Jon squirmed in Andrew’s grip, hanging like a chicken ready for plucking. ‘Forgive me,’ Jon gasped. ‘I’ll never – not again. I swear it. Don’t kill me, Mister Cobham. Think of my children – of my wife. I am not a well man.’
‘Indeed?’ queried Andrew. ‘Is your health so poor? A sad reflection on my generosity over the years, perhaps. Did the food and board I supplied free of charge not bring sufficient comfort? Yet you sleep deep and often, signs of a clear conscience, they say.’
‘Little Ellen,’ Jon spluttered. ‘Think of my babies.’
‘I try not to,’ Andrew said. ‘But if I must, I should no doubt decide they were better off without a murdering traitor for a father. You stole poison, and put it in Marrott’s hands. You knew why I had it locked safely away. And you knew what use it would be put to, if taken by others.’ His eyes, cold and black, were just inches from the other man’s. Jon’s feet were lifted from the ground and kicking wildly, his hands pummelling helplessly at Andrew’s tightening fingers at his throat. In desperation Jon’s old scratched boots, heavy wooden soled, connected over and over against Andrew’s shins. Andrew neither winced nor moved. He continued speaking, his voice soft with latent menace. ‘You are a murderer, Mister Spiers,’ he said. ‘You killed your king. Now, do I hand you over to be drawn, hanged and quartered, or do I break your neck myself?’
‘I never meant –’
‘You are a dealer in regicide, the most heinous of crimes. And you betrayed me. You betrayed every friend you have, and you betrayed your family. Or does your wife collude in your treachery?’
‘She knows nothing. I couldn’t tell her.’ Jon was now scarlet. Andrew’s grip on his collar was strangling him. He wriggled weakly and now his legs dangled limp. He pleaded, ‘I will make amends, sir. Forgive me, I beg you.’
‘I never forgive,’ Andrew said. ‘But you have not answered my question, Mister Spiers. Did you love the Woodville cause, then?’
Jon was dizzy and growing faint. ‘I wanted – just the comfort – a little of the riches other men have. You’re a rich man, Mister Cobham. You pretend not to be, but with a house like this – clothes – the duke as your friend. I wanted – some of the same.’
Andrew paused a moment. Then he said, ‘That was the wrong answer, Mister Spiers. Passion, I might understand. An earnest belief in the wrong cause, I might overlook. But to murder for gain is a vile business. Have you any idea of the suffering caused in death by poison? Do you know the agony of arsenic? Do you care?’
Jon’s voice was barely discernible. His child’s blue eyes popped, bursting from their skull. He whispered, ‘I never thought –’
Andrew nodded. ‘Your own death,’ he said, ‘will not be as terrible, my friend. I shall make it quick.’
The sunset raged in swirls of rushing vermillion as Andrew broke Jon Spiers’ pale neck. Above them each cloud was lined in saffron and streaks of cobalt sprang like swords across the horizon. The small snap was barely audible. Andrew laid the lifeless body flat on the damp grass, and turned at the crunch of footsteps. Casper stood in silence behind him.
Andrew said, ‘You see, the hand is far quicker than the axe.’
Casper nodded, almost timid. ‘You’ve a mighty strong hand, then, Mister Cobham, to break a man so easy.’
‘It was only a little neck.’ Andrew stood slowly, looking up at the house at the end of the pathway and the last rays of the burnished sunset sinking behind. All the windows had turned to scarlet. ‘And I am – sadly – much practised,’ he said. ‘Now let us go home.’
It was some days later and the great city lay peaceful beneath the summer sky. Rumour abounded but no further conspiracies marred the law of the land and under the continued rule of the Protector, all seemed right in the world.
The Portsoken Ward basked beneath the stars and the chimneys at Cobham Hall smoked long into the night. Tyballis lay quiet and naked in Andrew’s arms. His fingertips brushed across her nipples, his thumbs circling the aureoles and his breath, leaning over her, was hot. Where their bodies touched, the sweat of their previous lovemaking clung. Yet although the great fire raged over the hearth at the far end of the chamber, its mighty flames had sunk. They no longer roared high but the burnished heat glowed like a rising sun at the end of the bed.
They had made love, then slept for some hours, and finally awoke together with the rattle of the broken shutters and the first threat of a storm. The rain came suddenly, thrumming on the roof tiles and hurtling against the window. Snapping into immediate awareness, Andrew grinned, his face flushed by the fire’s last reflections. Tyballis was still sleepy and his breath was in her eyes. She whispered, ‘Is it morning already then, my love?’
He shook his head. ‘I doubt it’s more than two of the clock, and still night. You must sleep longer.’
She wriggled up against the pillows, looking back earnestly at him. ‘There’s been something on my mind for some days. If I say it now, then I can dream sweet again. It’s about Jon. So I have to say I’m sorry.’
Andrew smiled, slow to decipher her words. ‘There are only two of us to blame,’ he said. ‘Jon Spiers, and myself.’
Outside, the thunder rolled like the echoes of cannon fire. Inside, the warmth contained them in a cavern of silent shadows. The bed curtains, half-closed, became a secret chamber within the chamber. The high bedposts and their carved intricacies, marked the boundaries. The hanging silks were the containing walls. Above them the tester’s fraying raggedness ballooned, embroidered in dust. Each small movement, each sigh of intimacy, was a whispered promise of pleasure. Engulfed by pillows all in disarray from their previous lovemaking, Tyballis wiped away sleep’s stickiness from the corners of her eyes. ‘But you see,’ she explained, ‘when I was Marrott’s prisoner, I saw Jon at that house. Marrott called him the “usual messenger” but I just thought you’d sent him there – that it was all one of your tricks, that Jon was helping you, spying and taking false messages. But I should have warned you, just in case. So, I was to blame – just a little. And don’t say you’re to blame, when you’re not at all.’
‘What spy worth his salt,’ Andrew smiled, ‘does not recognise the traitor in his own household?’
Tyballis smoothed her hand against his cheek. ‘You didn’t even trust me when you first knew me. Now I understand why.’
‘Trust creates vulnerability. It is not a gift I am usually capable of giving.’
‘I trust people before I think about it. Silly perhaps, when you remember who I was married to.’
‘And yet,’ Andrew smiled, leaning over to trace her body from navel to thigh, ‘neither of us suspected Jon Spiers.’
‘He was always asleep. That’s another way of hiding, isn’t it? Perhaps that’s why he did what he did. To feel more important.’
Andrew leaned back beside her, staring over the bed’s footboard at the dying ashes. ‘Why Spiers did what he did does not interest me. I am more concerned as to why I failed to discover it. He used Luke’s name when selling poison and trading information. I was told this, and it distracted me. But I should have guessed. Jon’s child Ellen was the only one who saw how I opened the chest containing the arsenic. A better lockpick perhaps, than I realised, and being keen to prove her pride, no doubt later showed her father. Tomorrow his wife will take her children back to the farm. She refused my invitation to remain here. I am not surprised.’