We walked down Thames Street; ten of us, all in dark clothes, most carrying swords. It was just past curfew, and the few people on the streets gave our intimidating-looking group a wide berth. A watchman did step out to ask what we were about, a little nervously, but Stice answered peremptorily, ‘Business of Sir Richard Rich, Privy Councillor,’ and produced a gold seal. The watchman held up his lantern to look at it, then bowed us on our way.
We walked past London Bridge; candles were being lit in the four-storey houses built along its length. The tide was full, just starting to ebb; we could hear the roar of the waters as they rushed under the broad stone piers of the bridge. It was dangerous for boats to ‘shoot the bridge’ and for that reason the wharves dealing with foreign trade were sited immediately downriver. They ran along the waterfront between the bridge and the Tower of London; a line of masts near a quarter of a mile long when trade was busy, as it was now. Behind the waterfront stood a long row of warehouses. I saw the tall, skeleton-like arms of the cranes at Billingsgate Wharf outlined against the near-dark sky; beyond the wharves, the Tower appeared a strange phantom grey in the last of the light.
We turned down Botolph Lane to the waterfront, walking quietly, stumbling occasionally, for we had no lamps. From several buildings came the sound of revelry, even though it was past curfew — illegal ale-houses and brothels, serving sailors ashore for the night, which the authorities tended to leave alone.
We reached the waterfront and the long line of ships. It was quiet here after the noise of the surrounding streets. For a moment I thought I heard something, like a foot striking a stone, from the mouth of the lane from which we had just emerged. I looked back quickly but saw only the black empty passageway. I exchanged a glance with Barak; he had heard it, too.
Stice led the way onto the cobbled wharf, keeping close to the warehouse buildings. Beyond it the ships bobbed gently on the tide; low, heavy, one- and two-masted trading vessels lined stern to prow, secured by heavy ropes to big stone bollards, sails tightly furled. From a few cabins came the dim flicker of candlelight. With the reopening of French and Scottish trade, and the import of luxury goods for the admiral’s visit, the wharves must be busy indeed during the day. Out on the river itself pinpricks of light, the lanterns of wherries, glinted on the water.
Nearby stood a long pile of barrels, three high, secured with ropes. ‘No talking now,’ Stice said in a whisper. ‘Get in behind them.’
One by one we slipped into the dark space. I crouched next to Cecil and Stice, peering between two of the barrels, which smelled strongly of wine. Opposite us a two-masted crayer was berthed, a squat heavy vessel for North Sea carriage of perhaps thirty tons, Antwerpen painted on the side. There was a little deck-house, the windows unshuttered; two men in linen shirts sat inside, playing cards by the light of the lamp. They were middle-aged, but strong-looking.
Next to me Cecil’s face was quietly intent. I thought, this is not his usual form of business, and wondered whether underneath his coolness he feared the prospect of violence. I whispered to him, ‘I thought I heard something, at the mouth of that lane, just as we came onto the docks. Like someone dislodging a stone.’
He turned to me, his face anxious now. ‘You mean we have been followed?’
‘I don’t know. Barak heard it too. I had a strange feeling.’
Stice, on my other side, turned to Barak who had taken a position beside him. ‘Did you?’
He nodded yes.
Stice’s eyes glittered in the dark. ‘Once or twice I’ve felt the house in Needlepin Lane is being watched. But I’ve not been able to catch anybody at it.’
‘We’ve never known for sure that Greening’s murderers were connected with these Anabaptists,’ Cecil said. ‘What if there’s a third party involved, someone we don’t know about?’
‘Then perhaps tonight we’ll find out,’ Stice answered. ‘Now be quiet, stop talking, just watch.’
We crouched there for the best part of an hour. My back and knees hurt; I had to keep shifting position. Once, we tensed at the sound of footsteps and voices, and hands reached for swords and daggers, but it was only a couple of sailors, weaving drunkenly along the dockside. They climbed aboard a ship some way off. Apart from an occasional distant shouting from the taverns, all was quiet save for the sound of water lapping round the ships.
Then I heard more footsteps, quiet and steady this time, and from another narrow lane to our left I saw the bobbing yellow glow of a lantern. A whisper passed along our row of men. ‘Four of them,’ Stice said into my ear. ‘Looks like our people. Right, you and Master Cecil stay at the rear, leave it to us fighting men.’ And then, with a patter of feet and the distinctive whish of swords being pulled from their scabbards, the others ran out from behind the barrels. Cecil and I followed, our daggers at the ready.
The men were taken totally by surprise. The lantern was raised to show four astonished faces. They matched the descriptions I had committed to memory: the tall, powerfully built square-faced man in his thirties must be the Scotch cleric McKendrick, the plump middle-aged man the merchant Curdy, and the rangy fair-haired fellow the Dutchman Vandersteyn. The fourth man, in his twenties, tall, strongly built and dark-haired, had to be Leeman, the Queen’s guard who had deserted. He would be trained as a fighting man, and I also remembered that McKendrick had formerly been a soldier. Apart from Curdy, who had the round flabbiness of a prosperous merchant, each looked as if they could give good account of themselves.
All four rallied in an instant, bringing up swords of their own. They were going to make a fight of it. Apart from Curdy, who had been holding the lamp and now laid it down, only the fair-haired man had been encumbered by luggage, a large bag which he let drop to the cobbles. But Stice and his crew, Cecil’s two men, and Barak and Nicholas, made eight against them. They fanned out in a circle, surrounding the smaller group, who cast glances, as did I, at the ship from Antwerp. The two crewmen had now left the cabin and stood at the rail, staring at what was happening. Then another man climbed up from below to join them.
Stice called out, ‘Lower your swords. You’re outnumbered. You are under arrest for the attempted export of seditious literature!’
The fair-haired man shouted something in Dutch to the men at the ship’s rail. One of Stice’s men lunged at him with his sword but he parried immediately, just as the three men from the boat jumped nimbly over the ship’s rail onto the wharf, each carrying a sword. My heart sank; the number of fighting men was almost even now.
One of Cecil’s men turned and raised his weapon, but in doing so he turned his back on the blond Dutchman, who thrust his own sword swiftly through his body. The man cried out, his sword clattering onto the cobbles. Then Vandersteyn turned to face the rest of us and, with his three compatriots, began retreating slowly to the boat. I looked at the fallen man; there was no doubt now that we were not dealing with some amateurish group of fanatics but with serious, dangerous people.
‘Cut them off!’ Stice yelled. A moment later there was a melee of swordplay, blades flashing in the light of the lamp. I stepped forward, but felt Cecil’s hand restraining my arm. ‘No! We must stay alive; we have to get hold of the book.’
There was a battle royal now going on beside the ship, blades flashing noisily. Watchmen came out to the rails of nearby ships and stood gawping. Curdy, the weakest of the fugitives, lunged clumsily at Gower, who, ignoring our agreement to take these men alive if possible, sliced at his neck with his sword, nearly severing his head. Curdy thumped down on the cobbles, dead, in a spray of blood.
From what I could see of the melee, the surviving fugitives were effectively parrying blows from our side, backing slowly and deliberately towards the Antwerpen. We must not let these people get aboard. I stepped closer, though in the feeble lamplight I could see little more than rapidly moving shapes, white faces and the quick flash of metal. Stice received a glancing blow to his forehead but carried on, blood streaming down his face, felling one of the sailors with a thrust to the stomach. I stepped forward, but again Cecil pulled me back. ‘We’d only be in the way!’ I looked at him; his face was still coldly set, but the rigidity of his stance told me he was frightened. He looked at Lord Parr’s dead servant, face down on the cobbles, blood pooling around him.
Nicholas and Barak had their hands full with the guard Leeman, who was indeed a fierce fighter. He was trying to edge them away from the centre of the fight, towards the little lane we had come down.
‘At least I can get this!’ I said, darting over to Vandersteyn’s bag, which lay disregarded on the ground. I picked it up, thrusting it into Cecil’s arms. ‘Here! Look after this!’ And with that I pulled out my dagger and ran to where Leeman, wielding his sword with great skill, continued to lead Barak and Nicholas back towards the alley, thrusting mightily and parrying their every blow, years of training making it look easy. His aim was clearly to separate them from the others, to allow McKendrick and Vandersteyn to get on board the ship. Beside the Antwerpen the fighting continued, steel ringing on steel.
I raised my dagger to plunge it into Leeman’s shoulder from behind. He heard me coming and half-turned; Nicholas brought his sword down on his forearm in a glancing blow as Barak reversed his sword and gave him a heavy blow to the back of the head. He went down like a sack of turnips in the entrance to the lane. Barak and Nicholas ran back to the main fight.
It was now seven against five — Vandersteyn and McKendrick and the three surviving Dutch sailors. I hoped the other members of the crew were all in the taverns getting drunk. But suddenly one of the sailors managed to jump back on board the ship. He held out an arm and Vandersteyn, despite having been wounded in the leg, jumped after him, leaving only one sailor and the Scotchman behind.
On deck, Vandersteyn and the crewman used their swords to sever the ropes securing the ship to the wharf. The sailor snatched up a long pole and pushed off. The Antwerpen moved clumsily away from the wharf, instantly caught in the current. Vandersteyn shouted to the two men left behind, ‘I’m sorry, brothers! Trust in God!’
‘Stop them!’ Stice yelled. But it was too late, the Antwerpen was out on the river. The current carried her rapidly downstream, bobbing wildly, the two men on board struggling to control her, almost overturning a wherry which just managed to row out of the way in time. A stream of curses sounded across the water as the boat headed for the middle of the river. I saw a sail unfurl.
The remaining Dutchman and McKendrick had their backs to the river now. Realizing it was hopeless, they lowered their swords. ‘Drop them on the ground!’ Stice shouted. They obeyed, metal ringing on the cobbles, and Stice waved his men to lower their own weapons. I looked at the four prone bodies on the wharf: the Dutch sailor, Curdy, Cecil’s man and, a little distance away, Leeman, lying on his front in the entrance to the alley. ‘He’s dead,’ Barak said loudly.
On neighbouring boats watchmen still stood staring, talking animatedly in foreign tongues, but Barak had been right; they had not wanted to get mixed up in a sword fight involving a dozen men. One man shouted something at us in Spanish, but we ignored him. More men, though, might appear from the taverns. I looked at the Dutchman and McKendrick. Returning my look, the Dutchman spoke in heavily accented English. ‘Citizen of Flanders. Not subject to your laws. You must let us go.’
‘Pox on that!’ Stice shouted. ‘Your bodies will go in the river tonight!’ His head and shoulders were covered with blood from his wound; in the light of the lamp he looked like some demon from a mystery play.
The Dutch sailor seemed shaken, but McKendrick spoke boldly, in the ringing tones of a preacher, his Scotch accent strong: ‘Ye’ve lost! We know Mynheer Vandersteyn had a book, by Anne Askew. Carried on his person, not in that bag. That’s why we got him aboard. Ye’ve lost!’ he repeated triumphantly.
Stice turned wildly to Cecil. ‘We have to get that boat intercepted!’
‘On what grounds?’ Cecil said, his voice sharp and authoritative now. ‘Exporting heretical literature? The book would be public knowledge in a day. And intercepting a foreign trading vessel could cause diplomatic trouble; that’s the last thing we need just now.’
Stice wiped his face with a bloody sleeve, then looked at the bag which Cecil still held. ‘Maybe they’re lying! Maybe it’s in there!’ He grasped it from Cecil’s arms and upturned it on the ground, dragging the lantern across to examine the contents. I helped him go through them; nothing but spare clothing, a Dutch bible and a purse of coins. He threw the purse down and stood cursing.
‘Search those men!’ he shouted, pointing to McKendrick and the Dutchman. Two of Stice’s men grabbed them and searched them roughly, watched carefully by Cecil and me, then turned back to their master, holding out a couple of purses. ‘Nothing but these!’
‘Examine them!’
The two men opened the drawstrings and bent to look inside. Seizing his moment, the Scotchman suddenly jumped forward and grabbed his sword. Gower was next to him. Taking the big man by surprise, McKendrick lunged at him, thrusting his sword deep into his stomach. With a cry, Gower staggered back into the man next to him, unbalancing him, and the Scot, with an astounding turn of speed for such a big man, ran for the lane, jumping over Leeman’s prone body. Stice’s men ran after him, disappearing into the darkness.
‘By God’s body sacred!’ Cecil shouted out. It was the first outbreak of temper I had seen from him. ‘We’ve lost them all!’ He approached the Dutchman and, to my surprise, addressed him in Flemish. A brief exchange followed before Cecil turned away. ‘He knows nothing,’ he said fiercely. ‘They all belonged to some heretic congregation in Antwerp, came over knowing their friend Vandersteyn had an important book to bring back. This one says there are two more crewmen who will be back from the tavern soon. And we can’t have a diplomatic incident over this.’ He spoke desperately, looking at the four bodies and at Gower, who had fallen to his knees and was gasping as he clutched the wound in his stomach, blood trickling down between his fingers.
The two who had run after McKendrick returned empty-handed. ‘He got away from us, those lanes are pitch-black. The devil knows where he is now.’
‘No!’ We all turned to the Dutchman, who spoke in heavily accented English. ‘God knows where he is. He is God’s servant, unlike you shavelings of the Pope.’ Stice and his men looked at him threateningly; they would have given him a beating, but Cecil called them off sharply. ‘Let him go,’ he said. He looked at the sailor. ‘Run, you, while you can!’
The Dutchman disappeared into the lanes. ‘Search Leeman and Curdy’s bodies,’ Cecil said. ‘Quick, there’s little time.’
‘What for?’ Stice asked. He had taken out a handkerchief and was dabbing at his face.
Cecil nodded at the direction in which the Dutchman had fled. ‘In case he’s lying and one of them has the book on his person.’
Barak and Nicholas went over and searched Leeman’s body, while one of Stice’s men searched Curdy’s, Cecil and I standing over him in case a manuscript should be found. But there was nothing on either man, save more purses full of coins for the men’s new life on the Continent. I sighed. Gower had collapsed to the ground now, coughing; Stice went over and knelt beside him. ‘We’ll get you seen to,’ he said in a surprisingly gentle tone.
I turned to the body of Cecil’s man. ‘Had he family?’ I asked.
Cecil shook his head. ‘I don’t know. The poor fellow was in Lord Parr’s household.’ He turned to the other man who had come with him. ‘Did you know him?’
‘Only slightly, sir. But he had a wife.’
‘What do we do with the bodies?’ Nicholas asked quietly.
‘Put them in the river,’ Stice answered, standing up. ‘There’s nothing to identify them, and with luck they’ll be carried far downstream before they surface. When the crew return they’ll find the ship gone and they’ll learn about the fight from the one we let go, who’ll be running to them now. But they’ll say nothing, their business was illegal and there’s nothing to lead anyone to us. Get them in the water, now.’
‘Not my man,’ Cecil answered firmly. ‘You heard, he had a wife. My other man and I will have him taken back to Whitehall in a wherry. We owe him that. We can say he was robbed.’
Stice took a deep breath. ‘We’ve got to get Gower to a doctor. He’ll take some carrying to the cart.’
On the next ship the sailor was calling to us in Spanish again — asking questions, by the tone of his voice. Stice turned and shouted, ‘Fuck off!’
‘All right, Stice,’ Barak said briskly. ‘We’ll dispose of these other two; you’re right, if they’re left lying here there’ll be questions.’
Stice nodded agreement. He turned to me, braced his shoulders and said, ‘We have failed, Master Shardlake. Sir Richard Rich will want an accounting for this.’
‘He is not the only one,’ Cecil said.
Stice left his two remaining men carrying the wounded Gower between them. Barak shook his head. ‘Stomach wound like that, doubt he’ll make it.’
‘No,’ I said. ‘Well done, Nicholas, for battling with Leeman. He was a powerful fighter.’
Barak smiled. ‘Not was. Is. Come and look. Bring the lamp.’
Puzzled, Cecil and Nicholas and I followed him over to where Leeman lay prone. Nicholas turned him over. The wound on his arm had stopped bleeding. Barak put a hand to the man’s nostrils. ‘There, he’s breathing. I only knocked him out.’ He looked between me and Cecil and smiled.
Nicholas said, ‘You told me he was dead!’
‘There’s an art to where you hit a man on the head. I thought it a good idea to pretend he was dead. Now that Stice has gone we can take him in to question him alone.’ He allowed himself a smile. ‘I was scared he might come to and moan, but he’s still out cold.’
Nicholas looked at Barak with a new respect. Cecil bent over Leeman dubiously. ‘Are you sure he’s all right?’
‘Pretty sure. He’ll come round soon.’
I looked at the young guard’s still face. ‘It seems Anne Askew’s writings have gone, but as for the Lamentation, if anyone knows what’s happened to it, it’s him.’
Cecil smiled with relief. ‘Yes. You did well, Barak.’
‘He may not want to talk,’ Nicholas muttered.
Cecil looked at the boy, his large eyes set hard now. ‘One way or another, he will.’ He looked round. People were still watching us from the boats, but nobody had come yet from the taverns. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘Get those bodies in the river. Quick!’