The Lost Prophecies

Ruler of two kingdoms, parleyment not humble,

Against great Rome do faithless spark.

He guides the means whereby their house doth crumble,

And fires the date henceforth will mark.

I

‘I don’t understand,’ I said to my friend Abel Glaze. ‘I didn’t even know he was alive.’

‘He’s not, it seems,’ said Abel, indicating the letter that lay open upon the table between us. ‘At least, he is not alive and well. Dying, rather.’

‘What I mean,’ I said, ‘is that I had no idea of my uncle’s existence until I got this letter. My father never mentioned he had a brother.’

‘You sound aggrieved, Nick.’

‘I don’t mean to. It’s come as rather a shock. How would you like it if you discovered you had uncles and aunts hidden away by a father who hadn’t bothered to-’

I stopped, noticing the look on Abel’s face and remembering that, quite apart from a lack of uncles and aunts, he possessed no memory at all of his mother and not much of his father. Abel Glaze had gone off to fight in the Dutch wars in the ’80s of the last century when he was scarcely out of boy’s clothing.

‘Anyway,’ said my friend, ‘what are you going to do about it?’

‘I’ll have to go, I suppose.’

‘Well, I don’t know about you, but I am going for a piss, Nick. Get us another while I’m gone.’

He stood up and threaded his way through the crowd of drinkers in the Knight of the Carpet. It wasn’t a particularly salubrious tavern but it was close to our workplace. Or our play-place, I should say perhaps, since both Abel and I were actors in the King’s Men. Our company was based at the Globe Theatre on the Southwark shore of the river.

I drained my tankard and beckoned to the potboy to bring me a couple more. While Abel was outside relieving himself in the stinking alley that ran between the Knight and the brothel next door, I picked up the letter from the tavern table, although I’d read it a dozen times. Once more I scanned the outside of the letter and its simple direction to ‘Nicholas Revill’ at ‘the Theatre, London’. And the mysteries started right here. For the person who had written it knew enough to be familiar with my name and the fact that I was employed in one of the London companies. What they didn’t know was that the Shoreditch playhouse which went by the name of the Theatre had been demolished a few years ago. Some of its timbers had actually been used to build the Globe. It’s possible, of course, that the letter-writer had assumed there was only one playhouse in London and simply called it the Theatre – but, if so, that showed the writer to be very ignorant indeed.

The letter reached me by chance after being delivered by the post rider to the Swan, a rivals’ house which lies a bit further along the river bank. Someone I knew there had been kind enough to walk the few hundred yards from his play-place to mine and give it to me in person. I’d received the letter that very morning and spent the rest of the day puzzling over it. Naturally, I wanted to share my puzzlement with my good friend Abel Glaze.

When I’d exhausted what I could learn from the outside of the letter – which wasn’t much – I turned again to its contents. Although apparently from an unknown uncle, it was written not by him but by his wife. The letter had come from a house in Shipston on Stour. My uncle, who was also called Nicholas Revill, was too ill to write but capable of dictating words to his wife, acting as a secretary. These facts were stated at the beginning.

In brief, the letter claimed that the sender was brother to John Revill, my father and the late priest of the parish of Miching in Somerset. The sender was aware that my father had perished with my mother in an outbreak of plague that struck the country around Miching some time in the final years of Queen Elizabeth’s reign. Now Nicholas Revill too was dying and wished to see the nephew who was named after him. That’s what he claimed: that I was named after him.

I say the sender of the letter ‘claimed’ all this because the news of an uncle – to say nothing of a dying uncle – had come out of the blue. As I’d said to Abel Glaze, my father never once talked of a brother called Nicholas or any other member of the family living near Shipston on Stour or anywhere else. Nor could I remember my mother ever mentioning a brother-in-law.

But then my father wasn’t very forthcoming. In truth, he could be a fearsome man. He disapproved most strongly of the stage and all the players on it. If he was still alive, my choice of profession would probably have driven him to his grave all over again. As for my mother, she tended to follow her husband’s lead. When a topic displeased him, neither of them referred to it. And if my reverend father had never mentioned his brother, that might be explained by some falling-out in the family. A falling-out lasting several decades. That there could have been some ill feeling between the brothers was suggested by a reference in the letter to an ‘old estrangement’. The writer, Nicholas Revill’s wife, had some difficulty with the long word. She’d crossed it through and then written it exactly the same above.

There was no indication in the letter why I should visit my dying kinsman, but then the dying do not have to give reasons. I could sense my uncle’s frailty in the very shaky signature that was appended to this letter. More pressing than his dictated request, though, were two words scrawled beneath the signature. ‘Please come.’ She’d signed it with her own name: Margaret Revill. I visualized my aunt adding that last plea once she’d sanded the letter and taken it out of the sickroom.

At that moment Abel Glaze returned to the table. He wasn’t alone but accompanied by a new associate of ours, or an associate of Abel’s, I ought to say. Thomas Cloke was a fellow around our age or a little older. He was tall, with a large nose and dark hair that poked out from under his cap. My friend Abel was short, but he also had a prominent beak, and there was something about the way he walked, with a bit of a bounce, which was similar to Cloke’s confident stride. So seeing them together making their way across the Knight of the Carpet, you might have thought that one man was imitating the other. If you’d been asked, you would have said that Abel was copying Cloke.

When he caught sight of me at the corner table, Thomas Cloke did a mock bow. ‘Why, if it isn’t Master Revill, the master player.’

Straightening up, he snapped his fingers at the potboy who’d just delivered our refilled tankards to indicate that he’d like one of his own, and best be quick about it. Cloke had this peremptory manner. I knew little about him except that he came from a well-to-do family and that he didn’t seem to do much apart from being a keen attender at the Globe. He was one of those who hang around the taverns frequented by players in the hope that a bit of our magic will rub off on him.

Don’t laugh. There are more than a few individuals like Master Cloke, both male and female. Some of the males want to take up playing themselves. Indeed, I’d spent my first few months in London haunting inns like the Knight in the hope that some playhouse shareholder would discern my talent and offer me a job without my having to ask for one. (It didn’t work for me but you might be luckier.) Then there are other people who may not want to act on stage but whose tastes are so odd that they enjoy the company of actors. We don’t object to them. Especially we don’t object to the women who feel like that.

So now Thomas Cloke eased his gangling frame on to the bench next to me. He mimed a man gasping for breath, he uttered strange noises, and then let his face fall forward until it was grazing the dirty surface of the table. He squinted sideways at me.

‘You were very good, Nicholas.’

I managed to smile for an instant.

‘Tom is praising your death scene,’ said Abel helpfully. He settled himself on the opposite side of the table.

‘Not so sure about the living scenes, mind you,’ said Cloke. ‘But there was plenty of blood when you went.’

‘Only a sheep’s,’ I said, patting the spot on my chest where, on stage, I’d burst the little bladder of sheep’s blood which simulated violent death. I’d just done a turn as an assassin in a piece called The Melancholy Man. And as an assassin I’d naturally come to a gory end, giving off the kind of strangulated sounds that Cloke tried to imitate. Dying on stage is not as easy as one might think. Cloke did not do a convincing impression of a dying man.

Abel too had a part in The Melancholy Man. He played a corrupt cardinal. We’d finished the afternoon performance and changed in the tire-house, Abel taking off his cardinal’s red while I divested myself of the assassin’s black. We wiped most of the paint off our faces and repaired to the Knight for a tipple. Evidently, Tom Cloke had attended the performance as well.

‘What about me, then, Tom?’ said Abel. ‘No words of praise for me?’

‘Remind me who you were again, Mr Glaze,’ said Tom Cloke in his lordly fashion, taking a fresh tankard of ale from the returning potboy.

‘I played Cardinal Carnale,’ said Abel. ‘You know, the one who smears poison on to the Bible which he gives to his mistress to kiss – oh, I see-’

Tom Cloke was nodding at Abel to show that he knew perfectly well which part my friend had taken. He’d been joking. Or had he? I was surprised at the level stare that Cloke now directed at Abel, level enough to cause him to pause with his tankard halfway to his mouth.

‘I have no praise for your cardinal, no,’ said Cloke.

‘Ah, well, you can’t please ’em all.’

But I sensed that Abel was disappointed. Perhaps it was because Thomas Cloke was really his friend, not mine, and he valued the other’s good opinion. A few weeks ago they’d got chatting in another players’ tavern, the Goat & Monkey, and, for reasons I couldn’t fathom, fallen into a sort of companionship.

There was a pause. Cloke noticed the letter, which was still lying open on the table. The letter from my supposed uncle, Nicholas Revill. Maybe he made out the urgent words scrawled at the end, ‘Please come’, and the added name of Margaret Revill. Maybe his curiosity was pricked. I wished I’d folded up the letter and put it away in my pocket before Cloke clapped eyes on it. Too late now, as he said: ‘What’s this?’

I was already reaching for the letter when Abel, perhaps eager to placate the other man, said: ‘Nick here has discovered he has an uncle living near Shipston. The strange thing is, he never knew of the man’s existence until this very morning. And now his uncle is dying.’

‘Is that so?’ said Thomas Cloke.

He turned to look at me. I shrugged. I was irritated with Abel for giving away so much. This wasn’t really any of his business and it certainly wasn’t Cloke’s. I shoved the letter into my doublet and launched into a few words of explanation, hoping to kill the subject.

‘Interesting,’ was the only remark that Cloke made.

‘We are thinking of journeying to Shipston,’ said Abel, ‘to visit this unknown branch of the Revill family. But we shall have to be quick about it since Nicholas’s uncle is on his deathbed.’

‘We?’ I said.

‘Have you finished playing at the Globe, then?’ said Cloke.

‘The King’s Men are preparing to go on the road for the summer,’ said Abel. ‘There’s a final performance tomorrow afternoon and then we are packing up for our summer tour.’

‘Just a moment, Abel,’ I said. ‘What’s all this about we going to Shipston?’

‘I thought you’d like me to come along with you, Nick. I don’t mean to intrude on your family concerns, but I thought you might value my company on the road. Maybe I’m wrong.’

‘Naturally, I’d be pleased to have you with me.’

‘It’s not as if we have to travel much out of our way because, you know, we are due to play in Warwick in – what is it? – ten days’ time.’

This was true. Like the other London companies during the later part of the summer, the King’s Men loaded their costumes and a handful of props on to a couple of carts and trundled into the provinces to give the bigger towns a taste of what the capital of England enjoyed for the rest of the year. We favoured a different part of the country each summer and now, in the August of 1605, it was the turn of Warwick and Coventry. By chance this was also the region where our principal author and shareholder, William Shakespeare, had grown up. There’d been talk that we might be playing in Stratford itself.

I noticed that Tom Cloke, who’d been silent for a few moments, was looking from Abel to me and back again. When he spoke it was with an unusual tentativeness.

‘Here is a fortunate coincidence, gentlemen,’ he said. ‘Abel, you know that I have cousins who live on the way to Warwick. It has been in my mind to visit them for some time. What would you say if I joined you on the journey? Safety in numbers, eh?’

‘That’s a good idea,’ said Abel.

‘Of course,’ I said.

‘Let us drink to it,’ said Cloke, snapping his fingers at the potboy once more for our cups to be refilled. ‘Drinks on my slate, of course.’

And so it was settled that the three of us would set off the day after tomorrow, once we’d given a final performance of The Melancholy Man at the Globe. I didn’t greatly relish the idea of Thomas Cloke keeping us company, but I could think of no plausible objection, even if he had muscled his way into our trip.

I had the obligation to visit my dying uncle and doing so as soon as possible. Abel Glaze was offering to accompany me out of friendship, and, as he’d pointed out, we were due to travel in that direction anyway. We’d simply be getting a head start on others in the company and, once I had called in at my uncle’s house, I could join Abel and the rest of the fellows in Warwick. And if Cloke also had family to visit in the area, then it made sense for him to ride with us. The roads were more secure and easier to travel in high summer, but there was something in his comment about safety in numbers. Three men on the road made a more forbidding prospect for thieves and highway robbers.

Nevertheless, I wasn’t altogether at ease. There was an element in Thomas Cloke I didn’t trust even if I couldn’t put my finger on it.

II

It was the third day after the three of us had set off when I started to feel real suspicions that everything wasn’t as it should be. There was nothing amiss in the sunny weather or the state of the roads. They were dry and the hooves of our hired horses threw up plenty of dust, but all that was preferable to the mires of winter and spring. The travellers we passed going towards London or the ones we overtook waved cheerful greetings or at least regarded us with the minimum of suspicion.

There was nothing wrong with my companions either, or with me, I hope. We got on well enough. Abel Glaze and I were old friends dating back to the days when the King’s Men went under no more ambitious a title than the Chamberlain’s. The two of us talked quite a bit of players’ shop, which Tom Cloke was happy enough to listen to, occasionally chipping in with some comment of his own. I had to admit that Cloke was fair company. He was generous with his purse, buying us our supper on the first two nights because, as he said, he’d wished himself on us and we were entitled to some compensation. Overall, I was enjoying the journey, not thinking much about the deathbed that awaited me at the end. I’m no great rider, but my horse was biddable enough and we proceeded at a gentle jog.

We were following the usual road out of London on the way to the Midlands – the one through Slough and on to Oxford via Wallingford before heading further north. It was the route that William Shakespeare took on his journeys home. I’d mentioned to WS that Abel and I were leaving London early, explaining about my dying uncle and adding that I’d first heard of this man’s existence scarcely more than twenty-four hours earlier. WS was all quick feeling whenever he heard such news affecting one of his company, and he grasped my hand in farewell.

‘It is hard to gain and lose a member of one’s family in the same instant, Nick. But you are doing the right thing by going. One should not neglect family.’

A shadow passed across his face, and I recalled the company talk about WS: that he did not often go home to Stratford despite acquiring a large house in the town some years ago and – although he would not have said so himself – despite being one of its most notable citizens.

From the moment when Abel Glaze, Tom Cloke and I gained the open country beyond the fringes of London, I observed that Cloke was watchful. Not just on the more deserted or heavily wooded stretches of the road but when we arrived at the hostelries where we put up each night. These places were nothing special, and we chose them at random. But before we sat down to supper our companion would survey the other guests and travellers almost as if he was searching for someone whom he knew – and feared to see. Only when he’d established that there was no such individual amongst the itinerant merchants and the locals in the room would he breathe more easily and go about ordering food and drink. If someone came in, he stopped eating or drinking for an instant to glance at them. But it was more than a casual glance, if you know what I mean.

On our first night we shared a room with several other travellers, and Cloke gave them the same scrutiny. The same on the second. On the third night the three of us had a tight little chamber to ourselves, mostly occupied by the large bed. This time, with no one to be suspicious of inside the room, Cloke spent some minutes gazing out of the window after supper. It was growing dark. He beckoned to me. I was just taking off my boots and outer garments before lying down. Abel Glaze was already asleep and snoring his head off. I went to the window.

In a conspiratorial whisper Cloke said: ‘Do you see those men over there, Nicholas? Under the trees.’

I squinted through the leaded panes. The inn, which was called the Night Owl, was on the outskirts of Wallingford. The town and its castle were to one side and to the west was the river, while wooded countryside crept up near the inn. The dust of the road seemed to glow with a light of its own. There was a stand of trees opposite the Night Owl. Tom Cloke said: ‘There! Do you see?’

The glass in the window was old and lumpy, and the light outside was fading. If it hadn’t been for a sudden spark as someone in the group struck a tinderbox, I don’t think I would have noticed the little knot of men standing in the shadows of the trees. Then I made out the pale blur of faces, the movement of hands.

‘Yes, I see them,’ I said.

‘They were at supper downstairs.’

‘I don’t know, I can’t see clearly enough from here. Anyway, so what if they were?’

‘They are looking up at our room,’ said Cloke.

I could feel his breath on my cheek as we crowded at the little window. His agitation was plain. Such is the power of suggestion that I became convinced for a moment that the group outside was indeed looking up in the direction of our chamber. Like my companion, I grew uncomfortable. An owl hooted in the trees. But then one of the men in the group laughed – the sound carried quite clearly on the still evening air – and common sense returned, to me at least. It was a natural laugh, not a thief’s, not a conspirator’s.

‘They’re having a quiet smoke before turning in for the night, that’s all.’

The little red embers of their pipes pulsated in the dark. I counted four embers. I clapped Tom Cloke on the shoulder and went back to undressing for bed. I lay down next to Abel, who was still snoring. Cloke stayed at the window until it grew completely dark outside. Before he joined us in the bed, I heard him go to the door and softly rattle the latch as well as sliding the bolt back and forth a couple of times. I thought he was going outside but he was only checking that we were secure. Eventually, the bed creaked as Cloke got in. I feigned sleep even as I sensed him lying wakeful beside me. The owl hooted again. I wondered why our travelling companion was so alert, so nervous.

The morning after we left Wallingford, Cloke seemed to relax. I made some reference to the pipe smokers we’d glimpsed from the window of the Night Owl and he shrugged it off. Abel looked curiously not at him but at me. We paused in Oxford to hire fresh horses and rode a few miles further from the city walls as far as Woodstock to take advantage of the fair weather and the longer hours of summer light.

We were getting close to the dwelling of Tom Cloke’s cousins, whose family name was Shaw and who lived beyond the small town of Bloxham in a place called Combe House. The three of us had one more shared night in an inn, and then the next day we’d be parting company as I went on to Shipston on Stour and Abel made his way to Warwick to wait for the rest of the King’s Men. Occasionally, I thought of the dying uncle whose name I shared. But since I had never met him or his wife Margaret, my thoughts did not go very far. I hoped to arrive in time, but it was all out of my hands.

The Green Dragon at Woodstock was comfortable, as befits a hostelry in a town where there is also a royal palace, and we drank and ate heartily. Cloke thanked us for sharing our journey. He bought us supper and I felt well disposed towards him, and not merely because I knew I wouldn’t be seeing him beyond the following day. He wasn’t such a bad fellow after all.

The next morning, however, his nerves seemed once again to have got the better of him. We were leaving the Dragon early, impatient to get to our various destinations. It was crisp, bright August weather, with a hint of autumn already in the air. Cloke was in the stableyard of the inn when Abel and I got there. He’d already taken down Abel’s bag in addition to his own and had offered to take mine too. A man in a hurry. Now he was talking to the ostler, who was bringing out our horses. Tom started when he saw us, his friends and fellow travellers, draw near. The sun was at our backs, streaming over the wall of the yard. Perhaps he hadn’t recognized us at first. Who was he expecting? Yet, close to, he looked more guilty than alarmed.

‘Something wrong, Tom?’ said Abel.

‘Nothing,’ said Cloke. ‘I am anxious to be going, that’s all.’

We passed through Bloxham, with Tom Cloke telling us that the spire of St Mary’s was the highest in Oxfordshire, although these were almost the only words he uttered during the morning.

The country grew more hilly and the roads emptier. Tucked away down in a side valley I noticed a splendid house, standing alone. I was wondering whose it might be when, to my and Abel’s surprise, Tom Cloke suddenly straightened in his saddle and pointed.

‘There’s Combe,’ he said. ‘It is the home of the Shaws, my kinsmen.’

We reined in for a moment to examine the prospect. I knew that Tom Cloke came from a well-to-do family but, if this place was anything to go by, he’d been reticent on the subject of his cousins’ wealth.

In the noonday sun that hung over the west-facing valley, Combe House was set like a jewel against a backdrop of trees and water. The warm stone glowed and the windows sparkled. There was a moat, and a gatehouse approached across a bridge. I guessed Combe House dated from the reign of Queen Elizabeth’s father, a time when prosperous families began to move away from the safety of towns and to construct country dwellings with the appearance of mansions rather than castles.

‘You will stop for some refreshment before you go on your way,’ said our companion. It was more of a command than a request. ‘The horses will need watering.’

There was no disagreeing with that, and I for one would be glad to dismount for an hour or so and stretch my legs, as well as having a bite to eat. We turned our horses off the main road and started down the winding path that led into the valley. The path was wide and rutted with the tracks of wagons and carriages. We made a gradual, sinuous descent through copses of trees.

‘This is a fine place,’ said Abel, half-turning and calling over his shoulder. ‘I shall have to speak with more respect to you in future, Tom.’

By now we were almost on the flat and moving in single file, passing through dense ranks of trees that overhung either side of the path, which was slightly sunken. Combe House was out of sight. When we’d been high up above the valley and looking down I’d been in good spirits, but now something was making me uneasy. There was no sound of birdsong, no sound but the breeze rustling in the leaves and the plodding of our horses. My horse seemed to share the unease I felt. I was in the middle, with Abel to the front and Tom to our rear. A dozen or so yards separated each of us from the other.

As I glanced back to see whether Cloke was going to respond to Abel’s comment, I heard the whinny of a horse and was puzzled, for it was not one of ours. Then there was a flash and a loud bang from the trees to our rear. Tom was leaning forward but his head was up and his mouth wide open. Even amongst the shadows cast by the trees I could see him gaping ferociously as if trying to force words out.

With a great effort, Tom Cloke straightened in his saddle and looked down at his chest. Almost in curiosity. There was a bloom of red spreading across his shirt, clearly visible beneath his unfastened doublet. And then several things happened at once. Behind us, from further down the track and between the trees, several men appeared on foot in a jostling mass. They started to run towards us.

Tom’s horse panicked and cantered ahead. Cloke was bent forward once more, clinging to the reins. My own horse was putting on speed too. I didn’t have to urge him; he was doing so by instinct. I called out a warning to Abel Glaze – in my terror, I don’t know what I said and words were unnecessary anyway since Abel was already twisted around on his mount and staring past me in amazement – and then the three of us were thudding along the narrow path and out into a wide grassy space that fronted Combe House and its encircling moat.

Either the occupants of the house were on the lookout for us or they had some guardian permanently on duty at the main entrance, for, by the time we’d covered half of the few hundred yards of sunlit grass that separated the trees from the moat, the alarm had been raised and people were gathering under the gatehouse arch at the far end of the bridge, with more arriving at every instant.

I risked a glance behind me. Tom Cloke was still with us, but he was all huddled up on horseback. I sensed rather than saw a group of men emerging from the shelter of the trees. They halted, no doubt seeing the party waiting on the far side of the moat and realizing that we’d reach the safety of the house before they could catch us. Abel and I managed to rein in our horses when we were almost at the bridge. The band of men by the wood – there were four of them – moved a little out of its shelter. At least two of them were carrying muskets. One of them raised his weapon and sighted down it. I understood now what had happened to Tom Cloke. The meaning of the red stain across his chest. But the man lowered his weapon. We were either out of range altogether or too far away for accurate shooting.

These men were no common footpads or chance thieves. They must have tethered their own horses in the woodland near Combe House and waited for us to arrive. They had chosen their moment carefully, when we were away from the main road and off our guard near the moated house.

I realized all this later. Now my attention was caught by the sight of poor Tom Cloke vainly trying to hold on to his horse. He must have pulled on the reins, for the animal veered around, away from the house, and began to bolt towards our ambushers.

A handful of men started out from the gatehouse on the far side of the bridge. Some were carrying staves, one of them a musket of his own. Abel crossed the narrow bridge; I was close behind him. Several men grabbed at the reins of our horses. Abel and I jumped down. All was confusion, with the horses jinking about, men shouting and dogs barking. No one could decide whether to take shelter in the courtyard, which lay beyond the gatehouse, or to venture to the far side of the moat and confront the ambushers.

The individual with the musket ran to the far end of the bridge and raised his gun in the direction of the trees, but he did not fire either. Our companion’s horse, with Tom slumped across it, had almost reached the woods. Then it slowed as if uncertain where to go next, and one of our assailants walked forward quite nonchalantly, like a man strolling in a meadow, hand outstretched. He seized Tom’s horse by the bridle. At the same time Tom’s body fell from the horse. The ambusher, who was clad in black, at first seemed inclined to leave him lying there. Then he beckoned to one of his fellows. The two of them unceremoniously hoisted up our friend and tossed him over the saddle as though he were a hunter’s quarry. From their handling of the body, Tom was dead. Dead or dying. The horse and its burden were led off into the woods.

I was surprised the men made no attempt to approach closer to Combe House. Although they were outnumbered, they were obviously determined individuals. Perhaps they’d got what they had come for.

So far, no one had spoken directly to us. But now a tall, handsome young woman came forward. ‘What trouble have you brought to our house?’ she said.

III

‘You think it was the same men you saw at Wallingford?’ said Abel Glaze.

‘I’m not sure,’ I said. ‘All I know is that Tom was worried about something and he called me to the window of our room as it was getting dark. You were fast asleep. There were four men standing outside. They were smoking pipes and laughing amongst themselves. I thought nothing of it at the time, but it seems as though they must have been stalking us all the while and waiting for their opportunity.’

‘Why wait until we’d almost arrived here?’

‘Perhaps they needed to be certain of our destination before they attacked.’

‘It doesn’t make sense, Nick. What did they want?’

‘They are not common thieves, that’s certain.’

‘I noticed that Tom was anxious through the whole journey.’

‘I did too,’ I said, wondering why Abel hadn’t mentioned this earlier.

‘So it must have been Tom Cloke they were after,’ said Abel. ‘Why would anyone bother to follow a couple of poor players?’ There was almost relief in his voice. Nothing to be ashamed of. He was expressing my own thoughts.

‘Poor Tom,’ said Abel. He sunk his head in his hands.

Abel and I were sitting in an upper bedchamber of Combe House. The interior of the place was as fine and spacious as the outside promised. After the striking young woman by the gatehouse had asked us that question about the trouble we’d brought them, we spent some moments identifying ourselves to her, since she seemed to speak with authority.

While we were busy explaining our connection to Tom Cloke and the reason why we’d pitched up at the moated house, a young man appeared in the courtyard, closely followed by an older couple. There was such a strong likeness amongst these handsome people that it was evident they were father and mother, son and daughter. These were indeed the Shaw family, and I’ll say more about them later.

The older man gave orders that an armed party from the house was to scour the woods and valley in search of our assailants and, although he did not say this in our hearing, most probably of Tom’s body. Meanwhile we were taken inside and given refreshment, while our horses were stabled. Neither Abel nor I had much appetite for food, but we drank several draughts of some fiery spirit which helped steady our nerves. We sat in the hall of the house. The two women of the household, Elizabeth and Mary Shaw, mother and daughter respectively, attended to us in person, dismissing the servants once they’d brought the refreshments. There were younger children peering at us curiously, but they too were ushered away. A couple of spaniels that were too idle and pampered to go on the hunt for our assailants hung around the table. Abel fed them scraps.

All around was bustle and activity, but we were a still centre. Now we were able to tell our story in a more ordered style, up to the moment of the ambush.

I was glad to discover that the Shaws were actual kinsmen to Tom Cloke. I think part of me hadn’t quite believed the claim he’d made as we gazed down on Combe House. For their part, the women accepted us for who we were, members of the King’s Men and travelling companions to Tom, by chance more than by design. Abel described how Tom had attached himself to us when he found we were journeying to the Midlands in our profession as players. He added that I was visiting a dying uncle. Mary Shaw made some commiserating remark to me about this and I simply nodded, too embarrassed to say that I had been unaware of my uncle’s existence until a few days before.

I noticed that neither Elizabeth nor Mary showed much grief about Cloke’s death. Perhaps they were still too shocked by the suddenness of it all to respond or perhaps he had been a distant kinsman whom they’d scarcely known. Towards the end of our recital, however, Mrs Shaw abruptly said: ‘Did our cousin Thomas have anything with him?’

‘What sort of thing?’ said Abel.

The lady of the house, tall and good-looking like her daughter, appeared slightly uncomfortable at her own question.

‘I mean, did you notice whether he was carrying anything… unusual? Large enough to be in his bag or cap case?’

‘If he was, then it will be in the hands of our attackers,’ I said. ‘They made off with Tom and his horse. All his possessions were in the saddlebag.’

‘That is so, Mother,’ said Mary Shaw. ‘We saw one of the thieves snatch at the horse’s bridle and lead the beast and the body of our kinsman into the woods.’

Mother and daughter exchanged quick glances. And when the father and son reappeared – they had gone out at the head of the party searching for our attackers – I thought I saw an odd exchange between William Shaw, the owner of Combe House, and his wife. Mr Shaw came striding through the door of the hall, his son Robert close behind him and a gaggle of armed servants in their wake. Abel and I were still seated at the great dining table with Elizabeth and Mary. William Shaw announced to all of us what was already apparent from the expression on his face: ‘They are nowhere to be found, I fear.’ Then he gave a slight and separate shake of his head to his wife as if in confirmation of his words. But I sensed he was sending a different message to her. I cast a glance at Abel. He too had noticed.

This was a further small mystery for Abel and me to puzzle over after we’d been ushered upstairs to our chamber. We were to stay at Combe at least for the rest of the day and the night to come. The attack on us and the murder of Thomas Cloke would be reported to the justices in Banbury (the nearest town of any size), although this would have to wait since no one was going to venture far from the house that day. Realistically, any chance of tracking down and apprehending the culprits lay with the occupants of Combe, and that seemed to have failed.

‘Ah, well,’ said Abel, lifting his head from his hands. ‘Poor Tom.’ He sighed and lay back on the bed. I was sitting in a chair by the open casement window. Below was a sheer wall, at the base of which stirred the waters of the moat. This was not as wide or deep as a castle’s, but it was enough to make access to the house almost impossible except via the bridge in front of the gatehouse. At that moment I was glad of the security. I gazed over the water at the sunlit trees fringing the cleared area around Combe. On our ride up here this morning the countryside had looked peaceful, innocent. Now the shadows under the trees might conceal a band of murderers.

I was vaguely aware of Abel rising from the bed and going to the corner of the chamber where our bags had been stowed, brought to us from the stables by a boy servant. I travelled light, as did Abel. The costumes and everything else we required for our work were being conveyed direct to Warwick in the company wagons.

Now I heard Abel give a grunt of surprise.

‘What is it?’

He didn’t answer but swung his bag on to the bed. It was a battered old thing, going back to the time when Abel had made his living in an even more disreputable way than as a player. My friend was a reformed character these days, but he’d once tricked money and alms out of travellers by pretending to suffer from distressing ailments like the falling sickness. He used the cloth bag to carry the various items he needed (mostly cosmetic, like a player’s). But as he looked inside the cap case now it was evident that he wasn’t finding what he expected. He lifted out a square-shaped item that was wrapped in drab cloth and secured with cord.

‘I thought my bag was heavier than it should be,’ he said.

‘What is it?’

‘I don’t know. I didn’t put it in here.’

Abel placed the item on the bed. He ran his fingers along its edges. ‘Feels like wood. Or a book of some sort.’

The same thought crossed our minds at the same moment. Abel looked at me.

‘It must be Tom’s,’ he said.

I recalled that very morning in the stableyard of the Green Dragon at Woodstock. How Tom Cloke had been in the yard before us, chatting to the ostler. How he appeared startled or guilty when he saw us approaching. Had he slipped this… this item… into Abel’s bag beforehand? He’d taken the bag down to the yard early, as if he was doing Abel a favour. He had offered to take mine too, but I refused.

‘Put in here by accident?’ said Abel, then, seeing my expression, added: ‘No, I don’t think so either.’

‘He placed that – whatever it is – inside your bag when he was carrying it to the stableyard. He did it because he feared what might happen. Feared he might be attacked and his goods stolen.’

‘Not just him. We were attacked, remember.’

I could see Abel was angry and upset because Tom Cloke’s actions had placed all three of us in danger. I felt angry too, but Cloke had been Abel’s friend more than mine.

‘I am going to see what’s inside this piece of cloth,’ said Abel defiantly. ‘It may be a dead man’s property, but he has forfeited the right to it by his behaviour.’

Nevertheless, Abel Glaze continued to stare at the item in its drab covering where it lay on the bed. His reluctance to open it seemed to be based on more than some simple scruple about tampering with Tom’s possessions. But after a few moments he took a small knife from out of his cap case and, slitting the knotted cord that was bound about the parcel, unfolded the cloth. By this time I was standing beside him, looking down.

I don’t know what I expected to see. Something valuable for sure, valuable enough to cause four mysterious men to tail us over several days before launching an attack and murdering Tom. Something valuable, but not this. Abel had been right when he said that the object felt like a piece of wood or a book. It was both of those, an old volume with primitive wooden covers to which shreds of leather still clung. Crude stitching bound the covers together.

Abel lifted the book up without opening it. He handled it warily, as if it might bite. The back cover was pierced by several holes, suggesting it had once been nailed down somewhere. Altogether, the nail holes did not add to the attraction of the volume. Perhaps it had been used to stop up a hole in a wall. It was definitely ancient. The surprise was that it had survived at all and not been put to kindle a fire.

Only now did Abel open the book. I was peering over his shoulder. The leaves were of parchment and crackled to the touch. One of them was discoloured, as if a careless reader had spilled wine on it. Abel drew in his breath sharply, for the contents were in complete contrast to the unpromising exterior: a series of short handwritten texts positioned in the centre of each page, and with the lettering immaculately formed. The scribe, whoever he was, had taken pains to produce something imposing. Which argued that the contents must have been important – at least to him. Unfortunately, they didn’t make any sense.

‘It’s rubbish,’ said Abel. There was a mixture of regret and relief in his voice.

‘Let me see.’

I cradled the volume in my hands. I was conscious of the stillness inside the chamber, of a fly buzzing at the casement window, of the sunlight outside.

‘It’s in Latin, I think,’ I said.

‘Of course, Nick. I forget you are an educated man.’

‘My father saw to that – with his rod if he had to.’

I was only half-aware of my own words, too absorbed in the writings of someone from centuries ago. For the volume seemed to stretch further into the past even as I was holding it. I went back to the seat by the window, where the light was better.

‘I can spell out some of it. Here’s a phrase about the house of a king and broken bones, and another one about the sacred face of a traitor. Set out like the lines of a poem.’

‘Rubbish, like I said.’

‘I’m not so sure. Have you got anything to write with? Anything to write on?’

Abel sighed and fumbled in his case. He produced a thin stick of charcoal. I don’t know why he had it but guessed it was part of the gear from his counterfeit crank days, when he’d conned money out of people. He hung on to the stuff for sentimental reasons. He gave me a roll of paper as well, saying it was the lines of some part he’d played recently and forgotten to return to the book-keeper at the end of the performance.

But I wasn’t interested in Abel’s part. I was too caught up by now in attempting to puzzle out a block of lines which occurred near the end of this slim volume. I tore off a fragment of the paper. Resting the book on my knees and using the smudgy charcoal, I copied the words on to the back of the paper scrap. It didn’t take long. Then I attempted to turn them into English. That took a lot longer. And then I sat staring at the whole thing until Abel grew exasperated and said: ‘Well?’

‘It’s not rubbish,’ I said, ‘even if the lines don’t appear to make much sense. It seems to rhyme in the Latin so it would go like this in English.’ I paused in the way that I would have done in delivering an important speech on stage.

‘“Ruler of two kingdoms, parleyment not humble,

Against great Rome do faithless spark.

He guides the means whereby their house does fall,

And fires the date henceforth will mark.”

‘But if I change “fall” to “crumble” I can get a rhyme with “humble”.’

I made the alteration in what I’d written and sat back, rather pleased with myself.

Abel was staring at me, though not in admiration. ‘I think you’d better leave the poetry to Master Shakespeare, Nicholas.’

‘You must admit it has some meaning even if it’s obscure.’

‘Possibly. It could be a prophecy or a prediction. I remember a fortune-teller near Paul’s Wharf who used to go in for that sort of thing. Rhyming lines and all.’

‘This must have been what they were after, those men,’ I said. ‘It’s the only thing that Tom transferred to your bag.’

‘If so, they were ready to murder for it.’

I closed the book. It suddenly weighed heavily in my lap. I felt slightly dizzy, the effect of the drink we’d taken downstairs, perhaps. We were silent for a moment. When Abel next spoke it was to echo my own thoughts.

‘Nick, when those men search inside Tom’s saddlebag-’

‘-which they will have done already-’

‘-they’ll see straight away that the book isn’t there-’

‘-they’ll assume we have it-’

‘-we do-’

‘-and come in search of it here-’

‘-come in search of us.’

As Abel concluded with this alarming prediction, I glanced out of the open window once more. The shadows under the distant trees grew darker.

‘We’re safe as long as we stay here,’ said Abel. ‘This is a well-defended house.’

‘We can’t stay here for ever. Some of us have got a living to make. I’ve got a dying uncle to see. Besides, we may be in as much danger within Combe House as outside it. I reckon that the Shaws were waiting for cousin Cloke to arrive. Mrs Shaw asked us whether Tom was carrying anything unusual on the journey. And you saw the look that passed between husband and wife when he returned from his hunt for the attackers. It wasn’t about not finding those men; it was about not finding… something else.’

‘So why don’t we just give them the book? Explain how Tom must have put it in my bag by chance?’

‘What’s to stop them kicking us out of here if we do? Kicking us out or something worse…?’

‘This is a respectable family, Nick. The danger lies outside.’

‘Maybe,’ I said. ‘But we should keep hold of this book for the time being. Let’s sleep on it. Tomorrow we can hand it over as we leave.’

‘All right,’ said my friend. ‘But in the meantime we’d better find a place in which to conceal it. I don’t want to put it back with my own things.’

In the end we tucked the book under a mattress on the bed. One of several mattresses on the bed, for this was a wealthy house. We had carpets on the floor too. We hid the book only just in time, for there was a knock at the door. It was Mary Shaw, the daughter of the house.

‘Gentlemen,’ she said, ‘I fear that we are not treating you as guests deserve to be treated. Please come with me.’

IV

It seemed that Mary had summoned us for no other purpose than to show off something of the house, or rather its immediate surroundings, before the evening meal. As we went downstairs into the hall, we saw the children again, a boy and a girl. They were attended by a clean-shaven, jowly man who inclined his head slightly to our guide. Mary Shaw explained that the children were also her cousins. Her mother’s sister, whom we hadn’t yet met, was a widow and a permanent resident in Combe. The clean-shaven individual acted as the children’s tutor.

We walked over the bridge across which we’d galloped on our arrival. We were not alone. A couple of the household servants, strapping fellows in livery and armed with staves, kept a discreet distance behind us. Their presence should have made me feel easier, but it did not. Also trailing behind us were the spaniels that had been in the hall. They were the particular pets of Mary Shaw. She called them Finder and Keeper.

Abel and I couldn’t help glancing towards the place under the fringe of trees where we’d last seen Tom Cloke, dead or dying, draped across his horse.

‘You knew your cousin Tom Cloke well?’ I said.

‘Not really, Master Revill,’ she said, ‘although the Clokes and the Shaws have long been linked through marriage.’

‘Have you any idea why he should have been attacked?’ said Abel.

‘It was an attempted robbery, was it not?’ she said as casually as she could manage. ‘Besides, I thought that all of you were attacked, not only Tom.’

She was a good liar but not good enough. I wondered why her mother Elizabeth wasn’t showing us around and answering our inevitable questions. The older lady might have been more convincing.

Combe House and its environs were delightful. Or they would have been under normal circumstances. The late-afternoon sun glittered off the dark moat. Ducks paddled in the water or preened themselves on the banks. Wagtails darted around. Mary pointed out the stews, or fish ponds, that were fed by the overflow from the moat, and the way in which the water was eventually channelled into a stream that ran at the lower end of a meadow beside the house. There was a certain pride in her voice, but Abel and I were uneasy and looked around as if our ambushers might at any moment emerge from the surrounding woodland. The two servants loitered just out of earshot, while Finder and Keeper went about their own affairs.

After half an hour or so we returned to the house and the hall, where the table had been prepared for supper. Abel made himself absent for a moment while Mary made small talk with me. Had I visited this part of the country before? Did I enjoy the player’s life? Usually, I would have welcomed her attention. She was a good-looking young woman, if somewhat serious, but her interest was for form’s sake only, and when her mother entered the chamber she at once turned away and began a private conversation with her.

Mary’s place was taken by the steward of Combe House, a man called Gully. He was as sober as stewards tend to be, but he fitted well into this household of grave individuals.

‘This is a sad business, Master Revill,’ he said.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘The death of a kinsman and all.’

‘He has brought trouble to Combe,’ said Gully, echoing Mary Shaw, although at least he did not blame Abel and me. ‘This is a peaceful spot, out of the world. Some of us do our best to ensure it remains that way.’

‘Sometimes the world comes to you, willy-nilly,’ I said.

‘You look as though you might enjoy the world coming to you, Master Revill.’

‘You can’t be otherwise and be a player. The world is our business, you might say.’

Before I could embark on any more high-sounding guff, Gully was summoned by his mistress.

Now Abel returned and tugged at my sleeve. He whispered in my ear: ‘Our room’s been searched.’

‘What!’

‘It’s been done quite carefully, but my things aren’t exactly as I left them.’

‘Is the book still there?’

‘Under the mattress, yes.’

‘Maybe we should have put it somewhere more obvious so they could find it.’

I was starting to regret hanging on to the damned thing. Our enemies seemed to be inside Combe House as well as beyond the place. I believed that Mary Shaw had been instructed to lure us out of our room so that our luggage could be examined.

After grace, we sat down to a plain but ample meal of fish and pigeon pie, with salads and sweetmeats. It was a subdued affair – not surprisingly, given that a kinsman had lost his life a few dozen yards from where we were sitting in the hall – and I had the chance to study our hosts.

William Shaw was a tall bearded man with prominent eyes, a feature inherited by his son Robert. The father had a quiet manner, apart from what was produced by the circumstances, I think. I noticed that he frequently glanced at the children’s tutor, Henry Gifford, who had joined us at table. The widowed sister to Elizabeth was called Muriel, but I did not catch her last name. She was not from the same mould as the rest of the family, being rather short and red-faced. More cheerful too. She seemed to be the only one familiar with the stage-play world and had once seen a performance of Master Shakespeare’s at the Globe. It was before my and Abel’s time in the company, however, and she could not have been very struck by the piece, for she remembered little about it apart from the violent killing of ‘that Roman’.

‘It is called Julius Caesar,’ said Abel.

‘That is the very one,’ said Muriel. ‘He was struck down as he was speaking before their parleyment. There was much blood spilled, and the assassins washed their hands in it afterwards.’

The word ‘parleyment’ reminded me of the obscure verse in the book hidden beneath our mattress.

‘The killing of a tyrant is permissible,’ mused Robert Shaw. ‘I refer to Julius Caesar, of course. Do you think-?’

‘Does play-acting please you, Master Revill?’ said Henry Gifford the tutor, interrupting the young man. These were the first words he’d uttered.

‘Why, yes, it does.’

‘It has not always been seen as a respectable way of making a living,’ said Elizabeth Shaw.

‘What is respectable these days?’ I said. ‘Some of the noblest people in the land have been our patrons, and even the late queen was fond of attending our performances.’

‘And now we are become the King’s Men,’ added Abel.

‘It makes no difference how many kings and queens attend your performances when a greater King than all of them looks down on us,’ said Gifford firmly. ‘Properly considered, playing is a form of lying. A player pretends to be what he is not.’

‘But it’s a pretence which is shared amongst the audience,’ I said, ignoring his opinion of what God thought of it all. ‘An agreed pretence which does no harm.’

These were familiar arguments, both for and against plays and players. Maybe I spoke more strenuously than I should have done, because I felt both aggrieved and on the defensive. Maybe that accounted for what I said next.

‘You should know that your late kinsman Thomas frequented the playhouse.’

Raised eyebrows and expressions of disbelief around the table showed that my point had not been well received. Doubtless the Shaws considered that attending playhouses was exactly the kind of loose behaviour that infected young men when they were unwise enough to visit London.

‘We must not be too harsh,’ said Elizabeth Shaw in a conciliatory way. ‘The players are not beyond the pale. They even have their own saint.’

‘His feast day is next week,’ added Robert Shaw.

‘I should thank you two gentlemen for accompanying Thomas to Combe despite the sad outcome of your journey,’ said William.

Conversation was desultory after that. It was arranged that we should leave Combe House the next morning. Mr Shaw offered us an escort for a few miles, although, he said, in his view the fellows who attacked us were long gone.

Abel and I returned to our chamber while the rest of the family went about their business. Abel examined his possessions yet again. He did not think they had been disturbed for a second time.

‘The room hasn’t been searched because the Shaws no longer think we’ve got what they are looking for, Abel. They believe our attackers already have it, which is the reason Mr Shaw does not expect us to be attacked again.’

‘But we know they haven’t got the book, which is the reason we may be attacked again. So let’s give it up to the Shaw family before we depart, Nick. Let them deal with the problem. Or we can simply leave it where it is.’

We checked to see that the book was still tucked amongst the mattresses. It was. I drew it out once more and looked at its ancient pages with their obscure verses. Were they predictions? Forecasts of events that had already occurred or were still to happen? I took out from my pocket the paper on which I’d scrawled my makeshift translation.

Some words leaped out at me – ‘Ruler of two kingdoms’, ‘parleyment’, ‘great Rome’. If they applied to the present time, it was not difficult to understand the references. Our new ruler, James, had also been King of Scotland before he journeyed southwards to take the throne left vacant by Elizabeth. ‘Rome’ could only refer to the papal seat. The Popes sometimes found it expedient to regard the English kings as usurpers and tyrants.

But if individual words and phrases were clear, the general sense of the verse was cloudy. Or perhaps it was that I was reluctant to look too closely into its meaning for fear of what I might find.

‘Who is the patron saint of players?’ said Abel, breaking into these alarming thoughts.

‘St Genesius. He was a Roman, like Julius Caesar the tyrant. Except he was an actor, I think.’

‘Did you know that the feast day of Genesius was next week?’

‘I didn’t.’

‘Yet the son of this household did. Odd, eh? Do you know what I think, Nick? That we have stumbled into a nest of recusants.’

The same thought had been on the edge of my own mind, but I’d been reluctant to admit it. This region of the country, spreading out from Warwickshire into the neighbouring counties, was known to be fertile soil for adherents of the old religion. There was a guarded quality to all the Shaws that fitted a family that must always be looking out for trouble from the authorities. Then there was an unexpected familiarity with the feast days of obscure saints, and some out-of-the-way reference to the permissible killing of tyrants. Above all, there was the figure of Henry Gifford, the supposed tutor to Muriel’s children. Tutor he might be in his spare moments, but I would have wagered a month’s worth of my meagre wages against a bead rosary that he was the priest who ministered to the souls in Combe.

Households like Combe might be tolerated by the authorities, but they could expect visits from pursuivants or priest-catchers, who would interrogate the occupants. If they didn’t receive satisfactory answers, they would take measurements of room dimensions, then tap on walls and ceilings in their search for hidden compartments. If necessary, they would simply wait for the hidden priests to exhaust their supplies of food and water. I thought of the men who’d lain in ambush for us. Pursuivants? No, there would be no need for them to hide in the woods or launch a murderous attack. They acted with the full power and approval of the state. The four men weren’t pursuivants but something different – and worse.

‘Yes, I think we are in a Catholic house,’ I said to Abel.

‘Thomas Cloke must have been a follower of the old religion too,’ he said. ‘Remember that he did not like my portrayal of a cardinal on stage.’

I did recall that odd moment in the Knight of the Carpet when Cloke had seemed displeased with Abel.

‘Whether that’s so or not,’ I said, ‘the Shaws are surely followers of the old religion, and Henry Gifford is the guardian of their immortal souls.’

I returned the book to its hiding-place beneath the mattress. I screwed up the piece of paper on which I’d written in smudgy charcoal the English version of the Latin and went over to the window. I opened it, leaned out and dropped the paper into the moat, where it floated, its whiteness clearly visible in the fading light, before it became clogged with water and sank into the depths. The moon, nearly full, had risen above the edge of the valley and cast a ghostly glow across the fields and woodlands beyond Combe. I shut the window against all that.

There was no key or bolt on the door, but Abel fastened a piece of cord around the latch. It wouldn’t prevent anyone getting in for long, but at least it would give us warning of the attempt. Then we retired to the single but spacious bed. It was more comfortable than any we’d been accommodated in at the various hostelries where we’d stayed, but I don’t think either of us slept soundly. I certainly didn’t. And that was before we were disturbed in the middle of the night and had no more sleep at all.

I was awoken by a thump from the far side of the room and the sound of scuffling and panting. Abel was out of the bed and at first I thought he had been taken sick, but within moments I saw two shapes writhing on the carpet in a patch of moonlight. Even as I scrambled from the bed, one of the figures leaped away from the other, who remained moaning on the floor by the door.

‘Help me, Nick.’

It was Abel, standing at a crouch between the bed and the crumpled shape. He was holding something. I recognized the book which had been stowed beneath our mattress.

‘He was trying to steal it,’ said Abel, his breath coming short.

I didn’t have to ask who he was, for the moon shone full on the other man – Henry Gifford, the ‘tutor’ to widow Muriel’s children. The light gave the man’s jowls a bluer tinge. He was not so much injured as winded. I wasn’t surprised he’d come off worse in a tussle with Abel Glaze, who was tough and wiry for all his slightness.

Now Gifford sat up. He said: ‘It is you who are the true thieves. Give me that.’

He spoke with the same kind of certainty as when he condemned us players during the meal.

Abel shook his head and moved until he was next to me. We perched on the edge of the bed, gazing down at the man on the floor. Incongruously, the tutor-priest propped his back against the wall and stretched his legs out, a man at ease.

‘If you do not surrender the book I will summon the household,’ he said.

‘And if you do,’ said Abel, ‘I will open the window and fling this… this item into the moat below before anyone can get here. I wonder how long your precious book would last in the water.’

‘It has survived worse than that,’ said Gifford. He sounded both defiant and doubtful. For my part, I was struck by Abel’s firmness. But, of course, he was angrier than I was.

He said to me: ‘So much for hospitality towards guests, eh, Nick? I felt a draught of air and saw this fellow crawling towards our bed on all fours like a beast, then I felt him fumbling beneath the side where I was lying. Aha, I thought, I know what you’re after. So I fell out of bed on top of him.’

Felt a draught of air? I’d been too preoccupied before to notice a chill together with a damp, musty odour which had crept into our chamber. Nor had I seen what Abel now directed my attention towards: a darker square at floor level in the linenfold panelling of the wall beside the bed. A space just large enough for a man to wriggle in and out of. Next to it, leaning against the wall, was the square of wood that usually concealed the opening. In a rush I realized that here was an authentic priest-hole, the kind of hiding-place that the pursuivants would search for with their measures and probes. At that moment I would have welcomed a band of pursuivants bursting into the room and taking up Master Gifford. The trouble was that we’d probably have been taken up with him.

‘He must have been spying on us,’ said Abel, the anger still in his voice. ‘He saw where we’d put this book. Admit it, Master Gifford, you were watching through some spyhole behind the wall.’

From where he’d also heard our speculations about the Catholic household, I thought.

‘Yes, I have been observing you,’ said the other calmly. ‘I know that you know who – or rather what – I am.’

‘We have no quarrel with any priest or with the Shaw family,’ I said. ‘In fact, we want nothing more to do with anyone at Combe House. We came here by chance, not choice, and we leave here of our own free will tomorrow morning. Neither my friend Abel nor I have any desire to cause you or the Shaws… difficulty.’

This was my way of hinting that we would not report them to the authorities. If I’d expected Gifford to be grateful I was to be disappointed. He gave a kind of snort and said: ‘Very well. But in return for a safe passage from Combe you should return the book which was brought here by Thomas Cloke.’

I looked at Abel, still sitting beside me on the bed. The moonlight streamed over our shoulders and fell on the priest’s extended limbs. Abel nodded almost imperceptibly.

‘We’ll give you back the book,’ he said, ‘but on one condition. Tell us what is so important about it.’

Henry Gifford was silent for a moment. I wondered whether he was going to claim that the book was unimportant, which would have been absurd. Instead, he decided to tell the truth or part of it.

‘Master Glaze, you are holding in your hands a very old volume, a piece of antiquity. It was composed by a monk in Ireland many hundreds of years ago. Some say he was divinely inspired, others that he was mad and wrote in a delirium. There are at least two names for the book: the Armageddon Text and the Black Book of Brân. It contains verses that some think predict the future. There has long been talk of such a volume, but it has not been seen for centuries.’

‘Armageddon is the final battle between the nations,’ said Abel. ‘The end of things.’

I felt a chill that was unrelated to the cold in our chamber.

‘I have translated one of the verses,’ I said.

Gifford snorted again, this time with amusement. No doubt he was surprised that a lowly player could understand Latin.

‘The lines referred to a ruler of two kingdoms and to Rome and a house crumbling to ruin.’

It was gratifying to see the effect this had on the priest. No more snorting with amusement. He sat straight up and thought for a moment.

‘Yes, that is a description of the end of things, as your friend says. The ruler of two kingdoms is the devil himself, who lives in hell and has a mere leasehold upon the earth. But the day will come when he shall be vanquished and the house of earthly vanity shall crumble. Rome will play its part in this as the source of true religion. You see, gentlemen, how honest I am being. I do not conceal my faith or my allegiance. I am at your mercy.’

I didn’t altogether believe him and his explanation. But what business was it of mine or of Abel’s? I could understand how a household such as the Shaws’ would value an ancient book of prophecies which apparently predicted the part played by the Catholic Church in the end of things.

Abel said: ‘How did Tom Cloke come by this book?’

‘I don’t know precisely,’ said the priest. ‘I believe it was acquired by chance in the area around Westminster. Recognizing that it would be… of interest… to his Shaw kinsmen, Thomas decided he would bring it with him on his visit to Combe.’

‘Then it is unfortunate that Thomas was murdered for his pains.’

‘That was coincidence, Master Glaze. The three of you had the bad fortune to encounter a band of robbers on the road. But you and Master Revill had the good fortune to be close to Combe and to find refuge here.’

I reckoned that Gifford had started accurately enough when he was describing the origins of the Black Book of Brân but that he was now leaving the truth further and further behind. If the book was no more than an odd piece of antiquity, why had Tom Cloke secretly slipped it into Abel’s luggage, why had we been attacked on the road (which was no coincidence whatever Gifford said), and why was the priest prepared to sneak into our chamber in the middle of the night to snaffle the item?

‘Have I satisfied your curiosity?’ said Gifford, standing up for the first time.

‘No,’ said Abel. ‘But, speaking for myself, I do not wish to pry into these matters any further. Here’s your Black Book and be done with it.’

Gifford’s hands closed around the volume. He thanked Abel and inclined his head slightly. He replaced the wooden panel that he had removed to sneak into our chamber and left the room in more conventional fashion, although he was hampered for an instant by the cord that Abel had wound about the door latch. The end of this scene, like the rest of the encounter, was played out by moonlight. Its eerie glow gave an edge to our discussion of the end of things.

I tried to sleep but was too shaken by the encounter to succeed. There were distant noises elsewhere in the house, the sound of whispers, feet shuffling. I wondered what Gifford was up to. Was there a whole clutch of priests at Combe, creeping about in the woodwork? For all that, I did fall asleep eventually as the sky was beginning to lighten.

V

If we thought or hoped we’d seen the last of the tutor-priest, we were wrong. Abel and I rose early the next morning and went downstairs, carrying our baggage, bleary-eyed and yawning all the way.

I’d assumed it was too early for the majority of the household, or at least for the family, to be up, so was surprised by the buzz of noise coming from the area of the kitchen. Instead of the to and fro of servants on their way to the dining hall, however, most of them were crowding towards the kitchen as if there were some attraction inside.

‘What is it?’ said Abel to a knot of servants standing in close conference by the door.

‘Body,’ said one.

‘Whose?’

‘Dunno,’ said the same person. He’d obviously got our measure the previous day (we weren’t important).

We might have got no nearer than that except for the appearance of Mr and Mrs Shaw. They were still in their night attire. The crowd around the door parted to admit the householders, so Abel and I squeezed through after them.

The kitchen was large, with brick arches containing the hearths and a separate oven for baking. The place was heavy with the smell of last night’s cooking and the press of people. There were a couple of sinks set into the outer wall, and it was in this area that everyone’s attention was concentrated. One of the flagstones in the floor had been lifted and placed to one side.

Rather than earth or rubble, what lay beneath must have been a conduit of some kind, usual enough in a large kitchen like this. Gully the steward, the most important man there apart from the family, was standing by the hole. He alone out of the household looked spruce and trim. He caught his master’s eye and gestured downwards. He did not speak. I saw Shaw peer over the edge and flinch away. His wife stepped forward and also looked down before drawing back sharply. She clutched at his arm.

Naturally, my curiosity was stirred. Abel and I edged our way towards the cavity in the floor. By now, most of the people in the kitchen had had their fill of the sight and all eyes were on the Shaws to see what they were going to do or say next. I glanced down. I’d been right. About five feet below was a brick-lined drainage channel. Its function was to carry the waste from the kitchen sinks and, judging by the smell, probably the waste from the garderobes in the house as well. It was wide and deep. But that wasn’t what caught my attention.

Clearly visible at the bottom was the bare head, exposed neck and clothed back of a man. He was wedged along the line of the drain, his face hidden, submerged in a couple of inches of water. I knew, by instinct more than direct recognition, that the body was that of the recent visitor to our chamber. It was Henry Gifford, the tutor-priest.

For some reason I experienced a pang of guilt. I exchanged glances with Abel. He too had recognized Gifford and looked as uncomfortable as I felt.

‘Who found him?’ said Mr Shaw, breaking the silence.

‘I did, sir.’

It was one of the cooks, a large white-faced woman. (But her pallor might have been caused by shock.) She stepped forward.

‘Well, Anne?’ said Shaw.

‘When I came in this morning I noticed that the flagstone was out of place, sir. It was pushed to one side a bit. I couldn’t put it back by myself and I called to Adam to help.’

A servant, presumably Adam, now stepped up beside the woman. Words tumbled out of him.

‘She called and I came and we was trying to shove the flagstone back and I saw something wasn’t right and I said to Anne, “Something is wrong”, and we shifted the flag right away from the hole and looked down and saw… what anyone can see lying down in the bottom there. A person, sir. Now the steward comes in-’

‘I heard the stir, Mr Shaw,’ said Gully, stepping forward to join the line of witnesses. There was a pause as if he was going to say more, but he stopped short.

‘How did he die?’ said Shaw. Even at the time, it seemed an odd question or, rather, an odd moment to ask it.

‘Drowned, sir?’ said Gully.

‘Choked by the foul vapours?’ said someone else. Whether the speaker had intended it or not, there was something almost humorous in the remark, and one or two titters broke the tension. Then, as if a dam had been breached, the room was filled with talking.

Abel nudged me. He indicated the flagstone propped against the wall. He whispered in my ear: ‘Do you see, Nick, there are handholds on either side of that thing?’

Abel was right. The sides of the piece of paving stone were fairly regular except for two ragged indentations at opposing points. You wouldn’t have noticed them if the stone was in its place amongst the other rough-hewn flags on the floor. But a strong man, preferably a couple of strong men, would have been able to prise the slab from where it was set in the kitchen floor, using these handholds. This would have been useful if you’d wanted access to the drain to inspect it or to clear a blockage. What was odd was that, if the flagstone was intended to be raised, then the simplest thing would have been to set an iron ring in its upper surface. Much simpler than providing a couple of makeshift grips that looked as though they’d scrape your fingers when you grasped them. Unless, of course, one wanted to conceal the fact that this was a secret method of raising the stone and getting into – or out of – the drainage channel.

It was probably because we’d seen the priest-hole in our bedroom that Abel and I simultaneously realized the significance of the flagstone. Combe House had been adapted to conceal the followers of the old religion, or rather of its priests and ministers. There was most likely a secret network of tunnels, channels and hidey-holes throughout the house. Secret, but, of course, known to everybody at Combe. It could hardly be otherwise. No doubt all of its occupants were adherents to the old religion or sympathizers, at least. I remembered that the steward Gully had talked about the house being ‘out of the world’. It wasn’t only peace and quiet they were looking for but the freedom to persist with the old forms of worship.

William Shaw noticed the direction of my and Abel’s glances. He too looked at the flagstone. He was no fool. He realized what we’d understood.

‘We must get him out,’ said Mr Shaw, raising his voice to quell the babble.

Silence fell, but no one moved. Perhaps they were reluctant to descend into the drain and grapple with the body. Perhaps each person in the kitchen was waiting for someone else to step forward.

‘I’ll do it,’ said Abel. ‘It’s a small entrance and I am slight enough. I was familiar with bodies once. I served in the Dutch wars.’

I was proud of my friend. He was showing the stuff that we players are made of. He wasn’t far wrong either in drawing attention to his convenient slightness and the narrowness of the entrance to the conduit. Maybe at the same time, by volunteering himself, Abel was drawing attention away from the fact that he and I were the outsiders in the place, that we had our suspicions about Combe and because of that were ourselves objects of suspicion.

Scarcely waiting for Shaw’s assent, Abel perched on the edge of the hole and lowered himself into the drain. I went nearer to help. Several of us crowded around the aperture. I became more convinced than ever that this odd means of access to the kitchen conduit was part of the hidden realm of Combe.

Abel found it difficult to manoeuvre himself around the form of the prone man. He leaned forward in the confines of the channel but could not get sufficient purchase on the body to move it more than a few inches. His feet squelched in the mixture of water and detritus at the bottom of the drain.

‘A rope,’ he called up.

A rope was produced and, after a deal of grunting and muffled cursing, Abel secured it under the arms and around the chest of the dead man. Then, with the help of three of us pulling from the surface, the body was tugged to a position immediately below the hole, raised to a curious bent-backed position, then a standing one, and finally hauled out in a fashion that was inevitably unceremonious and undignified.

Abel Glaze scrambled out, unassisted. He was filthy, his hands and front smeared with slime, mingled with blood and water. He smelled rank. Meantime, the mortal remains of Henry Gifford were laid out on the kitchen flagstones for all to see. And what I could see was that this man had not been drowned or choked by foul vapours but murdered. Now that he was rolled on his back, eyes glassy and mouth gaping in the centre of his blue jowls, there was visible a great gash on his forehead. If there was not more blood on his countenance, it was because it had been washed away in the slop of the drain. I noticed that the members of the family – by this stage the son and daughter had arrived on the scene together with the widow Muriel – as well as the servants reacted with gasps or groans at the sight of Gifford’s corpse. But there were no tears, no cries of grief.

Such a fatal wound might have been an accident. Gifford might have slipped and struck his head on a stone ledge while creeping about underneath the house, but my mind straight away leaped to murder. Not the mind of William Shaw, however. He bent over the body, with his wife keeping at a slight distance. After a short scrutiny, Shaw pronounced: ‘An accident, a tragic accident.’

He was looking at Abel and me while he said this, as if daring us to question his judgement. He didn’t speculate or explain what Gifford had been doing down beneath the kitchen floor, but then, perhaps, in this house of secrets he didn’t have to. He gave orders that the body should be removed.

It was evident that we wouldn’t be able to leave Combe House just yet. Abel required a wash and a change of clothes, and Mr Shaw was too distracted to arrange for the escort he’d promised us. While Abel went outside to the yard, where there was a well and a hand-pump, I made myself scarce on the upper floor. In truth, I wanted to keep well away from the whole business of the dead tutor-priest, especially if his end had been deliberate, not accidental. I wondered what had happened to the so-called Armageddon Text. I wondered if Henry Gifford’s abrupt death was connected to the mysterious black book.

As I was standing in the passageway by our bedchamber, my musings were interrupted by a whimpering sound. I paused with my hand on the latch. The whimpering was now augmented by the noise of scratching. Further along the passage stood one of Mary Shaw’s spaniels, the source of the scratching and whining. Whichever name it went by, whether it was Finder or Keeper, the dog was pawing at the entrance to a room two or three doors along from mine and Abel’s.

I walked along to open the door of the room. As I neared the chamber I realized that the dog was anxious to join its mate, since an equivalent whining and scrabbling was coming from the other side. There was a hefty lock on the door, but it wasn’t secured. The instant the door widened sufficiently, Finder (or Keeper) slipped out to join his fellow, and the two of them scuttled down the passage without any acknowledgement to their rescuer.

I peered into the room. Though quite small, it was well lit, with a cluster of windows set irregularly in the east-facing wall. The sunlight pouring through was enough to dazzle my eyes. There was a pleasant smell from the herbs strewn on the floor. The room was seemingly a house of office, since there was a close-stool positioned beneath the windows. I looked at the view. In a spirit of curiosity I lifted the lid of the stool. The pierced seat was padded to make it more comfortable for the sitter. It must be for the benefit of the family, since only the Shaws would require privacy and padded seats for their private functions. In fact, they would most likely have a couple of such rooms in a property the size of Combe House. The servants enjoyed a communal privy on the ground floor, to which Abel and I had been directed after our arrival.

Yet there was something odd about this room. Privies, even refined ones for family use, are usually blind and airless places, not equipped with windows that give a fine view over the countryside as this one did. In the other wall was a door, also unlocked. It gave on to a bedroom. This was a large apartment, unusually so for a guest chamber (if that’s what it was, rather than a member of the family’s, since there appeared to be no personal possessions here). I looked around. There was a wardrobe against one wall. The wardrobe was unlocked and empty. I went to the main door, which led into the passage, and came to one or two conclusions. I returned to the first room and gazed around, particularly at the floor covered with rushes and clippings of rosemary and lavender.

I was on the point of leaving the room when I heard steps coming along the passage. I shrank back, reluctant to emerge. Then I recognized the steps as Abel’s. I stepped outside to meet him. He started when he saw me.

‘Nick, is that you? I have something to tell you.’

‘And I have something to show you,’ I said. ‘Where is everyone?’

‘Safe downstairs. I have been washing myself. And changing my shirt.’

I almost pulled him into the room I’d just emerged from. I shoved the door to. I pointed out the disordered state of the floor coverings, with the rushes and sprigs of rosemary and lavender not neatly spread about but lying in heaps and swirls. Near the close-stool was the outline of a trapdoor. It was difficult to see it straight away because of the light streaming through the windows.

‘So?’ said Abel. ‘It is for emptying the contents of that out of the pan beneath the seat and into the house drains.’

By that he meant the close-stool.

‘It’s a large trapdoor for emptying a pan of shit,’ I said, bending down and grasping the iron ring set into the floor. The trapdoor swung smoothly open. No sound, no creaks or squeaks. A slanting shaft of stone led down into darkness. A waft of colder air emanated from it, together with a less pleasant odour than that which had filled the room.

‘Big enough to take a man…,’ I said, closing the trapdoor.

‘… and probably linking to the drain running beneath the kitchen where Gifford was discovered,’ said Abel. ‘Though I’m not sure I’d care to slide down it.’

‘You would if you had to. I think the close-stool normally sits over this trapdoor. It’s not deliberate concealment but it draws the eye away from a careful examination of the floor. And when I first came in here I was struck by the number of windows. They’re at eyelevel too. The first thing you do when you come in here is to look outside. Your eyes would be filled with the daylight. You wouldn’t be likely to bother with the floor.’

‘And if you did,’ said Abel, ‘you would find only a channel going down to the main drain.’

‘There’s more,’ I said. ‘Next door is a bedroom, but it is large and somehow empty – apart from the bed. Anonymous too. We’re in a recusants’ house, Abel. They need somewhere to worship. Their priest needs somewhere to robe himself, and to live and sleep. I think this is where Gifford prepares for Mass – where he prepared for Mass, I should say – and next door is where the family assembles for it.’

‘I heard voices last night,’ said Abel. ‘The Mass would be said at a secret time, the middle of the night.’

‘Probably it’s also where Henry Gifford slept. We’re a long way from the main entrance to the house, and the doors are especially thick here and the locks are solid. If the priest needed to make a quick escape he only had to open the trapdoor and hide in the drains until the pursuivants left.’

‘And the bedchamber next door abuts on our room of last night,’ said Abel.

‘There’s probably a space between the walls. That’s how Gifford was able to spy on us last night. This place is a honeycomb of false walls and secret places.’

‘I haven’t told you of my own discoveries yet,’ said Abel.

Standing in the room with the close-stool, we leaned towards each other like conspirators.

‘I went to wash myself in the yard and then I asked the laundrywoman for a fresh shirt, since mine had got all dirty and bloody while I was down in that kitchen drain. I thought it was the least that Combe House owed me, a clean shirt, since I’d recovered a body for them.’

‘Wasn’t the laundrywoman willing to give you a shirt?’

‘Very willing. She handed me this,’ he said, indicating the shirt beneath his doublet. It looked too large for him. ‘But when I was in the washroom I noticed a pile of clothes that were due for washing. Some of them had spatters of blood on them.’

‘Difficult to get out, bloodstains,’ I said.

‘You can use salt and water, or milk or even human spit,’ said Abel. ‘I remember the tire-house man in the Globe telling us so. It may take a couple of washings, but the stains will fade eventually. But that’s not the point, Nick. Those items of clothing with the stains were good pieces, doublets and hose and women’s bodices. Fine pieces made of brocade, taffeta. They weren’t servants’ garments. They belong to the Shaws.’

‘Perhaps they got their clothes marked when they were attending to Gifford’s body.’

‘No, these things were already in the washroom. They must have been there before the body was found.’

‘So you’ve made a jump between the bloodstained clothes and a dead man.’

‘Wouldn’t you?’

‘You think the Shaws had a hand in Gifford’s death?’

‘Don’t you?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘William Shaw was very quick to declare it was an accident in front of the whole household. Too quick. In fact, I had the impression he was saying it for our benefit.’

‘The servants are loyal to the Shaws. They would accept whatever their master or mistress told them. They might even accept a violent death. They would not ask questions about blood-spattered clothes.’

‘The sooner we leave this house of murderers the better,’ I said.

‘There’s more,’ said Abel. ‘I said I’d made discoveries. The bloody clothes weren’t all.’

He paused. I thought he was doing it for effect. But he’d heard something in the passageway outside. The scrabbling of claws on the wooden floor. The sound of the spaniels. Then a shushing noise. A woman trying to silence the dogs. Abel and I had been so absorbed in our speculations that we hadn’t been conscious of anything beyond the close-stool room. The door was slightly ajar. I’d pushed it to, not latched it.

As one we made for the exit. Too late. In the passage outside was assembled the whole family. Mother and father, son and daughter, the sister-in-law, the steward Gully. How long had they been there? What had they overheard?

Curiously, they had the air of suppliants, as though they’d come not to surprise us but to make a request.

‘We must speak to you,’ said William Shaw.

VI

We were ushered into the large empty bedchamber, the one that I’d speculated might have been used by the family for hearing Mass. Abel and I stood awkwardly in the middle of the room while the Shaws and Gully clustered about us in a half-circle. Incongruously, the spaniels Finder and Keeper scampered about their heels. I didn’t fear the family exactly – the three men surely would not attempt anything against Abel and me in the presence of three women – but it was a very uncomfortable moment. I felt my palms go clammy. Sweat ran down my sides. I cursed Tom Cloke, dead as he was, for ever having introduced us to this house.

‘Gentlemen,’ said William Shaw. ‘We have been listening to your conversation. I heard you, Master Revill, suggest that this was a house of murderers.’

I blushed, as if I was the one guilty of some offence. I opened my mouth to apologize, to justify myself, but Shaw gave an impatient wave of his hand.

‘You are wrong. The Shaws are not murderers. Hear me out. Say nothing until I have finished. Then you may decide on your next step. You have correctly understood the nature of Combe and of my family. We are followers of the old religion. We wish harm to no man or woman, we wish no injury to our country or its rulers. We are not plotters or conspirators, although some would like us to be. Such are the present times that we live under the shadow of suspicion and in constant fear of persecution like other houses in this part of the world.

‘Henry Gifford was here as a tutor to sister Muriel’s children. But he was principally at Combe to minister to our souls, in this very chamber where we are standing. He is – he was – a recent arrival in Combe, here only a matter of months. He replaced another… individual… who was a truly good man but who has been called to serve elsewhere. I will not conceal from you the fact that we did not care for Gifford. We felt obliged to give him shelter, however, because of what he was and who he represented.’

Shaw hesitated and glanced at his wife. She took up the story.

‘It is true that we have been harbouring a priest,’ said Elizabeth Shaw, speaking with more directness than her husband. ‘However, we came to believe that Henry Gifford had more worldly aims than the salvation of souls and the cause of the true religion. He talked easily about the death of tyrants and the ousting of lawful kings and encouraged us to talk of such things too.’

She glanced towards her son Robert. I remembered that he’d touched on the subject at yesterday evening’s meal. And that Gifford had quickly changed the subject.

‘Such talk is dangerous,’ said Elizabeth. ‘But it was not just talk. Gifford seemed to be in communication with other forces, external forces, who might prefer action to mere words. He received messages, visitors sometimes, that he would not tell us about. This is a quiet and godly house. We live secluded from the world.’

Gully was nodding vigorously. Elizabeth’s words were more or less what he’d said to me the previous day. Now William Shaw resumed.

‘We heard from a distant kinsman, Thomas Cloke, that he had an… object… of great value to deliver to us, or rather not to us but to Henry Gifford. That this was a secret affair was shown by the way the message was conveyed. Nothing was committed to paper, but all was done through hints and whispers. Then in due course you two gentlemen arrived here with Thomas. Alas, our fears were shown to be all too real by the attack on our very doorstep and the violent fate of our kinsman. Gifford seemed not at all concerned by the death but only troubled by the whereabouts of the… object.’

‘It was a book,’ said Abel. ‘We know about it. A book with covers made of wood and containing verses.’

‘Complete gibberish,’ I said before Abel could reveal more. ‘Couldn’t make head or tail of it. Meant nothing to us.’

But William Shaw and the others didn’t seem interested in our opinion of the Black Book of Brân or the implication of Abel’s words that we’d caught sight of it.

‘It brought matters to a head, the death on our doorstep,’ said the master of the house. ‘We held a family council, for we are, all of us, concerned in this matter. Gully joined us. There are no secrets between the Shaws and their steward.’

Gully looked resolute but also gratified at this compliment. He would surely have died to preserve this house and its occupants.

‘We talked long into the night,’ said Mary Shaw, the daughter. ‘We came to a fateful decision.’

I drew my breath in, sharp. Was she about to say that they had decided to do away with the priest?

‘We determined that he should leave Combe and leave straight away, on this very morning,’ said the son, Robert Shaw. ‘We came here to tell him so. We made a reasonable request.’

‘Merely that he should quit Combe,’ said Mary.

‘Quit our house today,’ said Robert.

I imagined the family arriving as a delegation at Gifford’s door. I would not have wanted to face them, so firm, so united.

‘Words followed,’ said the widow Muriel. It was the first time she had spoken. ‘Words followed and then blows.’

‘It was my fault, Master Revill, Master Glaze,’ said Gully now. ‘You should blame me and no member of the family.’

William Shaw put a hand on Gully’s arm, but the steward shrugged it off and continued.

‘I could not bear to hear Gifford say things against the family that was harbouring him. He called us traitors and apostates. He was holding the black book in one hand and the cross in the other.’

Gully raised both arms, clutching an imaginary cross and book in imitation of the priest. I noticed he referred to ‘us traitors’.

‘He was holding a large cross made of brass,’ said William Shaw. ‘It was stored in that cupboard over there. Henry Gifford was brandishing the sign of our salvation. He was speaking low and soft, but his voice was as full of venom as the sting of a snake. He kept on saying, “You shall not have it, you shall not have it”.’

‘The cross?’ said Abel.

‘Not the cross, but the book brought here by Cloke,’ said Elizabeth. ‘My husband asked him how he had laid hands on the thing, since Thomas had been shot and his goods and horse stolen before arriving at Combe. Henry Gifford claimed that the book was already in your grasp and that he had taken it from your bedchamber yesterday.’

‘That part is true enough,’ I said. ‘But the book was hardly in our grasp. Abel and I brought it to Combe without knowing it. Thomas Cloke had slipped it into one of our bags earlier in the journey – perhaps because he expected to be attacked.’

It was easy to be honest. I no longer felt in any danger from the Shaws and their steward. They were too busy accounting for their actions, as if we were justices. It was William who continued.

‘I approached Henry Gifford. Perhaps he thought I was about to take the wretched book from him. He became like a man possessed. He raised the cross higher in the air and made to bring it down on my head. I moved back in time and he missed but it was a wicked stroke. Then he held out the cross, half in threat, half in supplication.’

‘I came forward,’ said Gully. ‘I thought I could reason with Gifford. But as Mr Shaw says, he was possessed. The priest must have believed that I too was attempting to take the book from him, for he lunged at me and I stumbled and fell back on the floor. Then Mistress Mary here stepped forward to help me, and Gifford lashed out at her too.’

‘It is true,’ said the daughter of the house. ‘I tremble to remember it.’

‘I was angry now,’ said William. He was stroking his beard. His eyes were prominent. ‘There was a tussle and one of us wrested the cross away from Gifford and struck him a great blow across the forehead.’

‘It was I who struck him,’ said Gully, ‘and although I am ashamed that I should have put the instrument of our salvation to such an impious use, I trust that He who sits above and judges all our actions will absolve me of any murderous intent. I acted in defence of this family – and in defence of myself, of course.’

There was no defiance in the steward’s tone. Merely a plain statement of what had occurred in this chamber, the place where the family was accustomed to make its religious observances. Abel and I heard how Henry Gifford had staggered back, hardly able to see on account of the blood gushing from the wound in his forehead. It seemed that he was not so badly injured for, under the gaze of the distressed and distracted Shaws, he made a stumbling escape from the close-stool chamber, using the trapdoor and sliding down the stone chute that led to the drains and sewers of Combe.

He was still clutching the book as if his life depended on it. William Shaw likened Gifford’s disappearance to that of a rat creeping back into its hole, as if he would naturally retreat down the shaft rather than try a more orthodox exit. Perhaps he thought in his panic that the Shaws would try to stop him getting away from Combe.

Did they in fact try to stop him? No, said Elizabeth, they were horror-struck at the scene. Did they think they’d seen the last of him? Yes, explained William, since he had got his hands on the black book and no longer cared a fig for the spiritual welfare of the house, if he ever had. There were various secret exits from Combe, including a grille which covered the outlet from the drain under the kitchen and which might be removed to give access to the moat. From there a determined or desperate man could swim or wade his way to safety.

That was what they thought – and hoped! – had happened to Henry Gifford. He wasn’t so grievously wounded after all. He’d escaped from Combe House, clutching his precious book. They’d never see him again. They’d be left to the peace and quiet of their estate. At this time the family were still in their day clothes – they had debated into the night whether and how they should confront Gifford – and they now discovered that their garments were spattered with the priest’s blood. They discarded their clothes and put on their night attire.

But Gifford had not got away. Whether he was more badly wounded than they assumed, whether he’d harmed himself in his descent down through the drains, he had evidently tried to emerge inside the kitchen, via the flagstone. His life fading, he had managed to dislodge the stone but did not have the strength to push it away and climb out. So Gifford expired face down in the muck and slop of the kitchen drains.

His discovery was almost as much a shock to the Shaws as it was to the servants of Combe. But not quite as much. William had pronounced the death an accident, knowing that his people would not question his opinion, but he observed the suspicion on Abel’s face and my own. So they had decided to give this full account of the previous night, a resolution that was strengthened when they overheard my reference to a ‘house of murderers’.

Later, I asked myself why it meant so much to the Shaws (and to Gully) that a pair of wandering players should listen to their story of how a corrupt priest had tried to steal a black-bound volume and then resorted to violence to keep it in his hands. It was as if we were justices and jury. And then I realized that the Shaws were appearing not in front of Abel Glaze and Nick Revill but before the bar of their own consciences. It wasn’t we who had to acquit them. Only they could acquit themselves. Their extended confession took place while Finder and Keeper skittered about the room until, growing tired, they fell in heaps in a corner.

There were a couple more questions.

What had happened to the cross, the one that had inflicted the head-wound on Henry Gifford?

No longer sanctified, it had been thrown into the moat, where it promptly sank.

And the book, the black book?

The Shaws did not want to know what had happened to it. The book, whose contents were unknown to them, had brought trouble to Combe. It had, presumably, led to the murder of their kinsman Cloke and to the frantic avarice of Gifford to possess it. Whatever the book was, it was not a sacred thing to be consulted and revered. Good riddance if it was down in the mud and muck of the house drains. Not that they were even aware of its title, but the Armageddon Text could stay in the mire until doomsday. It was I who had asked the question about the book’s whereabouts and I reflected that, because of Gifford’s explanation, we two players probably knew more about it than anyone else in the room.

And that was that. William Shaw directed half a dozen of his burliest serving men to accompany us a few miles along the road. The parting that we had with the Shaws was a formal one, neither warm nor cold. We were privy to their secrets but, even had we been inclined to, there would be little purpose in alerting the authorities to the demise of the priest. In fact, by helping him to his death, the Shaws had shown themselves loyal Englishmen and Englishwomen. They wanted no part in the seditious talk and rumours of plots which were swilling around this part of the country. The body of the priest, which was presently being washed and laid out, would be decently buried with the appropriate obsequies.

‘Decently.’ That was William Shaw’s word, and I think it applied to the whole household. They were decent people, well-to-do, God-fearing, honest and honourable and law-abiding, except insofar as they observed the older religious practices.

Shaw gave Abel a couple of sovereigns not so much as a way of buying his silence as in gratitude to my friend for helping to fish Gifford out of the kitchen drain. Mary Shaw expressed the hope that my uncle would still be alive by the time I got to Shipston on Stour. (I confess I’d forgotten my uncle and namesake in all the excitement.)

We rode out of the valley scarcely twenty-four hours after we’d arrived at Combe House. We had our escort of liveried servants, who rode fore and aft of us. I was glad of this as we retraced our passage through the belt of trees where we’d been ambushed the day before. There was no sign of the black-garbed men nor any trace of our companion Thomas Cloke, though I’d been half-expecting to see his body tossed casually into the undergrowth by the wayside. Surely, when they discovered that he wasn’t carrying what they were searching for, they would have no further use for his corpse?

As we reached the rim of the valley, Abel and I turned to look back at Combe. The house lay, jewellike, in its moat. The birds were singing while a breeze was combing the trees. The day was clear. You would not have thought that a murder had taken place so recently in the precincts of Combe nor that another man had met a violent end inside the house.

The main road was in sight. A band of travellers was trotting along, their passage raising swirls of dust. There were a dozen or more of them – all classes, to judge from their clothes – enough to deter all but the most violent robbers. This was probably the reason why they were travelling together in the first place. Anyway, Abel and I decided to take our chances by following in their wake. In truth, since no danger was in prospect, we wanted to part company from the liveried escorts and be about our own business.

So we cantered on, thinking we’d left the whole raft of priests, agents and recusants well behind us. At least I did. After a couple of hours our stomachs told us it was time for refreshment, and we reined in on a patch of ground, which, though surrounded by woodland, was not far from a scatter of cottages. We had bread and cheese and ale from Combe, so we tethered our horses while we sat on the grass and talked about everything that had happened over the last day and night.

It was then that Abel Glaze revealed his final surprise, the second of the discoveries he’d been about to broach to me in the chamber when we were interrupted by the Shaws.

He had the book with him, the Armageddon Text, the bloody Black Book of Brân.

VII

‘Jesus, Abel, what are you doing with that?’

Abel had retrieved the book from his bag. It sat between us on the grass, a tainted thing. Abel’s pride in pulling off a neat trick had turned to unease when he saw my reaction.

‘I took it from the kitchen drain. When I was down there with that Gifford, what should I see lying next to his body but this what do you call it? This Armageddon Text? While everyone was busy getting the body laid out on the kitchen flags, I tucked the book under my doublet so’s no one should see it and climbed out.’

‘In God’s name, why didn’t you leave it where it was? That’s what the Shaws wanted. Or rather, they never wanted to see the bloody thing again. I don’t want to see it either.’

Abel looked so crestfallen that his long nose actually seemed to quiver.

‘I thought it was valuable.’

‘I don’t know about valuable, but it’s certainly dangerous.’

I looked around as if we might be being spied on at that very instant. We were in sight of the road, but there were no riders close. The party of travellers had passed into the distance. I started because I thought I detected a movement in a nearby clump of trees and bushes, but it was nothing, only a pigeon taking flight.

‘All right,’ said Abel. ‘I’ll leave it here. Throw it into those bushes.’

‘You can’t do that.’

‘But you just said-’

‘I know what I said. But you can’t discard the book now. We’re lumbered with it.’

‘Perhaps it’s fate, Nick.’

I was about to say what I thought of fate, and in a particularly pithy way too, when I was distracted again by a stir in the nearby trees. More pigeons taking flight.

But not only pigeons. From the shelter of the trees there emerged, with much rustling and crashing, a band of men. Black-clad men. And not four this time, but five. One of them went to stand sentry at the roadside, while the others approached us.

Abel and I had already jumped to our feet. We had no weapons. Our horses were tethered several yards away. As I said, there were a handful of houses in view but no sign of any of the occupants. In any case, I don’t think these tough and resolute-looking men would have been distracted from their purpose by the presence of a few locals. We were trapped.

All this flashed through my head, and probably Abel’s as well. But it wasn’t the principal thought in my mind. Instead, I stood there, mouth hanging open like an idiot, heart hammering away in my chest, the blood roaring in my ears. For striding towards us was the figure of Thomas Cloke. The dead man, whom I’d seen the previous day shot off his horseback perch and tumbling to the ground. The late Thomas Cloke who, out of cowardice or prudence, had slipped the Armageddon Text into Abel’s case. Not a ghost but a living, breathing, grinning piece of flesh.

Cloke walked with that familiar bounce. He was enjoying the looks of disbelief on our faces. He was wearing the same gear as on the previous day except for a clean shirt replacing the one that had been soaked in his own blood.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘It is I, Thomas Cloke.’

The other three men stood slightly to his rear, suggesting that Cloke was their leader. Two of them were carrying muskets. At the edge of the road, the fourth man kept watch against passers-by. I glanced sideways at Abel. He looked too dumbstruck to speak. So I felt it was incumbent on me to make some remark, to say something halfway intelligent.

‘You’ve been planning this a long time, Master Cloke?’ I said, even managing to strike a casual note.

‘A combination of planning and the willingness to seize an opportunity,’ he said. ‘When I heard that you and Abel Glaze were to visit the Midlands, we thought it would be a good moment to put a particular… plan into effect.’

Cloke glanced down at the black-bound book where it lay neglected on the grass. The book that he’d secreted in Abel’s bag. The book that was surely part of the mysterious plan he referred to.

‘We?’ said Abel, finding his voice. ‘Who’s we?’

‘A certain group connected with the Council,’ said Cloke. ‘A private group.’

He meant the Privy Council. More specifically, he meant those agents of the Council under the direct control of Robert Cecil. Little Cecil, recently ennobled (again) and now the Earl of Salisbury. Wrynecked Cecil who had his fingers in more pies than you could count. Crookback Cecil, who ran a network of spies and intelligencers in the name of national security. I had encountered Robert Cecil once at the time of the Essex uprising in Queen Elizabeth’s dying days. The thought of those days – and of Cecil in particular – was enough to make my guts do a little dance. I tried to keep this from showing on my face, but no doubt Cloke was accustomed to the reaction prompted by any mention of the Council.

‘I thought you were our friend, Thomas,’ said Abel. ‘I thought you enjoyed being in our company and attending our plays.’

‘I did not object to your company and I am a devotee of the playhouse. But some things are more important than friendship, Master Glaze.’

‘You are not even Thomas Cloke,’ I said. ‘Tell the truth – your name is not Cloke.’ Abel turned to look at me. The other man said nothing so I ploughed on, more confident in my theory. ‘The Shaws were surprised when I told them that their kinsman was a playgoer. He is not, but you are. So who are you, Master…?’

‘Never mind,’ said the man we’d thought of as Thomas Cloke.

‘Is there really a Thomas Cloke?’ said Abel, and then, realizing the question was foolish (since the Shaws had willingly acknowledged Cloke as their kinsman), he asked instead: ‘What has happened to the real Cloke? Is he dead?’

‘Alive and well, as far as I know,’ said the man who wasn’t Cloke. ‘I took on his name as a means of getting close to Combe House. Cloke is indeed a cousin to that nest of recusants.’

‘But you could not get too near the house or the family, could you?’ I said. It was all becoming clear to me. I had to struggle to keep the admiration out of my voice, admiration at the neatness of the scheme concocted by the ‘private group’ of the Council. ‘For some reason you wanted to convey that item to Combe, but you had to make yourself scarce before you got there. Otherwise they would have recognized you – or not recognized you as Cloke.’

‘Very good, Nicholas.’

‘You pretended that your companions now, these gentlemen, were actually your pursuers. You put on a good act of being fearful so that when we were ambushed – and you were apparently killed – we’d accept it without question.’

‘Good again, Master Revill.’

‘So what did you use for your imaginary wound? The fatal wound?’

‘You recall our chat in the Knight of the Carpet? The two of you had just come offstage from playing in The Melancholy Man. You did a good death scene, Nicholas, you with your bladder of sheep’s blood and all that writhing about. Well, what did you think of my death scene, eh? The shot that rings out in the woods, the pool of blood that spreads across the chest of the victim, the way he huddles over his horse’s neck, the manner in which he falls helplessly to the ground. I used sheep’s blood too. Convincing, eh? Do you think Master Shakespeare and the other shareholders would give me a place with the King’s Men?’

‘No,’ said Abel. ‘There’s more to being a player than dying well.’

‘Sir!’

It was the man stationed by the road. He gestured in the direction we’d come from, to the south-east. I noticed the way he addressed Cloke as ‘sir’. The other three stiffened and one of the musket-holders took a sudden interest in his weapon.

‘Why did you go to such lengths? What was it all about? Was it on account of that book there?’

I asked partly out of genuine curiosity but also to distract ‘Thomas Cloke’ from whatever he planned to do with us. He spoke with great certainty and command. He was quite different from the man I’d encountered in a couple of taverns, quite different from the idle follower of the players. But he was human enough to be proud of his trickery. And the longer he talked, the greater the chance of some travellers passing.

‘On account of that book? No, not directly. The Armageddon Text – as they are pleased to call it – is useful to smoke out renegades and traitors. There was one such in Combe House.’

‘Henry Gifford?’ said Abel.

‘That was one of his names, but he was no more a Gifford than I am a Cloke.’

‘You know the priest is dead, then,’ I said.

‘We have heard. We did not stir far from Combe last night or this morning. We became… aware… that a man had died in the house. But he was no priest. Or if he was, it was merely a cover for worse work. Gifford was an agent for our old enemies.’

‘Old enemies? The Spanish? I thought we were at peace with them. A treaty was signed last year.’

The Council man smiled slightly as if in pity at my ignorance or naivety. ‘Oh, we are at a formal peace, Nicholas. But there are elements on their side who are conspiring with sects over here…’

‘So the whole business was a means of smoking out this Gifford?’

‘You have hit on it. We knew that the Armageddon Text would be irresistible to Gifford… for reasons I do not wish to enlarge on. It smoked him out, as you said. What we could not have counted on was such a happy result after the smoking-out. That Gifford would perish in Combe House. One less of them!’

‘Cloke’ snapped his fingers to reinforce his last words. The man at the roadside called out in greater alarm. He unclasped his raised hand twice to show that a substantial number of travellers was moving up the road.

‘Now if you’ll just surrender the Armageddon Text, Abel,’ he said. ‘It is a dangerous volume, ripe for sects and factions.’

Abel bent down to pick up the black book. It had grass stains on the wooden cover, to join the other marks of use. My friend handed it to our erstwhile companion, who said: ‘We will leave you now. You have played your part as true Englishmen, whether you meant to or not. But, Nicholas and Abel, do not enquire into this matter any further. There is a very serious threat to our land, but with the help of this black volume we shall smoke out more of the traitors.’

The individual we’d known as Thomas Cloke vanished into the trees together with his retinue. A couple of minutes later, another large party rode past the clearing, and Abel and I remounted and trotted off in their wake. I can’t speak for Abel, but it took many miles before I stopped looking over my shoulder and grasping my reins tight. Had we seen the last of the Armageddon Text? I devoutly hoped so.

There were a couple of sequels to our excursion at Combe House, one private and sad, the other public and terrifying.

After Abel and I parted company, I reached Shipston on Stour in time to see my dying uncle and his wife Margaret. She was profuse in her thanks for my arrival. He, poor fellow, was scarcely in a condition to recognize me or anyone else. But he was a Revill, and a Nicholas to boot, and he was my father’s true brother. With a moist eye, I saw the likeness in his drawn face. He clutched my hand and mumbled some words before I was shooed out of the room so that a priest could administer the final rites.

Yes, my uncle also was an adherent of the old religion. It was on account of his faith that he had fallen out with my father or vice versa. All this I had from Margaret. My father, an unforgiving man in some ways, had cut himself off from his only sibling, had never spoken to him, had never attempted to communicate with him.

Margaret had seen my name on a playbill she had picked up in Oxford a couple of years previously. The Chamberlain’s Men, as we then were, had played Oxford at a period when plague closed the London theatres. Margaret Revill had been struck by the coincidence of names. When she showed the bill to her husband, he remarked that John, my father, had himself been drawn towards the stage-play world in his young days. (This was amazing to me. My father was stout in his abhorrence of the stage. But then I reflected on the way in which people’s passions can change violently to their contrary and it became less amazing.) Anyway, the coincidence of names and my father’s one-time ardour for acting had been enough for Margaret to write at her husband’s dictation a letter addressed to me at the Theatre, London. Nicholas was on his deathbed and he was eager to see his nephew, having no surviving children of his own. So even if he was not absolutely sure who I was, I hope I brought some comfort to his dying moments.

The other event was more momentous. The cryptic lines in the Armageddon Text about parleyment and sparks and fires were a prediction of the powder-treason which caused such a stir in the land later that year. When the attempt was made to destroy parleyment, Abel and I at once remembered that verse which I had laboriously copied out and translated. We could scarcely look each other in the eye for a time, as if we were the guilty ones!

It was said that the plot and plotters, both lay and priest, were nurtured in houses very similar to Combe. I am sure that was true. But we two humble players were less certain about the part played by the Black Book of Brân. When Abel and I did eventually talk together after the powder-treason was revealed in the November of 1605, we conversed in low tones and whispers. Like everyone else, we were outraged by the attempt to destroy our king and the members of parleyment (to say nothing of those innocents who would have been caught up in the slaughter).

As you know, the plot was thwarted and no lives were forfeit except those of the plotters. But in our hints and whispers Abel and I couldn’t help wondering how long beforehand the authorities had been aware of the conspiracy, whether, in fact, they might have been instrumental in bringing it to a head so that it could be lanced like a boil.

In this counter-plot against the powder-plot, it was useful to both sides to have possession of the black-bound volume, the Armageddon Text. For the plotters, the prediction of the ruin of parleyment gave validity to what they were trying to do. See, they could say, this event was foreseen hundreds of years ago by an Irish monk, divinely inspired. While for men like Robert Cecil and his agent ‘Thomas Cloke’, the existence of the book and the ‘parleyment’ verse in particular was proof of the other side’s wicked purposes and a useful means of smoking out traitors. Those who suffered were people like the Shaws, decent and honourable families who simply wanted to live and worship as they had always done. No doubt they were under special scrutiny now. My uncle too, had he survived, might have been added to the catalogue of suspects.

But I kept this line of thinking to myself. It was not a good time to voice doubts about the activities of the Privy Council nor to express fellow feeling with adherents of the old religion. The world slipped back to black and white, as it does from time to time.

I wondered what had happened to the Black Book of Brân. The man who wasn’t Cloke had carted it off, no doubt taking it back to London, where it might cause further mischief. I wondered too what was contained in the rest of the volume, what other disasters and catastrophes it predicted. Best not to know, I thought. If the disasters were in the past, they had already happened and the world had survived. And if Armageddon was still to come – and we are promised it will come – well, then, it would come despite anything that Nicholas Revill might do. With luck, he would not be around to see it. I shouldn’t think you would feel any different.