‘Ten days ago… a fortnight?’ he said. ‘A messenger came to me with instruction to ride to… a certain place.’
‘And what was required?’
‘I told you. As much intelligence as I could provide on the man calling himself Prys Gethin. And speedily.’
Yes, it would need to be, else how could all this have been arranged in the time?
Easily, when you thought about it. Dudley had never explained fully, but I guessed that, not wishing to attract attention by assembling his own travelling party, he would have instructed his steward Thomas Blount to cast around for a discreet but secure company journeying to the Welsh border.
And Thomas Blount being a lawyer well known in the inns of court… they would have found him. How fortunate that this should coincide with the most unusual circumstance of a London judge being sent to try a Welsh felon for a most uncertain offence.
My thoughts curled in upon themselves like eels in a bucket, and I fought to untangle them.
‘The idea of the border judiciary in fear of a band of brigands – that seemed unlikely to me from the start.’
‘If the word came down from London,’ Thomas Jones said, ‘they’d be forced to swallow their pride. Still hard, it is, to believe London would go to all that trouble, all that expense. All that connivance.’
The question of Robert Dudley and the Queen… this was the most crucial matter in England. Nay, in all Europe. A decision had therefore been taken to dispose of a man, at whatever cost.
I recalled the urgency in Cecil that day I’d been brought to him. The day it must have begun to look as if Amy’s suspicious death had not been enough to finish Dudley as a suitor. The day Cecil and Blanche Parry had conspired to ensure that she failed to deliver the message to me from the Queen seeking a suitable date for a royal wedding.
I have no doubts about your ability in this regard. Which is why I don’t want you and your fucking charts within a mile of the Queen at this time.
Watching me. How long had they been watching me? I recalled a flitting glimpse of the black-clad Walsingham, mothlike in the Strand as I was leaving Cecil’s house.
Watching Dudley, too. Well, of course. Watching Dudley, the most hated man in all England, and all his household – in particular his principal retainers, Blount and Forest.
I said, ‘How would they get to the prisoner in New Radnor castle?’
‘It’s hardly the Fleet, John.’
And if it had been the Fleet, they’d have got to him easily enough. Even quicker at Marshalsea, though it might cost a groat or two more for the guards. New Radnor castle, inside curtain walls, would be a fine place for comings and goings. Certainly better than Presteigne, with its gaol in the middle of the town, where all could see.
‘So men came to Prys Gethin’s dungeon at New Radnor, with a proposition.’
‘He’d be suspicious, of course, at first,’ Thomas Jones said, ‘if the men who came to him were English.’
‘And if they were not? If he was addressed in Welsh?’
‘Duw, you’re right. Who thinks of all this?’
I’m sure we both saw the dimensions of it now, the plan laid out with all its Euclidian precision.
The alarming thought came to me that there would have been no one better to put the proposal to Prys Gethin than Thomas Jones – Twm Siôn Cati himself.
No such thing as a free pardon.
But, no, his pardon had come from the Queen, and this plan was the most savage thrust into Elizabeth’s heart. He wouldn’t do it and they wouldn’t demand it of him for fear that he’d go along with it and then, with typical cunning, damage it at the eleventh hour.
Or was that what he was doing now? Dear Christ, I was out of my head, dizzy with imaginings.
‘Just say it, John,’ Thomas Jones said wearily.
I nodded, closing my eyes.
‘A bargain is cut. Against all reason, Prys Gethin walks free. While Robert Dudley – Master Roberts – never comes back across the border.’
I felt myself sinking inexorably into the most treacherous political marsh in the world, full of rapids and sucking pools, dark water, hanging weed.
‘Fortunate that you were out of town, when they took him,’ Thomas Jones said, ‘otherwise, they’d’ve had you as well, and we wouldn’t be sitting here working it all out. And you, I’m guessing, would have been long dead. Your value being – beg mercy, John – negligible by comparison.’
I could not argue with this.
‘They took him, how?’ I said. ‘Where?’
No sooner was the question out than I knew.
My name is Mistress Branwen Laetitia Swift. Ask anyone in this town.
Maybe a sleeping draught in a cup of wine he’d not refuse. Perhaps poison.
I stiffened.
‘I should also have told you,’ Thomas Jones said, ‘that while discreetly following the Roberts brothers around town before their departure for Brynglas, I was led to a warehouse on the outskirts. Gwyn let himself in and then came out quite quickly. I think he was just making sure it was still there. Would still be there when it was needed.’
‘What?’
‘A cart. Wooden frame and a cover. As much of it as I could see.’
‘How would they know what was required of them?’
‘I imagine a message was conveyed to them from Prys. By mouth – I’d doubt either of them can read. Likely whoever went to Gethin at New Radnor would then have conveyed instructions to the brothers.’
‘Gethin would have revealed their names to him?’
‘If his life depended on it, he’d certainly take the chance with their lives. I don’t know how it was done – likely the man would go alone, unarmed, as a sign of trust. I don’t know. All we can be sure of is that none of them will know who authorised the bargain. How high it goes. And the beauty of it, when you think about it, is that they know that Prys, as a devout Welshman, will never – not even under the most imaginative of tortures – reveal a deal struck with the English.’
Perfection. I stood up.
‘So they have Dudley. Alive or…’
‘I think we must assume they have him,’ Thomas Jones said.
Apart from the scratting of rats or badgers in the wood, there was silence.
So here it was: for the sake of England, or someone’s idea of what was best for her, it had been agreed to spare a killer. A many times murderer who relished the slick of blood upon his skin and believed himself justified… driven by the ghosts of Glyndwr and Rhys Gethin. This man released to rob and kill and rape again at will.
‘Though Gethin might end up quietly dead,’ I said. ‘Knowing what he knows.’
‘If they ever find him. And I doubt they would.’ Plump, Welsh Thomas Jones was leaned back, looking at me, his eyes slitted. ‘There we are. I’ve told you all I know. What happens next is for you to say.’
‘How sure are you that they’ve taken Dudley to Brynglas?’
‘It’s no more than an astute guess, John. Though what I might add is that, before he disappears forever, it strikes me as likely that Prys will want to come to Brynglas. I do think he believes that Rhys Gethin is within him. Is part of him. And this is Rhys’s place… the citadel of his highest triumph. So… a final pilgrimage. A meeting with Rhys.’
‘Or whatever demon he’s invested with the spirit of Rhys. You said that. What did you mean by it?’
‘Ah, well… I think we may have read some of the same books.’
‘But you more than—
‘Hush.’