The Return of the Warrior Page 6

‘Ta-da!’ And Mad Bob did a little dance on the spot, then winced in pain. ‘They forgot what I was in for. The court let me off with twenty lashes.’ He turned round and lifted his filthy shirt. Now it was Jack who winced, as the rake-thin man revealed a criss-cross of nasty welts across his bony back. ‘I suppose it could’ve been worse,’ Mad Bob went on. ‘I could be hangin’ like you!’ He tugged at an imaginary rope, made a face and stuck out a lolling tongue.

  Jack responded with a thin, humourless smile. ‘Thanks, that’s really comforting.’ Then his gaze returned to the crowd.

  ‘You lookin’ for your friends?’ hissed Mad Bob. ‘I told you, once a bird takes flight, it won’t return to its cage.’

  ‘I don’t blame them,’ sighed Jack. ‘I hope they’ve flown far away from this wretched country.’

  ‘In my experience, birds often nest high up,’ he mumbled, clearly not listening to Jack.

  Mad as a March hare, thought Jack, as the man began picking his nose like he was digging for gold.

  ‘Your friend’s waving to you,’ said Porter, jutting his chin in Sir Toby’s direction.

  Jack glanced over and saw the vile man holding up another beer.

  ‘Take your time to die, Jack Fletcher,’ Sir Toby called out over the crowd. ‘I’m in no rush. I’ve a full bottle to enjoy here.’

  The bell in the church tower struck the hour and the crowd fell silent in anticipation. The court official proclaimed each of the prisoners’ crimes, then the hangman gave the order and the driver drew his horses away. One by one, the prisoners dropped off the back of the cart and swung from the gallows as the crowd shouted and cheered at the spectacle.

  ‘See you in hell, Jack!’ rasped Porter, as the cart went from under the vagabond’s feet.

  A moment later, Jack lost his footing too. His body dropped like a stone and the rope pulled taut round his neck.

  The gallows creaked under the weight of the nine swinging bodies. Taunts and insults thrown by the crowd drowned out the few anguished cries of friends and loved ones of the convicted, while death slowly and mercilessly choked the life out of the prisoners.

  Jack gasped and gulped for air, the noose tight round his throat. With every passing second, the pressure built in his head. His arms went rigid and his legs began to jerk uncontrollably.

  ‘Dance, Fletcher, dance!’ called out Sir Toby, laughing heartily with his companions at Jack’s death jig.

  Porter now swung limp and lifeless beside him, but Jack’s suffering was far from over. As the twitch in his legs gradually weakened, his heart pounded harder and harder and his lungs strained for the faintest morsel of air …

  Stark visions flashed before Jack’s eyes. His sister as a little girl making daisy chains for him in the summer sun … His mother embracing him with soft warm arms after he’d fallen and scraped his knee … His father standing proudly on the ship’s deck showing him how to use a sextant and compass … The green baleful eye of the ninja Dokugan Ryu looming out of the darkness … The bright gleam of the legendary Shizu blade as his guardian Masamoto gifted him his own samurai swords … His friend Yamato plunging to his death from the balcony of Osaka Castle … Yori folding a paper crane … Akiko bowing, her back to the setting sun …

  As Jack felt the last of his life ebb away, Mad Bob crouched before him at the edge of the crowd like a demon waiting to drag him to hell. Through the ringing in his ears, Jack heard the lunatic cry, ‘Here comes that birdie!’ followed by a fluttering swish overhead. Then he was falling … falling …

  He hit the ground hard with a thump. The noose round his neck loosened. Coughing and spluttering, Jack sucked in a painful stab of air. He blinked back to life and saw the rope lying in the dirt, the end of it now cut and frayed. Above him, quivering in the nearest wooden post of the gallows, was a hawk-feathered arrow.

  As Jack’s befuddled mind registered this, a small cloaked figure darted forward and helped him to his feet. Pulling a knife from the folds of his cloak, he cut away at Jack’s wrist bonds.

  ‘SEIZE ’EM!’ bellowed the hangman, a thunderous expression on his ruddy face.

  But the crowd were either too shocked or too entertained by the daring escape to react.

  ‘Fly away, birdies, fly away!’ Mad Bob chirped as the hangman charged towards them.

  The cloaked figure bundled Jack towards the front of the cart, where the driver stood beside his horses, open-mouthed and dumbstruck. Then an ear-splitting ‘YAH!’ was heard and the driver flopped to the ground like a sack of grain. Taking up the discarded reins, Jack’s rescuer jumped into the driver’s seat, his hood falling away.

  ‘Come on!’ cried Yori, offering his hand to Jack. Still weak and disorientated from his strangulation, Jack barely had the strength to clamber aboard. The hangman was almost upon him when someone leapt from the crowd. It was Mad Bob, blathering, ‘Judgement Day is upon us all! The world is –’

  ‘Out of my way!’ the hangman roared, stumbling over the scrawny lunatic and sprawling headlong in the dirt.

  Jack fell into the passenger seat. Yori flicked the reins and urged the horses on. As the cart pulled away, Jack glanced back at Mad Bob, who shot him a wink before vanishing into the writhing mass of onlookers.

  ‘STOP THEM! Someone, STOP them!’ yelled Sir Toby. The pompous sot was now so drunk and unsteady on his horse that he almost tumbled off as he tried to give chase. But gathering their wits, the crowd now closed ranks and attempted to block their escape.

  Hands reached up to pull them from the cart. Other men tried to clamber aboard. Then all of a sudden a hay barrow burst into flames as a burning arrow, tipped with tar, buried itself in the tinder-dry heap. People screamed; panic quickly spread. Another arrow sliced through the rope securing the wine casks beside the inn. The wooden barrels tumbled from the wagon and rampaged through the crowd, scattering them like skittles.

  Yori drove the horses on through the chaos. Clutching the seat, Jack kicked away at anyone who still attempted to board the cart. But most people weren’t fast enough or kept their distance, for fear of being trampled by the horses’ hooves or crushed under the cart’s wheels. As they approached the edge of the market, Jack noticed a unit of constables racing to cut them off.

  ‘Faster!’ he rasped.

  But Yori did the exact opposite and slowed down beside the church.

  ‘What are you stopping for?’ cried Jack.

  ‘To pick up a passenger!’ replied Yori. There was a light thump and the cart rocked, and Jack spun round to see Akiko crouched cat-like in the cart bed, her bamboo bow and quiver of arrows across her back. He glanced up at the church tower. ‘Did you just jump?’

  ‘No time to take the stairs,’ she replied. ‘Yori, let’s not hang around any longer. Jack’s done enough of that today!’

  ‘Ha, very funny,’ said Jack, but he was overjoyed to be reunited with his friends. ‘And unless you want to hang too, we’ve got to get out of here. Fast!’

  Sir Toby and his two companions had finally managed to coordinate themselves and were now in hot pursuit. The constables were also on their tail, running down the street after them. Yori swung the cart into Cock Lane, the sharp turn almost tipping them over, then bore left on to Snow Hill. Pedestrians ran for cover as the cart picked up speed, the wooden wheels clattering over the cobbles.

  ‘Your daishō,’ said Akiko, presenting Jack with his swords. ‘Looks like we might be needing them.’

  Jack slid them into his obi, their weight familiar and comforting on his hip, and with them he felt his strength return. ‘Never thought I’d see these again,’ he said, looking at Akiko – ‘or you, for that matter. Thanks for rescuing me. But how did you know I was to be hanged?’

  ‘Mad Bob told us,’ explained Akiko, clinging on to the cart’s sides as it bounced over a rut in the road. ‘We’d been trying to find a way to break you out when we bumped into him leaving the gaol.’

  ‘If it wasn’t for him, we’d never have found Smithfield market,’ said Yori.
‘We only just got to you in time.’

  ‘I guess he wasn’t as mad as his name!’ said Jack with a laugh.

  ‘Oh, he’s mad all right,’ cried Yori, gripping the reins tight as the horses galloped towards Newgate. ‘He wanted Akiko to dress up as a bird!’

  As they approached the towering brickwork of Newgate, a bleary-eyed man emerged from the gatehouse and saw the cart hurtling towards him.

  ‘GUARD! CLOSE THE GATE!’ roared Sir Toby, tearing down Snow Hill with Sir Edmund and Sir Francis. The constables on foot had already given up the chase.

  The guard rushed to release the portcullis and the old iron gate rattled down to block off the entrance back into the city. Yori yanked on the reins and steered the horses into Old Bailey Street. But they were going too fast. The cart tipped, then a wheel hit a pothole and flew off. They were thrown from their seats just before the cart smashed into the city wall. The terrified horses bolted away, dragging the splintered remains of the cart behind them.

  Dazed, bleeding and bruised, Jack got unsteadily to his feet. ‘Everyone all right?’ he asked.

  Akiko and Yori nodded. Practised in the art of ukemi, they’d each broken their fall and rolled smoothly across the pavement.

  ‘We have you now!’ shouted Sir Toby as he and his companions thundered down the road towards them.

  Stumbling on, Jack led Akiko and Yori into a busy narrow side street. It would be less easy for Sir Toby to catch up with them and run them down. Weaving between the startled Londoners, Jack and his friends raced on into Fleet Ditch, past Ludgate and towards the banks of the River Thames. But that was where they ran out of road.

  ‘What now?’ asked Yori desperately.

  Jack pointed to a rowing boat at the quayside. ‘Quick, the skiff!’

  Leaping into the boat, Jack untied its mooring rope. A ferryman shouted at them, waving his fist angrily, but Akiko took an oar and pushed away from the quayside and then began to row hard. A moment later, Toby, Edmund and Francis pulled up at the riverside.

  ‘You cowardly swine! A pox upon ye!’ bellowed Sir Toby. ‘I’ll have your guts for garters, Fletcher! Upon my life, I will run you through with my sword until you bleed like a stuck pig!’ He continued to fume and curse, his face growing redder and redder with each insult, but he didn’t jump into a boat and follow them.

  ‘Why’s he giving up?’ asked Yori.

  ‘Perhaps he’s scared of water!’ smirked Jack, just glad the chase was over.

  The ferryman, apoplectic with rage too, gestured furiously downriver, yelling, ‘The tide’s going out, you blithering idiots!’

  Akiko frowned at Jack as she continued to paddle. ‘Why should that matter?’

  Turning towards London Bridge, Jack’s face drained of blood. ‘That’s why,’ he replied weakly, staring in horror at the fierce rapids surging underneath the bridge’s arches.

  The skiff began to pick up incredible speed. Akiko rowed furiously for the bank, but to no effect. The current had the little boat in its grip and was carrying it and its three passengers towards the huge stone starlings of London Bridge. On the riverbank, Sir Toby had switched from hurling insults to delighting in the deadly predicament Jack and his friends now found themselves in. ‘We’ll fish you out on the other side! Every little piece of you …’

  But his voice was soon lost to the roar of the approaching rapids. The waters grew choppier and the skiff rocked and lurched over the waves.

  ‘What are we going to do?’ cried Yori, his knuckles white as he clung on for dear life to the skiff’s gunwale.

  Jack sat down beside Akiko and took over an oar. ‘We need to try and shoot the bridge!’

  Akiko flicked him a look of alarm. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Aim for an arch and keep to the middle!’ he replied, rowing hard to straighten up their line. ‘Yori, you’ll have to guide us.’

  Yori nodded nervously. ‘Akiko, row harder your side … Now you, Jack … Now together …’

  The boat bobbed like a cork on the waves as the tide sucked the river through London Bridge. Faster and faster they went, the current drawing them on. Churches, houses and wharfs whisked by; a blur of people on the banks as they watched in astonishment the lone skiff tackling the wild waters. Jack’s muscles strained as he fought to keep the bow on course. He knew that if they hit a stone starling, the boat would be smashed to smithereens … along with its three passengers.

  As they drew closer and closer to the bridge, Yori continued to call out directions, his voice rising in pitch and urgency. ‘More your side, Akiko, MORE!’

  However, despite her frantic efforts, Akiko’s shoulder was still hampered by the rapier wound and she struggled to correct their line.

  ‘We’re not going to make it!’ yelled Yori. ‘We’re not g–’

  In a flurry of spray they shot through an arch, the huge starling scraping along the side of the skiff and smashing Akiko’s oar from her grasp.

  ‘Hold on!’ shouted Jack, throwing his weight the opposite way, as the boat began to tip and take on water. Battered by the violent swell, it veered sharply and crashed sidelong into a rushing wall of water, which drenched the three of them to the skin. Then the bridge spat them out on the other side …

  And that’s when the rapids really began. The Thames became a churning, frothing mass of mud-coloured waves. As the boat plunged into the raging torrent, the bow buried itself in the swell, the skiff broke apart and Jack, Akiko and Yori were tossed overboard.

  The frigid shock of submersion knocked the air from Jack’s lungs and he swallowed a bellyful of foul water. A moment later, he came up, spluttering and retching. He caught a brief glimpse of Yori and Akiko floundering in the foaming waters, before he was dragged back under again. The rapids turned him over and over, barrelling him until he touched the bottom, where the cloying silt of the riverbed embraced him …

  From the banks near London Bridge, all that could be seen by the curious onlookers was the wreckage of a small skiff drifting seaward, its three passengers having been lost to the murky waters of the Thames.

  The seagulls squawked overhead as three sodden and half-drowned figures crawled from the river on to the marshy bank. They collapsed amid the reeds, gasping and exhausted, and lay in the warm early-autumn sun, slowly drying out.

  Yori shook off a clump of water weeds from his shakujō staff and sighed. ‘I suppose the one good thing is that Sir Toby and the others will believe us to be drowned.’

  ‘We almost were!’ Akiko exclaimed.

  ‘Well, at least you’ve had your bath now,’ wheezed Jack as he combed a hand through his straggly mess of straw-blond hair.

  ‘It wasn’t as warm or as clean as I’d hoped, though!’ Akiko sat up and examined her mud-stained kimono in dismay. She untied a bedraggled leather pouch fastened to her obi. ‘Your purse, by the way,’ she said, tossing Jack his bag of coins from the prison before inspecting her bow and quiver carefully for damage.

  ‘Thanks,’ said Jack. He secured the purse to his belt, then began checking his own weapons. He thought how lucky he was to have left the rutter in his pack at the Mermaid Inn as he’d surely have lost it in the turmoil of their escape. He knew at some point they’d have to recover their belongings from the landlady – if she hadn’t sold them, or the authorities confiscated them yet – but that would have to wait until after the reunion with his sister.

  ‘Where are we?’ Akiko asked as she looked around at the marshy wasteland.

  Jack climbed to the top of the embankment and surveyed a patchwork of boggy fields dotted with flocks of scrawny sheep. ‘We’re on the Isle of Dogs, by my guess –’ he offered his friends an encouraging smile – ‘not far from Limehouse and my home.’

  ‘Praise be for small blessings,’ said Yori, scrambling up the muddy bank with the help of his staff.

  They tramped across the fields, pockets of sheep bustling out of their way and giving them wary looks from a distance.

  ‘Even the sheep think we�
�re scarecrows!’ muttered Akiko as she plucked yet another piece of reed from her hair. ‘So much for appearing at our best to meet your sister.’

  ‘Jess won’t care,’ assured Jack. ‘She’ll just be glad to see us.’ Then his brow knotted in curiosity. ‘I wonder what she’ll look like – after seven years, I guess she won’t be my little sister any more!’ He turned to his friends. ‘Do you think she’ll even recognize me?’

  ‘No one can forget your face!’ replied Akiko, arching an eyebrow. For a moment Jack didn’t know whether this was a compliment or an insult. But the curl of her lips gave away the gentle tease and Jack smiled, glad to see her sense of humour returning after their dunking in the River Thames.

  ‘What’s Jess like?’ asked Yori.

  Jack gazed up at the clouds passing across the sky. ‘Kind, caring, cheeky … and very competitive. But she was seven when I last saw her. I only hope Mrs Winters is still alive and caring for her.’ That had been his great worry when he was stranded in Japan. Their mother had died from pneumonia when he was ten, and his father had employed their neighbour, Mrs Winters, to act as Jess’s guardian and bring her up. But Mrs Winters had already been old when he and his father first set sail. She would be positively ancient by now, and the money their father had given her to look after Jess must surely have run out. Spurred on by these thoughts and his impatience to see his sister again, Jack quickened his pace.

  Leaving the fields behind, they found a rutted road heading back towards London. Several small shacks built from timber and driftwood sprang up on either side. As Limehouse drew closer, these shacks gave way to a mix of wattle-and-daub cottages and tumbledown hovels. The dwellings grew in number, until they were shouldering one another for space, as if the city was spilling out in a slow yet steady flood.

  ‘All this used to be fields,’ said Jack, gazing around in astonishment.

  When they were properly in Limehouse, Jack found himself a little lost. The roads and side streets were cluttered with new buildings, workshops and inns. ‘I think it’s down here … no, er … we turn left …’