Under cover of this total chaos, unseen by the audience blinded by fear, Gresham noted with horror the fourteen or fifteen men dressed as servants rise to their feet as one, reach inside their tunics and rough jerkins and draw out hardened wooden cudgels or wickedly edged cheap knives. Their target was clear.
Gresham.
Jane.
For a single, terrible, bleak moment, Henry Gresham gazed full into the face of his own death. In less than a second the appalled realisation of what he had done thudded into his brain. Lulled into false security. Seduced into relaxation by pleasure, like the man knifed at climax by his lover. His servants, his eight men, were here to enjoy. They were not armed. He started to draw his weapon out from the scabbard, as if in slow motion. It would be there fully two or three steps ahead of the man fixedly charging at him, club already upraised. He would, he could kill that man. But what of the horde of others that followed him?
He was too much of a fighter to take his eye off the man who would either be killed or who would kill him: the first in the mad rush of his attackers, the one with the brute strength to have hurled himself to the forefront of the charge on Gresham. Yet part of him disengaged from his main self, almost as if it floated above him.
Something extraordinary was happening.
His men were standing on their seats, drawing weapons from their tunics and jerkins. There was panic in their eyes, fear, confusion. The look of soldiers. The glint of metal. Boat axes! A heavy, short wooden shaft. A glinting, razor-sharp cutting and chopping edge on one side, a vicious sharp point on the other.
Mannion. Shouting orders at them. Not shrieking, nor yelling. Shouting — clearly, firmly, almost calmly. Mannion, who had risen to his feet a split-second before the attackers, a crucial, life-saving split second, to warn their men of danger. Mannion, who, for no reason he nor any Other human would ever know, had quietly ordered the boat crew, as he usually did, to take the boat axes out of the locker, and a knife or two if they wished.
Just in case.
Gresham used his other arm to fling Jane viciously to the ground. Never taking his eyes off his attacker, he waited until the man had drawn back his cudgel for the blow that would have smashed in Gresham's skull. At that precise moment he flicked the blade of his sword across the man's face. He caught one eye, missed the second by a hair's breadth. The shock was terrible. Even though Gresham's flick had not caught a single muscle controlling his arms, the man's hand suddenly flexed open as his eye exploded and the club flew out of its grasp. Caught by his own momentum, lunging forward, Gresham stepped up on to the bench as his assailant, his face a bloody mess, flopped by him to crash senseless to the floor.
Someone screamed. Jane. Some primeval communication made him look not at her sprawled body on the floor but to his left. He had chosen the right assailant. The man rushing at him from the right had been the nearest, the most dangerous. Yet the man rushing down on him from the left had been only a second behind. Gresham's brain had mathematically computed the threat and turned instinctively to the right as the greater risk. It left him with no time to deal with the man charging in from the left.
The man had a short, flat forehead and thick, bushy eyebrows. For a moment Gresham's sword felt as if it weighed several tons, as if the act of dragging it round to meet his second assailant would take a whole lifetime.
Would his sword have met the man from the left before his cudgel or his knife met Gresham's flesh? He was never to know.
Suddenly, unexpectedly, a hole opened up in the forehead of the second attacker. A flicker of light, and a boat axe was embedded there, between the bushy eyebrows.
As of a moment the light of life was expunged from the man's eyes. His sightless, mindless body flung past Gresham as had the other man's. Mannion had flung the axe. Mannion, hauling a second boat axe from his jerkin even as he yelled encouragement to Gresham's men.
One or two seconds, that was all it seemed. One or two seconds for the first of the attackers to be halted by Gresham, the second to be killed by Mannion. One or two seconds to cause the mass of men to falter, shocked at the sudden loss of two of their fellows. One or two seconds enough for Gresham's men to hurl themselves to their feet and gather round their master.
The attackers wavered. For another second it looked as if they might halt, turn and run, but their momentum as much as anything else carried them forward. They broke on the curtain wall of Gresham's servants, the strong keep of Gresham and Mannion, a double line before the prone body of Jane.
There was a sickening thud as body met body, club met flesh and muscle and sinew fought against muscle and sinew. The men grunted as they landed their blows, grunted as they took a blow and felt the pain searing up their limbs.
One of Gresham's men was lifted half off his feet by a blow from a cudgel, flung back into the benching. Another man, scarred face, missing teeth, broke through a gap and lunged at Gresham. Off balance, Gresham lunged back, using the extra length of his blade, knowing that a swordsman against a club had only one chance. His sword pierced the man's shoulder. He screamed and fell, hand clutching the wound. Gresham's blade was stuck, in flesh or ensnared in the rough woollen cloth. With a final sobbing heave he yanked it clear.
They had to reach the back wall of the theatre. They had to position themselves so that they were only dealing with an enemy coming at them from the front. Thank God Jane was wearing a skirt more like a countrywoman's, without the huge hoops and farthingales a more vain person would have chosen.
The three men who had pissed on the Pit had vanished, the surge of men and women hunting for them dissipated in the long haul up the stairs and the fruitless search of the top gallery. There was chaos, men and women looking fearfully up at the roar of battle coming from the first tier. They were streaming out of the theatre as fast as the cramped exits and their legs would allow.
Three attackers had come leaping at four of Gresham's men.
'Get to the back wall!' Gresham yelled, his voice cutting through the shouts and screams. Clambering, clambering all the while for that damned wall. Thrusting as the pack closed in. Feeling their hot breath, the stink of garlic from one, the dreadful stench of rotting teeth from another. Keeping that grip on Jane's wrist. The grunts, sharp, spasmodic explosions of breath from both sets of men. Muttered curses, shouts, a scream as a blow landed. Feeling with his feet the broken benches beneath him. Only able to risk the quickest of glances backwards.
Young Harry had tripped over a bench and exposed himself to a blow from a swinging club. It hit his ribs, blowing the breath out of him. Just as his assailant was about to land a final blow on his pate, Harry turned aside, dodged. The club intended for his head smashed on to a bench. Splinters flew, the bench cracked near in half.
A rough, hard surface bit into Gresham's back. The wall! Now they could point outwards, a sharp-tipped semi-circle daring someone to break it. Jane suddenly dropped down behind a broken bench. Wounded? No, thank God. Sensible. Gresham was dimly aware of something lightly flitting past his face, a thud following on a short moment later. A fly? A bird? He had no time to ponder it. Was this Overbury's doing? Revenge for his humiliation? So where was he?
Some of the attackers were losing heart. This length of battle was not what they had been paid for. Yet by now the theatre was almost empty. The thugs decided to make a last throw of it.