordinary plot that Robert Fox had claimed was being prepared in the heart of the capital. Theo had wondered if it was our duty to report it (to whom I wasn’t sure) on the grounds that the least suspicion of something so unimaginably terrible ought not to remain concealed.
‘All those names, Gabe, and that unimaginable suggestion concerning what they’re up to!’ he said as we sat huddled together late one afternoon behind the tightly closed door of his inner office, a bottle of fine brandy and two mugs on his desk. ‘And Fox seemed so certain of the source of his intelligence, so sure that this house which some band of conspirators had rented was even now having a tunnel dug in its cellar to connect it to the undercroft of the Palace of Westminster!’
‘Robert Fox was a fanatic,’ I replied. ‘Look what he did down here! Six dead, one his own man who was killed by another of them.’ I paused, for this was still too fresh a memory not to be painful. ‘And three of them players, surely no more threat to the safety of the King’s exalted person than you or I, yet dead nonetheless.’
‘You sound angry,’ Theo remarked.
‘I am angry.’
It would be a long time before Harry Perrot’s agonized words faded from my memory. He was gentle and I loved him, he’d said of poor Raphe Wymer, Desdemona to his Othello. They did not have to kill him.
I thought of the coded list in Francis Heron’s notebook. Those men would die too if we gave it up, whether they were guilty or not, for Robert Fox’s kind never took the risk of leaving someone alive who only might be a threat.
Theo was watching me. ‘You are in favour of keeping it to ourselves?’
‘Yes,’ I replied, ‘for I will not have more deaths on my conscience.’
There was a long silence. I thought I could hear Theo turning it over in his mind.
Then he sighed, reached for the brandy and poured a generous measure into the two mugs. He raised his, I did the same, and we clinked them together.
‘What should we drink to?’ I asked.
He pulled a face. ‘To this bloody plot being no more than a fantasy,’ he replied.
We drank.
A month or so later, when the weather had turned very cold and several of the townsfolk had suffered painful falls that required a doctor’s attention, I paused between visits to a very old man and an even older woman to snatch a hasty meal in the Saracen’s Head. I had nearly finished when Coxton the innkeeper sidled up to speak to me.
He looked carefully to see if anyone was listening. Then, leaning close, he said, ‘You realize, Doctor, that the Company weren’t responsible for all the weirdness that went on?’
I stared at him. ‘Go on.’
‘Something got disturbed,’ he said quietly. ‘Like as not it was when they unblocked the old tunnel beyond the underground room. It’s old, see, this inn. Been Coxtons here for generations, like I said, and we know.’ He paused, and there was sweat on his brow. Dropping his voice to a whisper, he added, ‘Whatever was down there woke up. Picked up the mischief being acted out by those young Company fools and fed on it. Grew strong on it. Joined in.’ He straightened up. Then with a nod, he moved away.
I found I’d lost my appetite for the last of my pie. I felt cold suddenly, and slightly sick. The tunnel had been bricked up at the far end and the door in the passage turned into a permanent barrier – that had been done as soon as the Company had departed – but it wasn’t much of a comfort just then.
I stood up. I had more patients to see, I couldn’t afford to waste time trembling in the Saracen’s Head taproom.
And besides, I reminded myself as I strode out, I didn’t believe in ghosts.
Did I?