‘What happened?’
‘No, you tell me what happened.’
She smiled, pleased that he had good sense. ‘He shouted, the pony bolted and you both got into trouble because it broke into a garden and ate the peas.’
He had caught her arms, was leaning down to stare into her eyes and she caught a faint spicy lavender smell from him, under the normal musk that no man produced naturally, which confirmed her opinion that he was not wearing his own clothes.
‘Where is he, mistress? Yes, my name’s Robin, I’m his brother. Can you take me to him? Did he send you?’
It was the shadow of desire to feel Edmund’s brother’s hands on her and she flushed, stepped back. He let go at once.
‘Please, mistress, I’ve been combing London for him…Is he all right? Is he still alive?’
For answer she turned, led him across the courtyard to the steps down, paid an ill-afforded penny to the gaol servant who was dozing there on a stool to let them in. Robin looked up and around at the darkness and stink of Bolton’s Ward, his nostrils flaring. She went across towards where Edmund lay, and saw him move feebly, trying to turn away, hide his face. Robin spotted him too, lengthened his stride and was there first, kneeling on the slimy stones, bending, catching his brother’s shoulders, lifting him, embracing him. She smiled to see it, then turned away so they could have some privacy.
When she approached Robin had sat back on his haunches.
‘What the hell were you playing at?’ he was demanding in a furious whisper. ‘Father’s been searching for you for weeks, why the devil didn’t you send a message? Why in hell did you stay in this shit hole, you could have died…You can’t mess around with gaol-fever, it nearly killed me and I had the two best nurses in the world looking after me, for Christ’s sake…’
His rage convinced her more than his affection had, but it was distressing Edmund who was lying back on his grubby pillow, panting.
She touched Robin’s shoulder and he whipped round, glaring at her. ‘Mistress, why didn’t you…’
‘He begged me not to, sir,’ she said firmly. ‘I tried my best to get him to write to your father, but he wouldn’t, even when he was lucid. And most of this time he has been too ill to do anything.’
‘You might have done it on your own, got him out of this filthy place.’
His anger shook her, though she knew it was really a diffuse fury that wasn’t aimed at her.
‘S…sir, I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t dare reveal who he was or contact your father because he was so desperate that I shouldn’t. How could I go against what he said? He pleaded with me not to betray him, said if I sent any message to my lord, the spy in his household would make sure Heneage found him first…And he was so afraid of Heneage. And in any case, I think he was ashamed. He said many times he wanted to die.’
‘Oh Christ.’
‘He very nearly did, sir, and is still not recovered. This is the most dangerous time with gaol-fever; if he strains himself too much now, it will come back and probably kill him. Please be gentle with him.’
It was touching and made Julie want to smile at them. Although Robin was still fuming, Edmund’s frail hand had crept out from under the blankets and into his brother’s. They were holding hands like children and neither of them had noticed.
‘Yes, you’re right,’ Robin said eventually. ‘I’m sorry, Ned, I should have thought. I suppose it probably was right to lie low, but…for God’s sake, why in this place? Why not the Eightpenny Ward?’
‘Most of his money was counterfeit and somebody stole the rest,’ Julie explained.
‘Bastards.’
Edmund said something with a faint smile.
‘No, you’re damned right nobody would have thought to look for you in here. I didn’t. How could you possibly bear it? It’s worse than below decks in a ship. It’s like…it’s like a circle of hell.’
Again Edmund whispered something to his brother with a look at her that Julie knew meant she was the subject. She could feel herself flushing.
Robin listened for a moment. ‘One question,’ he said. ‘When did you understand Heneage’s game?’
‘When I…paid my tailor with the gold we made…I thought we’d made…and he weighed it and threw it back in my face for a forgery…I suddenly saw it…’ came Edmund’s creaking breathless voice,’…saw how it used me against Father. All I could think of was to hide and the only place I thought they might not look at first was in gaol, especially…in a different name. I made a deal with the man to arrest me for the debt in mother’s name, as Edward Morgan.’
Robin nodded. Edmund lay back and panted, white with exhaustion. Very gently, Robin released his brother’s hand, put it under the blankets, tucked him up like a child and then stood, dusting his fingers and his legs.
‘Mistress Granville,’ he said quietly to her. ‘I don’t think we have much time. I want you to go to the courtyard and find a man there, by the name of Kit Marlowe. He’s almost as tall as I am, velvet peascod doublet slashed with peach taffeta, but he looks like a cocky smug bastard and that’s exactly what he is. When you find him, tell him…tell him to go to my father and fetch reinforcements.’
Edmund was plucking at the blanket, the cords of his neck straining to lift his head. Robin saw and patted him. ‘I know, I know, Marlowe’s Heneage’s man. He says he wants my help to get him in with Essex and just for the moment, I believe him. All right?’
Edmund let his head fall back and closed his eyes. They looked sunken and his colour was bad. Robin looked down at him with a worried frown and then at her.
‘Please, mistress, hurry,’ he said. ‘I’m staying with Ned. If a plump-looking man in a fine marten-trimmed gown asks you where he is, even if he says he’s Mr Thomas Heneage, the Queen’s Vice Chancellor, lie.’
She nodded, frightened at the large stakes these men were playing for…Defying the Queen’s official? Well, she could do it for Edmund.
***
In the end, it was lucky that Heneage had brought no thumbscrews with him, because he had expected to be able to capture Sir Robert Carey and put the next part of his plan into operation. It meant he had to send one of his men to fetch some to use on his prisoner. While he waited, he decided to see if painting word pictures of some of the effects and refinements of thumbscrews would have any effect on the yokel. He had been talking for ten minutes when he realised that the blasted man had somehow managed to doze off again, lying sideways on the carriage bench.
His first impulse was to use his dagger on the man’s eyeballs, see if that would keep him awake, but he controlled himself.
He was absolutely certain the northerner knew where Edmund Carey was hiding. The spittle he had carefully scrubbed off his face before snatching his henchman’s cosh and using it for five satisfying minutes on the bastard northerner’s kidneys, that infuriating childish gesture confirmed his instinct that he was dealing with defiance and not ignorance.
He was planning how to use the thumbscrews to break Carey’s man quickly, considering other places you could use them than merely fingers, when it occurred to him to wonder how it was a northerner could know where Edmund Carey was when nobody else did.
The answer came to him from God, as simply as the sun rising. He actually laughed, because it was so obvious.
He leaned out of the carriage and called his second in command over to him, told his driver to whip up the horses again. He called to where his henchmen were standing in a group, sharing a leather bottle of beer and practising knife throwing at the swollen corpse of a rat lying in a gutter. Then he kicked the northerner’s shins to wake him up.
‘Edmund Carey’s in the Fleet, isn’t he?’ he said, and saw the telltale change in the man’s eyes. ‘You really should have told me before, it would have saved you some pain. And you would have told me in the end, you know; people always do. Probably after we’d crushed one or both of your balls.’