They halted in the last of the light spilling from the torches further up the garden. ‘What are we to do, Father?’ Ned asked. He was making an effort to keep his voice calm. Only the note of it, higher than he had lately used, gave him away.
John took his arm. ‘I do not know . . . yet. War throws up chances, boy. We must be ready to act on one.’
They were about to go he knew not where when they heard the hiss from behind them. It was low enough not to carry to the gate but reached the two of them. ‘Psssss!’
‘What make you there, Lawley?’
He froze. St Lawrence was staring at him from twenty paces away. ‘Checking the walls, Captain,’ he replied, making sure Ned did not turn either. ‘All seems secure here.’
‘Good. Then . . .’ A burst of hammering upon the gate interrupted, turned the Irishman back to the grille in it. ‘Slowly,’ John whispered, and he and Ned stepped back, one measured pace after another, until the shadows at the garden’s end swallowed them quite. Then they moved more quickly until they could put fingers to stone.
‘At last,’ came the soft voice.
They recognised it. Actually, they had both recognised it from the hiss. The way one does if one is a son. Or a lover.
‘Tess.’
XXXVI
Escape
Now he was looking hard, he could see the uneven darker shadow atop the wall. ‘Tess!’ he called again, softly. ‘By my holidame! What make you there?’
‘I have been waiting here these two hours hoping you would come. Now help me down, will you?’
‘How did you get up there?’ John knew the walls were as high the other side.
‘There are fruit trees in the gardens here. I found an orchard ladder.’
John’s heart beat a little quicker. ‘Can you contrive to lift it, love, and pass it over this side?’
‘I cannot.’ A grunt of annoyance came. ‘’Twas my plan, but I kicked the cursed thing in climbing on to the wall. It fell and lies in a ditch below. Can you not help me? I am frozen here.’
Muttering a curse, John peered into the deeper darkness at the wall’s base. But it was Ned who toed it. ‘What of this?’ he asked.
John joined him. In the corner, a gardener must have piled grass cuttings from the bowling lawn and leaves from the several elms. They were soggy after the winter’s deluges but were waist height and softer than the ground. ‘Edge along, Tess, to this corner. There’s a shorter drop here.’
They heard her mutter, then her slide. Soon she was above. ‘Try to lower yourself from your hands,’ John called, ‘then stretch till you . . .’
She did not wait, nor listen. She was above and then she was down, landing on her feet, tipping straight off the rakings, falling into his arms. He caught, held. ‘Are you well?’ he gasped, clenching her tight, her face an inch from his.
She swayed, steadied, stood. ‘Aye, I think I . . . I am.’ She left his embrace, stepped off the green pile. ‘I am stiff, it is certain. Cold, but’ – she shivered – ‘hale for all that.’
John drew back to look at her. The shock came that the action had delayed. ‘Why have you come, Tess?’ he asked, incredulous.
‘Why? You dolt! I have come for my son.’ She grasped Ned to her, hugging him hard. ‘Are you well? You are not hurt?’
‘No, Mother, I am fine. My father has kept me safe.’
‘Your father . . .’ She turned back to John. ‘What did you mean, sir, by bringing him here? Here, of all places? Have you lost the few wits you still retained?’
John flinched. ‘I did not think . . .’
‘Nay, that’s certain. The one house in London where—’
A loud sound interrupted her. The bark of shot, followed by a shattering of glass. Someone screamed. All looked to it, then John laid a hand upon her arm. ‘Tess, I am at fault, I know. I will answer for it hereafter in any way you see fit. For now, though, all I can do is try to keep you both safe.’
The shot had quieted her. ‘Can we not climb back up?’ she said.
He shook his head. ‘If we could, Ned would have been over the wall ere now. The only way out is through the doors, and it is commanded that no man may leave by them.’
She looked back at him sharply. ‘Did you say “no . . . man”?’
Her emphasis hung between them. John spoke to it. ‘Aye, I suppose we could persuade yon Irishman to let you out. He might do it as a favour to me. But your son he will not allow.’
She turned her stare on Ned. ‘Well then,’ she whispered, ‘how about my daughter?’
‘Daughter?’
‘Aye.’ The slightest smile came. ‘Perhaps some use can come of all your playing.’
Ned saw it – and blushed. ‘Nay, Mother, I cannot.’
‘Aye, son, you can and will.’ She turned. ‘Tell him.’
‘I cannot see the way of it, but . . . Ned, if we can contrive an exit for you, then you must take it.’
‘No, Father. I wish to stay here with you.’
John stepped close, put a hand on the boy’s shoulder. ‘Ned, if I could keep you with me, I would. But this escapade is going to end two ways – in battle or in surrender. Gaol or death are the only options here. If I am to survive either, I will need’ – he glanced at Tess – ‘the poor remnants of my few wits. They may suffice to keep me alive. They have done so before. Yet ’tis certain they are not enough to manage for us both.’
Ned stared at him a long moment. Then, to John’s surprise, his arms came up and he pulled his father into an embrace. ‘Do so then, Father. Live. And come back to us soon in Southwark.’
They parted. John looked at Tess. ‘Yet I still do not see how this is to be arranged.’
‘Leave that to me,’ she replied, and reached to a button at her neck. He noted now that she was wearing the simple dress she wore to run the inn. As more buttons undid, he glimpsed her neck. Something more. Her fingers paused. ‘Turn, sirs,’ she commanded.
They obeyed. It did not take too long. She was wearing a long shift under her dress that could be buttoned high. She and Ned were near of a height now. It came to his ankles, though his boots poked out from beneath it. With his long hair loosened, her bonnet atop it, and John’s cloak to cover all, he looked the part. But while the garb changed the look, his profession filled it. He was transformed.
John kept them on the dark side of the shadows until the mob around the postern thinned. Men were being vetted, some allowed in, none out. Those who were admitted were dispatched about the grounds. After a while, there was a lull. No hammering upon the door. Yet from beyond it other sounds came. Bugles called to muster. Drums beat. St Lawrence stood there, gazing towards the house, briefly alone save for his sentinel atop the wall.
It was the moment. ‘Gently now,’ said John, and the three advanced.
They were nearly by him before he heard their approach. He started. ‘Lawley,’ he said. ‘What’s this?’
‘My wife and daughter, Captain.’ The Irishman recovered enough to bow, and both Tess and Ned curtseyed. ‘Maidservants in the house. Can you let them pass?’
‘Alas, I cannot. You know my charge: no one to leave.’
‘I heard the command: no man may do so. And I do not seek it.’ As St Lawrence made to speak again – to deny, John could see it in his eyes – he stepped closer, took the man by the elbow, led him slightly apart. ‘You know that if it comes to a fight, we have but small chance. I am willing to die for my lord, as I know you are. But women are always threatened with a worse fate.’ He let the words sink in. ‘If I am to fight, let me not do so with half my care behind me.’
St Lawrence stared at him for a few seconds, then nodded. He looked up to the guard on the wall. ‘How is it, Drummond?’
‘Same, Captain.’ The man peered left and right. ‘They are not yet in the river gardens, only upon the Strand. No one near.’
‘Good, then.’ The Irishman stepped to the gate, shot the bolts, opened it halfway. ‘Swiftly now.’
John put
his arms around both Tess and Ned, guided them through the entranceway. On the other side, another house’s wall and a narrow lane between.
‘Thomas waits on the water with a borrowed skiff,’ Tess said. ‘We’ll take that way.’
‘’Tis safest. Go.’ John clapped Ned’s shoulder. ‘Look after your mother, boy.’
‘I will, Father.’
Then Tess pressed close, startling him. ‘Come with us, John. I can run as fast as Ned in this skirt. There’s no one to stop us.’
She was right. St Lawrence had stepped back to give them the moment. It was so tempting. And yet . . . ‘I cannot, sweetheart,’ he said softly. ‘While my lord lives, I owe him my service.’
‘Robert Devereux? After all he has done to you? After all you have already suffered for him?’ She stamped her foot. ‘Out upon him, I say. He does not deserve such loyalty.’
John shrugged. ‘Perhaps. But I made a vow: to stay this one last assay at his side. To see his triumph or witness his fall. I cannot break it.’ He pushed her gently away. ‘Now go.’
Still she did not obey. ‘Have you seen Samuel?’ she asked.
‘Aye. He is within.’ He sighed. ‘And I will see him safe if it is in my power.’
The look she fixed him with was one he knew well. ‘Really, sir,’ she said, one eyebrow raised. ‘Loyalty can be taken too far. Sir Samuel can fend for himself as well as any man.’
And with that, she turned sharply and made for the river.
He watched them till the darkness took them. Few torches moved in the gardens and orchards there. The Queen’s forces would yet be mustering and, with God’s good grace, they would make their waiting boat safely.
He stepped back inside. The bolts were shot immediately. ‘A fine-looking wife you have there, Master Lawley,’ St Lawrence said, turning back from his task. ‘And a pretty daughter. Strange how you never mentioned her before. The twin of your boy, is she?’
The sparkle in the Irishman’s eye was more than reflected torchlight. John smiled. ‘I thank you, sir,’ he replied.
St Lawrence shrugged – then both men started as a scattering of gunfire came from the direction of the courtyard. ‘Each man to his duty, then,’ the captain said.
‘Aye.’ John raised two fingers to his brow and flicked a salute. ‘I will see you in the breach, sir.’
‘You will.’
Shaking his head, John left. The sounds of a fight were growing ahead of him, yet he did not untie his buckler, nor draw his sword. He would kill no Englishmen this day unless he could not help it. All he could do was strive to give his lordship the time he needed to burn all incrimination – though he suspected it would do him little good when evidence of treason could be picked up on every corner between Charing Cross and St Paul’s pulpit. But even as he went to check on gates and flimsy barricades, John knew he was rendering the earl a last service; for after today, if tragedy played out its regular course, there would be no earl to serve.
XXXVII
Despair and Die
John went first to seek his lord. He was not hard to find.
No skulking in a cellar or kneeling in a chapel now for Robert Devereux. He was in the dining hall, raging – and burning. Papers were scattered round him, in sheaves, leaning towers, chests. Men were bringing more all the time, threading through the clutch of women – his wife, his sister, their maidservants – and the dejected nobles who’d sallied with him. The room was filled with weeping, imploring, arguing, the maniacal earl ignoring all, flinging handfuls of paper and whole ledgers into the fireplace. Flames rose high and swiftly. ‘Come, William!’ Essex yelled, pausing to drag Mounteagle forward, the nobleman who’d been dunked in the Thames as they fled. Flinging him down, he laughed. ‘Dry yourself before my hearth, why don’t you?’
John stepped a little into the room, watching as both the earl and the fire roared. If only he’d been in this mood this morning – and used it to storm the palace, John thought.
The flames grew higher, the room uncomfortably hot. Then, underneath the crackling of paper, there came another, and one of the stained-glass windows exploded inwards.
The screams redoubled. Essex paused, papers held on high. ‘Guns!’ he cried. He looked above the heads of the women surrounding him. ‘Master Lawley,’ he commanded, ‘defend me! Gain me another hour, I pray you. We are not warm enough yet!’
‘My lord.’
At the door, John looked back. Essex was scrabbling at his throat, as if he was choking, which was possible considering all the smoke. But then he pulled a string from around his neck, a velvet purse at its end. ‘And we consign the King of Scotland to the flames,’ he cried, flinging the purse into the hearth.
Shaking his head, John left the house and made for the courtyard.
On the instant, he could see that any delay would be far short of an hour. Yet the flimsy wagon drawn across the gates could be ballasted with books – Essex House might not possess much gun-powder, but it had an abundance of leather-bound volumes that could resist a bullet better than any fascine.
‘You men,’ he called to the swordsmen loitering near, ‘with me.’
He broke one of the library’s large windows on the side of the building, organised a line of men to run from it to the gates, passed books out. They filled the wagon and it occupied men who otherwise would just stand about and fear. But when it was done, he knew it would make little difference. From his vantage on the terrace he could see over the relatively low walls of the courtyard into the Strand beyond. It swam with troops. Various flags flew – he recognised the ensigns of Lord Burghley, the pygmy’s elder brother; of the earls of Cumberland and Nottingham, the latter also being Lord Admiral of the Realm. There were others. The court had mustered its factions, far outweighing the puny ones within the walls.
He had a thought: to get the earl to boat and thence downriver to Gravesend and a ship bound for the Continent. But craning from the sentinel’s perch at the side gate, he saw the enemy had now plugged the gap that had, he hoped, allowed Tess and Ned through. Flame light now glimmered on spear tip and helm down each of the side paths and throughout the gardens that filled the space between wall and water. A sudden sally of determined men might clear them away, but then what? John could think of no wherryman, howsoever desperate for a fare, who would come to the stairs to pick up the Earl of Essex this day. And what of the rest of them if one did? He did not desire another February swim. No. John shook his head. Cecil and his party had their rabbit trapped in his hole. Now they were going to dig him out.
The voice came from so near his ankle it made him start. ‘Any hope there, Lawley?’
John looked down . . . at the quivering face of Sir Samuel D’Esparr. ‘None,’ he said, stepping down, and continued, as bluntly, ‘Prepare yourself for what’s to come.’
He set off up the path, the knight at his elbow. ‘But what is that to be, sir?’
He glanced at the man. With his watery eyes and his jowls aquiver, Despair looked as he must have done when the Irish set about him with farm implements. Piteous. But John had no time for pity. ‘It may come to a fight. There’s lords in the house who declare they would rather die sword in hand today than on a scaffold a week hence. And we, their servants, will be expected to die with them.’
‘A fight?’ The large lower lip began to tremble. ‘You know, sir, it is not truly my . . . my . . .’ He swallowed. ‘What else may come?’
‘Surrender, though I doubt we’ll get terms. The lords will have relatives on the other side who may help them ’scape the axe.’
‘And their ser . . . servants?’
‘Newgate to start, and then . . .’ John shrugged. ‘Who knows?’
Their walk had taken them back to the main courtyard. John mounted the terrace, till he could see again over the walls to the forces there, which, even in the short time, had close to doubled. Lords were mustering to display their loyalty and a dozen new banners flew. ‘Prison?’ Sir Samuel’s eyes overflowed now. ‘I canno
t go to prison. I could not bear it.’
‘S’blood, man,’ John hissed, ‘master yourself, pray.’
But the knight’s watery gaze and his attention were now fixed over the walls, to the ranks of the enemy. And hope suddenly chased despair from his eyes. ‘Over there!’ he gasped, clutching at John’s sleeve. ‘The ensign of Lord Compton.’
‘What of it?’ said John, trying to shake the man off.
Like a terrier, he held, even pulled John close. ‘Get me to him, Lawley,’ he whispered. ‘I’ll see you well rewarded for it. He is my wife’s cousin. He is bound to help us.’
‘Your . . . wife’s cousin?’
It took a moment for Sir Samuel to realise what he’d said. He released the sleeve on the instant. ‘She . . . she is an invalid, sir. Uh, immured in the country . . . She . . .’
He broke off, mainly because John had stepped close and seized him by the throat. ‘You already have a wife? And yet you were going to marry my Tess?’
He loosed his grip just enough for words to dribble out. ‘I was going to say . . . wife at death’s door . . . going to tell . . . before the final . . .’
A shout came. ‘Captain Lawley!’ John did not instantly turn, but instead leaned closer. ‘If we both outlive this day,’ he said, ‘I will see you in Newgate Gaol, Despair. And you and I will have a reckoning.’
‘Captain Lawley!’
Throwing the man off, he turned now to see St Lawrence running towards him. ‘Look out there, sir!’ the Irishman shouted.
John looked, saw soldiers wheeling out a wagon laden with barrels, a timber lashed to the front of it like the bowsprit on a ship. The apparatus was dragged to a position opposite the gates of Essex House.