C Sansom - Sovereign

‘We shall have true faith back again,’ he said with a sudden cold fierceness. ‘True faith and a rightful monarch.’

‘And the fire for Cranmer. And how many more? Even if you win you will create a mirror-image of the world we have, perhaps a worse one.’

‘I should have realized.’ Wrenne sighed deeply. ‘You are not a man of faith. But knowing the King is not of royal blood, does that count for nothing with you?’ His tone was almost pleading.

‘Not enough to countenance drowning England in fire and blood, no. Not enough for that.’

‘Then let me go quietly. I will not trouble you again. I will leave you to your peaceful life.’ There was angry bitterness in his voice now.

‘If you give me the papers,’ I said, ‘I will let you walk free.’

He leaned back in his seat, casting his eyes down. He seemed to be reflecting. But I knew he would never give up the documents, not having come so far.

He looked at me again, his eyes still fierce though his voice was quiet. ‘Do not make me do this, Matthew. I cannot give you the papers. It has taken me so long -’

‘I will not join you.’

Then in a movement I had been half-expecting, but more speedily than I could have imagined him capable of, Wrenne leaped up, grasped the bowl of pottage and threw it in my face. A terrible growling noise came from his throat, fury and sorrow somehow mixed together. I cried out, jumping up. Half-blind, I grabbed at Giles but he twisted away and tumbled out of the door. I heard his heavy footsteps as he went out to the hall in a sort of shambling run, then a curse as he hauled uselessly at the locked front door. He turned again, gasping as he ran for the door to the garden. I felt a gust of cold air as it was thrown open.

I stepped into the hall. The garden door yawned wide, giving on to a blackness through which a curtain of rain fell. Apart from the rain there was silence. Joan must be asleep in her room at the front of the house. I stared out into the darkness and the hammering rain.

LITTLE WAS VISIBLE beyond the doorway, the light from the parlour window showing only the rain, still falling hard and straight as ever, and the dim shapes of bushes and trees. My face smarted, but the pottage had not really scalded me. It had been standing for some time and had cooled. My hand went to my dagger. I pulled it from my belt. I shivered again, violently.

‘Giles!’ I called out. ‘You are trapped! There is no way out of the garden except the gate to the orchard, and the door from the orchard to Lincoln’s Inn is locked at night! Surrender yourself, it is all you can do.’ There was no reply, only the relentless sound of the lashing water.

‘For pity’s sake, man,’ I called. ‘Come out of the rain!’

I could wait, here in the doorway, till Barak returned. But what if Wrenne managed to climb the orchard wall? He was old and ill but he was also desperate. If he got away with those papers – I stepped outside.

It was hard to see. I kept to those parts of the garden where there was some illumination from the windows and the open door, watching lest he run at me out of the darkness. The rain appeared to be lessening at last but it was still hard to see and I stumbled and nearly fell against a bench. I walked to the back of the garden, feeling my boots squelch into mud as I approached the orchard gate – the water was now seeping under the wall, as I had feared. I saw the gate was open; large footprints in the mud showed that Giles had gone through. I saw the key was in the lock and pulled it out. Passing through, I locked the gate behind me, put the key in my pocket and stood with my back against it, inside the orchard. I began to shiver again.

Looking up, I caught a faint white glow of moonlight through the still-roiling clouds. Even so, I could see little in the orchard beyond a vista of black mud.

‘Giles!’ I called again. ‘Giles! I am armed! You cannot escape!’ I looked at the high walls separating the orchard from Lincoln’s Inn. No, Wrenne could not scale those. He was in here with me, somewhere.

The clouds parted and the full moon appeared, showing a sea of undulating mud broken by the water-filled holes where the trees had been. Up against my wall there was now a pond thirty feet across, little ripples dancing in the moonlight. I squinted and stared out across the mud.

Then I thought I saw something move slightly. I leaned forward, staring at a dim shape in the mud by the pool. Holding the knife firmly, I began moving carefully towards it. My boots sank deep into the mud, making squelching sucking sounds. The shape did not move again. Had Wrenne collapsed here, the strain too much for him? I reached the figure and bent carefully, ready for a sudden spring. If I had to I would stab him. Then I gritted my teeth as I saw a surface of uneven bark and realized I was staring at a log half-buried in the mud.

He struck from somewhere behind me, his weight sending me tumbling to the ground and making me drop the dagger. I gasped as I hit the mud, the breath knocked from my body. A knee crunched into my back, then I felt Giles lean over to one side to grab the dagger. So he would kill me. I bucked and heaved to throw him off balance, and he toppled sideways. As I hauled myself to my feet I saw his bulky shape rising too, slowly, the knife gleaming in his hand. I could not see the expression on his face because it was black with mud, no more than a dark circle with two glinting eyes.

‘For pity’s sake, Giles,’ I gasped, ‘surrender the papers. We cannot end like this.’

‘We must.’ He stepped forward, his arms held wide, the knife glinting in his right hand. ‘Unless you let me go. Please, Matthew, let me go.’

He thrust at me suddenly. I jumped aside and hit out with my manacled wrist. The iron caught him hard on the side of the head; he gasped and dropped the knife. I must have half stunned him for he reeled away, staggered into the margin of the pool and fell over with a splash. He hauled himself up and sat, a dark shape up to its waist in water. Then the moon vanished, leaving us once more in darkness, and the rain began pelting down again.

I threw myself at him before he had time to rise, gasping at the impact of the cold water. And now it was Giles who struggled and bucked underneath me, and he was starting to weaken, his resistance feeble as I put both hands round his neck and forced his head under the water. I knew only one of us could come out of that cursed swamp alive. I kept his head under, ignoring the horrible gasps and gurglings he made.

Giles’s struggles ceased, he went limp. A ghastly sucking sound came as he breathed water into his lungs, a sound I still hear in dreams; there was a last frantic spasm and then he went limp as a rag doll. But I did not move; I realized I was weeping, warm water mingling with the cold on my cheeks. For minutes more I knelt there holding him fast, sobbing in the darkness as the rain lashed relentlessly down on me.

I do not know how long it was before I got shakily to my feet. I was trembling from head to toe, but I made myself bend down and turn Giles over so he lay face down. Then I put my hands under the water, lifted his sodden robe, and felt through his pockets. I found a purse, and a thick pack of papers wrapped in oilskin. I took them and staggered away, without looking back.

BARAK AND TAMASIN returned an hour later, dripping wet for it was still raining. Tamasin looked upset, as though she had been crying. I was sitting by the fire in the parlour; I had banked it up with logs and sat stirring it with the poker, trembling and sweating for the fever had come on me properly now. They stared at me in horror, covered from head to foot in mud as I was, steam rising from my sodden clothes. They ran over to me.