Tombland

Nicholas took a shuddering breath. ‘I managed to wound Barnabas, then saw Gerald about to stick you. If I ran him through, he might still have had time to make a final thrust. So I put my shirt round the blade and hit him over the head with the handle.’ He gave a cracked laugh. ‘Besides, I thought I’d better not kill him, or we’d be in trouble. Look up.’

At all the windows giving onto the courtyard, I could see faces, and one or two lamps. As Toby had predicted, the tenants were not going to involve themselves in a swordfight, but the clash of weapons had woken everyone.

I grasped Nicholas’s hand. ‘Thank you, thank you, you saved my life.’

He said, ‘I heard what Gerald said. He sounded – mad.’ He looked down at the boy’s prone form. Gerald groaned and began to stir. Blood oozed from a wound on his head. He hauled himself slowly to his knees. Nicholas reversed his sword and held it ready as Gerald staggered to his feet. The passion of a minute ago was gone, and he gave us a narrow-eyed look of pure hatred as he steadied himself against the water barrel.

Toby was leaning against the wall, blood still dripping from his arm. Barak called across, ‘You need to make a tourniquet, matey. Nicholas, help him.’ He pointed his sword at Barnabas. ‘Get up, you, and help your brother out of here. No swords, they’re going in the Wensum. You can swim for them tomorrow.’

Barnabas, blood still pouring from his shoulder, came over and put his arm round his brother in a surprisingly gentle gesture. He looked at us. ‘By Christ, we need more practice. An old hunchback, a fat cripple, a common churl without even the right to bear a sword, and that long freak. Yet they beat us. But we’ll get you back, you don’t do this to us!’

‘You don’t!’ Gerald’s savage eyes, glaring through the blood now trickling down his face, made me shiver. Then he groaned again and clutched his head. Barnabas looked at us, spat on the ground, and the pair limped through the arch, trailing spots of blood.

Nicholas crossed to Toby, whose black hair and beard framed a face that had gone white. He tore the sleeve of Toby’s shirt from his wounded arm and began to wind a tourniquet. Toby said, ‘It’s a flesh wound, it’ll need sewing, but it’ll be all right.’ He turned to me. ‘Christ, they were fast. Well, young gentlemen get proper training,’ he added bitterly.

Barak came over. He looked sad, crestfallen. ‘I should never have come,’ he said. ‘I haven’t the strength in my left arm. And like that little bastard Gerald said, I’ve too much weight on me for a fight against someone young and fit.’ He sighed deeply. ‘I’m sorry. I should have known my fighting days are over. It could have cost your life.’

I put my hand on his shoulder. ‘You did your best in good part.’

A door creaked, and a man appeared in the doorway, holding up a lamp. ‘Come on,’ Barak said, suddenly brisk. ‘Best get out of here.’ He picked up the twins’ swords. ‘Nick, for God’s sake put your shirt on.’

‘I know the best ways to go to avoid the constables,’ Toby said.

I looked at him. ‘When we get back to the Maid’s Head, we’ll get a doctor to you. We’ll tell them we were set upon.’ I laughed bitterly. ‘By God, we must be the subject of plenty of gossip there already. So much for keeping our mission quiet.’

Chapter Twenty-five

As I expected, the staff at the Maid’s Head were startled by our appearance. I told Master Theobald that we had been attacked by robbers. From his sharp look I was not sure he entirely believed me, but he organized a physician immediately, a quietly competent elderly man named Belys, who applied lavender oil to Toby’s wound and stitched it as well as my old friend Guy could have done.

Afterwards, the four of us sat in my room, recovering from the shock of the fight and considering where it left us. I said, ‘If the twins spoke true, there was a whole host of people they told about stealing the key that night. Any of them could have used a candle to take a wax impression when Gerald left his purse on the bench.’

‘Assuming we believe the little bastards,’ Toby said grimly.

‘They gave us several names we could check. Including Boleyn’s steward Chawry.’

‘So you think the twins weren’t involved?’ Nicholas asked.

‘I doubt it more now. Though it would be foolish to discount them. And it’s interesting they are friends with Southwell’s men, when he has a potential interest in the Brikewell estate.’

‘They’re a ruthless crew,’ Toby observed. ‘John Atkinson abducted that young heiress on Mousehold Heath last year and tried to force her into a marriage. Southwell helped him, and several of his servants.’

‘And we can’t discount their grandparents or anyone in their household,’ I added, leaning wearily back in my chair. ‘Any of them could have taken an impression of the key in the night, had a copy made by Snockstobe the next morning, and returned the original to Brikewell.’