The room was bare, floor strewn with rotting straw, tiny shards of light providing scant illumination from between the weathered planks. At the end of the room squatted a man, chained to a low iron bar running the width of the outhouse, in front of two long troughs.
‘Mind the hole,’ he grinned, wrists manacled to his waist, nodding to our right. ‘That is to be my grave.’
Someone had dug a large hole, six feet long and a yard across.
He leant forwards, legs crossed, naked body filthy, the tip of his yard resting limp against the straw. A chain connected the iron band at his waist to a four-foot iron bar. The stench of piss and faeces soaked the air. He stared with bright eyes, mouth fixed in a broad smile, sinister and humourless. Long dark hair hung wet about his shoulders and plastered his forehead, yet the eyes burnt.
I took care not to approach closer than the length of the chain. ‘Your grave, you say?’
‘Aye,’ he replied, leery. ‘Elks dug it for me. He thinks the sight of it will drive me mad.’ He snorted. ‘I enjoyed watching him dig it. The ground is hard.’
‘You are James Josselin?’ I surmised.
He nodded. ‘And you are spies.’
Unfolded he would stand uncommonly tall, I reckoned, more than six feet. Or perhaps he just seemed that way because he was so awfully thin. His ribs stood out like the claws of a demon. I looked about for signs of food and water, but found none.
‘When did you last eat?’ I asked.
‘A week ago,’ Josselin replied. ‘The devil doesn’t feed me. I suck straw for water.’ I felt my guts churn, for the straw was yellow and soft, weeks old and creeping with insects.
The flesh about his eyes and cheeks was purple and blue. A long ugly welt wound its way from below his ribcage to beneath his arm. Someone had kicked him, else beaten him with a stick. He eyed Dowling’s poker like it was an old adversary.
‘How long have you been here?’ I asked.
‘Since I came,’ Josselin replied. ‘Elks was first to meet me. My bad luck.’ He stared at me once more, small brown eyes unmoving, lips drawn back to reveal bright white teeth. The flesh about his wrists was red and festering and he smelt like he was rotting. This, then, was the ‘great man’.
I pulled from my pocket a hunk of bread I was saving for later. He took it with grace and chewed, unhurried. He squinted. ‘Methinks you came to fetch me back to London, but you cannot take me back.’ He held up his chained wrists. ‘Less you have the key.’ He laughed, a sad abrasive noise tinged with lunacy. ‘Did Arlington send you here, or was it Clarendon?’
I tried not to gaze upon his genitals.
‘Why say you Arlington or Clarendon?’ Dowling demanded, wandering dangerously close.
Josselin eyed Dowling out the corner of his eye. ‘Arlington says I betrayed England to the Dutch. Clarendon is the most determined to make peace.’
‘We work for Arlington,’ I said. ‘Though not willingly. He says you killed your best friend.’
Josselin breathed slow and steady through his nose, his face turning a violent shade of crimson. He clambered painfully to his feet and stood erect, bashed and bruised, covered in a thick layer of dirt and sweat. I edged backwards. Though his arms were chained to his waist, still I feared the look in his eyes. I didn’t trust him not to bite me.
He shuffled forwards, as far as the chains would allow and jerked his wrists away from his iron girdle, succeeding only in making them bleed. ‘I am not a traitor nor a murderer.’ He let his head roll back and stared at the ceiling, stood silent, trembling.
‘We found your book,’ I said nervously. ‘On the way to Shyam.’
‘My book?’ He lowered his chin and blinked. ‘You have my book?’
‘I do,’ I remembered, digging into the folds of my jacket.
‘Keep it,’ he snapped. ‘Charlatan words writ by devious agents. Believe nothing you read.’
‘You circled passages pertaining to the Dutch.’
‘The book is written by a charlatan. It tells of the demise of the Dutch forces.’ He stepped towards me, restrained only by the chain. ‘Ask yourself why the Dutch must fall.’
‘We are at war,’ I replied, bewildered. ‘Of course the Dutch must fall.’
Josselin bared his teeth. ‘And why did Charles have to die?’
I blinked ‘Berkshire? I don’t know why he had to die. Arlington said you killed him.’
‘My best friend,’ he said, clenching his fists. ‘Why did I kill my best friend?’
‘Do you know who did?’ I asked, nervous.
‘Aye, I know,’ he replied. ‘At least I know who ordered it.’ He clamped his mouth closed and glared.
Dowling took another step closer. ‘Everyone has told us what you did in Colchester when you were a child,’ he said.
I cursed him silently for distracting Josselin. I wanted to know who killed Berkshire, not listen to old stories, embellished and reembellished with the passing of two decades.
Josselin bowed his head. ‘Josselin the hero,’ he said. ‘Who tried to save Colchester from the barbaric hordes of General Fairfax.’ He nodded to himself. ‘You know Fairfax still lives? Black Tom. Forgiven all his trespasses because he helped Monck bring the King out of exile.’ He clenched his fists again and grimaced, a thick blood vessel
standing prominent upon his brow. ‘My mother was one of the five hundred brave women that pleaded for food, once the soap and candles ran out,’ he said. ‘They stripped her of her clothes like the other four hundred and ninety-nine. Then they chased her about the fields on horseback until at last they allowed them to return inside the town walls. Most of them, anyway.’
‘They say you didn’t talk even when they tortured you.’
Josselin sucked the air in through his teeth then closed his eyes. ‘They said they would hang me unless I told them the message I carried and who it was for.’
‘You were just a boy,’ I exclaimed. ‘Any boy would have confessed it, any man would have confessed it. They were soldiers that tortured you.’
‘I know who they were,’ Josselin murmured, eyes tight closed. ‘And I saw what they did. I would have told them the message the moment they asked, but I forgot it.’ His eyes were moist. ‘Each time they held a match to my finger I begged them to stop, but they would not.’
I looked at his hands. The skin on his fingertips was ridged and rutted, like the landlady said.
‘You are a hero to these people,’ I said. ‘Every man in Essex talks of you with fondness.’
‘I don’t know these people,’ Josselin retorted. ‘I was a child. I left when I was a young man. They say I am a hero because I wouldn’t speak, yet I knew not what to say. They are not interested in the truth. Not now, not then.’
‘Then why did you come here?’
‘To escape Arlington,’ he replied. ‘I knew he wouldn’t follow, not into Shyam.’
Now he stood naked in a cowshed wrapped in chains, deep in the heart of plague country.
‘Who killed Berkshire?’ I asked.
A dog barked, close by. I turned to Dowling. ‘Elks!’
Josselin again strained to pull his wrists away from the chain that bound them to his waist, roaring with frustration and pain. The iron cut into his flesh, releasing a fresh tide of blood and pus to pour over the palms of his hands.
‘Come!’ I urged Dowling. ‘It’s our scent they are following.’
‘We cannot leave him here,’ Dowling protested.
‘We’ll come back,’ I hissed. I raced towards the forest, then stopped and cut back, running across the track that led from the village, diving into a low cluster of bracken.
‘What are you doing?’ Dowling demanded, panting, towering above me. ‘You think the dogs won’t find you?’
‘Lie down!’ I croaked, hoarse, burying my head. The barking was close now.
He lowered himself gracelessly to the ground, grumbling.
‘We won’t escape the dogs,’ I whispered. ‘There is no point in running. I want to see what Elks does.’