Carefully, therefore, he tied the boat up to a stake and then worked away to loosen the grille. Before very long, he had wriggled into the drain. Cautiously, disturbing only the rats, he crept up the dark tunnel towards the black and cavernous womb of the London Tower. Hoisting himself up with a rope, he reached the grille above, unlocked it, and made his way through the cellar.
Hilda sat in her chair. In her hands was a piece of embroidery, but she was finding it hard to concentrate. Henri had come home early that morning, but apart from a polite enquiry after her father, they had spoken little. All day she had waited in suspense. Now she tried to embroider while Henri played chess with his youngest son and occasionally glanced at her in his cool, detached way.
The evening was quiet. Some way off, by the West Cheap, a fire had started at dusk and had spread to several houses. Such things were common in London, however, and she had thought no more about it.
But her heart did jump when, two hours after dusk, Ralph arrived to pay them a visit.
By now, all London had heard of his exploits in the East Cheap that morning, but although Henri looked amused and Hilda anxious, nobody said anything. Indeed, by now the surly fellow seemed not so much angry as thoughtful. Nodding to them all and taking a pitcher of wine, he sat on a bench opposite Henri and gazed morosely into the fire for some time before speaking. When, at last, he did, Hilda felt herself go cold. “I have a problem, Henri,” he said.
“What is that?”
Ralph took a draught of wine, then looked up slowly. “A spy,” he said quietly. “Close to me.” Hilda felt her hand tremble. “You see,” he went on, “I nearly made a big catch today. Arms. I’m sure they were there.”
“Perhaps you just made a mistake.”
“It’s possible,” Ralph admitted. “But I have an instinct, you see. I think the conspirators were tipped off.”
“By whom?”
Ralph was quiet for a moment. “By someone who knew my plans.” He looked straight at Hilda. “Who do you think could have done it?”
Hilda knew that she had gone very pale. She rested her hands in her lap and stared back at him. Did he know, or was this an innocent question? Was it a bluff to catch her out? But why should he suspect her? Her mind raced over the possibilities. “I’ve no idea, Ralph,” she said. But despite herself, it seemed to Hilda that her voice had shaken.
They were both looking at her now, Ralph and Henri. She longed to get up and leave them, but dared not do so. Who knew how long the agony might have continued, had it not been for an unexpected interruption.
It was Gertha. Her face was flushed from her evening walk and she was beaming with pleasure to see them all. Oblivious to the tension in the room, she went straight to Ralph, kissed him, laughed loudly as he blushed awkwardly, then took the talisman he wore into her large hands and cradled it for a moment.
“The fire out there is growing big,” she remarked, and Hilda prayed that this would change the conversation. But her prayer was not answered.
Turning to Ralph, Gertha remarked: “So you did not arrest the red-beard?”
Ralph grunted. “Something happened.”
“You will catch him. Won’t he, Hilda? He is so clever.”
Once again, Hilda realized that they were all looking at her. She stared at the German girl numbly. Was this some horrible trap? Had Gertha already told Ralph that she had known about his raid the night before? Was she about to do so now? Instead, however, to her equal horror, Gertha went on: “I saw him this evening in East Cheap with his two friends, hugging each other and laughing.”
Ralph’s jaw dropped. “Which friends?”
“The man who makes armour. Alfred, yes? And also a little man with a round head. No nose.” She laughed. “Maybe they think you won’t catch them, but you will.” Then, giving his head a kiss, she happily announced, “I go to my father now,” and was gone.
In the silence that followed, nobody spoke. Hilda, staring down at her embroidery, felt her mind in a whirl. How the girl had seen the two men with Osric she had no idea. What it might mean, she dared not think. At last, she glanced towards Ralph.
He was sitting very still, staring at the fire. He seemed to have forgotten her, but his face was working, as though in pain. How could he have overlooked that link? Yet it was so obvious. Barnikel the friend of Alfred. Alfred the friend of Osric. Osric, the wretched little serf he had found in the Tower cellars. The Tower cellars, where the arms were stored. The Tower cellars, for which Alfred had made the locks.
And suddenly he saw it. How they had done it, he could not imagine. Nor why. But now, jumping up from his seat, he cried out aloud:
“The devils. I know what they’ve done. I know where the arms are hidden!”
“Where?” asked Henri quietly.
“The Tower itself!” Ralph shouted. Then, to Hilda’s terror, he added: “I’ll go there now.”
And he rushed out of the house, followed by Henri.
Hilda ran swiftly. In the darkness, it seemed to her that she flew. Past the long shadow of St Paul’s she ran, then down the western hill towards the Walbrook.
She knew she must hurry. It might even be too late. But whatever the risks, even if there were spies watching his house, she knew where she must go.
She must tell Barnikel. He would know what to do.
So great was her urgency, she scarcely noticed that the fire which had started earlier had now been spread by the wind all the way along the line of the West Cheap and was attacking some of the houses on the eastern hill.
Nor did she notice something else much stranger. As she ran down the hill, other feet were running softly not far behind her.
She crossed the little bridge over the Walbrook and started along Candlewick Street. It was empty now. She was panting so hard that she could hear nothing else. Her chest was hurting. Reaching the London Stone, she paused for a moment to catch her breath and heal the stitch in her side. She leaned forward, her hands on her knees.
The strong hands took her completely by surprise as they suddenly grabbed her, pinned her arms, and threw a cloak over her head. Before she had time to scream, they were dragging her swiftly into an alley.
The job was easier than Osric had thought. He had soon established a rhythm. First he took all the arms out of the chamber and across to the grille. Letting them down into the drain was not as hard as he had imagined; it took only half an hour. After this, he dragged them in bundles down the black passage until he reached the faint outline of the grille in the riverbank.
Two hours after he had entered the cellar, he was ready to load the arms on to the boat.
Only one thing had surprised him. Each time he had come down the passage towards the grille, it had seemed to him that the sky outside was lighter. Though he had somewhat lost track of time as he worked, he knew it was still only the first half of the night. It could not possibly be the light of dawn he was seeing. So when, finally, he stepped out on to the mud, he received a shock.
Blown by the wind, the fire that had begun on the western hill had developed a huge and terrible life of its own. Not only were the wooden buildings of London tinder-dry; not only was there a wind behind the leaping flames; but once it reaches a certain critical point, a great fire creates a wind of its own. So it was that on this night in the autumn of 1087, the huge fire had taken hold. Crackling and roaring, it had advanced across the eastern hill, along the spur behind the Tower and round to All Hallows.
As he emerged from the tunnel, it was the noise that Osric noticed first. A dull, continuous roar coming from the city. Only as he reached the boat and turned round did he see it.
It was an astounding sight. Hissing, crackling, sending up explosions of sparks, the fire was leaping up like a single flame round the rim of the curving slopes above. Here and there a flare suddenly rose as though some huge, unseen dragon was lurking behind the hill, breathing flames as it devoured the city. And looming up before this encircling ring of fire was the great, black sha
dow of the Tower.
It was a striking picture, but he had no time to look.
Ignoring the flashing and spluttering flames on the hill above, he dived back into the blackness of the tunnel.
Ralph hurried down the hill. Below him, lit by the flames, stood the huge mass of the Tower.
His progress had been delayed. Twice as he hastened across the western hill he had been forced to pause to direct people who were trying to contain the fire. Whatever his faults, he was a man of action. Using a chain of men from the garrison at Ludgate, he had attempted to save a house by passing buckets of water from a well. “Douse your roofs,” he had cried to the people in Poultry. At the Walbrook stream, he had made another concerted attempt to hold the fire. But even as they watched, the great red monster had flown hissing and spitting across a hundred-foot gap from one thatched roof to another. Finally realizing that it was useless, he had hurried on through streets of panic-stricken people, feeling the flames behind him as he ran ahead of their roar towards the great, grim silence of the waiting Tower.
In a few bounds, he was up the wooden staircase. With hardly a glance back at the encircling flames, he strode through the doorway into the main hall, calling for the guard.
There was no sound. He went through the chamber, heading towards the stairs to the cellar. There was a torch burning in an iron bracket, but no guard. Ralph cursed. No doubt the fellow had gone to look at the fire. Seizing the torch to light him on his way, he unlocked the door and went down the spiral stairs.
At first, as he gazed around the chamber and the main western cellar, he saw nothing.
Then he noticed the open drain. So that was it. Taking up a position with his sword, he waited for someone to come up. Nobody did. He waited a little more, straining to hear. After a while, fearing that perhaps the conspirators might already be making their escape, he cautiously lowered himself down. Holding the torch in one hand and his sword in the other, he advanced along the passage.
More than half the weapons were stowed away. It would not be long now before the loading was done. After that Osric had one trip back up the passage to make sure he had not dropped anything. The tide was starting to come in. So much the better. It would be easier to get the heavy boat off the mud.
He was just bending over the boat, stowing some spears, when he heard a sound behind him, turned, and saw the familiar, long-nosed face of Ralph Silversleeves emerging from the passage.
The Norman straightened up and smiled. “Alone, Osric?” he asked. Then, glancing around: “I think so.” Seeing Osric’s astonished face, he calmly went on: “You are arrested, Osric, in the name of the king,” and, advancing across the mud, he pointed his sword at the little fellow’s midriff. “You thought you could deceive me with your friends, didn’t you?” he hissed. “But soon, perhaps in there,” he jerked his head towards the Tower, “you are going to tell me all about it.”
The flames were leaping higher than ever above the slopes. From somewhere behind All Hallows there was a great crack and a billow of flame. The red flashes lit the Norman’s face, half pale, half in brutal shadow.
It was now that poor Osric made his foolish move. Scrambling into the boat, he snatched for a weapon. A moment later, his face ghostly white, his eyes larger and more solemn than ever, he faced the Norman again. In his hand was a spear.
Ralph watched him. He was not afraid. The serf lunged at him furiously, but he stepped back. He let Osric clamber out and advance towards him while he gently retreated up the bank, each step taking the little fellow further away from the arms still in the boat.
How pathetic Osric looked. Ralph saw the hatred in his eyes: it radiated from his whole body, the pent-up loathing of a man who has suffered two decades of oppression. Ralph did not even blame him. He just kept his eye on the tip of the spear. Another backward pace. He was halfway up the path now, at a clear advantage. Thanks to the flickering red light rising so fiercely above the Tower, the spear gleamed, easily visible, while the serf blinked at the glare in front of him.
Osric lunged.
It was so easy. With a single, swift blow from his sword, Ralph cut off the spearhead, leaving Osric with nothing but the shaft in his hands.
“Well, little man,” he said softly, “are you going to kill me with that stick?”
Osric’s large, round face was so woebegone, his eyes so desperate and serious; an open, pathetic smudge where his nose should have been; a broken shaft where the spearhead had gone. Uselessly, yet unable to give up, he took another pace forward, jabbing at the Norman with his broken weapon.
Ralph grinned. “Do you want me to kill you, so you can escape torture?” he asked. “Would you like that?” He chuckled. He needed the serf alive, but it amused him to frighten him.
He raised his sword.
How startled Osric looked. How amazed. Was it the sword flashing before him? The prospect of death? The huge red wave of fire that had just risen behind the Tower? Who knew? Ralph started to bring his sword down.
But it was not the fire, nor the sword, but another astonishing vision that had caused Osric to gasp in amazement. It was a great, red beard and a pair of blazing eyes, a huge figure from out of the shadows that now arose, blocking out even the Tower, and, surrounded by a great halo of fire, his arms upraised like some avenging Viking god, swung the mighty double-handed battle-axe through the flame-filled sky, and smote down upon the Norman’s head, smashing the skull and cleaving even his torso in two down to the bottom of his ribcage.
Barnikel had come.
Half an hour later, they buried Ralph’s body.
It had been Osric’s idea, and it had seemed appropriate. Dragging it up the passageway wrapped in oiled cloths, they had carried the body to the secret chamber where the weapons had been stored, and placed it in there. Then, carefully, Osric had sealed up the wall again and they had left, leaving no trace, locking and refixing the grilles behind them. It pleased him to think of the Norman locked in there for eternity.
Soon afterwards, he guided the boat into the stream, towards the place where other hands would disperse the weapons.
Barnikel, meanwhile, walked back through the city. His own house at All Hallows was already in flames. He did not care. There was nothing he could do to save it. The fire had spread everywhere now, from the stalls in Candlewick Street all the way up to Cornhill. But the most significant event of that night was announced when, crossing the Walbrook, Barnikel heard the cry: “The fire’s got St Paul’s. It’s coming down.” Which caused him, at that moment to smile. For in his hand he held the talisman and chain they had ripped from Ralph’s broken body. And now he knew where to put it.
One thing about that evening remained a mystery.
Just as the Dane and Osric were taking the body away, the labourer had turned to the old man. “By the way,” he demanded, “how did you come to turn up here so conveniently?”
Barnikel smiled. “I got a message. I came as fast as I could. As I didn’t see Ralph on the way to the Tower, I came here.” He grinned. “At just the right time.”
“But who sent the message?” the little fellow persisted.
“Oh, I see. Yes, that was certainly lucky.” He nodded. “A fellow came. From Hilda.”
Which was a mystery.
1097
It was one summer evening ten years later, as Hilda sat in the hall of the house by St Paul’s, that the mystery was solved.
Looking back on her life, she usually supposed that she was contented. Certainly, it had to be admitted that over the last decade things had generally worked out for the best. Osric had gone, though she sometimes saw his little son, who lived with Alfred and his family now. Barnikel too. But she was glad of that. A month after the great fire of eighty-seven he had suffered a huge stroke down at Billingsgate Wharf and had crashed out of this life into the hereafter. A year later the expected rebellion in Kent and London had taken place and been utterly crushed. “Thank God he wasn’t there to make a fool of himself,” she o
ften murmured.
And now old Silversleeves had gone too. Two months before, on a wet April night, a merchant had arrived at the stout stone hall of Silversleeves with a written message for the old man. An hour later a servant had approached the master to find him sitting stiffly in his chair, apparently still reading the message on the table before him. Except that he was dead.
The Canon of St Paul’s had been buried in St Lawrence Silversleeves with every obsequy and honour. Three days later she and Henri had moved into the house, and in the coming weeks even she had been astonished to discover the full extent of the fortune he had bequeathed them.
There had been peace too, for Rufus reigned securely now. Recently he had built a huge hall of his own at Westminster, a fitting companion for the Confessor’s Abbey. He was strengthening the fortress beside Ludgate. And when she glanced up from the courtyard of her house, she could see, on the site where the Saxon St Paul’s had burnt down that fateful night, the outline of a great Norman cathedral, massively built in stone, that would soon dominate the entire skyline, just as the Tower dominated the river.
Yet whenever she stared at St Paul’s and remembered that great fire, she always found herself pondering certain mysteries.
The talisman belonging to Ralph had been found in the cathedral’s charred ruins. But what had he been doing there? And whose were the mysterious hands that had held her for two whole hours that night before she had been just as suddenly released near the Walbrook only to see half London burning? She had never been able to solve either puzzle, and she had not supposed that she ever would.
Now that their children were grown, it often happened that Hilda and her husband were alone in the evenings, and they had long since evolved a habit of politely ignoring each other by which they could tolerate the other’s presence quite comfortably.
Hilda, therefore, was quietly doing her embroidery; Henri was sitting by his father’s chessboard, playing against himself.
This evening, however, Hilda was irritable. The reason, she thought, was the house. She had always felt uncomfortable in the stern, stone hall. She wanted to go outside, or else to find some more intimate, congenial place. Blaming her husband for all this, she occasionally glanced at him with an expression of dislike.