‘I mean danger from Arcampora himself.’
A flicker of uncertainty in Fiorzi’s gaze.
‘The Brothers of Antioch have entrusted Samuel to the care of a man who has killed – deliberately – to advance his own knowledge,’ Bianca continues bluntly. ‘Your Eminence, Samuel Wylde is in the care of a monster.’
Having set the match to the powder, Bianca braces herself for the blast.
But it doesn’t come. For a moment she thinks Santo Fiorzi is going to tell her that consorting with monsters is a price worth paying to advance his cause. Then he says, ‘You’re quite correct, Mistress Bianca. Arcampora is indeed all that you say he is. And the Brothers of Antioch are scarcely much better.’ He permits himself a grudging smile. ‘You are quite right, Passerotto. Yes, I confess it – I would rather the English returned to the one true faith. But not at any price. Be you English, Roman, Spanish, French, Lombardy or Swiss, there is barely anyone alive on this continent who has lived a single year free from the war of the faiths; from the ambitions of kings, princes and bishops – cardinals, too, for that matter. But you are wrong in your assumption. I have not come all this way to put Samuel Wylde on the English throne. Quite the contrary.’
‘Then what have you come here for?’ Bianca’s words sound to her like a tiny bell ringing in a vast cathedral.
‘I’d have thought that would have been obvious to such a clever and tenacious woman,’ Santo Fiorzi says. ‘I’ve come to take my grandson home.’
7
Besides the pain, the beating has left a deep, aching lethargy in his bones. Sleep, it whispers. Lie here on the cold flagstones and just sleep.
But sleep means surrender. Sleep very probably means death. Because the hurt has a purpose now: it reminds him that Florin and Dunstan will return.
Like an old man climbing out of an uncomfortable chair, Nicholas eases himself up. He draws as many deep breaths as he can, until the pain becomes too great to bear. Then a wave of nausea makes the floor liquid beneath his feet, and he wastes precious moments regaining confidence in his legs.
He checks the door. It’s made of stout timber, studded, with a covering of tar to stop it rotting. And it’s bolted from the outside.
Inspecting the windows, Nicholas concludes they haven’t been repaired since before the Dissolution. Those not blocked by moss and lichen let in a weak, watery light. Where the glass has gone from the iron latticework, the diamond-shaped spaces are too small to allow even his fist to pass through. He wonders if a heave of a shoulder might knock out the entire frame.
Stepping back, he hurls his bruised flesh against the ironwork. His efforts dislodge nothing but a few clumps of damp lichen and a shower of tiny rust flakes. The frame is set firmly into the masonry. He tries the others, grimacing at the agony of each impact. His only achievement is to open up his split lip again.
Nicholas turns his attention to the interior. The hall is utterly bare. The only furnishings are the festoons of spiders’ webs and a few tendrils of ivy that have prised their way in from outside. It smells like an abandoned sepulchre after the dead have moved out in search of better lodgings.
He looks up at the roof. Perhaps if he could climb onto a crossbeam he could smash his way out. But the stone walls are slippery with damp. There’s nowhere he can see that might provide even the most tenuous foothold.
At the centre of the inside wall is a cavernous fireplace, tall enough to stand in. The bricks are scorched black, the mortar wreathed in plump ermine collars of fungus. Perhaps there’s a chance his limbs might support a squirming, rasping, lung-choking climb up the chimney. Nicholas plans it in his mind: brace the back against the brickwork… push out with the legs until they’re rammed against the opposite side… propel yourself upwards inch by inch…
He walks in and looks up, expecting to see daylight at the top. Three feet above his head is a solid plug of dirt, crumbled masonry and broken birds’ nests.
His despair is absolute. This is what it must be like, he thinks, to take your last look at the shore when you realize you can’t tread water any longer.
Resigned to the knowledge there is no escape, he walks stiffly back to the far wall and slumps down to the floor, resting his jaw on his knees.
Why didn’t I listen to Bianca when she warned me about going anywhere near Cleevely? he wonders. What will she do when I fail to return to Bankside? Will she dispatch Ned Monkton to come looking for me? Will Ned find my carcass, the way we found the remains of Tanner Bell?
It occurs to him there is one tiny glimmer of hope. Today, the first of his two letters will reach Thomas Tyrrell. In fact Bianca will have delivered it to Munt’s warehouse by now. The instructions it contains should reach Cleevely inside four days. Perhaps there’s a chance he can convince Arcampora to keep him alive that long.
As Nicholas considers how he might do this, he hears the same dry, scratching sound he’d heard on regaining consciousness. It seems to be coming from a curtain of deep shadow to the left of the chimneybreast.
Nicholas clambers to his feet. Crossing to the shadow, he sees a narrow door set into a solid-looking stone recess. Until now it has been hidden from him by the projecting wall of the fireplace and the pervading gloom inside the lodge.
The first thing he notices about the door is that there are no hinges visible. He’d expect to see stout iron bands reaching out across the planks from the frame. But the door must have hinges. Which means they’re on the other side. The door must open into the space beyond. Away from him.
Up close, the scratching is much louder now. It sounds to Nicholas like a trapped bird. And a trapped bird must mean a hole in the roof. Or even a window. An open window.
He wonders what manner of chamber is on the other side of the door. If it’s the lodge’s former sleeping quarters, the lock should be on the door’s other face. So why is the lock-plate and the sliding flat-bolt on this side? Unless it’s been placed there not to allow admittance, but to prevent someone getting out.
Nicholas runs a finger along the flat-bolt. The metal is cold against his flesh. But it’s not pitted with age. It’s not rusted the way he’d expect, if it has been here since the time the clergy were expelled.
Out of nowhere, he recalls something Timothy had told him once, at the Jackdaw. The subject of the conversation had been Bankside house-divers, and their ability to defy almost any lock constructed by mortal man. ‘A lock is only as good as the door frame it’s connected to,’ Timothy had told him. And Timothy knew all about locks. Because his father was a locksmith, and it’s only because Timothy is a second son that he’s now a taproom boy and not his father’s apprentice.
Nicholas squats again, ignoring the pain in his thigh where the tip of Florin’s boot landed. He studies the bolt-keep on the door jamb with the one fully functioning eye Florin has left him.
The bolt-keep is kept in place by two iron brads, hammered into the frame. Nicholas reckons he might just be able to summon enough strength to drive in the door, ripping the bolt-keep out of the frame in the process.
Except that he’s not built like Ned Monkton, and Florin and Dunstan have stolen away with most of his strength.
His first charge against the door brings a howl of pain from somewhere very deep inside his body. For a moment he thinks he’s fractured his humerus, or at least dislocated his clavicle. And the door has yielded nothing, other than a little dust.
Nicholas steps back a couple of paces. He bends his knees, braces his palms on his thighs and tries to summon up the courage to do it again. Then he stands up, drops his right shoulder a little and makes a second rush.
A second howl of pain. Louder and more visceral than before. But still the door does not budge.
On the other side the trapped bird seems to have renewed its desperate attempts at escape. Nicholas can hear the thrashing of its panicked wings.
On the third charge he loses his nerve entirely, stopping the very moment before collision.
On the fourth he almost faints with the pain.
For the fifth attempt, he decides he needs help. He asks Eleanor to give him the courage to continue. Or is it Bianca he asks? Somehow the fire in his shoulder seems to have fused the two images together.
Nicholas hits the door with the last of his strength, biting again at the gash Florin has put in his lip, spilling fresh warm blood over his chin.
As the bolt-keep tears out of the frame, Nicholas’s own momentum carries him into the chamber beyond. It’s all he can do to stop himself plunging on. He barely notices the door swinging loosely on one unbroken hinge behind him, as if all he’d really had to do was knock. He comes to a halt, half-crouched, hands on knees, gasping. But grinning, too. Grinning like a Jack o’ Bedlam.
And as his functioning eye peers into the semi-darkness, he sees there is no window to escape through. No bird fluttering against the glass. Just a boy shackled by the ankle to a length of chain. A boy with a bloody rag tied around his head, every pore of his death-white skin weeping silent terror, while his right foot tries desperately to scuff out the necromantic symbols chalked into the flagstones.