Chaloner nodded, then turned to the woman. ‘And who was his lover, a manipulative courtesan who is also a member of the Piccadilly Company and sister to the dangerous Harley?’
‘Brilliana!’ exclaimed Thurloe in understanding. ‘It all makes sense now.’
When Brilliana gave a brief, cold smile, the pastes on her face cracked, revealing a glimpse of the beautiful but deadly woman underneath. ‘Well done. Unfortunately for you, your deductions have come too late to make any difference to what has been set in motion.’
‘It has failed,’ said Thurloe harshly. ‘Your brother is dead, and the Adventurers are still alive.’
‘My brother is not dead, so do not think you can frighten us with lies,’ said Brilliana coldly.
Chaloner looked around uncomfortably, unable to escape the conviction that something was very wrong. Why were they not more concerned at being exposed?
‘We should leave,’ he said in a low voice to Thurloe. ‘I do not like this.’
‘We should have guessed days ago,’ said Thurloe, ignoring him to glare at Cave. ‘You either paid or coerced Elliot to start a fight, so you could disappear and become Janszoon. You were good. Your “death” convinced Tom, and he is not easily misled.’
Guiltily, Chaloner recalled how he had berated Lester for not checking Elliot’s body. Now it seemed he had done the same thing with Cave, but with far graver consequences.
‘I confess I was alarmed when he tried to inspect my “wound”,’ admitted Cave. ‘But I stopped him, and then he was kind enough to hire a cart to take me to the charnel house. The original arrangement had been for Elliot to do it, but that changed when I was obliged to stab him.’
‘And then another Piccadilly Company member — or, more likely, Brinkes — collected your “body” later the same day,’ surmised Thurloe.
Cave grimaced. ‘He should have arrived sooner. I had to spend hours in that terrible place, in constant fear that someone would come and inspect me. He used the excuse that he was perfecting his disguise, but I think he did it for malice.’
‘Brinkes made himself look like Elliot,’ Thurloe went on. ‘And told Kersey that he lived in Covent Garden — where Elliot had rented rooms.’ He glanced at Brilliana. ‘And you claimed it was Elliot who had encouraged “Jacob” to give Cave a hasty funeral — to make Tom waste time looking for a man who was dead and buried.’
Chaloner glanced behind him again. Why did Cave and Brilliana seem so relaxed? Because they expected Fitzgerald or their master to rescue them? He looked hard at the spyholes in the panelling, but could detect nothing amiss. Cave smirked at his wariness, making him even more certain that something was about to happen.
‘Enough,’ he said softly, tugging on Thurloe’s arm. ‘We should-’
‘It worked,’ Brilliana said gloatingly, ignoring Chaloner and addressing the ex-Spymaster. ‘Everyone was so easy to deceive. Chaloner should have drunk the chocolate I provided, though — then we would not be having this discussion.’
‘You “die” in operas all the time,’ Thurloe said to Cave, freeing his arm from Chaloner’s hand. ‘I suppose you wore a sack of animal blood under your clothes, which gushed out when it was jabbed. That is how it is managed on stage, I believe. Then you both donned disguises, testing them on cronies at the Piccadilly Company first …’
‘They were impressed.’ Brilliana’s smile was smug with satisfaction. ‘And it gave us the confidence to step into that most auspicious of circles — White Hall.’
Chaloner was barely listening. Every nerve in his body screamed that something was wrong, although he could still hear the distant boom of Brinkes and his henchmen hammering on the Great Parlour doors, so he knew they had not yet managed to break free.
‘But why kill Elliot?’ Thurloe was asking. ‘He did what you asked.’
‘Barely,’ said Cave coldly. ‘Lester told him he would hang for murder if he “killed” me — an outcome that had not occurred to the fool, because I could see him having second thoughts before my very eyes. I was obliged to goad him to fulfil his end of the bargain by attacking Lester.’
‘Who was unarmed,’ said Chaloner, recalling the crowd’s murmur of disapproval. ‘I suppose you were afraid that Elliot would tell the truth about the deception to save himself from the noose.’
‘Yes.’ Cave touched a hand to his scarred face. ‘And I was angry because he hurt me. That was certainly never part of the arrangement.’
‘What is in this for you?’ Thurloe asked. ‘It means your old life is over for ever — your voice will be recognised if you ever sing in public again. There can be no going back.’
The besotted expression on Cave’s face as he glanced at Brilliana answered that question, although Chaloner could see just by looking that the devotion was not reciprocated. When he had outlived his usefulness, Cave would be dispatched, like so many others.
‘I am sorry, Chaloner,’ he said, and he sounded sincere. ‘I enjoyed singing to your viol when we sailed on Eagle. You have a rare talent, and it is a pity to silence it. But it cannot be helped.’
Chaloner was about to remark that he had no intention of being silenced when he heard the merest of rustles behind the door. A faint smile tugged the corners of Brilliana’s mouth, and he knew her deliverance was at hand. Reacting instinctively, he hurled himself to the floor, dragging Thurloe with him. And then the room was full of noise as bullets ripped into the oaken panels and smashed the windows.
Before the gunmen could reload, Chaloner kicked the door closed and struggled to his knees to lock it. Immediately, someone started to batter it from the other side. It began to splinter, not being as robust as the ones in the Great Parlour. Chaloner glanced fearfully at Thurloe, expecting him to be shot, but the ex-Spymaster scrambled to his feet and hurried to Brilliana, who was gazing at the shattered remains of her right arm in shocked disbelief. Cave was dead.
‘Open the window,’ hissed Thurloe. ‘We shall escape through that. Hurry!’
Obediently, Chaloner ran towards it, but could see shadows moving in the fog outside. When one of them fired a musket at him, he whipped around and began prodding the panels instead.
‘The plans said Hyde installed a passage in this wall,’ he whispered urgently. ‘Help me find it.’
There were voices in the hallway — Fitzgerald’s piping treble ordering someone to hurry. The pirate sounded deranged, and Chaloner knew he and Thurloe would not live long once they were caught. Whoever was kicking the door intensified his assault, and Chaloner’s hunt for the hidden passage became more frantic, too.
It was Thurloe who found it — a tiny knob disguised as a carving of a pineapple. Chaloner followed him inside, then pressed the mechanism that closed it. A little light filtered through the holes that had been placed for spying, but it was still difficult to see where they were going.
‘Fitzgerald did not care who was shot just then,’ Thurloe whispered, shocked. ‘Indeed, I cannot help but wonder whether he wanted Brilliana and Cave dead anyway.’ His voice was unsteady, stunned by the ruthlessness of the onslaught.
‘Probably,’ agreed Chaloner. ‘It is more loose ends tied.’
‘Do you accept now that I was right to keep you away from him? And understand why I could never find witnesses to speak against him when I tried to bring him to trial? How could I, when he murders his accomplices?’
They were passing the last of the peepholes when the door burst open and Fitzgerald flew in. Chaloner stopped to watch. The pirate did not so much as glance at the writhing Brilliana, and instead issued a piercing scream of frustration when he saw his enemies had escaped. His master entered more calmly.
‘They seem to have gone,’ said O’Brien softly. ‘Find them, or you will die, too.’
Chaloner gaped at the man who had been the author of so much carnage, then clenched his fists as rage consumed him. It was O’Brien’s fault that Lester had died saving worthless Adventurers, and in the darkness of Hyde’s secret passage, he vowed the man would pay. Unfortunately, his dive to the floor to avoid the deadly hail of gunfire meant he had dropped his weapons, so the odds of him fulfilling that promise were remote to say the least. But he determined to do his best.