Rory Clements - The Queen's man

After binding the grizzled mariner’s wrists, he looped another section of rope twice around his ankles and secured it with two half-hitches.

He gazed down at his captive, neatly parcelled up. ‘Don’t wander off. I have plans for you.’

Florence Angel was regaining her senses. Hungate watched her as she tried to crawl towards the hole he had blown in the wall. Her clothes were in shreds, her bindings torn away, her face dark with soot and blood. He thought of his mother and sister and for a moment felt some pity. The feeling evaporated as soon as it came. Why should these women have life and hope when his mother and sister had been afforded none?

He grabbed Florence by the hair and dragged her back into the midst of the rubble and ruins. She fought and scratched, but he re-tied her hands with ease then held his smooth hand beneath her jaw and made her look into his eyes. ‘Know this. Your father did for my family, and so will I do for you and yours.’

The old woman, Audrey, was unconscious, her breathing shallow and laboured. Hungate thought of killing her there and then, but decided there had to be more. He tied her as he had tied the other two, then dragged all three of them from the wreckage of the building, through the hole created by the bomb, to the tree he had already selected.

It was a tall ash with a strong lower branch that stretched horizontally ten or twelve feet above the ground. One by one, he attached long ropes to the bound ankles of his three captives, then tossed the loose ends over the branch and lifted each of them up, suspended by their feet, until their heads and bound hands hung down, swaying, a foot or two from the earth. The women’s skirts were bound to their ankles so they did not fall, and so they could still see.

He left them there and walked away to his horses, where he removed a flask of brandy and a loaf of black bread from his saddlebags, then returned to his three prisoners. He sat down against the wall, amid the rubble of stones, and began to eat the bread, occasionally sipping at his brandy flask.

‘You will burn in hell,’ Florence gasped as she twisted.

‘Save your dirty breath. You will need it for screaming.’

‘What is this?’ Boltfoot demanded, attempting to jerk himself upright. ‘If you are a pursuivant, you cannot do this.’

‘What is your name?’

‘Cooper.’

‘You are John Shakespeare’s man.’

Boltfoot did not reply.

‘I would rather he were here than you. It is unfortunate, for you have strayed into something that is none of your doing. This is about these worthless popish baggages. It took me all these years to discover their place of abode. This is so my mother and sister may finally rest in peace.’

‘What do you want of them? One is a sick old woman, the other a defenceless daughter. They can do you no harm.’

‘Not now they can’t, strung up like rabbits. But they prospered while my mother and sister starved. And so now they will suffer — and then, bit by bit, they will die. And so will you, Mr Cooper, simply for being here. The only question that remains is which of you will take the longest.’

Hungate stood up and unsheathed his long butcher’s knife.

Boltfoot realised that the only thing that could possibly save them was someone’s intervention. But that was not likely to arrive this night and by dawn, he was certain, it would be too late. Their only hope was to keep this madman talking.

‘What happened to your family, sir?’ His voice was nothing more than a strained whisper. The blood was rushing to his head like a tidal current, filling him up, throbbing.

‘ Sir? I am not a sir. I am a common man like you, Cooper. Do not be fooled by my jewels and my fine doublet, for I have spent all my years red with blood and I have waded through shit.’

‘If I am to die here, at least let me know what this is about.’ Even upside down, Boltfoot could not take his eyes off Hungate as he hoisted the dead deer off the ground by its legs and attached it to the branch of another tree, so that it, too, hung down.

‘Watch, Cooper. See my skill.’ He made an incision just below the fetlock of one of the animal’s hind legs, then at lightning speed made a further series of cuts.

Boltfoot had seen animals being skinned before, but never with such accuracy and so quickly. Within five minutes, Hungate was pulling off the whole skin of the deer, like a tight glove being peeled from a hand. Boltfoot watched without saying a word. At his side he heard the rasping breath of the mother and the moans of the daughter, like some sort of religious ecstasy. He could not see them, but wondered if they, too, were watching this.

‘And so you see, Cooper, that was a dead animal. It did not squirm or bleed. Simple. I have skinned a thousand animals or more. Blindfold me and I could do it by my sense of touch. But it is not so easy when the animal is still alive. How long would that take, would you say?’

‘Is that what you are planning for us?’

‘The women. You can have a bullet in your head, for I wish you no ill will.’

‘What have they done to you?’

‘They prospered. Let us ask them. Mistress Angelus, tell me of your husband. How did he live? How did he die?’

Boltfoot sensed the older woman’s breathing coming faster, and then he heard her faint voice. ‘He lived well and was murdered. Brutally.’

Hungate laughed. ‘Let us go back a bit. Let me tell you about my family. Like the Angelus family, it consisted of a father and mother, a son and a daughter. I was the son. We lived in the county of Surrey, south-west of London. My father kept and nurtured the game at Loseley Park, a great seat of Sir William More, a house often visited by the Queen. Our life was good, until Robert Angelus-’

‘Who was he? What happened?’ Boltfoot spoke with great effort.

‘He was the destroyer. He killed my father.’

‘But why?’

‘By bearing false witness against him. Angelus was a treasurer and steward to Sir William, who was a man of great wealth. By the year fifteen sixty-seven, Angelus — a secret Catholic in a good Protestant household — was stealing gold from his master, and sending it to William Allen in the Low Countries to help in founding a seminary for English papists. He came to realise, however, that this theft could not continue undetected for much longer and decided to find a scapegoat. That was my father, a more innocent soul than you will ever find. Angelus had formed a disliking for him ever since he refused to enter into a scheme whereby venison would be sold to local butchers and the money split between them.’

‘This is a sorry tale, Mr Hungate.’

‘I was barely twelve years old. We came home from the woods, as always, and the sheriff was there with his men. They searched our property and found fifty pounds in gold hidden away in our barn. My father was taken to court, found guilty of stealing all the gold that had gone missing from Sir William’s coffers — though this was twenty times the amount found at our home — and hanged the next day. I was forced to watch it, as were my mother and sister. We were then cast out from our home, with nothing. No money, no livestock, no land. My mother was beyond despair. By nightfall, she had hanged herself. The next day, my sister threw herself to her death in the lake. And I was alone.’

Boltfoot forced his engorged lips to move. ‘How did you survive, Mr Hungate?’

‘I returned to the woods, Mr Cooper, and lived among the wild beasts and the birds. I was already a skilled hunter, but now I dedicated my life to the art of war, with but one thought: one day I would do to Robert Angelus what he had done to me.’

‘Where is Robert Angelus now?’

‘Dead. Before I was thirteen, I had killed him. I watched and I waited and I learnt that the saintly Robert Angelus had taken a local wife as his mistress. Each Tuesday, he rode out alone to meet his filthy woman, a weaver’s wife. I waited outside her cottage and watched him arrive. I listened at the shuttered window and heard their foul grunts as they copulated the afternoon long. At last, he departed, his business done. I watched him from the woods, my longbow ready. I trailed him as he sat astride his mare, adjusting his dress. My hands did not shake, nor did my eye blink as I drew back the bowstring and let loose the arrow that split the man’s throat. He fell from his horse without a sound and died in a sea of his own blood. And then I stripped him of his skin and hung it, stretched between two saplings, like washing hung out to dry. I rejoiced. Yet I soon discovered that I was not satisfied. The blood debt had not been paid.’