The Rufus Spy Read online

Now, on the morning of the third day since the monastery had burned, I had to get us safely to the place I’d remembered; the place deep in the secret heart of the fens where I thought nobody would find us. I’d thought it would be relatively easy. Now, faced with the actuality of fulfilling my plan, I wasn’t so sure.

  After an hour, I stopped.

  ‘Are we lost?’ Rollo asked calmly.

  ‘Not exactly lost,’ I replied. I slipped from the mare’s back. ‘Hold my reins, will you?’

  I’d only been to the place I was looking for once before, but that had been a few weeks ago and the memory was fresh. Two details, however, had changed: the water level was considerably higher now, and the previous time I’d come, I’d been on foot.

  I’d also been with someone who knew the way, but I didn’t allow myself to dwell on that.

  I couldn’t do anything about the water level, but I was hoping that the altered vantage point of being down at ground level instead of up high on the mare’s back would help …

  And, after far too long – I could sense Rollo’s growing impatience, snapping and snarling along the track behind me – it did.

  I emerged onto a sort of beach, on the edge of the land and with the black fenland water spread out before me. A little way to my right was the place I sought.

  I wanted to cheer. Instead I hurried back to Rollo, informed him I’d found it and, mounting once more, told him to follow me.

  We shoved our way through onto the shore together. Stopping, I pointed.

  He stared at the place I was indicating.

  ‘But it’s an island,’ he said. ‘And, unless you can magic one up, we haven’t got a boat.’

  ‘We don’t need one.’ My confidence had returned. ‘There’s a causeway leading out to it from there.’ I pointed again. ‘It’s not really an island because actually there’s a narrow neck of land about three paces across that connects it to the shore. Come on!’

  I kicked the mare, and, with Rollo splashing along behind me, we went along to the place where the connecting causeway began. I dismounted, bending down to inspect the ground.

  I was back in my own territory, and now the tension and fear were controllable. Straightening up, I looked out over the dark water. And, quite soon, I knew exactly where the safe path went.

  I took off my heavy cloak and flung it across the saddle. Then I gathered up my skirts and tucked them securely in my belt. I spoke some calming words to the mare, who was a little nervous, and she relaxed. She gave a soft whinny, and nudged me affectionately with her nose. With one hand on her neck, hoping that the warmth of my touch would go on providing reassurance, I set off into the water.

  It wasn’t as deep as I’d feared, and even having negotiated the lowest point I was only wet to halfway up my thighs. Relieved that I wasn’t going to get soaked, I raised my eyes and looked ahead.

  The island was much as I remembered it, and just as dark and forbidding. Like the fen edge behind me, the vegetation here grew dense and profuse, forming thickets of alder and willow in which grew the occasional ancient oak tree. Beneath the canopy of the trees there grew the thick, all but impenetrable carr made up of a tangle of bushes and shrubs, some of them peculiar to the marshes. Under the carr grew the marsh fern, rusty brown now.

  On the island there was a house. It was small and simply constructed, with wattle-and-daub walls and a reed-thatch roof. It consisted of one main room, behind which there was a separate workroom. Other than the privy, that was all.

  I had a mental picture of the main room, and I was hoping that once we’d lit a fire and driven out the damp it would be cosy enough.

  I’d reached the far end of the causeway. I led the mare up onto dry ground, and she shook her head as if in relief, making her long mane fly and her harness jingle. I moved out of the way so that Rollo could step onto the island as well.

  Silently I handed him the mare’s reins. I walked forward, right up to the low door. I raised the latch and, before my courage failed, flung it open.

  I went in, coming to a halt just inside the door.

  I held my breath.

  Nothing happened.

  I gave a gasp of relief.

  For, while I had recognized this house’s value as a hiding place, nevertheless I feared it. It had been Gurdyman who, only a few weeks ago, had brought me here. He too had used it as a place of sanctuary; somewhere to hide when he feared his life was threatened.1

  It had protected him from the danger that he knew about, but in going there he had encountered a far worse peril. So, because of him, had I.

  But that peril had gone now.

  And as I stood there in the open doorway it seemed to me that this house, whose solitary inhabitant had once been a force for good, was now welcoming Rollo and me as if we were long-lost children.

  He had lost them.

  Furious – with his prey but even more with himself – the man drove a hard, bunched-up fist into the tense muscle of his thigh. He had been so sure. He’d been proud of having picked up their trail again when they left the fens and headed north. He’d thought he’d lost them, but some instinct had told him to try that road; to pause in that out-of-the-way hamlet, stitch on a smile and pause for a pleasant word with the red-haired priest. Who had told him, with hardly any prompting, precisely what he wanted to know. Then there had been that dismal, miserable day of waiting in the rain, only for the reward of the glorious moment when he picked up the trail again and followed it to the monastery.

  He’d been so sure it had ended there; he’d left, hurrying on with all speed to do what he had to do next.

  Now he knew.

  He was after the man again, and this time he wouldn’t let himself be fooled.

  ELEVEN

  Late in the day after his lengthy discussions with Gurdyman, Jack met his loyal lawmen at the tavern on the quay. As he had anticipated, the murder of Elwytha Picot was the sole topic of conversation. Sheriff Picot, Jack learned, was incandescent with rage and searching desperately for someone to blame for his late nephew’s wife’s savage death.

  ‘I’m not sure it matters if they’re guilty or not,’ Fat Gerald observed. ‘He wants a hanging, and if he can come up with a slower and more painful method of execution, he probably will.’

  His remark silenced the group for a moment. It was, Jack thought, looking round at the men’s faces, as if every one of them – himself included – recognized the truth of it.

  ‘I’m not pointing the finger at you, chief,’ Walter said quietly, ‘but the sheriff’s sore as a whipped hound that he can’t hang anybody for the death of his nephew. I reckon Gerald’s right, and whoever he picks on for the lady’s death will be made to pay twice over.’

  ‘Has the body been removed?’ Jack asked, more for the sake of moving the talk away from Walter’s remark than because he really wanted to know.

  ‘Yes,’ said Ned. ‘They brought it up to the castle early this morning and put it in the sheriff’s private quarters. It’s being prepared for burial.’

  ‘And that will be no small affair,’ Lard offered. He grinned briefly. ‘They say the sheriff was none too fond of his niece by marriage, and had little to do with her when she was alive, yet all the same it seems he’s intent on making a lavish spectacle of her death.’

  Who will there be to mourn her? Jack wondered.

  He remembered the gaggle of servants dancing attendance on her, the morning he’d watched her walk out.

  ‘What of the household?’ he asked.

  He’d spoken too abruptly, and one or two of the men were exchanging glances. ‘Not too sure, chief,’ Walter said. ‘I don’t suppose they’ll stay, though, with nobody to serve and nobody to pay them.’

  ‘If I were sheriff I’d have a team of men standing by to search them as they go,’ young Henry said, eyes bright with fascinated speculation. ‘I’d wager that they’ll have helped themselves to one or two easily portable and very valuable little treasures.’

  ‘Aye, and who wo
uld blame them for that?’ Ranald replied roughly. It was him, Jack recalled, who was vaguely related to one of the serving maids. ‘The master and mistress of the house were hard on those beneath them,’ Ranald went on. ‘From what I hear, they did nothing to earn the loyalty, respect and devotion of those who served them.’

  ‘Go on,’ Jack said.

  Ranald turned to him, a faint smile twisting his mouth. ‘I guessed you’d want to know the latest, chief, and I’ve just come from a lengthy chat with my cousin’s wife’s sister.’ He paused, gathering his thoughts. ‘Nobody who worked in the household was happy there. Many of the lowest servants were little better than slaves, since their only payment was their lodging and their food, and there was never enough of that.’

  ‘Why did they stay?’ asked the lad, Iver.

  Ranald turned weary eyes on him. ‘They had no choice, boy. When Gaspard Picot put up that great house, he demolished other people’s homes to make room for it. They’d have been no better than half-ruined hovels to one such as him, and he’d probably said, if he’d troubled to think about it, that he was doing the town a favour by getting rid of an eyesore.’ He shrugged. ‘Eyesore or not, those houses were home to the folk who inhabited them, and when Picot destroyed them, many decided that they had little option but to accept his terms and go and work for him.’

  ‘He was a hard master?’ Jack asked.

  ‘He was. Maudie – that’s my cousin’s wife’s sister – says she was spared the worst of him, because she was the lady’s maid, and the lady had separate quarters. But her man, he served the master, and that man was cruel in so many ways you wouldn’t be able to count them, and the whippings and beatings weren’t the worst of it.’ Ranald paused, gazing across the room, clearly thinking. ‘Best way I can sum it up, from what Maudie told me, is that Gaspard Picot could make you believe there was no hope, and that breaks a man’s spirit.’

  Again, silence fell as they all thought about that. Then Fat Gerald said, ‘In that case, I don’t blame them for making off with a treasure or two.’ There were nods and grunts of agreement.

  They were ordering more ale when the door of the tavern opened and Ginger came hurrying in. ‘Get one for me, will you?’ he called out to Magnus’s pretty wife, and she nodded, smiling. ‘The weather’s closing in,’ Ginger added, shoving Iver up the bench so that he could sit down. ‘There’s a mist rising and it’s no night to be out.’

  ‘Are you just off duty?’ Jack asked. Ginger, busy with the first draught of ale, merely nodded. ‘Where have you been?’

  Ginger swallowed and wiped his cuff across his mouth. ‘At Gaspard Picot’s house,’ he replied.

  ‘We were just talking about that!’ Iver cried.

  Ginger gave him a scathing glance. ‘Now there’s a surprise.’

  ‘What’s happening over there?’ Jack demanded.

  ‘The house is deserted,’ Ginger said. ‘The sheriff made quite sure of it. He had ten of us go through every chamber, hall and cellar, investigating every cupboard, chest and dark corner. Then he made a great business of locking and barring the doors. Some of the outdoor servants have organized temporary quarters in the outbuildings, but they’ll all have to be gone soon. The sheriff has only allowed them to stay because he’s ordered them to stop anyone trying to break in.’

  ‘Where will they go?’ Fat Gerald asked.

  Ginger shrugged. ‘No idea. Many are locals, though,’ he added, ‘so with any luck there’ll be some relative or friend who’ll help out.’

  Jack was only vaguely aware of the conversation continuing around him. His thoughts had turned to those two earlier murders. He was sitting beside Ned, one of the senior of the lawmen based inside the castle, and now, leaning closer to him, he said quietly, ‘Has any progress been made on the two young men found dead?’

  Ned shook his head. ‘Not that I know of, chief. We’ve nothing at all to go on, that’s been the trouble. As far as I can tell, Sheriff Picot has decided that neither of them are our concern since both were strangers, one travelling by land and the other by water but both merely passing through.’

  ‘So we’re just to put them out of mind?’

  ‘That’s about right,’ Ned agreed tonelessly. ‘Both have been buried and will soon be forgotten.’

  ‘You don’t – it’s not thought that the two deaths could be connected with the widow Picot’s murder?’

  Ned shrugged. ‘Don’t see how or why they should be, chief. Other than the timing, where is the connection? The young men were killed out in the open, the lady in her own hall.’

  ‘All three bodies were savagely beaten,’ Jack said.

  ‘Aye, but then so are many of the murder victims we deal with.’

  Jack had to acknowledge the truth of that. He leaned back against the wall, deep in thought. So the general view was that the two earlier deaths had nothing to do with the lady Elwytha’s murder … He shook his head. Although as yet he couldn’t rationalize it, Jack kept on returning to his suspicion that there had to be a connection.

  Jack was having trouble sleeping. After a night consisting of a few brief periods of dozing and a lot of lying awake, he rose just before dawn and set out, down the path through the deserted village, out onto the road and then left towards the town.

  It was still dark, and the total blanketing-out of the stars suggested a cloudy sky. He was struck by the strange absence of noise: stopping just past the construction site where the new priory was nearing completion, he realized that the silence was absolute. The morning was mild, damp and still, and as he moved on down the gentle slope towards the river, he walked into a dense cloud of mist rising from the water. As he crossed the Great Bridge, he could barely see a pace in front of him.

  He strode on, round to the north-east of the town. He was finding that walking along a road shrouded in mist was disturbingly eerie, and at times he was moving almost blind. He noticed that the mist also muffled smells; used to the various stenches of the river and the town, he was struck by the lack of them. The mist had a smell of its own … Pausing to sniff, he tried to describe it to himself. It smelt of the earth; of mud; of darkness and hidden things.

  He strode on, dismissing the rambling of his thoughts.

  Sometimes the total silence seemed to drum against his ears until it was almost painful. But the deadening effect of the mist was not, he discovered, total; once or twice, unlikely and surely far-off noises such as the cry of an early risen boatman and the bang of a heavy door suddenly rang out with sharp clarity, so that they seemed far closer than they could possibly be.

  Jack was beset by the weird sense that this wasn’t the world he knew and understood.

  Ruthlessly he crushed his apprehension and forced himself to walk faster.

  By the time he reached the Picot house, the mist had cleared a little. He made out the ruined wall beneath which he had sat and watched, and the overhanging branches of the willow. He could just see the gates in the paling fence, firmly closed, and the house up on its rise beyond.

  As he had done so many times before, he sank down on the bench – it was wet to the touch – and watched.

  I have no idea why I am here, he thought after a while. It’s cold, my bum’s damp, I ought to be snug and warm in bed and still sound asleep.

  Cross with himself and his own folly, abruptly he stood up and began a slow pacing, up and down, following the line of the old wall.

  He kept his eyes on the house on its rise, looming out of the mist and, as its intensity varied, sometimes clearly visible, sometimes obscured. But then suddenly a great pall of white billowed upwards and outwards, and for several moments he couldn’t see the house at all …

  He smelt smoke.

  And, starting to run although he had no idea where to, he realized that what he had taken for a sudden intensity in the mist was actually a huge cloud of smoke.

  He ran right into it, and instantly began to cough. The violence of the action, deep in his chest and right across his ribs, forced
his wound to stretch and contract with such vigour that he cried out in pain. Doubled over, he moved away as quickly as he could.

  When he could breathe again, he straightened up and stared back at the fire. It had taken hold now and sheets of flame rose high in the air. The gates had been flung wide and several figures were emerging onto the road, running from the flames and the smoke just as Jack had done. Some carried bundles, some helped others. A man cried, ‘Is everyone out?’ and someone else yelled back, ‘Yes, I was the last!’

  Jack moved back into the deep shadow of the ruined wall and, just like the others, watched as Gaspard Picot’s vulgar, braggart, extravagant house burned.

  And, knowing that nobody was inside, that those who had been sheltering in the outbuildings had all escaped, he felt a savage joy flood through him.

  Suddenly, out of the corner of his eye, Jack caught a movement: small, swift, so that he wasn’t entirely sure he’d really seen it. But, tiny though it had been, it had registered in his mind and he knew he must check. It was over to his right.

  Precisely where he’d spotted the dark, cloaked figure before.

  Keeping right up against the wall and trying to be quiet, he loped towards where he’d seen the tiny shimmer in the darkness. He thought he must have been mistaken, for, although anyone hiding there must surely have seen and heard his approach, there was no further movement.

  Until, when he was right upon the place, a dark-cloaked figure shot out of the depths of the shadows, elbowed him sharply in the ribs and fled.

  The elbow, on top of the damage caused by his smoke-induced coughing fit, almost finished Jack. But he couldn’t let this chance go by, and, gathering all his reserves, he set off in pursuit.

  In front of him, the dark-cloaked man suddenly turned off into the narrow, convoluted alleys of the community that Gaspard Picot had razed to the ground. It soon became apparent that he knew his way, and Jack understood now that he must have been hiding in here; living, probably, in one of the better of the tumbledown dwellings. He seemed to flit through the maze of alleyways and passages, as springy and light-footed as a deer. Nevertheless, for a while Jack was gaining on him.