More bottles followed, and pans, and stones. A slop pot, hurled from an upper storey, landed at his feet and spattered him with its contents. I had turned the neighborhood into my accomplices. Burgoyne fended off most of the missiles, but they slowed him down, and then one caught him on the forehead. After that, blood poured into his eyes, and he had to keep wiping them.
I could see the resolve building in him, and so I was ready when he made another attempt to kill me, running at me with the sword thrusting for my heart—and I would have got away if the growing crowd hadn’t hampered me. Suddenly, I was within range of the blade, and I frantically twisted away from it as it plucked at the buttons of my leather riding jerkin. I stabbed at him with my knife, and felt the blade enter the right shoulder. And then one of the crowd failed to get out of the way in time, and I tripped over him and fell. . . . And there I was, helpless as the killer stood over me with growing triumph in his eyes. His arm came back for the final thrust.
At which point the thief-taker Toland, who had come up through the crowd, swung his cudgel, and caught Burgoyne behind the ear, and so laid out the murderer atop me.
CHAPTER TWENTY
“It sorrows me to say this,” said His Grace of Roundsilver. “But I think it best if you stayed away from court for the present.”
I felt defiance straighten my spine. “I have done nothing wrong,” said I. “I have in fact done the Queen a service. Why should I hide?”
“The whole world knows of the Queen’s distaste for your presence,” said Roundsilver. “Should you appear at court, any who hope for royal favor will be obliged to shun you. It will be humiliating, and will do your cause no good.”
I thought for a long moment. Anger boomed dully in my veins. “I understand,” said I.
“Other matters will soon occupy the court’s attention. After that, you may return.”
The duchess looked up at me, her blue eyes deep with compassion. “I warned you, did I not, that you should think before you acted?”
“A court conspiracy,” said the duke, “is sometimes better left unmasked. If you meant to help Broughton, you failed. If you meant to uncover the guilty, you succeeded all too well. The Queen was forced to take action, and well does she resent you for making her take notice of the intrigue at her court.”
After capturing Burgoyne, Toland and I had taken the renegade knight to a magistrate, accompanied by a pack of the inhabitants of Ramscallion Lane. The sheriff’s men turned out, not because of the prisoner, but because they thought a riot was about to begin.
While Burgoyne was marched to jail, I led the mob to one of the countinghouses where I kept my funds. At the sight of this pack of unruly stew-dwellers, the good bankers began locking doors and slamming shutters, certain they were about to be stormed by an angry rabble. It took a bit of negotiation, but eventually I was allowed inside to collect some of my silver, after which I paid the mob to go away.
That same morning, before leaving Kingsmere for the capital, the Queen had appointed Lord Slaithstowe to be the new Attorney General, and put the investigation into his hands. Slaithstowe rode ahead of the Queen’s party and arrived late in the afternoon to find Burgoyne already in custody.
The Queen in the interim announced a reward of three hundred royals to the person capturing the fugitive, again without knowing that Burgoyne had been taken.
The next day Slaithstowe spent in putting the assassin to the question before the Court of the Siege Royal and coercing him to name his accomplices. What Slaithstowe heard probably had him tearing his beard out by the roots, but he did his duty, copied the transcript of the interrogation in his own hand—not trusting anyone else—and reported to the Queen first thing the next morning.
For Burgoyne admitted that he was in the pay of both Leonora, the Queen’s own mother, and her best friend, the Countess of Coldwater. Each rejoiced in her nearness to the Queen, and both feared losing the Queen’s love to the interloper Broughton—and in addition Leonora, for reasons of policy, favored Berlauda’s marriage to Loretto’s prince and heir, rather than to a minor viscount with a pretty face.
The countess’s father, old Coldwater, had been Burgoyne’s liege-lord. Burgoyne’s service in foreign wars had allowed him to return to Duisland with a competence but, being a rake and gambler, he had lost it all. The Countess gave him a few crowns now and again and kept him in reserve, in case she needed someone to intercept a messenger or cut a throat. And then came the inspiration to kill Broughton’s wife and blame the husband for the deed. It was one of the Countess’s ladies who commissioned the dagger with the Broughton badge.
Queen Berlauda must have been appalled and devastated by the news, but she lacked neither courage nor resolution. Burgoyne was sent to the gallows that very day. The Countess of Coldwater was ordered to Coldwater House on the northeast coast, there to await the Queen’s pleasure; and Queen Leonora was sent to the royal residence and fort at West Moss, beyond the Minnith Peaks, and as far from the capital as it is possible to travel without actually wading out into the ocean.
As for Broughton, the scandal was too great for a man without powerful friends to survive. Though he was innocent of anything but ambition, he was obliged to resign his post as Master of the Hunt, given the new office of Inspector General of Fortifications, and sent off to view and report on the state of every fort, castle, and city wall in the kingdom. And, as he had borrowed heavily to outfit himself as a great man at court, and to provide the entertainments at Kingsmere, he would be pursued on this pilgrimage by his creditors, or their representatives.
Whether Lady Broughton rejoiced in the return of her husband, I do not know.
An official announcement was made that Burgoyne had been hanged after an attempt to assassinate the Queen. No mention was made of the Countess or Queen Leonora, though everyone at court knew the story within hours. Presumably the bastard Clayborne, when he read the despatches of his spies, was greatly entertained by the affair.
Those responsible for the violence were punished, but the punishment did not stop there, for Berlauda deeply resented losing everyone she loved and trusted, and viewed without charity those who had brought her this intelligence. She could not abide the sight of Lord Slaithstowe, and found the pain of his presence too much to bear. He kept his office less than a week, which must have been a great blow, as he had performed his duty as well as it could be done—and he lost also the sweeteners he would have been paid by anyone whose business brought them before the Attorney General, a sum that would over time have been a great fortune. Instead, he was appointed Commissioner of the Royal Dockyard in Amberstone, where the opportunities for enrichment were small by comparison.
And as for me—I, who had been the subject of praise and the object of envy after my capture of Burgoyne—I was told merely that the sight of me was disagreeable to her majesty, and that I should avoid her royal presence. Unlike Slaithstowe, I was not offered a job, lest the offer be construed as a reward rather than a punishment.
I wondered if Virtue had triumphed over Iniquity, as in Blackwell’s masque. Berlauda’s court had been cleansed of one conspirator and one adulterous nobleman, but no doubt there were many of that sort who remained. The court was also rid of one half-lawyer who trusted too much to his own luck, and had suffered the consequence of that trust. I could almost hear the laughter as it echoed from the great roof beams of the foundry.