Martin Stephen: The Desperate remedy

Hot tears of self-pity welled up in him, burnt his eyes against the cold of the night. He was crouched low in a dry ditch, the dust in his nose and mouth, the debris of a country track already working its way inside his doublet and scratching against his skin. He had never felt more alone or more in terror of the nameless things hidden in the vast sweep of the flat countryside. He was holding back his breath, despite the red-hot iron bars in his chest, the impossible urge to scream and run. He had never meant to be on the road in the middle of the night. It was the horse's fault, that damned animal. He knew nothing of horses, could hardly ride. It had looked as good as any other in the dim light of the early morning, rolled its mad eyes at him like any other horse. He had thrashed it into action, hurling it towards Cambridge and the only man to whom he could turn, the panic driving him on and communicating itself to the animal beneath him. He had to see Henry Gresham. Gresham. The only man he could turn to, the only man who would know what to do with the terrible secret Will Shadwell had stumbled on, the secret he carried only in his head. The only man who might stop this terrible pursuit, take the wolves off his back.

The night spread round him, silent, still. There had been nothing now, no noise, for five minutes or more. Hope flared up in him. He knew every noise in London's mean streets, could interpret every sound. Here in the country the night spoke a different language, every sound of it in his heightened state of terror a possible death threat. Had it been some animal, treading lightly over the ground? Surely no men could be so silent. His breath was starting to come to him normally now, his heart thudding less against his eyes.

The horse had foundered outside Royston. He knew they would come after him, expected someone to notice his sudden run from London. With the horse under him he could at least match pursuit. With its useless carcass dead on the road he had had to branch off to avoid pursuit, on to the side roads and tracks. It had been a mistake, dull-faced peasants eyeing him as the only thing of interest to have passed that way in years, noting his progress and all too willing to tell it to whoever came behind. If only he could have hidden the horse, instead of leaving its lathered hide as a sign to any pursuer.

Dare he move? If there were pursuers still out there they might walk past him in his ditch. They were showing no lantern, lighting no flares, if even they existed. He knew he stank, but if they were there they had no dogs, that much he was certain of. He was lost, of course. The tracks he had taken weaved their way through the

Flatlands, but the stars stayed where they had always been. He reckoned he was upstream of Cambridge, knew if he kept on he would meet the slow, flat river. Gresham would be in bed now in his College rooms, simple and book-furnished for all the man's impossible wealth, a world apart from the magnificence of the house on the Strand and the whore who kept it for him. He would know what to do. Gresham always knew.

He was feeling drowsy, despite the cold that was starting to penetrate the thin, ragged cloak that was all he had time to grab when he fled London. Perhaps he would sleep here in the ditch, wait until morning…

He did not hear or even sense the man. He felt his hot breath against his cheek, heard the words cut through the night in his ear, had time to note the almost caressing husky tone.

'Will Shadwell… a fine dance you've led us.'

He screamed then, a spasm tearing through his body and hurling him up out of the ditch. He dimly saw three, perhaps four vague shapes where the night was blacker. He twisted away, felt a thorn tear at his boot and into the soft flesh above his ankle. He felt a thud in his back, was knocked forward, and looked down startled at the blade that had appeared through his flesh, just beneath his ribcage. He opened his mouth, and the warm, salty taste of his blood hit him at the same time as the tearing agony of the pain. He felt himself falling, heard rather than felt himself thud into the soft ground. Gagging, gasping, drowning in his own blood, he felt a boot kick him over. The last thing Will Shadwell saw on God's earth was the thin blade driving down towards his eye socket.

'You'll pay me the usual?' sniffed the miller, who seemed to have a permanent cold.

Henry Gresham prodded the dead face with his boot.

'I've told no-one else…' the miller added morosely, wiping his nose.

Gresham cut a fine figure by the riverside. Tall, strongly built, there was an inner fire in his eyes and a slight smile that suggested he found the world both ludicrous and amusing.

The body bobbed gently up and down in the tiny ripples that lapped the edge of the millpond.

'I turned 'im over for you,' the miller said, half bowing and putting his head between Gresham and the corpse, demanding attention yet being sycophantic at the same time. The drowned always lay face down, as if turning their heads from the sun for the last time. The body was swollen, white with corruption, but still recognisable.

It was Will Shadwell. A murdered Will Shadwell.

Spy, informer, double-dealer, whoremonger, pimp, thief, gambler, sodomite, drunkard, occasional follower of Satan when the money was good — and one of Gresham's best men. He had possessed no morals, and so could not be suborned by a good cause. He was utterly selfish and ruthless, and therefore a thoroughly known commodity. He was greedy beyond belief, and hence utterly reliable, provided Gresham paid him more than anyone else.

Once, in a Southwark stew, Shadwell had falsely claimed that someone else was paying him more. Gresham had nailed his hand to the table, sinking his dagger through the soft flesh of the palm he was holding out for more money.

'I've given you a good dagger as well as your gold, Master Shadwell,' Gresham had commented mildly, leaving the room with the screaming and impaled man gaping at the blood seeping into the timber. 'Come back to me when it's spent up.'

And because Shadwell was all these things and yet a coward, he had come crawling back to Gresham three weeks later. He did not lie again about how much others were paying him. He appeared to bear no grudge. Violence was nothing in his world. Mastery and power had to be proven. If proven, they were acknowledged, as much a fact of life as lechery or drunkenness. The mark of the dagger was still visible now on the puffy flesh of his right hand. It waved liked a dead weed in the water.

Now he was dead, hunted down, a town creature flushed out of its habitat and hounded to death in the broad sweep of the countryside. Even the water damage could not disguise the tears the brambles and thorn had made in what looked like a pell-mell chase. Something or someone had torn off a boot. He had been skewered from behind, enough to kill him in time. The actual killing blow, the knife thrust, had gone in through the eye socket and upwards, with so much power that it had broken through the top of the skull. It was a classic thrust, requiring pinpoint accuracy.

Gresham nodded distantly to the miller, and again to Mannion, his servant, who was behind them both. He heard the clink of money as Mannion drew a purse from his belt and started carefully to count out coins. The miller slavered over the sight, his eyes fixed on the money and his greed only thinly cloaked by a ragged air of servility.

'Thanks, master,' said the miller, who would have tugged his forelock had there been any hair left on his greasy pate. He gave a curt order to his lad, who started to drag the body out of the water. The miller was turning away to go back to the screaming wife and screaming brood who were warming up for the day in the stone-built mill when suddenly he paused. A thought must have struck him’ Gresham realised, an event so rare as to stop him in his tracks. 'Why is it you're the only genl'man who pays to see corpses?' the miller asked, daringly. He sneezed, and a globule of something white shot from his nose and lay on an uncomplaining reed. Gresham turned to look at him.