A Queen's Spy, - [best books under 200 pages .txt] 📗

assault. As it was he twisted violently under the increasing pressure on his shoulder, his eyes seeing the blade coming towards him.

It was neither clean, nor quick.

The knife missed its mark and stabbed into the side of his neck. Not a killing blow, missing the arteries and sliding into the corded muscle and tendon encasing his spine. Hanwyn was immobile for a moment only, the man’s scream brought him to his senses. Throwing himself on the messenger he brought the man to his knees and held him fast, pushing a handful of sack cloth into his mouth to stifle his guttural animal shrieks.

Richard, a hand in the man’s hair, held his head as still as he could and reapplied the knife, the blade this time stabbing through his throat, the point impaling itself with a thunk in the wood of the barrel beneath him.

It took time. Two of them held him down as his violent struggles lessened.

Hanwyn, his arms wrapped around the dying man, met Richard’s eyes. “How long, is he going to…”

Richard wrenched the knife hilt sideways, opening a menacing gash in the side of the man’s neck and splattering them both. The struggles lessened immediately as soon as the knife had cut through the heart’s supply of blood to the brain.

Despite being covered in blood, Hanwyn’s expression was one of relief as he felt the body grow limp in his grasp.

“You can let go,” Richard said, “he’s dead.”

Hanwyn did let go then. Removing his arms carefully and slowly from around the leaking body. Looking very much as if he expected the lifeless corpse to turn upon him.

“Why did you kill him?” Carew asked in a hoarse gasp.

Richard regarded him coldly. “I didn’t. You did.”

“What?” Carew regarded him in confusion.

“Did you want me to release him? At some point or another he is going to lead someone else back to your door. You let him know too much,” Richard replied matter-of-factly.

“What shall we do with him?” wailed Carew. Throughout the man’s murder he’d stood in the corner, his back pressed to the wood, and when Richard had pulled the blade through his flesh he’d vomited and globules of it ran still from his mouth and down the front of his doublet.

“You’ve got pigs, haven’t you?” said Richard, rising from his knees and rubbing his hands down his hose.

“Pigs!” Carew looked at him incredulously.

Richard wiped his blade clean, “Well you can either try and dispose of his body under cover of darkness when the watch are abroad and after the curfew bell has rung. Or you can feed him to your pigs. Your choice.”

 

†

 

Back at the house in Chapel Street Richard sat with his head in his hands. In front of him the cipher keys lay on the desk.

What the hell am I going to do?

It had always looked like it was going to be difficult. Thomas Wyatt had, for a moment, held in his hands the promise of change. He’d had the chance to propel Elizabeth onto the political stage, to take her from pawn to Queen. While that was a possibility Richard knew he’d had no choice but to back him.

The board had, however, changed.

Richard had known from the outset that Wyatt’s plan was weakened simply by the complexity of it. The three rebellions were to occur at the same time. In theory if there were risings in Kent, the Midlands and Suffolk, Parliament would not be able to stop them all and popular support would flood towards the ones not being suppressed and the movement would grow organically.

Wyatt’s efforts were going to fail though if the rebellions outside of London failed to gain the support they needed, if they posed no risk to the status quo then Parliament would not be moved to divide its forces to suppress them. Parliament, he feared, would now be warned of Wyatt’s plans, they might not have the dates but he had to suppose that Derby was aware of the plan, and he was sure that the conspirators were being closely watched.

With a quick movement Richard pulled all the cipher pages into his hands and balled them, then standing he moved quickly to the fire and fed them to the flames. Watching the paper curl and blacken.

It was now more than likely that the riders dispatched to send the messages to spark off the risings in the Midlands and Suffolk would be intercepted. Richard pulled from his doublet another letter, one he had not consigned to the flames, one detailing Wyatt’s plan and the names of some of those complicit in his plan. Whether he liked the task or not, now he needed to ensure Wyatt’s plan failed quickly, for he needed to prevent Elizabeth’s name from being linked to the plot.

Shortly after Richard had called for his horse and was setting it in the direction of Derby’s house. When he arrived he was not kept waiting long, the urgency in his voice had persuaded Derby’s staff that they should convey their master’s visitor as quickly as possible to the man he wished to see. It was a household where unannounced guests who arrived and left after dark was the norm.

Richard strode confidently into Derby’s room, his hand already inside his doublet, he pulled free the letter and held it out for Derby.

Derby’s eyes flickered between the folded sheet Richard’s face. “Tell me quickly.”

Richard did, and Derby, his mouth pressed into a cold hard line, had nodded solemnly. “We have intercepted riders leaving the city. We have their messages, but the code we could not break. The Duke of Norfolk is to take a government force and ride south to stop his advance, but we don’t know if the troops he has will be enough to halt Wyatt.”

Richard knew then that Wyatt’s plan was doomed. The messages had not made it out of London, there would be no support outside of the city, the risings in the Midlands and Suffolk were going to fail.

Wyatt was on his own.

“He plans to bring his men straight across the Thames near the Tower,” Richard supplied at the end of his summary.

“Does he now? We can be prepared. We have men across the City, we can pull them back to the Tower and mass our forces there,” Derby said, his hand tugging at his chin, his brow furrowed.

“A map, do you have a map of the City?” Richard cast his eyes around the littered surfaces in Derby’s study.

“A map? Yes, here.” A moment later Derby had shuffled through a pile of papers and produced a wide velum sheet with the city penned out on either side of the snake that was the Thames. “I had it drawn up outlining the new borough boundaries. Why do you want it?”

Richard traced his finger along the river until he found the point he was looking at. “Here is the bridge near the Tower.”

Derby peered closer. “Yes, and the land on our side banks down to them. We can easily defend that side by placing a force here,” his finger stabbed the map on the river’s south bank, “we can even stop them from crossing the bridge in the first place. If we take a force across we can block them at Southwark, that way we keep the bridge safe and Her Majesty.”

Richard looked up from the map and his eyes met Derby’s. “I agree. What if I told you there was a way to stop them from getting to the north of the river without shedding blood and crossing swords. What if I could free all of the men from guarding the bridge and prevent Wyatt from crossing?”

Derby’s eyes widened. “I would like to hear it.”

†

 

The Duke of Norfolk had headed south with a band of soldiers over eight hundred strong to stop Wyatt bringing his force anywhere near the city. Several of the officers had served under Wyatt in Italy, and that, combined with the sight of four thousand advancing rebels caused five hundred of Norfolk’s government troops to defect.

Wyatt, confident of success, and unaware that the risings in the Midlands and Suffolk had failed, was convinced that there would be two more forces, equal to the one he lead, advancing towards the Capital. He was sure the country would be in chaos with Parliament unable to decide how to react - Should they hold the capital? Should they send out troops to quell unrest? Should they divide their forces?

Wyatt’s encounter with the government troops furthered his rising confidence that his cause would be successful. Those that had not defected they chased back North towards London. Wyatt was convinced the city would lend its support to him when he arrived.

Wyatt couldn’t use outriders when he approached the capital, the troops instead rode unopposed all the way up the Southwark Road towards the bridge that led to the Tower.

“Sir, there are no troops on the bridges.” It was one of Wyatt’s captains who spoke, having just ridden back from the front of the leading troop.

As he approached the bridge Wyatt soon saw the truth of the captain’s words himself. The City had a sixth sense for unrest, and London had not been taken unawares. The population who lived in the streets leading to the crossings were gone, the streets were empty, and there were no government troops lined up to prevent them from crossing.

“Maybe London is siding with us,” the captain sounded excited.

Wyatt, more cautious, motioned for his men to advance, and slowly they made their way towards London Bridge. It was an impressive structure, rising sixty feet above the water line. The bridge was erected on top of a set of piers, and both sides of the crossing were crammed with wooden buildings, only the central route was cleared for the traffic to make its way from the south to the north of the river.

“The tower is open, look!” Wyatt heard another of his men shout as he pointed towards the bridge.

At the Southwark end of the bridge a large defensive tower rose, and below it were the double gates that could be sealed shut as part of the city defenses.

Wyatt’s eyes narrowed. “Would a fleeing force not have closed the gates against us?”

“London is for us, I think they are open in welcome,” his captain stated with confidence.

They rode closer to the derelict bridge, and on through the open gates of the tower. When their horses passed under the tower it became painfully clear why there had been no need to close the gates against them.

The central section of the wooden bridge between the two central piers had been ripped up. The defenders had used oxen and chains and rived a twenty-foot hole in the middle of the road. The remaining spurs of wood that jutted from the sides were too narrow to use get an army across, there was no way safely to take horses over and the gap was too long to shore up with available materials. London Bridge, and the crossing, had been defended with fifteen men and two teams of oxen that had been hurriedly herded onto the wooden structure.

From the vantage point on the North side Derby watched as the whole of Thomas Wyatt’s force was brought to a crashing standstill.

Shaking his head in disbelief he looked at Richard. “You were right, he is turning to take his rabble across Lambeth Moor and cross at the bridge there.”

“He has little choice, that’s the only way he can get into the city now. His troops will need to come