LITMIR.BIZ

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out. ‘And it’ll be on the turn by the time we come back.’

      ‘It’s six or seven miles up to Barn Elms. The wind’s freshening, too.’

      ‘Six shillings.’

      ‘Seven.’ Wanswell was no fool. He sensed my urgency. ‘All right, sir. Here’s what I’ll do. I’ll take you there. But once the tide turns, I’m off. And whatever happens I’m leaving long before dusk. Which means I want my money when we reach Barn Elms. Take it or leave it, just as you please. It’s all one to me.’

      I haggled a little more for honour’s sake, but he would not give ground. In the end I agreed to his terms. I believed him to be honest enough in his way, and he would think twice about cheating me because of Sam.

      We set off, making good time because the wind was with us, as well as the tide. It was most damnably cold on the water, though, with nothing to shield us from the weather, and I wished I had a rug to cover me. The sky was a dark, dull grey, sullen as uncleaned pewter. There were patches of snow on either bank of the river.

      The last time I had been to Barn Elms it had been full summer. The estate lay on a northerly loop of the Thames on the Surrey bank. There was an old mansion there, with gardens and parkland. The place had become a favoured resort of Londoners in the warm weather. I had never been there in winter but I guessed that, away from the house and the home farm, it would be a desolate spot. The duellists had chosen well.

      Wanswell brought me to the landing stage used by the villagers rather than the parties of pleasure from London. An alehouse stood nearby, and it was there he proposed to wait for me.

      Time was galloping away – it was already past one o’clock. If the duellists had arrived before me, it would prove difficult to find them in the expanse of gardens, orchards and pastures that formed the estate. My best plan was to keep within sight of the river.

      I followed a lane that ran north along the bank, a field or two away from the river itself. Having no alternative, I pressed on for perhaps half a mile, plodding through mud and slushy snow. At this point, the lane veered closer to the water. I paused at a stile to find my bearings and to make sure I was not overlooked. It was then that I saw two or three boats hugging the shore and making for a landing stage about a quarter of a mile upstream. They had four oarsmen apiece, and each of them carried two or three passengers under the awning at the stern. The passengers were all men, and all wearing dark clothes.

      I hung back in the shelter of an ash tree and took out the perspective glass. The party disembarked at the landing stage. The boatmen stayed with their boats. I twisted the brass cylinder to bring the passengers into focus. They were marching in single file towards a spinney that crowned a gentle rise in the ground too slight to be called a hill. I recognized both Sir John Talbot, a tall, red-faced man, and Lord Shrewsbury himself, a thin, stooping figure who struggled to keep up with his kinsman. The third man must be Howard, who was talking earnestly to his lordship as they walked, gesturing with his arm to emphasize what he was saying. The others had the look of servants.

      I was about to follow them as discreetly as I could, when another boat appeared on the water. This one came at speed from the opposite bank of the river. It was much larger, a richly painted barge with a dozen or more oarsmen and a cabin made private with leather curtains. Such an ostentatious craft made an instructive contrast with Shrewsbury’s three unobtrusive boats. There was a brazier of coals in the stern, and three gentlemen stood beside it warming their hands. One of them was taller than the others. I knew who he was before I fixed the glass on him and made out the florid features of the Duke of Buckingham.

      Among the other passengers were two men standing on the other side of the cabin, near the oarsmen. Their faces were shaded by their hats. Both were big men, one thin and tall; the other more than making up for his relative lack of height by his breadth. They were almost certainly the men I had encountered last autumn, when I had had certain difficulties with Buckingham: his confidential servants, the Reverend Mr Veal and Roger Durrell.

      While the Duke’s party were disembarking, I moved away from the ash tree, following a line of hedgerow towards the spinney. I concealed myself among the trees. Buckingham and his followers marched away from the river, making no attempt to conceal themselves; I heard one of them laughing, as if he were on a jaunt.

      By this time the Shrewsbury party had vanished into the spinney. When the trees had swallowed Buckingham’s party as well, I followed cautiously. The one advantage of spying on members of the aristocracy was that they were so absorbed in their own affairs, so shrouded in a sense of their overwhelming importance in God’s creation, that they tended to be careless of what was going on around them. They (or more probably their advisors) had taken the precaution of choosing this secluded spot for the duel; but, once here, it did not occur to them to take particular precautions against being observed.

      By the time I reached the spinney, the duellists and their supporters were out of sight, but I heard the sound of voices in the distance. There was a path through the trees, the soft ground churned up by the passage of a dozen or so people. I advanced slowly among the leafless trees, a mix of birch, ash saplings and the occasional oak. Though the path was clear, it was obvious from the tangled undergrowth that the spinney had not been coppiced for some years.

      I was aware of a leaden sensation in my belly, together with an inconvenient urge to empty my bowels. I walked even more slowly than before. Unlike the gentlemen ahead, I was not the stuff of which heroes are made. I could imagine, all too easily, what the duellists and their entourage would do to me if they found me here.

      The voices ahead were louder. Then came a deep and throaty shout, a word of command. It was followed by the clash of steel, fast, furious and shockingly harsh. All this time I was continuing to advance. The path rounded a corner and suddenly they were all in front of me.

      The spinney was bounded by a low line of bushes that once had been a hedge. The path passed through a wide gap and into a small field, a close perhaps used for confining stock. Beyond it were more trees and more hedges, which cut off the view of what lay beyond.

      The six swordsmen were going at each other in a blur of movement, grunting, shouting and stamping. The others had gathered in two camps, one on each side of the close. It was fortunate that everyone’s attention was drawn exclusively to the duel, otherwise I must have been seen at once. But they had eyes for nothing else.

      I took in this picture in a fragment of a moment. At the same time I leapt backwards, skidding on the mud, in my effort to avoid being seen. As it was, I stumbled, almost falling into a vast yew tree beside the path. The tree swallowed me up: it was hollow inside, for its centre had been eaten away by time, leaving a sturdy palisade of offshoots and bark, thickly covered with evergreen foliage. I slowly parted two of the branches on the side of the yew nearest the field. At this point, the tree had invaded the hedgerow, and my spyhole gave me a view of the duel.

      The swordsmen had put off their cloaks and hats, removed their coats and tucked up the cuffs of their shirt sleeves. Buckingham had removed his hat and golden peruke. His shaven scalp was pinker than a lobster in the pot. He towered over Shrewsbury, who was breathing hard and retreating before the onslaught of the Duke’s thrusts. The other four were hacking and slashing with the abandon of madmen. There was no science to this – no elegant dance of thrust, parry and riposte: this was as bloody and brutal as a pitched battle between rival packs of apprentices in Moorfields. In such a brawl, weight, muscle and length of arm were more important than skill or agility.

      Screaming in triumph, Buckingham ran Shrewsbury through in the chest, driving the blade up into the right shoulder. The Earl dropped his sword and fell to the ground. The Duke tugged his sword free.

      Holmes and Talbot were evenly matched, giving each other blow for blow, so Buckingham swung to his right to aid Jenkins, who was hard pressed by Howard. Howard saw the danger. Snarling, he flicked away the Duke’s blade, putting him off balance and causing him to lurch towards Jenkins. The latter, his sword arm impeded by Buckingham, tried to recover. But he was too late. In a fluid, unexpectedly graceful movement, Howard switched his attack from the Duke and drove his blade into Jenkin’s left side. The young soldier

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