Dodd was sitting wishing very much for his comfy old clothes and jack and helmet. It seemed all wrong to be going into a fight wearing his fancy tight clothes, no smell of oiled leather and steel. At least he had his sword back. Perhaps he should have bought that poinard dagger after all. Briscoe was in the other boat. They had no guns since there was very little point in trying to keep the thing secret if they were going to be firing them-although their opponents might well have guns and would certainly shoot. The worst of guns was the notice they gave with the hissing and light of matches in the dark-and the Judith had no guns with snaphaunce or wheel locks because they hadn’t penetrated to Cornwall yet. Their only real hope was surprise.
Enys was next to Dodd at the back of the boat and Dodd looked him over cautiously. He kept licking his lips but other than that, seemed steady enough. Still, you never knew with a man until you’d seen him fight and even then, you still never knew. Please God he was better at it than his extraordinary sister.
Enys claimed to know a small muddy beach where there was a path that led to Topcliffe’s house-it couldn’t be helped but they had to use the path as the house was on a small knoll in the middle of the Lambeth marshes.
They were at the Bridge, the slender pointed gigs pointing straight into what seemed a vast pile of foam where the tide and the river current came to blows. The White Tower gleamed a little in grey starlight. There were some incomprehensible shouts from boat to boat. They slowed, steadied, took aim and then the men started leaning into the stroke while Mr. Trevasker and one of the second mates, Ted Gunn, called the time.
With the creak of oars in the rollocks and the bellowing of the waters, Dodd found himself ducking down as low as he could to avoid the spray. The turbulence was appalling where incoming tide met the river flow, slow as it was from the summer. For a moment they held, trembling on the foam, the oars moving rhythmically. Even Dodd could tell that if the Cornish weakened or made a mistake in their rowing, the gigs would be turned sideways by the pounding waters and probably turn over and wreck. It was a ridiculous thing to do, as ridiculous as the salmon swimming upstream. Could they do it? Would they all die of drowning? Dodd knew he was holding his breath in fear of the boat sinking.
The vast wet starlings were moving, passing by as the oars speeded their rhythm. Gradually they seemed almost to climb up a mountain of water, battered one way and the other, under the arches with their echoing roar, under the bracing beams, and then out into the quiet of the broad reach of the Thames where the turbulence was less. Dodd heard the rasping of the men’s breath as they eased their stroke. They had to keep rowing or the current would take them down under the bridge again but they were panting like men who had been in battle-which they had been. Without the tide behind them, the thing would have been impossible, and they still had three miles to go.
They settled into a steady rhythm after they had caught their breath and Dodd felt guilty for not helping-but this was no time for apprentices at rowing.
“How far do we go fra the river’s edge to the house?” Dodd asked.
“Half a mile perhaps,” said Enys. “The path is muddy but passable. It’s narrow though. If they have anyone watching it, they might warn the house and they could lock the place up or even cut some throats.”
“Ay,” said Dodd, “We need to catch them unawares. Two men to go up the path on the quiet and cut any guards’ throats…”
Enys coughed meaningfully.
“Oh ay, ehm…Capture them or something. About five more behind to get into the house and the rest to follow on if there’s trouble. Are there stables?”
“Yes, at the back. But there was only me and everyone was asleep, so when I got in I just passed as one of them, taking the priest off for more interrogation.”
“Why did ye kill him, really? It wasnae the coney-catching, was it?”
Enys said nothing.
“Hm,” There was something Enys had said earlier that was niggling Dodd. He tried to track down what was worrying him. “Ye had the password, did ye?”
“Yes. And it worked. I must say, I was surprised.”
“Cecil gave it ye?”
“Yes.”
“And the men slept through?”
“Well neither Heneage nor Topcliffe was there, but yes…”
Dodd sniffed. “Ay well then, Cecil’s got a man there and he drugged their beer.”
Enys was silent and Dodd saw his teeth flash in a rueful grin. “And there was I congratulating myself on how cunning I had been.”
No, it was still all wrong. It felt wrong. You took on a job to fetch a man out of imprisonment and then straight away you stabbed him in the back and heaved him in the river? It made no sense. Far better and far less effort to just stab him where he was in the prison and leave in a hurry. If that was your intent, of course. Perhaps Enys had intended to rescue him after all. But why had Cecil organised his escape in any case? Why couldn’t Cecil simply ask his father Lord Burghley to order Heneage to release him. From what Carey said, Burghley might have been old, but he was the chief man of the kingdom and the most trusted of all by the Queen…
Had Cecil ordered the killing then? But why didn’t Enys say so? And if Cecil had ordered it, why did Enys feel he must run? And why use Enys at all instead of whoever it was he had working for him inside the house? Why make it so complicated?
Dodd stared into the darkness, sucked his teeth, and listened to the steady rhythm of the oars as the powerful Cornishmen shoved the boat upriver against the flow. What was he getting into? Was that where they would have taken the women? How did Lady Hunsdon know for sure? What about Pickering?
“Did ye know Jackson well?” Dodd asked, fishing for some kind of clue, somewhere.
“No, I didn’t. Only by correspondance.” Enys’s answer was curt.
“Ah thocht ye came from a Papist family?”
“I do. I was in the Netherlands in the Eighties.”
It was there, just out of reach, somewhere in the darkness. If he’d been paid to kill Jackson, why would he have broken him out of jail first? Had he been paid at all…?
Dodd stopped breathing for a moment. Enys had certainly been paid in advance-he’d had money to gamble with at Pickering’s game who never allowed any kind of credit. Or…he had been given money at any rate, perhaps with the promise of more. Then he had been given careful instructions and he had followed them and successfully freed his man. And then, while in the boat on the Thames, no doubt heading for the Pool of London to take ship and escape, seemingly on a whim, Enys had put a knife in the back of the man he had just rescued at considerable risk and dumped him over the side with his feet still in chains to weight him down.
Dodd tried to imagine doing that kind of a job and what might make him put a knife in someone at the end of it. After all, you never really wanted to do it, did you? Killing someone in cold blood like that? No matter how many men you might have killed in battle or a fight or even on somebody else’s instructions, you never wanted to do something like that at such close quarters, especially not in a boat. He might spot what you were doing and certainly would resist, you might fall in or be stabbed yourself. Unconsciously, Dodd shook his head. You wouldn’t do it just because the man had coneycatched a lot of people, though you might disapprove of it. And you certainly wouldn’t do it if the son of the most powerful man in the kingdom had just paid you to help the prisoner escape.
In Dodd’s mind there was only one reason why he might put a knife in someone he had just rescued like that. He cleared his throat to ask Enys if that was the reason, then paused. All right. The only way the thing would work is if you realised that the man you had just rescued was going to try and kill you. Then it would make sense to put your knife in him first.
Why? Why would a priest who had just been rescued by Enys on behalf of…probably Cecil, possibly someone else…for what reason might he want to kill his rescuer? Well, they were alone in the boat apart from the boatman who had been well-bribed. One man goes upriver in a boat. A prisoner disappears from a safe-house. One man comes back, gets on a ship, and leaves England using the same name. And one man who knows too much about the scheme ends at the bottom of the Thames with a hole in him.