Revenger (50 page)

C
ATHERINE WAS SMALL
and slight. She slid over the sill and ran. She knew every inch of this ground and headed with all speed through the teeming rain toward the copse to the right of the house. She thought she saw two bodies to her side, but she paid them no heed. She could do nothing for them, whoever they were.

One musket-ball, two, clipped past her, slapping into the wet ground somewhere beyond her. And then she was in the dripping
trees. She went on, catching her dress on brambles, battling through thorny undergrowth until she was sure she was clear of the killing ground.

She sat a few moments on the wet leaves, caught her breath, then moved on toward the abbey and McGunn. Even without light, she would be able to navigate her way through its stones. She had obeyed her husband against her better judgment once before; she had no intention of doing so again. Someone had to see what sort of foe they were up against, and no one was better qualified on this terrain than she.

The sight that greeted her was awful in its horror. When she had encountered Father Robert Southwell, bundled in agony against the wall of the Gatehouse Prison, she had thought there could be nothing more hideous in the world, that she would be haunted by his torment for the remainder of her days. But this … the awfulness of this lay in the very familiarity of the surroundings, this place of happiness from her childhood days, now turned into a scene of unspeakable barbarity.

Covered lanterns had been lit, casting a hellish light on the old, rain-wet stones of the monks’ dorter, where the Cistercian brothers had once slept. From the high wall of this dormitory, a rope had been slung over a projecting beam. It hung down malevolently, with a noose at its end around the slim neck of Eleanor Dare.

A long ladder had been placed against the wall. Eleanor was halfway up the steps, forlorn and drenched, her arms bound behind her back, waiting to be hanged. A man behind her was pushing her ever upward and she scarce seemed to put up any resistance, as though she were resigned to her fate.

Beneath her, two more men stood watching, both of them heavily armed. One of them held the loose end of the hanging rope, tightening it as Eleanor ascended the ladder.

“Come out, Shakespeare!”

Catherine, crouching behind a block of sandstone in the old
cloister, did not know the voice but guessed it to be Charlie McGunn’s. It was rough and taunting.

“Come out, Shakespeare. Come and see the show. We’ll do your wife next, make a night of it. Your man Cooper is already dead. Here you are, come and get him.…”

With immense strength, the man dragged a short, squat body from the ground and held it aloft over his head. He spun it around, then flung it away as casually as a farmer would toss a sack of turnips into a cart.

The other men with him laughed.

Boltfoot dead! Oh, Jane, poor Jane. Catherine felt utter despair. She had no way of saving this poor woman, any more than she had been able to save Southwell or Anne Bellamy from the foul Topcliffe. John had been right all along. Be wary. Place your trust in cold caution, not faith. While God slept, the powerful held sway and the good died.

Chapter 44

S
HAKESPEARE HAD FOLLOWED CATHERINE THROUGH
the window but ran away from her to divide McGunn’s fire. He had barely gone five yards when the musket-ball hit him. He fell heavily to the ground, grunting with shock. His right hand went to his left shoulder. The ball had sheared a groove of flesh, on the outside of the upper arm, just beneath the shoulder blade.

Ignoring the injury as best he could, he dived for cover behind a broken old wain. The ancient wagon sat on its overgrown undercarriage, its four wheels fallen away and splayed out. He heard horses whinnying away to his right. He touched his shoulder again. It was sticky with blood and rain. He still clutched the caliver in his left hand. He tried to cover it beneath his cape. If he could loose off one shot at close range, it might be crucial.

He heard a voice, not more than thirty yards away. McGunn. Taunting him. Threatening to kill his wife. Gloating that Boltfoot was dead.

Shakespeare crawled away to his left. No musket-balls followed him. There was a low dry-stone wall, and he sped the last three steps until he was behind it. For a moment, he caught his breath. Hunching low so that only the curve of his back was visible above the wall, he began running—away from McGunn, but
also around him. He would come at him from the other side, to the south of the abbey ruins.

He stopped and peered over the wall. He had a clear view now. The area in front of the abbey was lit by torches. He saw the rope slung high and he saw Eleanor Dare about to die. The man behind her pushed her roughly and she climbed another rung up the ladder. Apart from him and a man who looked from behind very like McGunn, there was one other visible. But there could be any number of armed men concealed.

In the darkness behind the high wall with the noose, he saw a movement in the stones. He peered closer and saw, with horror, that it was Catherine. Shakespeare had to do something, and fast. He took aim with the caliver, pointing at the back of the man he took to be McGunn, and fired.

Nothing happened. The powder was damp. He looked at the weapon in dismay, flung it down and picked up a rock the size of a small cannonball, and hurled it at the man by the abbey wall.

It caught the man’s heel. He jumped and swiveled around, glaring in Shakespeare’s direction.

It was McGunn. Shakespeare ducked down below the wall.

“Get him!”

McGunn had a short sword drawn. He advanced on the wall with the man closest to him, leaving the hangman halfway up the ladder behind Eleanor.

Shakespeare crouched down and began to lope away southward in the darkness, hoping to draw the men away from Catherine. His approach scattered a group of startled sheep, then he stumbled on a rock and fell awkwardly on his injured shoulder in the muddy grass. He stifled a cry of pain.

He pushed himself up onto his hands and knees and tried to stand. But he was too slow. McGunn’s man had his arms in a grip as tight as a torturer’s screw and wrenched him up and backwards.

“Well, well, Mr. Shakespeare,” McGunn said, striding up to
him, the naked Toledo steel blade of his sword slung nonchalantly over his right shoulder. “You’re just in time for the hangings.”

The man laughed as he marched Shakespeare back toward the abbey. Shakespeare looked at the body on the ground. His captor kicked it as he walked past. Shakespeare looked more closely. It wasn’t Boltfoot.

“On with the show, Mr. O’Regan,” McGunn shouted to the man on the ladder. “Kick her away and let her swing.”

Shakespeare watched in horror as the man on the ladder looped the end of the rope around a jutting rock and then knotted it so that the rope was tight.

He pushed Eleanor off the ladder, then leapt down, pulling the ladder away, leaving her unbound legs scrabbling for a foothold that was no longer there. The rope lurched tight around her neck, choking the life from her. For a few moments, time seemed to stand still as Shakespeare and the three men watched her hanging there, struggling for life.

“See how she dances, Mr. Sh—” McGunn began. He was cut short by an explosion. The hangman fell forward, the top of his head sheared away. A mist of blood seemed to hang in the air, then fell with the rain.

McGunn’s sword was in front of him now. He reached into his belt and pulled out a loaded wheel-lock.

With every bit of power at his command, Shakespeare pitched himself backwards, knocking his captor onto the rocky ground. The man screamed as he fell against a boulder, cracking the center of his spine against the sharp stone. Shakespeare, winded, pulled himself away from the man’s arms. He turned and, reaching out behind him, closed his hand around a large stone, battering at the man’s head.

The rain-soaked night was lit by the flickering flames of three covered pitch torches. McGunn was looking from left to right, his mastiff-like face eerily brutish in the weird light and rain. He could not see where the shot had come from, so he aimed the
wheel-lock at Shakespeare and fired. The ball hit the writhing figure of his own man in the side of the chest. A stream of thick blood washed over Shakespeare and he felt the man go limp.

As Shakespeare rolled away, he saw Boltfoot stride out from the darkness like some monster from the depths of the dripping forest, his left foot dragging behind him. He had a pistol in his left hand, and in his right, he held his cutlass, the bright blade glistening.

Dropping his expended wheel-lock, McGunn pulled another one from his belt. As he raised it to aim at Boltfoot, Shakespeare launched himself at the Irishman. McGunn tried to twist around to shoot Shakespeare instead, but the ball flew harmlessly between the two men.

McGunn tried slashing down at Shakespeare’s neck with his sword, but he stepped away easily, then McGunn thrust forward at his stomach. Once more he slid aside, but felt the blade cutting into his doublet.

“You are going to hell in pain, Shakespeare,” McGunn growled as he pulled the sword back and tried to thrust again. From behind him, Boltfoot hacked down with his cutlass and McGunn’s sword clattered from his hand onto the sodden earth and rocks.

Boltfoot had him now. He was shorter than the bull-muscled McGunn but he was strong. He grasped the scalp above the nape of the Irishman’s neck and pulled back his head, while Shakespeare tried to wrestle him to the ground.

McGunn emitted a low roar, like a wildcat at bay, but he could not stand under this onslaught and slid and collapsed to the ground. Shakespeare pinioned his left arm, while Boltfoot struggled to control the right hand, which had grasped the jeweled hilt of a dagger and was attempting to pull the long blade from its sheath.

Twisting, Boltfoot dug his elbow hard into McGunn’s mouth, then pulled his dagger hand back and cracked the man’s forearm down against his knee. The force was so great it was like bre king
a dry, dead branch over a farm gate. The forearm snapped. McGunn did not cry out, but just growled deeper. He was practically helpless now, yet still he fought on as Shakespeare and Boltfoot struggled to turn him over onto his face.

“For pity’s sake, one of you help me!”

Shakespeare looked up startled at the sound of Catherine’s anguished voice. She had the ladder against the wall and was almost at the top of it, holding the body of Eleanor Dare, taking her weight.

Shakespeare heaved himself to his feet and ran to the ladder. He shinned up, first encircling his arms around Catherine, then pulling himself higher and taking the weight of Eleanor, whose body hung as limp as a slaughtered pig.

“Ease yourself down,” he commanded Catherine. “And reach for my knife.”

Releasing her grip on Eleanor, Catherine slid down under her husband’s body. She found his dagger in its sheath and handed it to him. Taking Eleanor’s full weight in his right arm, he reached up with his left hand and sliced and slashed at the hemp rope. Fiber by agonizing fiber, he cut through the taut cable until suddenly she slumped away from it, the noose and a foot of rope still about her neck. Clumsily he slipped down the rungs, holding her over his shoulder.

He laid her out on the ground and fought to loosen the rough noose from about her neck. Finally it was free. He put his ear to her chest. A heartbeat. He was sure he could hear a heartbeat. Pulling her lean young body up into his arms so that she sat upright against him, her head over his shoulder, he smacked her back as he would a baby that needed winding.

Of a sudden, she was coughing, her rib cage beating against his chest in spasms. She was sucking in air, gasping. She was alive.