CHAPTER 30

City of London

Luckily, the room was only one story above the ground floor, and there were barrels of ale stacked against the wall under the window. Even so, Nick landed hard, and a searing pain shot up his legs. He jumped from the barrels to the ground, praying he hadn’t broken any bones. To his relief, his legs held him up. Glancing right and left, he saw Edmund limping down the alley east on Budge Street in the general direction of Billingsgate Fish Market and the docks. He was favoring one leg, and Nick thought he had probably twisted an ankle on landing. From the front of the tavern, he heard Hector baying and the voice of Robert shouting something. Nick had stationed Gavell downstairs in the taproom in case Edmund should try to escape. He should have put him outside but hadn’t thought Edmund would be reckless enough to jump out the window.

Stupid, stupid, he chided himself.

“This way,” he yelled, and set off at a run after Edmund. He knew Hector would pick up his scent and the others would be following close behind.

The warm weather had brought out all of London onto the streets. Edmund must have realized that he had a better chance of escape if he forsook the back alleys and kept to the main thoroughfares, no doubt hoping to get lost in the crowd. But Nick was able to keep him in sight, partly because he had the use of both legs while Edmund was limping. Still, Edmund was running for his life, and this gave him an edge in both speed and cunning. He dodged between shoppers and barged others aside; once Nick almost lost him as he entered a tavern and came out the other side, but Nick was prepared for this, as Annie had done the same thing, and he was determined not to be taken in again.

Only when Edmund veered left on Walbrook Street and made for the Royal Exchange at the junction of Cornhill and Threadneedle Street did he almost lose him. Nick skidded to a halt at Bank Junction where these two streets converged and surveyed the great open area in front of him. Thronged with people shopping for goods ranging from precious metals to expensive imported wine to bolts of silk and velvet, it was a sea of people in constant motion. Almost anything could be had at the Royal Exchange for a price, and trade was especially brisk this fine May morning. But most people were strolling through the area, and Nick spotted Edmund’s head bobbing through the crowd, parting it like a rampaging bull trampling a wheat field. Then Edmund looked back and Nick saw his face, white and staring, his mouth open as he drew in great gasps of air.

Nick took off after him, ignoring the shouts and curses of people he was forced to elbow out of his way. When he got to where he had seen Edmund, he looked around and saw him doubling back toward the river. If Edmund caught a wherry, Nick would likely lose him. Somewhere above the hubbub, he heard Hector baying and knew he was tracking Nick through the city.

When Nick looked back on that day, he couldn’t explain why Edmund did not make for Old Swan Stairs, directly in front of him, but suddenly turned and ran toward St. Mary-at-Hill and the graveyard where Protea was buried. Perhaps he knew that the chances of a boat being immediately available to him were slim to none and that waiting for one would give Nick the precious time he needed to catch up; perhaps he could not run any farther and had decided to seek sanctuary in the church if he could just get to the altar and lay his hands on it, claiming the protection of the church for forty days. After this, he would have to either surrender to the secular authorities or confess his crimes publicly and then abjure the realm. As this meant he would go unpunished, Nick was determined Edmund should not gain asylum. Perhaps Protea herself, the mystery woman Edmund had murdered on The Dalliance, was also of this mind, for when Nick arrived, he saw Edmund leaning on her gravestone trying to catch his breath.

Nick circled him, sword drawn, and placed himself in front of the gate that led to the church.

“It’s over, Edmund,” he said. “In a few moments, my brother and Gavell will be here. You cannot escape.”

Edmund’s mouth twisted at the corners. Nick couldn’t tell if it was a grimace or a smile.

“I will never surrender to you,” Edmund said. “You will have to kill me first, as your family killed my father.”

“Your father took his own life,” Nick reminded him.

“He had no choice. He was bankrupt.”

“He did have a choice. As did you,” Nick said, slowly walking toward him. “You are leaning on the gravestone of the woman you murdered on the ship. How will you explain your choice to her?”

Edmund looked down, surprised, and stepped away from the grave. “I know of no Protea,” he said.

“That’s the name I gave her, thinking she was Annie.”

Now Nick and Edmund were facing each other perhaps ten yards apart, swords drawn.

“Tell me who she was, so I can have the name changed on her tombstone.”

Edmund shrugged. “Just a whore I picked up on the docks. Told her there was good business to be had on the ship with the sailors, gave her one of Annie’s rings. She thought it meant she had to fuck me.” He laughed. “That suited me. Afterwards, I strangled her and left her in the cargo hold.”

Again, Nick was stunned by the casual manner in which Edmund referred to his killings. He showed no more emotion than if he had put down a fox that had been raiding the chicken coop. Briefly, Nick wondered if Edmund was insane, but there was no manic gleam in his eyes such as Nick had seen in gaze of the lunatics at Bedlam. Edmund’s eyes registered no grief or joy, nor anger, but a kind of deadly boredom, as if the world did not interest him except as a means of satisfying his desires.

Only his fingernails, bitten to the quick, a habit even in his Oxford days that Edmund had not succeeded in conquering, suggested something that ate at him without mercy, some torment inside him.

“And it was you, of course, who locked me in the gunpowder room and started the fire.”

“Naturally. Shame you escaped. Again.”

Edmund had been the man the sailor had seen escaping the burning ship. What had niggled at him when the boatman imparted this bit of gossip to Nick on his way to Whitehall was how improbable it was for a sailor not to have recognized someone from his own crew.

“Richard Stace did not escape,” Nick said. “You have his death on your conscience too.”

Edmund just shrugged.

It was fitting, Nick thought, that their final confrontation should end in a graveyard with the dead lying beneath their feet. Edmund’s passage through the world had been marked by death: his father, Simon Winchelsea, the unnamed whore, and indirectly, Richard Stace. That he had failed to kill Thomas, John, and Nick did not signify. He had intended to kill them and must bear the guilt of it on the day of reckoning.

“Nick!” It was Robert’s voice.

Nick glanced over his shoulder. “Stay back,” he shouted.

The momentary distraction was all Edmund needed. He leapt forward and slashed at Nick’s sword, striking it out of the way, then quickly thrust before Nick could bring up his guard, and Nick felt the edge of the blade slice through the shoulder of his sword arm. Immediately, he changed sword hands. He could fight almost as well with his left as his right.

He saw Edmund’s face register rage for the first time. “Oh, well done,” he mocked. “All that expensive training with a sword master.”

Nick did not reply. He closed on Edmund, driving him back toward Protea’s grave. Edmund was beginning to parry and slash wildly now, clearly tiring, his twisted ankle slowing him down.

A kind of fury was building in Nick as he drove Edmund inexorably back. Gone was the pity he had felt for him at Oxford when they were boys, gone the sympathy for the misfortune of Edmund’s family and the guilt that his own family had wanted for nothing. Even if all this was true, it did not exonerate Edmund from his crimes, nor did it explain them. At the heart of Edmund was a great evil, and this evil must be purged from the world if the world were to survive in any form that Nick recognized, a world in which loyalty was based on love and not hate, on protecting life, not taking it.

Nick’s blade pierced Edmund’s side, and Edmund staggered but remained upright. His doublet began to darken with blood.

Nick was also bleeding from his shoulder, and droplets of blood flicked onto the gravestones as he moved. The next thrust of his sword took Edmund square in the chest. Edmund blinked and looked down at the shaft of steel protruding from his flesh, Nick’s hand still holding the blade. He looked up at Nick and smiled. It was one of the most ghastly things Nick had ever seen.

“Finish it,” Edmund said.

Even on the point of death, Edmund clung to the belief that his father had been a victim, that he himself was a victim. This was the heart of his delusion, Nick realized, the seed that had grown into a great black flower. And now Nick suddenly understood why Edmund was smiling. He would die a victim. In death, he would be vindicated. In his own mind, he saw himself as Hamlet, the tragic prince, done to death by an unjust world.

All this passed through Nick’s mind as he held the sword. He could withdraw it, and perhaps Edmund would live long enough to be tried and executed. But looking into Edmund’s eyes, he knew he was begging to be allowed to die with his illusions intact.

“Kill me.”

Holding Edmund’s gaze, Nick stepped forward and pushed his sword up to the hilt into Edmund’s chest. Their faces were only inches apart, almost like lovers, and Nick felt a great sigh issue from Edmund’s lips, and with it a bloody froth. Edmund’s legs collapsed under him, and Nick caught him under the arms and sat him down, the sword still buried in his chest, grotesquely erupting out his back. Gently, Nick leaned him sideways so that his cheek rested against Protea’s gravestone.

Edmund’s eyes were beginning to dull, but he was still alive. He tried to speak and his right hand twitched, beckoning. Nick put his ear to Edmund’s mouth.

“I wanted to be you,” he said.

And died.