The Silent Woman Read online

  His sword lay beside him and he snatched it up. He took a few steps towards the front door then checked. What if the challenge was a ruse? The man might have set a trap with the aid of confederates. Nicholas pondered for a moment then came to the conclusion that he was up against a lone enemy. If there had been accomplices, he would not have survived the first assault at High Wycombe. The man was paying him a perverse compliment. Nicholas was being congratulated on his earlier success and given a return engagement on more equal terms. Except that a man who tries to strangle an opponent from behind will always have distorted ideas of equality.

  Nicholas accepted the challenge but tempered boldness with caution. Instead of leaving by the front door, he moved quickly to the back of the taproom and slipped out into a narrow passageway with a stone-flagged floor. The door ahead of him gave access to some outbuildings and he could use those as cover while working his way around to the stables. Letting himself noiselessly out into the night, he kept his sword at the ready and crept furtively along. An owl hooted in the distance. A vixen answered with a high-pitched call. Clouds drifted across the moon. The lanterns threw only the patchiest light onto the courtyard.

  As he came round the angle of a building, Nicholas could hear the faint jingle of metal as a horse chewed on its bit. The animal was saddled and ready at the edge of the stables. Nicholas could just make out its shape in the gloom. He was now satisfied that he was up against only one man. The horse made possible a hasty retreat after the task was done, but Nicholas intended to frustrate his opponent’s plans. Bending low, he inched forward with his weapon guiding the way. He heard the sound behind him far too late. There was a thud, a loud grunt and a brief clash of steel. When Nicholas swung round, he was hit in the chest with such force by a solid shoulder that he dropped his sword to the ground and did a backward somersault. Two figures grappled violently above him but the fight was over before he could get to his feet to join in. There was a howl of pain and a clatter as something hit the cobbles beside Nicholas, then one of the figures went haring across the yard and vaulted into the saddle of the horse. For the second time, the assassin galloped safely away into the night.

  Nicholas jumped up to turn solicitously to the wounded man. He had recognised Owen Elias’s yell and feared serious injury to his friend. Still holding his own sword in one hand, the Welshman was bent double in pain. Nicholas put out a steadying arm around his shoulder.

  ‘Are you hurt badly, Owen?’ he said.

  ‘The villain cut my hand, Nick. ’Tis only a scratch but it bleeds all over me and stings like the devil!’

  ‘Let me help you back inside.’

  ‘I can manage. Leave me be.’

  Nicholas took a step back to appraise him. ‘What on earth were you doing out here?’

  ‘Trying to save your life.’

  ‘I thought you had gone off to your bed.’

  ‘That is what I wanted you to think,’ said Owen. ‘If that coward was going to strike again, he would only do it when you were alone. I hid in the passageway and heard the ostler’s message delivered. The sender tricked you.’

  ‘He did,’ confessed Nicholas. ‘He knew that I would try to sneak up on him from behind so he laid his ambush here. But for you, I’d be lying dead on the ground with a dagger between my shoulderblades. A thousand thanks.’

  ‘Your bodyguard has sharp eyes and even sharper ears.’

  ‘You suffered injury on my behalf. Come inside and I’ll bind up that hand. You can have all the ale you wish to medicine your wound.’ Nicholas retrieved his sword then picked up a smaller weapon. ‘He left his dagger behind.’

  Owen smouldered. ‘I’ll use it to cut off his stones.’

  ‘It may hold a clue for us.’

  ‘Where’s that ale you spoke of, Nick? I need it.’

  ‘And I’ll question that ostler more closely.’ He heard approaching feet. ‘We have company, Owen.’

  Roused by the commotion, the landlord and a couple of servingmen now came rushing out with lanterns. Edmund Hoode and other members of the company were in attendance. They saw the drawn rapiers.

  ‘What dreadful broil was here?’ said the landlord.

  ‘It is all over now,’ reassured Nicholas.

  ‘Who started the affray?’

  ‘We do not know the villain’s name.’

  ‘But what brought you out here, Nick?’ said Hoode in alarm. ‘And what was that unearthly cry we heard?’

  ‘That was me,’ said Owen Elias with a brave smile. ‘I was bleeding quietly to death.’

  The Welshman was clearly in intense pain. He swayed with fatigue, made an effort to hold up his injured hand for inspection then fainted into the arms of Nicholas Bracewell.

  Chapter Seven

  Daylight brought no relief for Westfield’s Men. They awoke to find the inn washed by a steady drizzle of rain. It would be a sodden journey to Marlborough. As they breakfasted on toasted bread and ale, they were unhappy and mutinous. Life outside London was a pilgrimage of pain. Owen Elias was still weak from loss of blood because his injury was more serious than he had at first admitted. The dagger intended for Nicholas Bracewell’s back had instead sliced through the sleeve of the actor’s jerkin and left a deep gash down his arm and hand. It was vital to stem the bleeding at once, and Nicholas took on this duty himself. During his three years at sea, he had witnessed some horrific injuries and some hideous diseases. By swift and careful treatment, the ship’s doctor had saved many lives and returned countless broken bones to full use. Nicholas had watched him clean and bind up the most appalling wounds, and he followed the same principles with Owen Elias. The tight bandaging would protect the wound until they reached a town where a surgeon could examine and re-dress the injury.

  Another blow hit the company, albeit in retrospect. The farmer who brought in the daily supply of milk to the inn also carried the local gossip. He told of a shepherd who had been stopped and stripped of his smock, hat and crook by no less a highwayman than Israel Gunby. The disguise had only been used for an hour before being returned to its owner with a purse of money. Lawrence Firethorn was livid. To be deceived by Israel Gunby once was a humiliation; to be gulled a second time was unendurable. While Firethorn took it as a personal affront, the rest of the company saw it as a general threat. Having swooped on them once, Israel Gunby and his vulturous partners were now circling them again before moving in to pick their bones clean.

  Their morale was lower than ever as they set off in the drizzle. Swirling discontent found a spokesman in Barnaby Gill. He identified the culprit with a sneer.

  ‘I blame our book holder for all this!’

  ‘You are unjust,’ said Firethorn. ‘Nick Bracewell is the very backbone of this company. He puts Westfield’s Men first in all that he does.’

  ‘Then why is he travelling to Barnstaple?’ said Gill.

  ‘Because his family live there,’ replied Edmund Hoode.

  Gill was testy. ‘We all have families. Lawrence has one back in London, you have parents in Kent, I have a mother and two sisters in Norwich, even that heathen Welshman must have some sort of kith and kin across the border.’ He sat upright in his saddle with pursed indignation. ‘When the company has need of us, however, we do not go running back home in the name of family obligation.’

  ‘Nick is loyal,’ asserted Firethorn. ‘He agreed to guide us all the way to the West Country before taking his leave of us. I ask you, Barnaby – where would we be without Nick Bracewell at the helm?’

  ‘At the Queen’s Head in Gracechurch Street.’

  ‘We were burnt out, man.’

  ‘Whose mind devised that brazier?’ said Gill acidly. ‘Whose hand kindled that flame? Our book holder’s. He is the cause of all our misery and it is never-ending.’

  ‘Nick was the hero of the fire,’ said Hoode with a passionate defence of his friend. ‘Do you not remember the danger he averted? Can you not recall his selfless courage? Have you not heard the ballad about the fire?’


  ‘A ragged piece,’ said Gill, ‘and not to be trusted for one moment. The ballad does not mention me at all. And I was the first victim of the blaze.’

  The three men were riding together at the head of the party as it bumped along a rutted road near Wantage. Other sharers were strung out behind them, and the waggon was now loaded to capacity. Since Owen Elias was disabled from driving the vehicle, Nicholas Bracewell had taken over the reins. Owen sat beside him and sang a Welsh air in a doleful baritone voice. The four apprentices were huddled together under a tarpaulin, and the hired men aboard found what shelter they could beneath cloaks and blankets. George Dart had been given the signal honour of riding the roan, and he brought up the rear with a pride that no amount of fine rain could dampen. Alone of Westfield’s Men, he thought it the most beautiful day of the year.

  ‘Consider it well,’ said Gill, returning to his attack. ‘Nicholas Bracewell has brought us ill luck at every turn. He got us thrown out of London and robbed at High Wycombe.’

  ‘You cannot lay the robbery at his feet,’ said Hoode.

  ‘At his feet and at Lawrence’s codpiece. They are the guilty parts of the anatomy here.’ He raised his voice over Firethorn’s protest. ‘We are the actors and have work enough to do performing our roles in a makeshift entertainment. We rely on Nicholas to set up the stage and weigh the audience in the balance. He should have picked out Israel Gunby.’

  ‘How?’ asked Hoode.

  ‘By instinct.’

  ‘In a taproom full of other travellers?’

  ‘Nicholas is our great voyager, is he not?’ mocked Gill. ‘He has sailed around the world and seen all sorts and conditions of men. That has given him a sixth sense about people. Lawrence has turned to him again and again.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Firethorn, ‘because Nick has never let us down. He can read the character of a man at a glance and see into his virtues and his defects.’

  ‘He did not read Israel Gunby at a glance.’

  ‘No more did you, Barnaby. Nor I, nor Edmund here.’

  ‘Nicholas is there to protect us.’

  ‘Even he has limitations.’

  ‘This tour has revealed them,’ continued Gill. ‘He has served us well in the past, I grant you, but he is now the symbol of our misfortune. Without him, there would have been no Israel Gunby to abuse us, no plague in Oxford to vex us and no second visitation from Gunby to tantalise us.’

  ‘Do not forget this drizzle,’ said Hoode sarcastically. ‘Without Nick, we would be basking in bright sunshine and filling our pockets with the money that grew on every bush that we passed. This is arrant nonsense, Barnaby!’

  ‘And is that injury to Owen Elias arrant nonsense?’

  ‘That is another matter,’ muttered Firethorn.

  ‘Another matter for which our revered book holder must be held responsible,’ persisted Gill. ‘He was attacked at the Dog and Bear last night. The gallant Welshman came to his rescue and almost lost an arm. Will you absolve Nicholas there as well?’

  ‘I will,’ replied Hoode fiercely. ‘You cannot blame a man because he is set upon by some drunken reveller.’

  ‘That drunken reveller was as sober as a pine needle.’

  ‘Owen will recover,’ said Firethorn, trying to deflect his colleague from a disagreeable topic. ‘That is all that matters as far as Westfield’s Men are concerned.’

  ‘Until this villain strikes again.’

  ‘What villain?’

  ‘The one who is stalking Nicholas.’

  ‘There is no such person,’ said Hoode weakly.

  ‘Leave off this talk,’ added Firethorn uncomfortably.

  ‘Tell me who caused that disturbance at the Fighting Cocks and I will,’ challenged Gill. His companions traded an uneasy glance. ‘I am not blind, gentleman. Nicholas went out to the stables and came back dishevelled. A horse was heard galloping away from the inn. Who rode it?’

  ‘Israel Gunby’s fat accomplice,’ said Hoode.

  ‘He would not dare to measure his strength against our book holder. An impudent rascal he may have been, but he was no fighting man. I believe that Nicholas was set on by the same person who came back again last night and maimed Owen. Deny it, if you will.’ He paused. ‘Well?’

  Lawrence Firethorn and Edmund Hoode maintained a shifty silence. They had both been told by Nicholas Bracewell why he had to go to Barnstaple, and danger was implicit in that journey. Barnaby Gill had worked out for himself what they already knew and he drew a conclusion that heightened their discomfort considerably.

  ‘We are marked men,’ said Gill. ‘As long as we carry Nicholas Bracewell with us, we are all at risk. When and where will this rogue launch his next assault? Which of us will be wounded on that occasion?’ He nudged Firethorn. ‘Get rid of him, Lawrence. Put the safety of the company first and send him off to Barnstaple. Or this fellow who pursues him will murder us all, one by one!’

  Marriage to an actor was always a hazardous undertaking and when that actor was Lawrence Firethorn, the relationship could never even approximate to conventional notions of holy matrimony. Solemn vows made before the altar could not bind a couple in perpetuity. In the interests of survival, they had to be continuously rearranged to meet each new situation as it arose. Margery Firethorn was a potent woman with a single-minded commitment to getting her own way, but even she could not impose a rigid structure upon her connubial bliss. Her husband could be guided but never wholly controlled. It would be easier to stitch the Lord’s Prayer onto a soap bubble than to fit Lawrence Firethorn into anything that resembled normal married life, and Margery’s own tempestuous nature could never be contained within a wifely role. Their love had been tested many a time, and although it had acquired layers of cynicism on her side and a few startling blemishes on his, it had never been found wanting. They might wrangle and accuse but they were always working together and the sense of a common vision kept them immoveably in each other’s arms and minds.

  The common vision took her to the Queen’s Head.

  ‘They have started in earnest.’

  ‘I see that, Leonard.’

  ‘The carpenters will be here for a fortnight or more,’ he said, ‘then the plasterers and painters will come, too.’

  ‘There’s thatch to be replaced as well,’ she noted, looking up at the part of the roof where Nicholas Bracewell had prostrated himself. ‘You’ll need fresh reeds up there to keep out the wind and rain.’

  ‘It will all be done in time, mistress.’

  They were in the courtyard of the inn amid the rasp of saws and the din of hammers. Carpentry was a deafening occupation. The problem with the work of restoration was that the Queen’s Head had to look worse before it could look better. A section of the balconies had been cut away entirely to leave a yawning hole in the corner of the yard. Wooden scaffolding held up the remaining part of the structure. Where supports had burnt through, props had been temporarily inserted to prevent any further subsidence. They would be replaced in time by the stout oak of ship’s timbers that were finding a useful purpose in life now that their sailing days were over. The work was slow, hard and expensive but it conformed to a definite plan.

  ‘Did you find the courier?’ asked Leonard.

  ‘He left the city at dawn,’ said Margery. ‘With God’s speed, he should reach Marlborough some time tomorrow. We must pray that the warning is in time to be of use.’

  ‘Did you tell Master Bracewell that I saw the man?’

  ‘It has not been forgotten, Leonard.’

  ‘Thank you, thank you.’

  ‘That portrait was largely your work.’

  ‘I am glad to be of service.’

  Margery gave him a gracious smile. ‘Do not let me detain you from your duties,’ she said, gazing around the yard, ‘for I must be about mine. Where is that whining innkeeper who pays your wages?’

  ‘He is in the taproom. Do you wish to speak with him?’

  ‘No, I wish to know that he is occupied so th
at I may place my argument where it will have more influence. It is too soon to reason with Alexander Marwood.’

  ‘It is,’ agreed Leonard. ‘He has a fit of the ague every time the name Westfield’s Men is heard. I will hold back my plea until he is more settled in his mind.’

  ‘Tread with care.’

  ‘I go on tiptoe.’

  ‘Choose your moment to woo the wretch back to us.’

  ‘I will. And you?’

  ‘Leave me to work upon his wife.’

  They bade their farewells and parted. Leonard went off to unload some more barrels from the dray while Margery took a first small step towards repairing the shattered relations between the Queen’s Head and Westfield’s Men. She had come at the express request of her husband. While the company was on the road, she and Lord Westfield were its representatives in London. The aristocrat would be brought into the scheme of things later on when the pontification of a patron might have more impact. At this stage, Margery Firethorn was a much more effective advocate for the exiled troupe. She could insinuate herself into places where no sane man would ever dare to venture.

  Sybil Marwood was in the room at the rear of the inn, which was used as a parlour during the rare moments when she and her husband could actually pause for rest. She was a plump, severe and unlovely woman who was spending her middle years bitterly regretting the follies of her youth. What had once been pleasant features had now congealed into a mask of deep disappointment. Sybil Marwood had so much iron in her soul that a team of miners would be kept busy for a month trying to extract it and several picks would be broken in the process.