The Tudor Conspiracy - Gortner Christopher W. - Страница 51

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I hesitated too long. With a leap aside, she yanked a blade from within her sleeve and slashed it across my arm. Hot pain and a gush of blood broke my focus. I swerved away from her, flinging up my cloak to thwart her next stab.

Instead, she ran to the doorway.

I spun about. As I lunged toward her with my sword lifted, this time ready to cleave her in two, she kicked the side table holding the lantern. It fell onto the heap under the window and shattered. With terrifying suddenness, the piled rushes and rags burst into a flame, startling me and causing me to fling my hands up. She had doused the heap with tallow oil-that was the odor I had smelled and failed to identify.

“No!” I roared.

Sybilla slammed the door shut. I reached it in time to hear a key turn in the lock. I yanked at the latch, shouting at the top of my lungs, hammering with my sword hilt, oblivious to the spray of blood from my wounded arm.

Then I slowly turned back to the room. My heart capsized in my chest. The flames were leaping up the wall, feeding on the brittle pile and oil like a ravenous beast.

My eyes started to water. Forcing myself to stay calm, I moved as far as I could from the conflagration and scanned the room. There was no other way out except through that window. Sybilla had planned this; she had brought me here for this specific end.

I was going to die.

The smoke thickened, gusting up to the low ceiling like the clouds of an incoming storm. In seconds, it would fill the room and I’d suffocate. I’d lose consciousness; by the time the flames reached me, I wouldn’t feel it. When it was done, when the manor had collapsed in smoldering ruins, there’d be nothing left save my charred bones.

A howl struggled in my throat. I looked about desperately, and my gaze fell on the decanter and untouched goblet. I yanked up my hood, sheathed my sword, and tore my gauntlets from my belt. Grabbing the goblet, I poured ale over my trembling gloved hands. Then I soaked my hood and threw the empty decanter aside. It wasn’t enough; ten pitchers wouldn’t have been enough, but as I turned resolutely to the fire, I knew I had no choice. I could feel the heat through my clothes, as if the flames already licked my flesh …

Hunching my shoulders, I stepped forward. The ground shifted under my feet. I looked down. The floorboards … they were moving …

A dull roar filled my head. I coughed, lurching forward. It was the smoke. I was being strangled by it, deluded into seeing things that weren’t there. If I could just push through that writhing screen of flame to grab hold of the window latch-

I didn’t think I was moving to my death or hear the section of floor creaking open behind me until rough hands grabbed hold of me, pulling me back, yanking me down into a hole. Only then did I realize the piercing sound in my ears was my own scream.

“Get moving, before it all comes down on top of us,” an urgent voice said. I dragged myself after the hulking figure who’d rescued me, my smoke-singed nostrils detecting a faint trace of wet earth. I was in a tunnel under the manor, a secret escape passage. Slimy water sloshed underfoot; it was so dark I couldn’t see anything. Gradually it began to lighten. A hatch above me was thrown back and I was again yanked, coughing and sputtering, into the garden. I lay on my back, gasping for air. In the distance, I glimpsed the river, shimmering like a dragon’s tail in the sullen dawn.

The barge was gone.

I looked up into Scarcliff’s twisted visage. “You’re lucky I saw my horse bucking at his tether,” he said, wrapping his cloak about me. It was soaking wet, foul with river-stink. “A little more time and you’d be roast meat.”

“How-how did you know?” My voice was faint, hoarse.

“I told you. I saw poor Cerberus fit to slip his bridle and all that smoke-”

“No. The passageway. You knew it was there. You’ve been here before.”

He went still. Then he said softly, “Don’t you recognize me, lad?” and I felt as if I’d plunged into an endless void, falling and falling without reaching bottom.

“Shelton,” I whispered. I couldn’t believe I hadn’t seen it until now.

It was there, beneath his ravaged face-the traces of the man I had known, the stern Dudley steward who had helped raise me and had brought me to court. As I met his one eye in recognition, I was swept back to that horrible night in the Tower when I’d pursued him. He’d been trapped in the crush at the portcullis. All those terrified souls, trying to escape the guards coming down on them with halberds and maces-skulls must have been cracked, limbs shattered, bodies scythed like chaff. Someone must have struck him, slashed his face to the bone. The wedged soles on his boots-his legs had been damaged, too. Yet somehow, he’d survived. He had dragged himself to safety and changed his name, his identity. He’d melted into London’s underbelly, hired himself out as a strong-arm for the earl. He must have known who I was the moment he saw me, but he had not breathed a word. Had he intended to stay hidden from me forever, to take his secret with him to his grave? If so, he had betrayed himself to save me.

“I know I owe you an explanation,” he said roughly, “but this isn’t the place. If you want to catch that she-wolf, we’d best get moving. I’ve been tracking her since the ambush on the road. I didn’t dare engage her”-he grimaced-“I’m not the man I was. But I saw her take the barge toward the bridge. The current isn’t strong, however. You still have time.”

I struggled to get up, to get away. He tightened his grip on me. “We need to bind that wound.” He tore a strip from the bottom of his chemise and tied it around my arm, stanching the blood. “It’s not deep. It’ll need curing, but that should suffice for now.”

He let me go. I clambered to my feet, the taste of embers in my mouth. Looking past him to the manor, I saw smoke billowing from the rooftop, an eerie nectarine glow smearing the windows. The fire was spreading. It would consume the entire house.

We trudged into the river, the water coming to our waists as we waded out far enough to bypass the garden wall. Scarcliff had moved the horses away from the manor. As he helped me onto my saddle, Cinnabar pranced sideways, agitated by the scent of fire. My world shrank for a moment. What was I doing? How did I think I was I going to stop Sybilla with a wounded arm and the help of a man I’d believed was dead and barely trusted?

We bolted toward the city.

It was that preternatural hour before morning, when everything is softened by the waning of the night. The city was just awakening, grumbling goodwives still sweeping their doorsteps of refuse as peddlers and hawkers embarked on the trudge to the marketplace at Cheapside with their wares, and pigs and dogs rooted in the conduits for leavings.

We galloped past them, scarcely registering their presence.

There was still time, I kept telling myself. Still time …

The massive gateway leading to the bridge reared into view. Officials in cloaks clustered before it as liveried sentries and armored soldiers roamed the perimeter. People were lining up, herding livestock. I registered a cacophony that must be loud, though to me it sounded less intrusive than my heart’s pounding in my ears.

Still time …

I slid off Cinnabar. “Too many people, and on horseback we’re too visible.”

He gave a grim nod. “I’ll follow you. Be careful.”

As I moved on foot to the gate, leading Cinnabar by the reins, I searched the crowd. Given the hour, most of those waiting to cross the bridge were tradesmen, but as I stepped into the line I suddenly spotted her near the front of the queue, swathed in a cape and with a cap pulled low on her head. She held a gelding by its bridle, the horse stamping nervously as it was jostled by those around it. She must have docked the barge and hired a horse. Under the bandage, my arm throbbed as I lowered my hand to my scabbard. The sentry waved her onward. She mounted and began to steer her horse through the crowd. She couldn’t ride fast; once she was at a safe distance, I hauled myself onto Cinnabar, dodging the multitude of animals, carts, and wagons on the bridge, intent on not losing her.

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