The Whispering Swarm (36 page)

Then came a monstrous roar which deafened us all and brought down whole sheets of lathe and plaster onto our heads. Outside, slates from the roof crashed into the street. ‘Bah! The cunning brute awaited a time when his spies tell him we're disposed elsewhere. And we are indeed sore underman'd.' Prince Rupert reached beneath a seat and brought out a small chest which, he said, insured us some sort of passage out of this hellish pit of sedition and blasphemy should God prove to be of the Parliamentary cause that day. With it beneath his cloak, he strolled for the door, taking one last, agonized glimpse over his shoulder.

As we inched along the passage I heard little Tom Tompion's voice piping after us. ‘I told you there was soldiers, masters.'

Carrying my weapons, which I barely knew how to use, I was a somewhat reluctant volunteer, wondering how I had been so swiftly caught up in the madness. Through the different bars of the Tavern, we rapidly gathered what forces we could, until we stood ready within the Inn, panting like feral dogs, peering through bottle-green windows, just in time to see Messrs Love and Clitch rounding the corner leading a small force of well-disciplined troopers uniformed in broad red-and-white-striped wool shirts, long leather waistcoats, steel helmets, breastpates, greaves and boots. ‘Intelligence men,' murmured Sebastian Toom with an oath. ‘Their thrice-damned general can't be far behind.' These hard-looking special soldiers were armed with pikes, bowstaves and muskets. Over their shoulders were slung quivers of arrows or bandoliers of charges. At their belts were basket-hilted longswords. Their appearance was in considerable contrast to the rather ragged, uncertain and leaderless citizens of the Alsacia who faced them.

Still another tremendous
boom-boom-boom
in rapid succession followed by an alarming clatter from below. Prince Rupert cursed like a Billingsgate fishwife, then paused to doff his mighty hat, muttering an apology to the ladies.

‘There's a damned informer somewhere amongst us!' swore Prince Rupert, increasing his pace. ‘Maybe more than one, as you say, Toom. Waiting until our attention—and forces—were concentrated elsewhere.'

There came a great thump through the inside walls. Missing by inches, more bricks and plaster crashed at our feet. The very ground felt unstable. A crack appeared in the brick floor and ran all the way to the other wall. I called out for people to test where they trod. Now we feared death from below as well as above. But so far Prince Rupert's Cosmolabe remained unharmed. Voices now called orders out there. Bullying, military bellows. Having filled up the public bar we crept softly to a door looking onto the square. ‘Gunpowder! Stripecoats!' Lu Wing sniffed. ‘And my fighters all gone to Limehouse!'

‘And my musketeers abroad!' Prince Rupert groaned despairingly, fearing for his Cosmolabe. Then he looked up and ahead as a deep-throated boom sounded from the west. ‘What gun was that, Jemmy? What I think?'

‘That was Old Thunder's tune i'truth, my lord.' Jemmy spoke in some awe. ‘A hand cannon!' He looked from face to face. ‘Few attract her anger, sirs, and retire unwounded at least. A blunderbuss such as is used at sea. That's Thunder. 'Tis the fine Prussian tromblon carried by Jake Nixer, our new Intelligencer General. He has warrants to pass where he pleases!'

‘And has gold to pay a few traitors,' swore Mrs Melody, waving her double-barrelled pistol. ‘The swine are coming through the cellars. Which means they have charts showing the Alsacia at her deepest. A whole nest of traitors, I'd say.' She had pushed her way to the front and flung open the door. ‘This is dangerous. Dangerous. Look! They have every street and alley covered. Save what we guard with our traditions and our ranks so thin.' The Alsacians defending us were scarcely enough to call a line. Their weapons looked clean and oiled, however, which suggested they anticipated attack.

‘Everywhere but the abbey. No doubt they could find no connecting cellars.'

I turned to look behind me and to my utter astonishment saw a row of wealthy young Orthodox Jews, with heavy black beards, in black mediaeval kaftans and tall astrakhan hats hurrying in a row through the door into the abbey. They looked at us in some concern but didn't stop to help. Then they were gone. The door closed swiftly behind them. I had never before seen Orthodox Jews in the Sanctuary. I thought I remembered that all Jews were still banished from London at that time. Those were not evidently contemporary Jews, either. They looked more like people I had seen in ghetto engravings from Venice. Contemporaries of Prince Rupert? But, if so, Cromwell would not yet have invited the Jews back to England. Another damned hallucination? Or was this the only sanctuary Jews could seek and hope to be safe in times still close to the late Middle Ages? I was going to have to see a doctor. An optician at the very least.

Hallucination or not, I was scarcely unprepared. I had a big basket-hilted cutlass in my right hand, two pistols in my belt and one more in my left hand, hastily issued by Toom from that secret arsenal disguised as a wine cupboard. All of us, men and women, were similarly armed. But I doubted anyone carried a gun as powerful as Nixer's Old Thunder, rattling roofs and windows in the distance. No doubt he set it off to frighten us.

Still the Intelligencer General had not made an appearance. Hard-faced, disciplined veterans of a score of great battles, slowly the stripecoats began to converge on three sides of the square. They all wore the jerkins and homespun woollen shirts and plain armour of the new Parliamentary police. Some wore helmets and others, mostly musketmen, wore felt hats with the front brim pinned to the crown. We had fallen back so we were defending both the Inn, the abbey and the narrow street behind. The soldiers marched in strict order, halberdiers in front, archers behind, swordsmen and musketeers between them. We were one thin, overstretched line, even when a few more from the Inn came to join us.

The Roundhead ranks parted and through them strode that short bantam of a man in a badly fitting red leather jerkin and a russet shirt. He had small, pale eyes, close together over a sharp nose. His cheeks were discoloured and puffy and his face was set in deep, neurotic lines. On his head he wore an iron war hat; a steel breastplate protected his chest and he had the woollen britches of a common foot soldier. Cradled in his arms he carried a massive long-barrelled, trumpet-shaped gun. This was Nixer's feared tromblon, Old Thunder. Resting on a scrawny turkey's neck, Nixer's gaunt Kentish face had deep-set eye sockets with such dark hollows they reminded me of a skull's. His thin lips twisted in a smile and his fingers were like tentacles, curling around that long, heavy gun. Sharp little pale blue eyes, heavy, hooded lids and twin red spots on his cheeks spoke of an obsessive disposition if not outright madness. His famous tromblon boasted a hardwood monopod to help balance it while firing. I had never seen such a beautifully finished weapon in silver, copper and brass, blackened from recent firing around the wide mouth and well-crafted locks.

Nixer's only other weapons were a long dirk and a big plain pistol at his belt. He had a slightly stiff and awkward manner and bristled with simple-minded self-righteousness. Self-importance personified. I'd heard he was a furious shiresman, a small Kentish farmer convinced that any city was a sinkhole of sin where Satan was openly worshipped. If so, then London would take a lot of cleansing. His unblinking eyes surveyed the defenders and came to rest on me.

Corporal Love brought his lugubrious, horsey face down to the level of Nixer's head and murmured something while the Intelligencer continued to gaze steadily in my direction. His unblinking eyes gave me the creeps.

I looked for Colonel Clitch but he had disappeared. For all I knew he was already blowing roads underground into our houses.

‘If you've come for my machine, Jake Nixer,' shouts tall Prince Rupert, stripping off his white smock to reveal all his silks, satins, lace and rings, with his long curling brown hair running over his lapels and shoulders, a long horse pistol in one hand and in the other a longsword. ‘You'll best know, fool, that your damned unsubtle cannon and your kegs of gunpowder threaten the scientific work of decades! Gone in a moment. You shall suffer for your fanatic religiosity. That machine was built by the most skilled craftsmen of the Occident and Orient, the combined wisdom of centuries. Inspired by our Creator himself! 'Tis a sublime engine for cultivated men but it baffles the foolish whose only thought is to destroy it. With such an instrument we might truly still change the world and bring about Paradise on Earth!'

‘You speak in lies and mysteries, Sir Sorcerer. Blasphemies, too, Master Stuart, I do believe.'

‘Have the goodness, knave, to address me by my God-granted title. There is precious little Stuart in my veins, but plenty in my heart and in my brain. I speak God's honest truth. The truth of our invention remains undisputed. Last I saw her she was being rained on by brick and rendering. What d'ye think drove us up to confront ye?'

‘You would divert my attention from the abbey. But I believe I am thoroughly wise to your devil's tricks, brother…'

‘Wiser than I, sir! What other Treasure would we have?'

Nixer sneered with a practised ease. ‘Men, you all know the plan,' he called out to his soldiers. ‘We'll kneel and rise, likely to give us the advantage again.' He seemed to stare directly at me. ‘Advance upon the abbey! Let's take it back in Christ's name!' He raised his right hand and the archers drew arrows from their quivers.

‘Strategy which won us Agincourt!' called Prince Rupert with a broad grin. ‘But can she win two centuries on?' He put his hands on his hips and laughed his mockery. ‘You forget, Mr Nixer, that I have made something of a study of strategy.'

‘We'll have an answer for thee soon enough, Master Stuart. There's still time for you all to join your kinsman and master on the block. Traitor to God and traitor to our country,' sneered Jake. ‘We'll find much evidence to prove it when this midden falls to our cause!' Nixer was all strutting confidence and gamecock twitching of his long neck, like a self-righteous rooster. His discoloured cheeks burned bright and crazy. His nasty little eyes glittered with malice. ‘Satan, son of the morning, is ever alert for new ways to trick us. That Treasure be the property of the people and I claim it in Parliament's name. We'll discover where it's hidden, never fear, for only thee, Rupert Stuart, know the veraciousness of that, I think!' He spoke in that stiff, pompous, semiliterate way common to most Low Church clergy, adding: ‘When I see it,' as if he belatedly found a missing clause.

‘If I could de-convolute thy sentences, man, I'd know whether I agreed with you and could offer you honest parley. Whatever it is you bray in your donkey speech, like old Bottom the Weaver in the play, we demand you lay down your arms, for you come illegally to a place of holy sanctuary.'

‘Play, is it? Ha! O, Corruption! O, Disgust and Misery!' Jake Nixer had learned his rhetoric well. ‘You speak of Paradise. Let me tell thee that hellfire shall come to this place this day and it shall burn as it were kindling in the dry heat of summer. Our holy places and the Church's shall not fall to God's enemies, nor shall the Just perish!'

‘Poppycock!' English slang in a familiar French accent. The mellifluous voice of Captain Claude Duval rang out across the square. ‘The old laws of London are on our side! The good old laws of the ancient Christians from the time of Joseph's landing. And before that, from the time of the pagan kings of Troy. Law upon law to keep Englishmen forever free and give example to the world! I am a student of history. So believe me,
messieurs,
I know of what I speak!' All ready for battle, Duval rode his lovely sorrel mare, Petite Marie, which he stabled next to his lodgings, Mistress Spott's in nearby Carmelite Yard. Mistress Spott's sister Persephone looked after his other wants.

There came a pause. None of us had expected this.

In a moment, Claude Duval went into action. Complaining at his galliard's interruption and roaring a series of French curses, many concerning the fate of his liver, he tapped Petite Marie into a gallop. He came on quickly behind the redcoat troops, running one unprepared archer into the next, startling some and shoving others to the side as, with powder and flints and ramrods, musketeers sought to prepare their weapons. His pistols in his hands, his reins looped around his saddlebow, Duval steered his lovely mount with his knees and filled the air with muffled curses. ‘Name of a dog, these cowardly reversos in their depressing clothes shall pollute our thoroughfares no longer!'

I found myself grinning at this glorious rhetoric even as the soldiers lifted their bulky muskets. Beside me, Moll laughed openly. ‘Duval always said he was prepared for just such an eventuality as this.' Her eyes shone and she applauded him vigorously. Then I guessed that Duval was perhaps her ‘cavalier', the older man who had seduced the strange girl fresh from college. The man whom she still refused to name. Who could
not
love Duval? He had saved us all. Women keep secrets much less ostentatiously than men.

Duval was a wonderful rider, perhaps the first skill required of a professional highwayman. He cut a dashing figure with his long auburn hair streaming in the wind, topped by a dark blue befeathered hat. He wore a fine navy blue silk frock coat, his pale blue waistcoat and stockings all lace trimmed. The incongruous, almost comical, aspect of his outfit was that he still had on his dancing shoes. The black leather pumps looked dainty in his heavy military stirrups, at odds with a massive cavalry sabre clattering at his saddle. Three Roundheads were alert enough to shoot an arrow into his left greave and try to engage him with their pikes. Two caught the force of his pistols. He drew his sword and dispatched the third. Then he was off, Petite Marie carrying him at a lick down another street. Ducking to avoid the overhanging walls and signs, laughing as he went, he left behind him a bunch of disoriented soldiers who no longer knew which way to expect the next attack—