The Alchemist of Souls (Night's Masque, #1)(3)
Someone grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and hauled him to his feet. His arms were pinned behind his back, none too gently.
"Maliverny Catlyn?" The captain held up a lantern and shone it in Mal's face.
"No, I just happen to look like him."
That earned him a fist in the guts. He gritted his teeth, forcing back the urge to puke up his beer.
"That's him, all right," said one of the other guards. "I've seen him in the Wheel a few times. When I was off-duty, of course, sir."
The captain grinned unpleasantly at Mal. "Right, boys, let's go."
They stripped Mal of his dagger and escorted him through the streets of Southwark to the down-river side of London Bridge. A sleek skiff bobbed amongst the wherries, with six men at the oars. Mal was pushed into the boat and the captain waved for him to sit.
"What are you arresting me for?" Mal asked, hoping they wouldn't risk upsetting the skiff by laying into him here.
"How should I know?" Monkton replied. "I was just told to bring you in."
Mal opened his mouth to protest again, but the captain shoved him onto the thwart. The skiff rocked alarmingly, and the soldiers laughed as he clutched at the gunwales.
"Enough!" The captain glowered at his men, then turned to Mal. "You, my friend, can squeal all you like once we get to the Tower."
The skiff cast off, and the rowers bent their backs, making slow headway against the incoming tide that threatened to drive it into the treacherous channel between the piers of the bridge. At last they broke free of the eddies and made their slow way downstream, bearing northwards towards the dark bulk of the Tower.
Crouched on the lower slopes of a hill on the eastern edge of the city, the Tower of London dominated the approach to the capital from the sea. Formerly the principal royal residence, the ancient fortress now housed Queen Elizabeth's chief enemies, detained at Her Majesty's pleasure in a style befitting their status. The Queen herself preferred the comforts of her father's palace of Nonsuch in Surrey, to which she had retreated in mourning for her late husband, Robert Dudley.
On the south bank of the Thames, opposite the Tower, a much smaller fortress squatted by the waterside. Though naught but a wooden palisade surrounded by ditches, it was no less forbidding than its ancient rival. Coloured lamps floated amongst the trees within and eerie piping sounds, like dying seabirds, echoed across the water. The skrayling colony. Mal made the sign of the cross and looked away.
The skiff lurched against the current as they turned sharply towards the water gate. Mal clutched the plank he was sitting on, hoping he didn't look as anxious as he felt. The severed heads of traitors, mercifully no more than silhouettes in the twilight, gave grim testimony to the fate awaiting those who defied their Queen. The splash of oars echoed from the stonework as they passed through a narrow tunnel under the wharf, then the skiff crossed the castle moat and entered the larger archway under St Thomas's Tower, emerging in a dank, shadow-hung pool where a flight of stone stairs led up to the outer ward. Mal was hurried up the steps and four of the guards closed in around him before he could so much as get his bearings.
A yeoman warder in scarlet livery beckoned to the captain, and Mal was taken a short way along the ward, through a sheltered rose garden and thence into a great courtyard with a tower at each corner. The warder unlocked a low door at the base of one of the towers, and Mal was escorted up the spiral stair and through another low door. It thudded shut behind him, and the key grated in the lock.
It was no filthy cell they had brought him to, but an octagonal chamber perhaps twenty feet across. Opposite him a blackened stone fireplace gaped like a bear's maw, and glazed windows to either side of it let in the last of the dim evening light. A second door, to the right of the one he had just come through, proved to be locked also.
The chamber was plainly furnished with a bedstead curtained in plain woollen stuff, a table and bench, and a padded leather prie-dieu under the eastern window. Only the walls betrayed this place as a prison. His fingers traced the shapes carved painstakingly into the stone: names of former inhabitants, several Jesuitical inscriptions, and an E within a heart. Both Catholics and Protestants had been held here over the years.
He knelt at the prie-dieu and began to pray that whatever mistake had been made in bringing him here, Our Lady would see fit to right it before his captors resorted to torture.
He spent a sleepless night alternately pacing his cell and praying. This was worse than the eve of battle. Death at the hands of the enemy was quick and clean compared to the punishment meted out to traitors. The fact that he had not to his knowledge committed treason was no comfort – why else would they drag him in off the streets and throw him in the Tower without charge? He tried not to think about what it must feel like to be disembowelled alive, and failed dismally.
Some time after dawn the sound of a key scraping in the lock roused him from his contemplations and he leapt up from the prie-dieu, groping at his side for the absent rapier. A yeoman warder peered into the chamber, bleary-eyed and drunk judging by the smell of cheap wine that preceded him into the room. Mal wondered if he should rush the man and try to make his escape, but without planning or accomplices he doubted he would get far.
The warder limped across the room, burdened by a heavy basket. From it he produced a battered pewter tankard and plate, an earthenware bottle and a loaf of bread. After setting these out on the table the warder left, locking the door behind him.