The Traitor's Tale (3 page)

Joliffe, resting in one of those lulls, sitting on his heels with his back against the low stone wall of the bridge-edge in the long open space between the last of the houses and the gateway, thought the shouting seemed to do about as much good as the fighting was. He had seen at least two men dead and a good many bloodied and bashed, but except for that and that the fire of fighting was mostly turned to bloody-minded stubbornness on both sides, nothing was much changed. Still, the street here was still full of men milling about, waiting to start again, with Gough standing a few yards away from him, close to the last housewall, in talk with some of
the Tower men, probably about how best to press forward and take the gateway once and for all. Rhys and Owen were a little further away, in the better light of a torch there, Owen wrapping a cloth around a cut across Rhys' arm above his gauntlet, taken in the latest squall of fighting. They were a little laughing together, while Gough, with his helmet off and wiping sweat from his forehead, was frowning and shaking his head at whatever one of the Tower men was saying.

Joliffe was listening not to them or the general shift and talk of men but to the river in the darkness behind and below him, the muted thundering of the water foaming and fighting its way between the bridge's wide stone pillars, so many and so thick they held the river back from where, with all its force, it wanted to go. He couldn't tell if the tide was at ebb or flow or on the turn, but knew for certain he'd rather be up here than down there—and now that his blood was cooled again, would rather be some place else altogether. The brigantine was more weight than he cared to carry; the helmet was awkward on his head; he didn't like trying to hurt people or have them trying to hurt him; he hadn't had supper; he wanted to be in his own bed sound asleep; he . . .

Gough strode out into the midst of the Londoners. His reputation and authority from the years when England had been winning the French war still served him well. More than once this night Joliffe had seen him rally the Londoners into believing they were the bold warriors they had never been, going not into an untidy scuffle on a bridge but into a battle with a leader of legend. Now Gough was doing it again. By voice and gesture he was gathering up the Londoners and lower men out of their weariness into readiness to fight again. He pointed toward the gateway and said something that brought laughter from the nearest men. Other men jostled to be closer. They were crowded around him now, and the laughter changed to a cheer. He was urging them on to a final great rush and push, and Joliffe shoved himself to his feet as the men around Gough swung from him and surged yet again toward the gate, Gough urging them on from behind. Joliffe guessed he meant to drive them rather than lead them this time, probably in the hope of bringing the weight of men in the rear to bear on the forward fighters, finally driving them through the gateway by plain weight of bodies. Good. Then there would be an end to this and he could get that letter and be away.

Just as there had been all night, more men were coming along the bridge in scattered fews and handfuls, belated to the fight. Gough turned from the fight to call out welcome to them, gesturing them past him, into the gateway scrummage, then turning toward it himself. Rhys and Owen, done with their bandaging, were moving to join him. They none of them saw four more, club-bearing men come out of the shadows along the street, pause, point, and then two of them spring into a run straight for Gough's back, the other two at Rhys and Owen.

Joliffe shouted warning as he broke forward into a run, too, and although Owen went down from a club alongside his helmet, Rhys dropped into a crouch below the blow meant for him and without straightening spun around, his dagger out, and went for his attacker as Joliffe barreled into the man who had felled Owen. Both his fight and Rhys' were sharp and short, with Joliffe's man making to swing the club two-handed at him but Joliffe, already too close, using his free hand to grab and shove the man's arms higher and the man backward, his head lifting, clearing his throat for Joliffe to drive his dagger under the man's chin and up.

He did not stay to see the man fall, just shoved him away while jerking his dagger out, saw from the corner of his eye that Rhys' man was down, too, and spun with Rhys toward Gough.

Gough was down, but his attackers had dropped their clubs. One of them had a dagger out but they had caught Gough under the arms, one on either side, and were making to drag him toward the bridge's edge. Their confidence in their fellows was too great: they did not look around until just the instant before Rhys and Joliffe took them from behind. Joliffe s man was wearing no back-armor, only a breastplate, its leather straps crossed across his back. Joliffe stabbed into his left side, thrusting up toward the heart. By the time he had his dagger out again and the man was falling, Rhys had shoved the other fellow staggering forward to thump against the bridge railing and slump to the ground. Dead, Joliffe supposed, but was already shoving his own man roughly aside from Gough, lying face-down where they had dropped him.

Together, he and Rhys turned him to his back just as Owen came staggering over, too
late for everything. But it had been too late from the beginning. Gough's dead eyes staring past them into nothing told them that. And the blood on Rhys' hand from where he had held Gough to turn him over told the rest.

"Under his arm," Rhys said. "They clubbed him down and one of the cozening shits stabbed in under his arm. He never had chance at all."

Nor had it been a chance attack. There were answers Joliffe would like to have, but, "Are they dead?" he asked, looking around at the four sprawled bodies.

"Right they are," said Rhys. He was closing Gough's eyes. A few men were falling back from the rear of the fight, gathering around, beginning to ask questions that the squires and Joliffe ignored, Rhys instead ordering, "Owen, see what's on them." And at Joliffe, "Watch him," leaving him with Gough's body while going himself to rifle through the clothing of the two dead men who had done for Gough, moving with the expert quickness of someone who had done this uncounted times on a battlefield, looking for what might be worth his while to have.

This time, though, he was looking for the same thing Joliffe wanted—evidence of who these men had been and why they had wanted Gough dead—and said angrily when he had finished, having found nothing but small pouches that clinked with coins inside each man's doublet and tucked them inside his own, "Nothing." He looked up at the surround of faces. "Anybody know any of these curs?" he demanded. "They look like Londoners."

Heads shook in general denial echoed by voices saying no one knew them. In truth none of the dead men looked anything in particular. Their clothing was ordinary, serviceable. They could have been anybody from anywhere. Rhys picked up the dagger that had fallen with the second man Joliffe had killed and gave it a hard looking over, but except it had Gough's blood on it, it had nothing to tell; and suddenly, fiercely, Rhys stood up and with a wide swing of his arm flung the thing out into the darkness above the Thames.

Owen came back from the other dead men, carrying their belts with their daggers in one hand, two more pouches with probably coin in the other, but, "Nothing else on them," he said.

From the gateway the yells and clashing and scuffle had gone on, most men not knowing what had happened behind them, but now someone shouted, "They've fired the bridge!" and the night burst past yellow torchlight into the vicious, leaping red and orange of unleashed flames. The men who had gathered around Gough's body disappeared in a rush toward the gateway, shouting. Rhys, with the calm of a man who's seen worse, said, "The gatehouse is stone. There's no wind, no houses close to take fire. It shouldn't spread."

"It's the drawbridge that's burning," Owen said.

"That's good, then," Rhys said, level-voiced. "They've given up hope of retaking the gate and want to see we can't go after them when they retreat." Then with the heaviness of a man not able to hold the worst at bay any longer, "Let's shift him back to the George. Where's his helmet?"

Joliffe found it and slung it from his arm by its chin-strap while Rhys unbuckled and slid Gough's sword belt off him and laid it, the scabbard, and Gough's sword on his body. Owen carefully folded Gough's hands over the sword, and Rhys said gruffly, "Come on then," and with Joliffe at Gough's feet and Rhys and Owen at his head they lifted him and set off along the bridge, keeping well aside, out of the way of men and women running toward the gateway with buckets and long ropes to haul up river water against the flames.

Looking back as they came off the bridge, Joliffe saw the rising black roils of smoke lighted by flames from below and wished the bridge-folk good luck. Then he had to give all his will to setting one foot in front of the other up the slope from the bridge to the turning into Lombard Street, leaving it to Rhys and Owen to answer, when they wanted to, whatever questions were thrown at them by Londoners come out of their houses to ask what was happening. Mostly Rhys simply snapped, "Go and see, if you want to know." Only as they came into the yard at the George did they pause for the innkeeper's questions, and to his credit he was more distressed by Gough's death than by the bridge, saying with wonder and regret, "Matthew Gough. All those years fighting the French, only to die against some rebel scum here in London. There's fate for you."

"There's fate," Rhys agreed bitterly. "Send someone for a priest. We're taking him to his room."

The climb up the stairs with Gough's body fairly well finished the last of Joliffe's strength, he thought. Until he crossed the threshold into Gough's room. At sight of the strewn chaos—chair and table and joint stools overset, bedding and mattress stripped from the bed and dumped into a heap against the wall, everything that had been in the chests dumped and scattered across the floor, the chests themselves up-ended—he jerked to a halt. Behind him Owen started, "What . . ." and Joliffe forced himself forward.

Like him both Rhys and Owen stopped on the threshold. Then Rhys snapped, "Let's get him in," and they carried Gough's body to the bed, laid it on the floor long enough for the three of them to put the mattress and a sheet back in place, then lifted Gough's body onto them.

Only then did Rhys take a long look around and swear, "Bastards and curs!" while Owen started shaking his head in silent protest and went on shaking it. Joliffe settled for righting a joint stool and sinking onto it, his legs done for a while. Slowly, he set to ridding himself of helmet, arming cap, and brigantine, dropping them onto the floor beside him.

Of nobody in particular, Owen demanded, "What happened?"

"Robbery," Rhys answered dully. He began to take off his own gear. "Only they didn't find anything, because we've put it all somewhere safer than here."

"Then when they didn't find anything, they came and killed him," Owen said. "Bastards."

"That makes no sense," Rhys said.

Nor did it; but neither of them were any more ready for thinking than Joliffe was. Owen joined Rhys in stripping down to their arming doublets and hosen. With hair sweat-plastered to their heads and shirts to their bodies, they looked very much the way Joliffe supposed he looked, and certainly for a moment they stood as slackly as he felt, until Rhys said with a nod at Gough's body, "Let's have him out of his armor anyway."

Taking Gough's armor off him after a fight was something they had surely done many times before now, but this time, the last time, their fingers were slowed by weariness and the weight of their grief and Rhys' sometimes-falling tears as he bent to the work.

Joliffe saw them but made no move to help. He had no place here. Gough and Rhys had likely started young together in the war; had maybe been surprised to find themselves both alive at the end of it; had probably talked of what they'd do with themselves now it was over; and now, when least looked for, all that could be planned was where to bury Gough and how many Masses for his soul could be afforded.

Joliffe had known Gough too briefly for grief anything like Rhys' and Owen's must be. What he had instead was a slowly growing anger at the way Gough had died and he kept that to himself, leaving the two squires to their grief and duty until Rhys lifted off Gough's breastplate and set it aside. Then Joliffe forced himself to his feet and said, "You can come at that letter now. I still want it."

Both squires turned to stare at him. Owen started angrily to say something, but Rhys said first, "Best you have it. Yes."

He made quick work of unfastening the front of Gough's arming doublet to come at a thin, many-folded square of parchment tucked tightly into the waist of Gough's braies. He pulled it out, faced Joliffe, and thrust it at him with, "This is what they killed him for, isn't it? They didn't find it here, came to kill him at the bridge, and meant to throw him into the Thames to be rid of him and it together. That was the way of it, wasn't it?"