Shakespeare recalled that Smythe had said something about Camden wearing a duelist’s rapier, and indeed, the barrister seemed skilled, but Braithwaite was no slouch with a blade, himself. The two seemed evenly matched. As they moved back and forth, the crowd moved with them, growing by the minute as everyone present on the fairgrounds responded to the noise and came to see what was occuring. Camden lunged again, but Braithwaite parried his thrust and riposted quickly, catching the barrister off balance. Camden staggered back awkwardly as Braithwaite lunged. Camden seemed to parry the stroke, but fell back into the crowd as he did so. There was a collective cry as they caught him and shoved him back up again, but then with a gasp, Camden fell to his knees.
“A touch! A touch!” several voices in the crowd cried out.
Braithwaite shook his head, perplexed. “Nay, I never pricked him!”
“But look, he bleeds!” cried Speed.
On his knees, Camden dropped his blade and brought a hand up to his side. It came away bloody. He gasped with pain, staring at Braithwaite with wide-eyed incomprehension.
“But…’twas not me!” Braithwaite said. He examined the tip of his sword, then held it out towards Shakespeare. “See for yourself My blade is yet unblooded!”
“He speaks the truth,” said Shakespeare.
Camden pitched forward onto his face and lay motionless.
“Seize that man!” The cry came from an anguished Sir Richard, who had arrived upon the scene just in time to see his son fall dead onto the ground. “Seize him! There is your murderer! And he has killed my son!”
“I have murdered no one! And he drew steel first!” protested Braithwaite, looking around with alarm at the throng surrounding him.
“You challenged him!” shouted someone in the crowd, and then a scuffle suddenly broke out. More people started shouting and in the next moment, a well-dressed, older man was shoved out of the crowd to fall sprawling next to the slain Hughe Camden, only he fell with a cry, followed by a grunt of pain on impact, demonstrating that he was still very much alive.
“There is your killer, Sir Richard!” a familiar voice called out, and Shakespeare stared in astonishment as the grizzled old pie vendor stepped out from the crowd, only now he was no longer stooped over, but stood straight and tall, and there was nothing even remotely subservient in his bearing. He reached up and removed his eyepatch and the wig he wore and stood revealed as none other than Her Majesty’s own councillor and confidante, Sir William Worley. “I saw the blackguard stab your son from behind with a dagger when he fell back into the crowd.”
“Nay, ‘tis not true!” the man cried out, as he got up to his knees. “ ‘Tis entirely innocent I am!”
“Why, ‘tis the elder Chevalier Dubois!” Shakespeare exclaimed.
“Well, well,” said Worley, standing over him. “And here we all thought you were deaf, monsieur, and did not speak because you could not hear. Yet you seem to have recovered miraculously. And ‘tis even more miraculous that a nobleman from France should speak with a Cornish accent!”
From out of nowhere, it seemed, grim-faced men armed with swords and maces stepped out of the crowd and surrounded the faux Frenchman, and Shakespeare realized that Sir William had not returned alone, but had brought a squad of guardsmen with him. Dressed in ordinary clothing, they had blended with the crowd, standing by for Worley’s signal. The man’s face fell as he realized that his situation was completely hopeless.
“My apologies, sir,” said Worley, turning to Braithwaite. “I had thought that the killer might be you, and in his haste to take advantage of your duel and make it seem as if you had killed a rival, this cowardly assassin very nearly made me sure of it. But although he tried to shelter himself within the crowd, I saw the fatal stroke when he stabbed Camden with this very bodkin.” He displayed a bloody dagger that he had wrested from the killer. “Sir Richard…” He turned to the ashen-faced elder Camden. “I am most profoundly sorry for your loss, but in death, your son has helped us apprehend not only his own killer, but the murderer of both Catherine Middleton and Daniel Holland.”
“Nay!” the killer shouted. “Nay, I tell you! S’trewth, I may be damned now, but I shall not bear the blame for what I have not done! God shall be my judge, for I did kill young Camden, but I swear I never killed the wench! And I never slew Holland, neither! ‘Twas all his doing, I tell you! ‘Twas all his plan from the start, and I’ll not bear the blame for it alone!!”
“Dubois!” said Shakespeare.
The man spat upon the ground. “His name ain’t no more Dubois than mine is. Why, he’s no Frenchman. He-”
With a sharp, whizzing sound, a crossbow bolt penetrated his skull right between the eyes, causing his head to jerk back abruptly. He was dead before he hit the ground.
Pandemonium ensued as everyone started shouting at once and running in all directions. Most of the onlookers desperately fled the scene, fearful lest they should be the next targets of the unseen archer, but everyone ran in different directions, many of them colliding with one another, and the scene erupted into chaos in an instant.
Two of the guardsmen immediately threw themselves upon Sir William, bearing him down to the ground and covering him with their bodies, but he shoved them away, cursing furiously. “Never mind me, blast it! Search the fairgrounds! Get me that archer!”
So fascinated was he by everything that suddenly began happening around him that Shakespeare completely forgot to be frightened. He simply stood there watching as people ran shouting and screaming in different directions, tripping over one another and knocking each other down in their mad rush to get away.
The entire scene, somehow, took on the aspect of a dream to him. It was as if he were not a part of it, but stood on the outside somewhere, watching as if from a distance or from an audience. In his mind’s eye, he replayed the scene of the assassin on his knees before them, at first protesting his innocence, then accepting his fate with resignation, then growing angry at the thought of being blamed for everything alone while his partner had planned it all… and then the slim, black bolt, flying straight and true, appearing to sprout all of a sudden from the killer’s forehead…
It had flown in at an angle.
For the archer to have made the shot, over the heads of the crowd surrounding the assassin on his knees, he had to have been shooting from a height, an elevation…
Shakespeare turned in the direction from which the arrow must have come, judging by the angle of the shot, and as he looked up the slope, back toward the house, he saw the stone wall that ran around the courtyard, and just beyond it, an open window.
It was an amazing shot to have come from atop that wall. Robin Hood himself could not have bettered it. And of course, it could only have been Phillipe Dubois… or whoever “Dubois” really was. He must have made the shot, then climbed in through that open window. It was astonishing marksmanship. But then, Tuck had said that whoever had shot that bolt at him had come within a hair’s breadth of hitting his head from a good distance-
Good Lord, he thought, Tuck! The realization struck him suddenly that Tuck was still back at house. He turned, quickly. “Sir William!” he shouted. “Sir William! This way! Hurry, for God’s sake!”