The Alchemist of Souls (Night's Masque, #1)(65)

He looked up at the sky. The sun was high overhead, silvering the leading edge of an enormous grey cloud that had blown in from the west.

"We should be getting back to the Tower, sir," he said. "Sir James will be expecting you for dinner."

"You took him where?"

Leland was scarlet with rage, pacing up and down in front of the fireplace like a lion in the menagerie. The parlour, now emptied of dinner guests, suddenly felt cramped to Mal, as though the panelled walls were closing in.

"Bartholomew Fair, sir," Mal said.

"Bartholomew Fair. Were you trying to get him killed?"

"No, sir, of course not."

"Yet you took the Ambassador of Vinland to the most crowded, filthy place in London, to be jostled by pickpockets and drunkards, gawped at by bawds and, and–" Leland broke off, almost apoplectic with fury. He took a deep breath. "Why did you not take them to Bethlem as had been arranged?"

"I thought it an unfit diversion for a gentleman, even a skrayling one," Mal said truthfully.

"You thought? You are not paid to think." Leland stopped in front of him. "You are paid to keep your eyes open and your sword at the ready."

"Yes, sir."

"What the Queen will say when she hears of this, I dread to think," Leland muttered.

"The Queen, sir?"

The lieutenant caught him a backhanded blow across the face. "Speak when you are spoken to, sirrah!"

Mal kept his eyes on the floor. He could feel his lip swelling already. He heard the door open and booted footsteps approach.

"Ah, captain," Leland said. "Take this man out to the barracks and have him flogged for insubordination."

Mal's head jerked up, but he bit back a retort when he saw the malicious look on Monkton's face. No sense in goading the man further. He turned to Leland.

"Permission to speak, sir."

Leland inclined his head.

"Sir, am I to be dismissed?"

"If it were in my power, you would be out of this place faster than shit off a shovel." Leland grimaced. "Fortunately for you, the ambassador has the final say in the matter."

Mal was marched across the green to the barracks. Leland had increased the garrison for the duration of the ambassador's visit, and there were around four dozen off-duty militiamen sitting around smoking and playing dice after dinner.

"Right, lads," Monkton barked. "Look sharp! I have here for you a lesson in what happens to men who fail to follow orders."

He held out his hand for Mal's sword, then gestured to him to remove his doublet. Mal complied, trying to ignore the soldiers' catcalls. Monkton led him over to the wall, where a pair of manacles was fastened at head height. Evidently this was a regular punishment.

"Shirt off as well," Monkton said. "We don't want you dying of a festering cut."

Mal stripped off his shirt, revealing the bandage on his left arm.

"Been in the wars already, have we?" Monkton said with a sneer.

Mal faced the wall and raised his arms, and the manacles were closed around his wrists. He sank his forehead on his hands, bracing himself for the first blow. Monkton exchanged banter with the soldiers, stretching out the moment of anticipation until Mal was almost ready to scream at him to get on with it, for God's sake. Then there was a whistle and snap of leather and sudden sickening pain that drove the breath from his lungs. Again and again the lash fell, until the soldiers' jeers blurred into the sound of blood roaring in his ears.

After a while he was aware of Monkton unlocking the shackles, and surmised his punishment was over. Someone pressed a tankard of ale into his hands. He gulped it down, hoping to dull the pain, and the soldiers laughed. When he had drained the tankard, Monkton thrust Mal's bundled-up garments and his sword into his hands and escorted him back to the tower. Mal stumbled along, his guts a cold knot of shame. He should have let the ambassador go to Bethlem; nothing he might have seen there could have been worse than this humiliation.

Ned trudged along Thames Street in the pouring rain. He wanted to run back to Gabriel and forget all about yesterday's visit from Kemp, but his laggardly conscience had pricked at him all day. With the courage of several pints of beer inside him and Gabriel urging him to get it over with, it had seemed such an easy thing to do. Now, as he neared the Tower, his courage began to desert him.

He emerged into Petty Wales and stared at the massive fortress, grey and forbidding under the lowering rain clouds. In there, men were imprisoned, tortured and executed, or simply left to die. Why, he asked himself for the umpteenth time, had he ever thought this was a good idea?

It was the right thing to do, that was why. Mal would have done this long ago, if their situations had been reversed. He only hoped his friend could protect him, though he knew he did not deserve such consideration.

With feet like lead he followed the path round to the left, through the Bulwark Gate and up to the crenellated gatehouse at the near end of the L-shaped causeway that spanned the moat. Two guards in the familiar livery of scarlet cloaks and dark blue jackets stood in the inadequate shelter of the passage under the gatehouse. Torches in iron cressets hissed as the wind drove veils of rain through the archway. In the flickering light, the entrance to the fortress put Ned in mind of the gates of Hell.

One of the guards stepped to the edge of the passageway, squinting through the rain dripping off the brim of his helmet. He levelled his partisan at Ned and looked him up and down.