CHAPTER 2

The London Road

Once they had cleared Headington Hill and Cheney Lane, Nick set a punishing pace on the London Road, justifying this to himself by observing that the sky was looking leaden, as if it might snow. In truth, it meant he and Edmund had no chance to talk. He had been surprised that Edmund did not seem curious about Nick’s life since going down from Oxford and was more interested in talking about himself and his achievements. But if Nick was being honest, this was a small price to pay for the way he had ignored Edmund when he was a lonely adolescent in a strange new town.

They had been riding for some time and were approaching Didcot when Nick spotted a lone horseman ahead. He was sitting on his horse in the middle of the road. Immediately wary, Nick slowed down, then reined up within hailing distance of the man.

“What is it?” Edmund said, pulling up beside him.

“Not sure,” Nick replied, studying the stranger carefully. He was wearing a soft cap pulled low on his forehead and a muffler around his neck so that most of his face was hidden. He was turned sideways on the road, effectively blocking it, one hand holding the reins of his horse, the other concealed by the angle of his body. Instinctively, Nick moved his cloak back over his left hip and, transferring his reins into his left hand, placed his right hand on the hilt of his sword.

“I’ll go see what the fellow wants,” Edmund said, and before Nick could prevent him, he was spurring his horse into a canter toward the stranger.

“God’s teeth!” Nick muttered, and dug his heels into his horse’s flanks. “Hold up, Edmund,” he shouted.

But by now Edmund had reached the stranger and seemed to be conversing with him. Just as Nick drew up, the man brought his right hand from behind his body and pointed a small crossbow at Nick. For a moment, Nick stared in freezing disbelief at the deadly iron tip of the bolt pointed straight at his heart, before he flung himself sideways from his saddle. Simultaneously, he heard the wicked snap of the bolt being fired, then the ground rushing up to meet him with bone-jarring impact. He rolled desperately away from the lethal surge of hooves stamping and rearing around him and managed to make it to a ditch at the side of the road. Crouching for cover in case the assailant had managed to reload, he drew his sword and peered over the top of the bank before scrambling up and running to Edmund’s aid.

But it was all over.

Their assailant was slumped over his pommel, and as Nick approached, he slid slowly down the side of his horse, smearing the terrified horse with his blood, and fell to the road, where he lay still. The horses were prancing and rearing in panic at the smell of blood, and Nick could see Edmund struggling to master them.

Nick dragged the man clear of the horse’s hooves, then placed the tip of his weapon against the supine man’s chest. But there was no need. The man was dead, pierced through the throat, his eyes regarding Nick with grotesque surprise, his mouth open as if in midshout, the front of his jerkin drenched in gore. Nick did not recognize him. Swiftly, he glanced around, looking for another rider, but the fields on the other side of the hedges were empty.

“Is he dead?” Edmund asked, at last managing to dismount. He was clutching his shoulder.

“You’re hurt.”

“It’s nothing. Just a scratch.”

Nick noticed that the dead man was holding a dagger; his crossbow lay on the road. He must have discarded it as soon as he realized he had missed and dropped it in favor of the knife. Crossbows were notoriously slow to load in a skirmish.

Nick tore off a piece of linen from the dead man’s shirt and bound up Edmund’s arm. The three horses had calmed and were now cropping the grass on the verge of the road as if nothing had happened.

“Do you know this man?” Nick asked, squatting down and going through the dead man’s pockets. When Edmund didn’t reply, he glanced up. Edmund had turned pale, as if he had just realized he had killed a man. He shook his head.

The only thing Nick found on the body was a small purse of gold.

“A cutpurse?”

“Perhaps,” Nick replied. But the manner of attack seemed too deliberate for a spontaneous robbery. It was almost as if the man had been waiting for Nick. He saw again the iron bolt aimed directly at his heart. There was no happenstance here. The man had been sent to kill Nick. He wondered if Francesco del Toro had spotted Nick tailing him and arranged to have him taken off the board.

“We have to report the death to the local magistrate,” Nick said, getting to his feet. “Can you ride?”

Edmund nodded.

“Then let’s get out of here.”

Nick caught up the reins of the dead man’s horse, soothing it in a low voice to keep it calm. Edmund held it steady while Nick heaved the corpse across the saddle and tied it on. Next, he looped the reins over his pommel and mounted his own horse. Edmund did the same, although Nick could see he was in pain.

“What were you saying to him?” Nick asked.

“I asked him if he needed help,” Edmund said.

“What did he say?”

“He said he had a message for you.”

Nick frowned. “For me specifically?”

“Yes. The Honorable Nicholas Holt.”

Then not a robbery but an assassination. Del Toro.

“Then you arrived, and, well …” Edmund trailed off. Glancing at him, Nick saw he was swaying slightly in the saddle. His wound must have been more serious than he had first thought. Edmund’s sleeve was red to the wrist, and blood was dripping down his hand and onto the neck of his horse.

Nick held his questions and concentrated on getting them both to Didcot, where Edmund’s shoulder could be properly treated. He tried to remember what Eli and Rivkah, twin brother and sister doctors in Bankside and his closest friends after John, had told him about infection. Something to do with cleaning the wound with wine and then smearing it with honey before binding it in clean linen. It had sounded more like a recipe for a ham to Nick, but he would do his damnedest to follow the instructions to the letter if such things as wine, honey, and clean linen could be had. Such was his faith in his friends’ medical skills.

Their friendship had begun when Eli found Nick bleeding in the streets of Bankside and stitched up the deep gash in Nick’s face that had been meant for his throat. Now a neat white line ran down from his right temple to just under his right jaw. Nick thought the scar gave him a dashing, piratical look; Rivkah said it made him look like a Bankside cutthroat.

Nick smiled to himself as he remembered what Rivkah had said. Sitting on a stool in their tiny kitchen the night he was wounded, he had not known whether he was in shock due to blood loss or from the sight of Rivkah in a flowing nightgown inadequately covered by a cloak. At first he had thought her Eli’s wife, but when he realized they were twin siblings, his heart had given a great lurch, and he wasn’t sure it had ever recovered. Perhaps that was why every time his friend Sir Thomas Brighton eyed Rivkah with more than gentlemanly interest, he wanted to throw him through the nearest window.

*   *   *

The death of the unknown assassin, albeit killed in self-defense, took two days to sort out. The local magistrate—a gentleman farmer—was not the sharpest tool in the shed, and it took repeated explanations to satisfy him that the killing was lawful. Neither Nick nor Edmund said anything about assassination but let the magistrate believe it was a robbery gone bad.

“Here’s your gold, then,” he said, handing Edmund the small bag. He had assumed Edmund had been the target, as he was the one wounded.

“Er …” Edmund said, looking embarrassed.

“Thanks for your help, sir,” Nick said before Edmund could blurt out the truth, steering him firmly to the door of the magistrate’s home. They had accepted the offer to stay for a couple of nights at the manor; Nick was concerned for Edmund, but he also needed to find out the identity of the man who had tried to kill him. Leaving Edmund recovering at the manor, he galloped back along the way they had come to make inquiries, but no one seemed to know the man or have any information about an accomplice. On the second day of fruitless searching, he gave up, aware of how late his report to Cecil was going to be. He just hoped Cecil didn’t learn of del Toro’s escape before he, Nick, could break the news to him.

Edmund’s arm was in a sling, but he said he could ride. The wound had been small but deep, and he had lost a fair amount of blood. The magistrate’s wife had patched him up proficiently, even putting in a couple of stitches.

“We have five boys,” she told them, breaking off the thread and surveying her handiwork with complacence. “You have no idea how many cuts and scrapes I’ve patched up in my time.” Nick had been pleased to see her clean the wound with wine, but when he mentioned honey, the woman had looked at him as if he were mad, although she grudgingly complied. “Never heard of that,” she said. “Must try it next time one of my lads lops something off.” She said this quite cheerfully. Nick admired her spirit and thought she would make a good battlefield nurse. She was far more intelligent than her husband, for one thing. And much younger. Her firm round body filled out her bodice quite charmingly, he thought.

“God go with you,” the magistrate said, waving them off. He seemed pleased that his first dead body had been sorted so quickly and he hadn’t had to go fagging the length and breadth of the county in search of a murderer. Judging from his girth and easygoing nature, Nick thought the magistrate was the type to settle for the obvious solution of an attempted robbery. If it had been him, Nick would have left the case open and continued the search for the family of the dead man in order to identify him. Nick left a letter to be sent back to Robert by the magistrate, asking his brother to make further inquiries into the identity of the man.

Nick gave the magistrate a few coins to bury the body decently.

“That was good of you,” Edmund said, “seeing as he tried to kill you.”

They were, once again, riding east on the London Road. This time Nick was careful to set a gentle pace so as not to jar Edmund’s shoulder. Unfortunately, this meant there was ample opportunity to talk.

“He wasn’t a suicide,” Nick replied, conscious of the men he himself had dispatched into eternity. “He had the right to a decent burial.” Even suicides deserved to be buried in a churchyard, Nick thought. In his opinion, most people’s lives were so brutish and short, it was no wonder some poor unfortunates gave way to despair and decided to off themselves. If everyone who felt despair was going to hell, then heaven was going to be a very sparsely populated place. Perhaps that was what the clerics wanted: paradise as an exclusive gentlemen’s club.

“I really don’t feel comfortable keeping this,” Edmund said, trying to give the gold back. “It feels wrong somehow. Like blood money.”

“You saved my life,” Nick said. “If anyone deserves it, you do.”

Nick realized that not only was he was in Edmund’s debt, but he had misjudged him. Edmund’s reaction to being given the purse of the dead man indicated he was a decent man with a conscience.