Something clicked in Lewgar’s mind.
‘Come,’ he said. Reluctantly he released her arm. And then, after a second, her gripped her hand and pulled her. They broke free of the chattering crowd, which seemed content to watch from afar, and moved up Dowgate, until the huddle of people resolved. ‘It’s Sir Francis Drake,’ he cried. Sure enough, the fellow was mounted on a great grey jennet. People, keeping to the sides of the street, safe from rain and hooves under overhanging eaves and galleries, were cheering him. He rode off – from the Erber, which was just around the corner – and up toward Budge Row. Behind him followed a whole train: groaning carts heaped with baggage; horses; running footmen; pages.
He was going off somewhere.
Plymouth.
Lewgar recalled his claim of setting off for Plymouth in a few days, having presumably finished reporting on the state and conditions of the ships which had lately departed from there. With the noise still heavy in the air, he turned to Cecily, a smile lifting his lips. ‘I think,’ he said, ‘that you might not find a cart going northwards today.’ Everything on wheels would have likely been commandeered by Drake, and all heading southwest. She gave him a weak, strained looking smile in return.
‘Perhaps at Billingsgate, though,’ he said. It wouldn’t do to look too eager to retain her company, he supposed.
Turning away from the splash of colour and into the thickening rain, they turned back down Dowgate Street and resumed their trudge towards the next set of docks.
***
Billingsgate lay just east of London Bridge, and south of the great sea coal, salt, wheat, and grain warehouses of Romeland. It was visible long before they turned off Thames Street. The ground sloped a little towards it – towards a forest of masts that obscured the Southwark side of the river. The ships which fed Billingsgate were not dictated by the height of the bridge; their sails and hulls and masts competed for size and place. Little white puffs of birds dotted them, their cries adding to the general cacophony.
The buildings which thronged the docks were densely packed: enormously tall, timbered offices, Lewgar presumed, for the merchants who made their fortunes out of fur, and dried fruit, and wines, and silks, and dyes – drawn from Muscovy, the Baltics, the Levant. The docks themselves were much like those at Queenhithe but on a wider scale. The road underfoot turned from paved to cobbled as they drew closer to the water. The ships, which had looked toylike even from Thames Street, turned into graceful giants. Here and there cartloads of fish were glistening; men and women, baskets at their feet, were already bartering directly with the sailors or milling around on the cobbles.
A good sign, thought Lewgar. Mariners who were touting for custom would be willing to talk. They clattered across the increasingly slippery cobblestones, making for the first heaving cart. Out of the side of his mouth, he said, ‘I think you wouldn’t fancy riding back to Bishop’s Stortford in such a rig.’ She had the grace to laugh, though he knew the jest was pathetically tame. Marlowe would probably have had a better one in reserve.
‘Good morrow,’ he said. He had been holding Cecily’s hand the whole time, he realised. She had said nothing. As he released it to salute the sailor, his own felt warm from her touch.
‘God go with ye, friend!’ The sailor – if he was a sailor – gave a toothy grin, as the customer he’d been serving hitched up her basket – stinking now with the freshness of salt and scales – and moved away. ‘What’ll you be ’aving? Your beauteous lady there looks as she’d have good plaice. Fresh caught this morning. Cooks up well.’
Lewgar smiled, trying not to look down at the packed display. He could feel the dozens of eyes looking up at him in dumb rebuke. He liked fish well enough but preferably stewed in butter or boiled or encased in pastry and swimming in wine and ginger. ‘We seek news,’ he said.
‘Oh?’ The gates were up. Suspicion and caution always seemed the consequence of asking news when it wasn’t on everyone’s lips. Lewgar had, however, prepared for it.
‘My wife and I,’ – now why did he feel the need to say that? – ‘are friends of Sir Francis Drake.’ The sailor’s eyes raked his suit, a little doubtfully, he thought. ‘You have heard he leaves London today for Plymouth?’
‘Ay?’ a little caution.
‘We seek members of the crew he took on his last voyage. The voyage to the New World. We would find men who might have had friends on the lost Sparrowhawk.’
Something flickered in the fellow’s eyes. ‘Sparrowhawk. ’ere, that’s the ship what come up somewhere down on the coast, ain’t it?’ Lewgar nodded, not too eagerly. ‘Ay, that was talk to be sure a few weeks back.’
‘Talk?’
‘O’ course. Ship talk. Of ghosts and the like. Amongst the men what work out of ’ere. Weird business, that was, it coming back up outta the sea.’ He shrugged and made a show of tucking a plaice’s head into line with its fallen brothers. ‘Ain’t never heard nothing like that before. Ships dug out of the sand by the waves, to be sure. Not up off the bottom of the sea. So people says, anyway.’
Lewgar swallowed. ‘Did you hear – have you heard – anything of the old crew of that ship? The mariners – Drake’s lost mariners?’
‘I …’ The sailor licked his lips. ‘There ain’t none. Not of that ship.’
‘Well, men who sailed with them, then, on the other ships on the voyage. The Golden Hind.’ He tried to remember the other one Drake had mentioned. ‘The Elizabeth.’
‘I don’t know nothing about that.’ He didn’t say more but moved away from behind his laden cart. He shouted across the cobbles towards his neighbour – a fat man who stood by a collection of boxes displaying pink scales. The big man shouted something back, jerking his thumb across the open dockyard, where two little boys – one black and one white – were running back and forth between the knots of shoppers and sailors, wielding brushes, sending gulls screaming skyward.
Returning, the plaice-seller said, ‘is it old Drake looking this business up?’ Lewgar gave a noncommittal shrug. ‘Hmph. You might speak to them lot over there.’ He waved over his cart. Lewgar and Cecily turned, seeing only more carts and boxes and fish. ‘I’ve custom, if you don’t mind.’ The pair stepped back as a woman and her maidservant approached from Thames Street, the lady with a pomander clutched to her nose.
‘There’s something here, I think,’ said Cecily.
‘What’s that?’ Lewgar was gnawing on the inside of his cheek.
‘He said “of ghosts and the like”. He’s heard something about this ship you seek news of.’
Lewgar considered this. She was right. He gave a nod, and together they strode off to ask more of the fish vendors what they knew, what they had heard. There followed a series of encounters not unlike the first, with initial flickers of interest and recognition turning to looks away and requests to go and speak to someone else. But Cecily was right. On several lips was the word ‘ghosts’. Eventually, one of the sellers – of mackerel – laughed outright at their request for news of the lost mariners. He was a scrawny man, young.
‘You want to talk to Wild Harry, that’s what you want.’ He laughed again, circling a finger at the side of his head.
‘What? Who?’
‘Wild Harry. He’s – he was – a mariner.’
‘One of Drake’s?’ Lewgar’s heart rose.
‘Nah, nah.’ It fell. ‘Wild Harry. He’s … he used to sail, back in the old days. Old, is Wild Harry. Lost his wits when he come home and foumd his wife run off with some rogue out of the north. He lives about the docks, still.’ The young man pointed away from the river, towards a sad-looking office building set between two newer, taller ones, almost invisible over the heads of chattering men and women. ‘He’s good fortune, some say. Comes out and raves. When the talk was of that Sparrowhawk coming out of the sea, he raved that he knew one of the lost mariners. Had seen him.’
‘Seen him?’
‘His ghost, like. Raved as how he’d seen the man’s ghost. Dunno why we think
him good fortune, Wild Harry. Rants more on ill-luck. You talk to him – it’s a good laugh. Warn you, though – he’ll say anything to be heard. Mad. Wait a moment and I’ll fetch him – he’s good for a laugh. Just don’t mention the wife – he turns mean at that.’ He came around before his stall and disappeared amid the crowd, blowing sharp whistles with his fingers. Eventually, the people parted, and he made his way back, a grin on his face.
At his heels was a man of about sixty, his white hair streaming, tangled, beneath a flat cap, and his seamed face dominated by a hooked nose. Two grey-and-white gull-feathers sprouted from the cap, like devil’s horns. The fellow was wearing a patched coat, far too big for his scrawny frame, and he came skipping, sprightly for his age and his condition. The men and women who cleared a path for him, respectable mostly, threw amused looks at each other. Harry swivelled his head from side to side. ‘And a good day and a good day and a jolly, jolly morrow!’
‘Good God,’ whispered Lewgar. He put an arm out in front of Cecily, as though to shield her. She pressed it down.
‘Here he is, my friends,’ said the young merchant-fisher. ‘Wild Harry, and just as large as life itself and twice as ugly.’
‘Ah. Good morrow to you,’ said Lewgar.
The old man, Wild Harry, swept a bow. His cap fell to the ground. He regarded it for a second and then threw back his head, issuing a low, mournful wail. Some of the people behind stared over, laughing. ‘Uh, please,’ Lewgar said, throwing up his hands, bending down to retrieve the cap and pressing it to the screaming man-child. Harry took it, but kept screeching, kept drawing attention. ‘Don’t take on.’
The young man, who had returned to his place behind the fish, shouted, ‘he won’t stop that, sir. Not until you pay him.’
Lewgar tutted, but he fished out a penny and passed it over. Harry stopped crying immediately. ‘And there is more for you,’ he said slowly, as if talking to a child, ‘if you will speak softly with us.’
‘More? Well-a-day and a hey and a hey to that, and more, and more.’
Lewgar recoiled at the disorderly speech. ‘Yes.’
‘Well-a-day, and come, come, come, to Wild Harry’s home.’ He jammed on his ridiculous hat and set off, waving and bowing to the people as he skipped in the direction of the little house across the dockyard.
‘Thank you,’ said Lewgar as sarcastically as he could to the young man.
He took Cecily’s hand again as they began moving towards the old building, his face set and his mind working. Ghosts! Paying a madman now to rave about ghosts! She seemed to sense his mood and gave a squeeze as they passed through the press of shoppers. ‘I don’t believe in ghosts,’ she said.
Harry stood at the door of the squat little building. The stench of fish had lessened. ‘Well, sir,’ he said, not looking at Cecily. ‘Come, and come.’ He disappeared inside. Lewgar followed, into a single, undressed room with only a straw-bed in the corner.
‘We would speak with you, Harry.’
‘Ay.’
For what felt like the thousandth time, Lewgar laid out his request. ‘We seek mariners who sailed with Drake some years back. Perhaps who know something of the lost ship. Lately returned. The Sparrowhawk.’
Harry’s reaction surprised him. The man frowned, removing his cap and depositing it on the bed. His entire manner changed. The mad grin vanished. ‘Ah, now. Is that so? Come to mock me as well, then? Put me in the Bedlam, have ye?’
Lewgar stood, dumbfounded at the transformation, at the sudden turning of his speech from tiresome nonsense to … well, sense.
‘No.’ This was Cecily. She stepped over the dirt-packed floor and lifted her right arm to touch him. He jerked back, scowling at her.
Lewgar stepped after her, not wishing her to be too near the old man, wild or not. ‘We were told you … that you saw …’
‘A ghost,’ said Cecily.
He flopped down on his bed and stared up at them. ‘Ay. And I did. You can’t put me in the Bedlam for what I saw with my own eyes. I’m not so mad as they think. Merely a little feint, to make my way in the world.’
No, thought Lewgar, bristling. The man was a counterfeit crank, playing at madness, the better to beg a few coins and a place to live as a scatter-witted charm to superstitious sailors. Plenty of false madmen made their living that way and enjoyed the liberty it gave them to say whatever they liked. Tom o’ Bedlams, he remembered they were called by the criminal classes, or patch-pates. ‘Well, then, we can dispense with play-acting. What did you see?’ he asked.
Harry continued to ignore Cecily, making a point of not looking at her. ‘I was friend to a feller who sailed on that ship. With Drake.’ He spat on the ground – right at Cecily’s feet. She stepped back, saying nothing. ‘Bastard, is Drake. Didn’t give his men nothing but death and hazards. Bastard.’ Lewgar said nothing. There, he thought, was the cherished liberty of the counterfeit zany. ‘My friend Roger went down with that ship. Never came back from the sea. So I heard. Then what do I see? I see him, large as life, walking up Water Lane. His ghost, I reckon. Saw his ghost.’
‘When?!’ Lewgar could feel his heart begin to race.
The old man’s mottled lips pouted. ‘Dunno. A year ago? Two? After I … stopped the sailing.’ He drew himself up. ‘And when they were saying that ship came back, just now – a month since…’ His brow wrinkled. ‘I said to them all out there, I said I saw the ghost of a man who sailed on that ship.’ He sniffed. ‘They just laughed. They won’t let me back to sea no more. Not at my age.’
‘This friend – this ghost,’ said Cecily. Her voice was gentle, but it seemed to do nothing to endear her to him. ‘Did you speak with him?’
‘You go,’ he barked, making them both jump. ‘You go to his whore of a wife up on Water Lane. Still calling herself Byrd.’ With that, he leapt from his bed, and began ushering them towards the door with his cap. After they passed out, he slammed it shut.
‘My word,’ said Cecily. She turned, her face a picture of innocence, to Lewgar. ‘What a prick.’
Lewgar’s mouth fell open. And then he laughed. It came out long and wild – wilder than Wild Harry had been. ‘There’s a word not fit for the courtroom. But I take your point.’ He shook his head. ‘A ghost.’ It seemed the Sparrowhawk’s dead would not be allowed to rest. ‘Word of a ghost from a gall-filled old madman. Worse, a madman who doesn’t realise how mad he is, and counterfeits another type of madness!’
‘I didn’t think him mad,’ she said. ‘A false patch-pate. Only … only turned cruel. Galled, yes. And I told you – I think there are no ghosts.’
Lewgar’s laughter subsided; she hadn’t joined him. And she was right. Wild Harry had seemed earnest enough. Perhaps the lost mariners weren’t as lost as the world believed. Perhaps one, or more, had escaped the ship. Or perhaps they had a hand in losing her for all those years in the first place.
‘To Mistress Byrd, then,’ he said. And then, a little shyly, ‘we make a good questing pair, I think.’
***
Finding Mistress Byrd’s house wasn’t as easy as it seemed. The residents of Water Lane knew of the widow, of course – but it seemed she had given up her leasehold on the old house and gone on to Harp Lane, not far distant. At Harp Lane, they were told that she had gone north – it was said – to Houndsditch. Thankfully, the rain came to nothing and shafts of sunlight speared their way down from between breaking clouds.
The third proved the charm.
The Widow Byrd’s house was pointed out by a rosy-faced woman on the street. It was a modest, two-storey place, with horn windows with projecting wooden sills bearing flowers, and a pleasant red-tile roof. Its door was hidden at the side, up a tiny earthen lane. Lewgar was very glad Cecily had remained with him. Breaking a widow’s peace was something that might require a woman’s touch. He let her knock on the polished oak door.
There was no answer at first. Of course, he thought.
But, with an ear cocked, he thought he heard movement inside. Mo
re, there was a low hum of conversation.
At last, they were answered. Framed in the doorway was a surprisingly patrician woman in her forties, her face calm but her eyes narrowed. ‘Good morrow?’
‘Mistress Byrd?’ asked Lewgar.
The woman looked over Cecily’s shoulder at him. ‘Who are you?’
Lewgar’s hat was off in a flourish. ‘I am Thomas Lewgar,’ he said. ‘Of Cambridge. I come from Sir Francis Drake.’
The woman’s eyes, he noticed, widened.
‘What?’
‘We understand your late husband sailed with him. Was lost on the Sparrowhawk.’
‘Lost.’ The lady seemed to withdraw a little. Her eyelids lowered. ‘Yes, lost. Many years gone, now.’
‘Might we come in?’ asked Cecily. ‘It has rained a little. To dry ourselves.’
‘I …’ Mistress Byrd looked over her shoulder. ‘It is not very convenient. My brother is lodging with me. On business.’ She looked from one of them to the other and seemed to soften. ‘But … to dry yourselves. Yes. Come.’
She led them into the front room of the house – a cosy little chamber with a fire burning in the grate. Painted cloths decorated the walls and there was a bench under a window. This was surprisingly intricately carved, with recumbent mermaids stretching at either side to form armrests, and for added comfort it boasted lengths of folded carpet on the seat. It stood opposite an equally well carved, cushioned stool. Beyond, a doorless passage led into another room. ‘Please, sit. Can I fetch you anything?’
‘No,’ said Lewgar and Cecily in unison.
‘Nonsense. I’ll – some hippocras. I’ll fetch it.’ The older woman hurried through the passage, leaving them seated on the bench. Lewgar felt foolish, unsure how to proceed. The look was not mirrored on Cecily’s face.
As exaggerated clatters came in through the passage, she whispered, her breath hot in his ear, ‘this old woman is a player.’ Aren’t we? he thought. Since leaving Cambridge, it seemed almost everyone was willing to be double-faced, from the false necromancer to the treacherous Hillyard to the false madman. Even Raleigh’s savages, smiling and frowning down from their painting, were fitted out as something they weren’t.
The Queen's Gold: A Christopher Marlowe Spy Thriller Page 20