Tulyet spurred his horse on when the track became firmer, and then it was all Bartholomew could do to keep up with him.
After what felt like an age, the physician bumping and lurching uncomfortably in the saddle, they reached Quy, which comprised a church surrounded by a few cottages, and a winding track that led to the manor. Lights gleamed in some houses, but no one came out to see why travellers should be passing at such an hour.
‘They have been paid to look the other way,’ surmised Tulyet. ‘Well, well! Perhaps these thieves of Miller’s will be worth catching after all.’
The lode lay to the east of the village, a long, arrow-straight canal cut centuries earlier to connect with the River Cam. A towpath ran along its side, just as Miller had said. It was too narrow for horses, so Tulyet ordered them tethered to a tree. He detailed one soldier to guard them, and ordered the rest to continue on foot.
The track was fringed by a line of scrubby trees, intended to act as a windbreak from the flat, boggy Fens on the other side. Unfortunately, it was badly positioned for when the wind blew from the north, and Bartholomew grumbled under his breath about the Sheriff’s reckless assumptions regarding drifts – snow was already beginning to pile up against the hedge, and he hoped they would not reach the end of the path, only to find they could not get back again.
They walked for some time, and just when he was beginning to fear that Miller had spun them a yarn after all, a building loomed out of the darkness. Tulyet squeezed through the hedge, and led his troops through the marshes, so as to approach it from behind. They edged closer cautiously.
The ‘warehouse’ was huge for the middle of nowhere, and had been carefully constructed so that its roof was lower than the surrounding trees, thus ensuring that it could not be seen from the road. It was unusually sturdy, and had clearly been built for one purpose and one purpose only: to store goods ready for smuggling through the Fens.
‘It has clearly been here for years,’ whispered Tulyet, peering at it through the swirling snow. ‘Inge must have remembered it from his youth, and decided to put it to good use.’
‘Regardless, it is abandoned now,’ said Norys, his voice shockingly loud in the silence of the night. ‘Miller was lying, just like we thought. We should leave and go home before–’
He flinched when Tulyet whipped around with a glare, warning him to keep quiet. Then the Sheriff indicated that everyone was to stay hidden while he crept forward to reconnoitre by himself. He was gone for a long time, and Bartholomew grew increasingly concerned. Eventually, he could stand it no longer.
‘Something is wrong,’ he whispered. ‘He should have been back by–’
He stopped speaking abruptly when Norys removed a cudgel from his belt. The last thing he heard before all went black was a shriek of pain from Harold.
Chapter 16
Bartholomew opened his eyes to darkness, and for a moment, he could not remember where he was or why he was so cold. His head pounded, but he could not raise a hand to rub it because both were tied behind his back. Gradually, his wits and his memory returned. He blinked to clear his vision, and saw the faint outline of the warehouse to his left.
No one was with him except Harold, whose hands were also bound. Unfortunately, either by design or accident, the lad was lying with his face in a half-frozen puddle. Bartholomew struggled frantically against his bonds, surprised when they came loose almost immediately – he could only assume that whoever had tied him up had not had the benefit of fur-lined gloves.
He crawled to Harold and hauled him over, but the young soldier was already dead. He sat back on his heels, shock and confusion washing over him. What was going on? Where was Tulyet? He stood on unsteady legs and began to search. Then he heard voices. He lurched into the undergrowth, to hide until he could determine whether they belonged to friend or foe, but no one appeared, and he realised the sound had come from inside the shed. Norys and the others were laughing together.
He rubbed his aching head, trying to marshal his thoughts. What should he do? Run back to the horses and ride to Cambridge for help? But the guard Tulyet had left with the animals might be in cahoots with Norys, and even if Bartholomew could overpower a professional warrior, how was he to gallop all the way home, on his own and in the dark?
Then what about the manor? He slumped in defeat. That was no good either. Tulyet had drawn attention to the fact that no one had come to investigate the sound of travellers in the middle of the night, meaning they were either involved in whatever was happening, or had been paid to ignore anything suspicious.
Norys laughed again, and there came the sound of metal goblets clinking together. Bartholomew took a deep, unsteady breath and began to inch forward, to see what might be learned from eavesdropping.
He crept all the way around the warehouse, expecting at any moment to meet a guard, but everyone was inside. Other than the door, there was only one opening – a tiny window at the back, presumably for ventilation. His medical bag was gone – lost somewhere behind the hedge – but he still had the small knife he carried on his belt. Working with infinite care, and aware that even a tiny scrape might give him away, he bored a hole in a place where the wood was rotten, twisting the blade this way and that until he had created a gap big enough to look through.
The first thing he saw was Tulyet, bound hand and foot, and with a sack over his head; his sword lay on a pile of oiled sheets nearby. There were seven men with him – the six surviving soldiers, including the one who had been left to mind the horses. And Inge.
With resignation, Bartholomew recalled Norys’s previous foray to the Fens – to investigate a sighting of the lawyer five miles east. At Quy, in other words. Bartholomew was disgusted, both with himself and with Tulyet, for failing to make the connection.
Other than people and the heap of tarpaulins, the building was empty except for a few sticks of furniture, presumably for the use of those guarding whatever was stored there, and a pair of elegantly sculpted feet. Bartholomew immediately recognised them as from the Dallingridge tomb.
He stared at the men as answers began to flood into his mind. No wonder the thieves had evaded capture for so long – they were soldiers on the very patrols that Tulyet had sent to snag them! And as the likes of Norys would be unequal to organising such an audacious scheme, Inge was the sly mastermind behind it, just as he had surmised.
The pile of oiled sheets told their own story, too: they were the kind that were thrown over carts, to protect their cargoes from inclement weather – clearly, these had covered the stolen goods during the first stage of their journey from the town, discarded now they were no longer needed. The size of the heap revealed that any number of wagons had rolled into the Fens, laden down with wares that would fetch high prices in London’s illicit markets, every one of them waved through the town gates with a nod and a wink from Norys and his associates.
He froze in alarm at a sudden rattle of footsteps on the towpath, then sagged in relief. It was Helbye. The old warrior had not been content to sit at home while his Sheriff led a potentially dangerous expedition, and had come to help. Bartholomew was about to run forward and warn him when alarm bells jangled in his mind. He sank back into the shadows, heart pounding.
Helbye had chosen the six soldiers himself, after insisting that he should lead the raid. He had also objected to Harold, who now lay dead. Then there were the patrols to catch the thieves – all unsuccessful, and all briefed by the sergeant. And who claimed to have chased a boat travelling south – a totally different direction from the one the real thieves would have taken, not to mention a different mode of transport?