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He fondled the long dagger he’d pushed through his wallet, drawing comfort from its metal-coiled handle. If there was an assassin about, he reassured himself, best to confront him now rather than be taken in the dead of night. An owl hooted. Horne snarled. ‘Let all the hell hounds come from Satan’s dark abyss! I will match blow for blow!’ His empty words comforted him as he walked across to the ruins, a collection of snow-covered boulders. The old ones said the great Caesar once had a palace there. Horne, deeply agitated by a mixture of fear, terror and forced bravado, went and sat in the middle. He felt safer; despite the darkness, the white, snow-covered common and brittle ice would give him warning of any assassin’s approach.
The merchant stared round the ruined Roman villa. A few yards away was a half-raised wall. Horne glared at it contemptuously. If any murderer lurked there, they would have to cover the ground and he had brought something special. A small arbalest or miniature crossbow swung from his belt, a bolt already in place. The darkness grew deeper. Horne studied the lights of the city. The wine he had drunk earlier in the day, his exertions and fear, made him feel warm and sleepy. A short stab of icy wind made him huddle deeper into his cloak and he stirred to keep the hot blood flowing through his veins. The merchant stared around into the gathering darkness and his courage began to ebb as he wondered who his strange benefactor might be. Horne closed his eyes, half sleeping, dozing. That’s what Bartholomew Burghgesh had always told him to do.
‘Rest whenever you can, my dear Adam. A true soldier always eats, drinks, sleeps and takes a wench whenever the opportunity presents itself’
Horne smiled to himself. Brave, redoubtable man! A veritable paladin! Horne had liked him but Ralph Whitton had always been jealous of Bartholomew for being a better soldier than he. But surely there had been more than that?
Something about Whitton’s wife being rather sweet on the young Bartholomew when he had, for a time, served as a knight ba
Horne chewed on his lip. He had to face the fact that he was a killer, he had been party to Burghgesh’s murder. Sometimes at night this thought would rouse him screaming from his sleep. And was that why God had given him no son or heir? Was his wife’s barre
A man clothed in knight’s armour, on his breast the red cross of the crusaders, his face hidden by that helmet! The same steel, conical shell with eagle’s wings on either side and blue tufted crest on top. A chilling terror gripped Home’s heart. ‘My God!’ he whispered. ‘It’s Burghgesh!’ Or was it an apparition from hell? The armoured, visored figure just stood there, feet slightly apart, mailed, gauntleted fists gripping the handle of the great, two- edged sword with the blade resting on one shoulder.
‘You are Burghgesh?’ Horne hissed.
The apparition moved closer. Only the crunch of mailed feet on the hard ice broke the silence.
‘Adam! Adam!’ The voice was Burghgesh’s though it sounded sombre and hollow. ‘Adam!’ the voice repeated. ‘I have returned! I come for vengeance! You, my comrade in arms, my friend for whom I would have given my life.’ One mailed hand shot out. ‘You betrayed me! You, Whitton and the rest!’
Horne moved suddenly, his hand going to the small arbalest which swung from his belt
‘You’re no phantasm,’ the merchant snarled. ‘And, if you are, go back to Hell where you belong!’
He brought up the arbalest but, even as he did, the great two-edged sword scythed the air, neatly slicing the merchant’s head from his shoulders. The decapitated head spun like a ball in the air, lips still moving; his trunk stood for a few seconds in its own fountain of hot red gore before crashing on to the blood-stained ice. Horne’s mailed executioner carefully cleaned the sword, drew his knife and knelt beside the blood-gushing torso of his victim.
Some hours later Sir John Cranston, muttering and cursing to himself, made his way from Blind Basket Alley up Mincing Lane into Fenchurch Street. Dawn had just broken and Sir John, unable to sleep, had risen early to confer with Alderman Venables about the continued disappearance of Roger Droxford, still wanted for the murder of his master whose decapitated corpse Cranston had found. Sir John had spent a restless night, tossing from side to side in his great double bed. He had tried to remain calm but still seethed with fury at Maude’s continued intransigence in the face of his pleadings and questions: her only answer would be to bite her lip, shake her head and turn away in floods of tears. At last Cranston had risen and gone to his personal chancery but, finding himself unable to concentrate, had finished dressing and gone to rouse Venables. Cranston gri
‘He can’t have fled far. Sir John,’ Venables murmured sleepily. ‘God knows, in this weather only a fool would try to flee the city limits, and both the description and the reward have been circulated.’ Venables had gri
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, he had two fingers missing from one hand and his face was covered in hairy warts.’ The alderman pulled his fur-lined bed robe around him, moving restlessly on the stone-flagged corridor and making it obvious the coroner should leave. ‘What’s so special about Droxford, anyway, Sir John?’
‘He’s special, Master Venables, because he’s a murderer, a felon who has stolen over two hundred pounds of his master’s monies, and it looks as if he has got away Scot free!’
Venables took one look at Cranston’s angry face and agreed. Sir John had then stamped off, muttering curses about public officials who didn’t seem to care. Yet, in his heart, Cranston knew he was a hypocrite. The business at the Tower was still shrouded in mystery. The fugitive Droxford, not to mention the easy-going alderman, were the nearest butts for Sir John’s foul temper.
He turned into the still-deserted Lombard Street and up to the great stocks just before the Poultry. A group of beadles were standing around a beggar who sat imprisoned there, feet and hands tightly clamped, face frozen, eyes open.
‘What’s the matter?’ Cranston bellowed.
The beadles shuffled their feet
‘Someone forgot to release him last night,’ one of them shouted. ‘The poor bastard’s frozen to death!’
‘Then some bastard will pay!’ Sir John bellowed back, and continued up the wide thoroughfare, past a group of nightbirds, whores and petty felons now manacled together and being led down to the great iron cage on top of the Conduit. A frightened-looking maid let him in. Sir John suddenly stopped, eyes narrowing. Hadn’t he glimpsed a shadow in the alleyway beside the house? He went back. Nothing. Cranston shook his head and, vowing he would drink less sack, brushed past the anxious-looking maid, down the passageway and into the stone-flagged kitchen. He thanked God Maude wasn’t there, he was tired of their encounters.