Yates struggled, but the ex-Spymaster’s grip was powerful, and it was not long before he abandoned himself to his fate. ‘I have done nothing wrong. I only did what I was told.’
‘By Temple,’ said Chaloner to Thurloe. ‘He knows you are taking more tonics than usual at the moment – I heard him tell Bristol about it. And Temple knows because Yates briefed him.’
‘There is nothing wrong in reporting that,’ bleated Yates. ‘It is hardly a state secret.’
‘No,’ agreed Thurloe in the same soft whisper. It was making Chaloner uncomfortable, so he did not like to imagine how Yates felt. ‘But that is not all you did. You doctored my tonics – it must have been you, because you are the only person who has had access to them since my own servant left. I might have died, had not the cat stolen some first. It is still poorly, and I am fond of that animal.’
‘And you almost killed Tom,’ slurred Leybourn. He began to sing again, crooning the words to a popular tavern ballad with no heed to the tune that usually went with them.
Yates shook his head vehemently. ‘That was not me! I had nothing to do with it, I swear on my mother’s grave! Temple accused me of it too, and said he wanted information, not murder. But it must have been one of your other enemies – God knows, you have enough of them.’
Chaloner almost believed him, but Thurloe did not. He summoned a pair of porters with orders to escort Yates to Temple with the message that he could have this would-be assassin back alive, but that the next one would not be so lucky. When they had gone, he turned to Chaloner.
‘You must tell Lord Clarendon immediately. If Temple and Bristol are hiring spies to watch men who are only peripherally associated with him, his close friends will be far more closely monitored – and Brodrick is apt to be indiscreet when he is drunk. And speaking of being drunk, can you not stop William from caterwauling? He is drawing attention to us.’
‘Good,’ said Chaloner, thinking fast. ‘Go and stand in the middle of Dial Court, where everyone can see you, and expect fireworks within a quarter of an hour. I will meet you at Tyburn at nine o’clock, for Dillon’s … I assume you will be there, to see him rescued?’
Thurloe smiled grimly, immediately understanding Chaloner’s plan to provide him with an alibi for the incident that was about to unfold. He handed him a tinderbox. ‘Yes, I will. Be careful with that powder; Prynne said the batch he bought for the well was unusually potent.’
Chaloner jogged back to the orchard, and spent several minutes enlarging holes in the walls for his charges – for the explosion to have an impact, the powder needed to be in a confined space, so it would destabilise the structure when it expanded on ignition. He fiddled until he was satisfied, then laid a thin trail of the black substance, so it could be lit from a safe distance. He did not have much left, so the ‘fuse’ was not as long as he would have liked, but he knelt and set Thurloe’s tinderbox to it before someone could come along and ask what he was doing.
‘Roundheads!’ creaked an avian voice from above his head. ‘Thousands of ’em!’
Chaloner glanced up at the parrot in alarm, and waved his arms in a desperate attempt to frighten it away. The bird stepped from side to side, but did not seem inclined to fly off. The powder began to splutter. Chaloner lobbed a handful of soil at the parrot, before turning and running as hard as he could, to take cover behind one of the remaining oaks. He reached it just as the first of his charges blew with a dull thump. Fragments of masonry shot into the air, then rained down all around him. He covered his head with his hands, smelling the powder in his hat as he did so. The second blast was smaller and deeper, but did more damage, because a huge part of the wall toppled inwards in a billow of dust. The third and final boom served to smash some of the foundation stones into pieces too small for reuse, thus ensuring the repairs would cost Prynne especially dearly.
Chaloner moved away from the tree and gazed into its branches, but there was not so much as an emerald feather to be seen. He sighed. He liked birds, and was sorry to have been the cause of one’s demise.
‘Bugger the bishops,’ came a voice from behind him. He turned to see a beady eye regaling him balefully. ‘And make way for the Catholics.’
Chaloner smiled, then clapped his hands to shoo it away. It was not a good idea to have mysterious voices chanting pro-Roman sentiments at the scenes of explosions. The bird flapped towards the chapel roof, and the spy trusted it would not come back. He stepped behind the tree again as people began to converge on the devastation he had wreaked, yelling and shouting their alarm. Prynne was among them and so was Thurloe, Leybourn clutching drunkenly to his arm. The surveyor lurched forward, and appeared to be genuinely puzzled by the wreckage. Chaloner held his breath, hoping he would not say anything incriminatory. Thurloe tried to pull him back, but Leybourn freed his hand impatiently, almost falling as he did so.
‘Lightning,’ he slurred. ‘I heard the crack as it struck the wall.’
‘Lightning?’ asked Prynne suspiciously. ‘It is not the right weather for lightning.’
‘God does not care about weather when He produces divine bolts,’ declared Leybourn, grabbing Prynne around the neck to hold himself up. ‘Did you not hear the rumble of His wrath?’
‘I heard a rumble, right enough,’ said Prynne dryly, ‘but it was an exploding rumble, not thunder.’
‘Obviously, you have not read John Spencer’s book on prodigies and prophecies,’ said Leybourn waving a finger in the lawyer’s face. ‘If you had, you would know what this means.’
‘Oh?’ asked Prynne, trying, without success, to free himself. ‘And what is that?’
‘That God does not like His trees knocked down and sold as firewood,’ said Leybourn. ‘And He will send great balls of fire to destroy the walls of those who do. Just like He did at Jericho.’
Chaloner’s regicide uncle had taught him about the combined power of superstition and rumour, and he saw a good example of it at Lincoln’s Inn that day. Thurloe stood back, arms folded in satisfaction, as servants and benchers began to agree that Leybourn might have a point. Even Prynne looked uncertain. As a fervently – some might say violently – religious man, Prynne was sensitive to what God might or might not like. It looked as though the plot had worked better than Chaloner could have hoped, because there was no suggestion from anyone that gunpowder might have been the culprit.
He left Lincoln’s Inn and went to White Hall, where he told Lord Clarendon how Temple had hired Yates to spy. The Earl was appalled, and ordered Brodrick to visit all his friends and warn them, lest they make indiscreet remarks in front of loyal servants who were nothing of the kind.
‘May has been spreading tales about you,’ said Brodrick, walking with Chaloner to the gate. ‘He says you murdered the real Vanders, and the Dutch government has offered a reward for your head. Some greedy fool will decide to have the fabulous sum he says is available, which means you are in serious danger – he knew what he was doing when he concocted such a tale.’
‘This must mean I am right about him being the author of Bristol’s letter,’ Chaloner said, more to himself than Brodrick. ‘I am close to the truth, and he is desperate to silence me before it is too late.’
‘Actually, I think he just dislikes you,’ said Brodrick. ‘If I were you, I would tackle him about it before it is too late. He is in the Spares Gallery.’
Reluctantly – he resented wasting time combating the bald spy’s spiteful antics – Chaloner walked to the hall where ‘Vanders’ had been unmasked, May and Willys had tried to run him through, and Holles had come close to shooting him. It was unusually busy that morning, because people had risen early to attend the public hangings at Tyburn. May was there, muttering to Behn.