Sea Change (7 page)

The pistol went off with a crack, deafeningly close to Spandrel's right ear. But the shot was wide. Spandrel's weight threw Zuyler off his feet. The two men fell together, the lamp rolling away and adding a tangle of shadows to their struggle. Zuyler had lost hold of the pistol as he struck the floor. Seeing it bounce clear, Spandrel made a grab for it, intending to use it as a club. But as he grasped the barrel and swung back towards Zuyler, he glimpsed too late the hammer in the Dutchman's hand, arcing up to meet him.

When Spandrel came to his senses, he thought for a moment that he was back in the Fleet Prison. All the ingredients were in place: the subfuscous light filtering down from a high, barred window; the coarse straw mattress he lay on; the coughs and oaths of his cellmates; the stale rankness of confined humanity. Then his mind began to piece together the truth of his situation, which was worse by far than it had been during his miserable days in the Fleet. He was not wherever he was because he could not pay his debts. He was there because he was suspected of murder. And not just any murder. Ysbrand de Vries was dead. Somebody would have to pay for that — with their life.

He sat up and was at once aware of a jolt of pain in his head so intense that he thought for a moment he had been struck with an axe. Then he remembered the hammer in Zuyler's hand, swinging towards him. He reached gingerly up and winced as his fingers touched the source of the pain. His hair was stiff with clotted blood. He did not know how bad the wound might be, but he was alive and capable of coherent thought. Looking around and catching the baleful eye of one of the other occupants of the cell, he reckoned that was the sum total of his blessings.

There was an exchange in Dutch between the man who had noticed Spandrel and another, gravelly voiced fellow in the shadows on the farther side of the cell who seemed to be called Dirk. Dirk then shuffled into clearer view, revealing himself as a gaunt scarecrow of a man, dressed in sewn-together rags that had surely never been clothes. There was a glint in his eye that made Spandrel think of a weasel peering from its hole.

'English, guard said. I speak bit.' He gave a toothless smile.

'I'm English, yes.'

'What you do, Englishman? What they have you for?'

'I did nothing. It's all a mistake.'

'Hah! Mistake. Ja. Right.' Dirk winked at him. 'All of us too.'

'I'm telling you the truth. I'm innocent.'

'Ja, ja. Who cares? You here. What for?'

'Murder,' Spandrel admitted bleakly.

'You kill?'

'So they say.'

'Who?'

'A merchant called de Vries.'

'De Vries? Ysbrand de Vries?'

'Yes. But—'

'De Vries dead?'

'Yes. He's dead.'

Dirk let out an eerie whoop of triumph and clapped his hands together. Most of the other half-dozen or so prisoners turned to look at him. 'You kill well, Englishman. De Vries a good man to kill. Very good.'

'I didn't do it.'

Dirk shrugged and grinned helplessly. 'Tell the executioner. Then you tell me what he says.' With that he sat down on the mattress at Spandrel's feet and winked again. 'You kill de Vries. Now...' Dirk mimed the looping of a noose around his neck and the jerking of a rope above his head. 'They kill you.'

Spandrel would have preferred to ignore Dirk, but no-one else spoke English and a few scraps of information were there to be gleaned amidst his alternately morbid and exultant ramblings. They were in a cell beneath Amsterdam's Stadhuis — the Town Hall. Spandrel had been brought in the previous night. The guards' reticence about his offence was now explained by the eminence of his alleged victim. They might expect a meal of stale bread and sour ale around noon. And Spandrel might expect to be questioned before the day was out. He was important, after all. At any rate, his crime was. Dirk was just a humble pickpocket, their cellmates little worse than vagrants. Some of them had been there for weeks, awaiting trial. When they had been tried — and found guilty, of course — a flogging or branding or both would follow. Spandrel would be dealt with in the same way, though perhaps more expeditiously; the authorities would not wish to be accused of dragging their feet in such a case. Only the end would be different. And, for Spandrel, it would be the end in every sense.

It was early evening when they came for him. Two guards marched him out of the cell and along a narrow passage lined on one side by the doors of neighbouring cells and on the other by a blank wall. They reached a large, high-ceilinged room, lit by candles at one end. In the shadowy reaches at the farther end, he thought he could make out the shape of a rack.

A long table stood beneath the chandelier in front of the empty grate. It was colder than in the cell, Spandrel's breath misting in the air. Three men sat at the table, one equipped with pen and paper. A fourth man stood by the shuttered window, smoking a pipe. He was older than the others and seemed to take no interest in Spandrel's arrival. The guards led Spandrel to a chair facing the table and gestured for him to sit. Then they shackled one of his legs to a large wooden block chained to the floor and left.

The two men at the table without pen and paper conversed briefly in Dutch, then one of them — a skinny, sallow-faced fellow with a squint that his narrow, bony nose seemed only to emphasize — said slowly in English, 'Your name is William Spandrel?'

'Yes.'

'This is your examination on the charge of the murder of Mijnheer Ysbrand de Vries. Do you admit the crime?'

'No.'

'You were caught in the act, Spandrel. You cannot deny it.'

'I can explain.'

'Do so.'

Spandrel had already decided that his only chance, and that a slim one, of escaping from the trap Zuyler had lured him into was to tell his inquisitors the truth — the whole truth — and to hope they could be persuaded to doubt Zuyler's version of events. He did not know precisely what that version of events was, of course, but he had little doubt that it painted him in the blackest of colours. He told his story from the beginning, therefore, and held nothing back. He could not judge how convincing it sounded. He was met only by the blankest of faces. When he had finished, there was a discussion in Dutch, then a brief silence, broken by a question he thought he had already answered.

'What did the despatch-box contain?'

'I told you. I don't know.'

'Where is it now?'

'I don't know. If it's not in the chest in Mijnheer de Vries's study, then Zuyler must have taken it.'

'Why would he do that?'

'I don't know.'

The man by the window barked a sudden intervention. The English-speaker reacted with no more than a rub of the brow, then said, 'You are an agent of the Marquis de Prie, Spandrel. This is known.'

'Who?'

'You told Mevrouw de Vries that you had come from London by way of Brussels. Why visit Brussels unless it was to attend on the Marquis for instructions?'

'I've... never been to Brussels in my life.' A sickening realization clogged Spandrel's thoughts. Estelle de Vries had lied. And that could only mean that she and Zuyler were in this together. 'You must believe me.'

'How can we? The Marquis's intelligence is faulty. Cornelis Hondslager was killed in a tavern brawl several weeks ago.'

'Zuyler must have lied to me about him too.'

'You are the liar, Spandrel. Admit it. Spare yourself a great deal of suffering.'

'I've told you the truth.'

'We will give you time to think. Then you will be re-examined.' The man rose, crossed to the doorway and shouted something in Dutch. One of the guards appeared and there was a murmured conversation.

'Zuyler killed him,' Spandrel shouted in desperation. 'Don't you understand?'

'We are moving you to a cell on your own,' came the unruffled reply. 'You may be able to think better there. For your sake, I hope you do.'

Solitary confinement made Spandrel yearn for the

company of Dirk the garrulous pickpocket. A despair, blacker than the night beyond the small, barred window set high in the wall, closed around him. And daybreak did not dispel it. His head ached less and his ribs seemed to be healing well, but that only cleared his mind of a precious distraction from the bleakness of his plight. He had told the truth, but it had done him no good. Sooner or later, torture, or the threat of it, would force him to change his story. Then his guilt would seem to be confirmed and punishment would swiftly follow. Such was the cruel logic of the law in every land. He would admit he was the agent of a man he had never heard of. He would admit to a murder he had not committed. Then they would have done with him.

Why had Estelle de Vries lied? Only one answer made sense to Spandrel. She and Zuyler must be lovers. Now, she could inherit de Vries's wealth and marry the younger man. Yes, that had to be it. Spandrel was the unwitting means to their happy end.

And the three men who had tried to kill him? Were they really agents of de Vries? Or was all of that a piece of play-acting, commissioned by Zuyler? If so, Sir Theodore Janssen might have meant to honour their bargain after all. In that case, Spandrel need only have left Amsterdam when he had the chance and he could even now be contemplating a future free of debts and rich in opportunities.

Instead, he was contemplating four damp walls, a lousy palliasse and an early death. He had seen enough hangings at Tyburn to know how it would be. Whether men went bravely to the gallows, or quaking in terror, made no difference. Hanging was not beautiful. It was twitching limbs, loosened bowels, bulging eyes and frothing lips. It was a thing many were glad to watch, but none to experience, a just penalty for the guilty, occasionally visited upon the innocent.

Monday — morning or afternoon, he was not sure — brought a visitor. At first, Spandrel thought his examination was about to resume, but the guards made no attempt to remove him from the cell. Instead, they shackled him and chained him to a hook on the wall, then made way for his visitor.

He was a blond-wigged, dapper young man in a fawn-coloured coat, which he clutched close about himself, either because he was cold or because he was worried, not unreasonably, that the cloth might be soiled by brushing against something. A kerchief was bundled in his hand and he seemed to be restraining himself with some difficulty from holding it to his nose. There was an anxious frown on his face to complete the impression of someone who found himself where he had no wish to be with no intention of remaining one minute longer than he had to.

'You're Spandrel?' he said in a genuinely English voice.

'Yes.'

'Cloisterman. British vice-consul.'

'Have you come to help me?'

'The only help I can give you is to urge you to tell the Sheriff everything.'

'I have done that.'

'He seems to think otherwise. Why were you in Brussels, for instance?'

'I wasn't. Mrs de Vries is lying.'

'An unfortunate accusation to level at a grieving widow. She will be at her husband's funeral today. The Consul will also be there, seeking to make some manner of amends for the disgrace you have brought on the British community in Amsterdam.'

'De Vries was killed by his secretary, Mr Cloisterman: Pieter Zuyler. Mrs de Vries knows that full well. She probably helped him.'

'Why should she have done that?'

'For the money she'll inherit, I suppose. The money they'll share.'

'But she won't inherit, Spandrel. Not much, at all events. De Vries had a son by an earlier marriage, now a V.O.C. officiary in Java.' By V.O.C. Cloisterman meant the Dutch East India Company — the Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie. Spandrel had learned that much from Zuyler. 'The younger de Vries, not the charming widow,' Cloisterman went on, 'is made rich by what you've done.'

'But I didn't do it. I didn't do anything. The Sheriff accused me of being in league with some marquess...'

'The Marquis de Prie.'

'Yes. But I've never heard the name before in my life, far less met him. Can you at least tell me... who he is?'

'You seriously claim not to know?'

'I tell you, sir, as God's my witness, I've no idea.'

'Well, well. This is a pretty turn-about, I must say.' Cloisterman seemed so struck by the notion that Spandrel might actually be innocent that he forgetfully released his coat and placed a thoughtful finger on his chin. 'The Marquis de Prie is Minister Plenipotentiary to the Governor-General of the Austrian Netherlands. He might have his reasons for wishing de Vries dead.'

'What reasons?'

'Who can say with certainty? I gather the Marquis favours the creation of a Flemish East India Company to rival the V.O.C., presumably to enrich the Flemish mercantile classes and so warm them to their masters in Vienna whom de Prie loyally serves. The V.O.C. has done all it can to prevent that happening. De Vries was a native of Flanders, with many friends in Antwerp and Brussels. He may have wielded considerable influence to that end.'

'I know nothing about any of this. I never went to Brussels. I brought a package from London on behalf of Sir Theodore—'

'Janssen. Yes. Also of Flemish stock. Another wielder of influence. But Sir Theodore, as you must know, is a man in severely straitened circumstances. His present situation is indeed faintly comparable to your own.'

'How so?'

'When do you claim to have left London?' Cloisterman asked, ignoring Spandrel's question.

'A week ago...' Spandrel thought hard. 'A week ago yesterday.'

'Sunday the twenty-second of January, in the Old Style?'

'Yes. That's right. Sunday the twenty-second.'