‘Of course I would!’ I snapped. I followed the landlord through the kitchen and there, in the middle of a little stone room, on a chair brought in from the dining room, sat a thin little man in black clothing, a black coif tight around his head, his unshaven face twitching in discomfort. He was tied hand and foot to the chair, and he was pouring with sweat, even though the room was cold. I could smell him from the doorway.
‘Was anything taken?’ I asked the landlord.
‘Nothing, funnily enough. He made a bloody mess, though. I’ll send someone up to tidy.’
‘No, don’t do that!’ I said. ‘And leave us alone, would you? I want to ask this fellow something.’
‘I’m sure you do, sir,’ he leered. The thief watched him leave, and then watched me as I began to pace in front of him.
‘Who are you?’ I asked.
‘Nobody,’ he said. ‘My ankle hurts something horrible. Will you turn me over to the watch?’
‘If you fuck me about,’ I said. Drawing back my cape I showed him the green hilt of my knife. ‘I have enough money that I could put your head on a spike and stick it out of my window, and the watch would say nothing. Now then. If you weren’t after my silver, what were you after?’
‘Oh.’ He screwed up his bristly face in pain. ‘I was after your scratch, mate. I heard a noise and ran for it. Bit careless on the stairs.’
I knew thieves. I was once a thief myself. And I had been robbed more than once since I began to roam across Christendom. So I was neither impressed nor surprised by the idiot who sat before me. The only problem, as he had taken nothing, was what to do with him. I could turn him over to the night watch, who would lock him away or string him up according to how they felt, or I could let him go. Old habits die very slowly, and I did not like the thought of the night watch poking through my affairs, respectable as they were, so I caught him by the ear and twisted it until it would stretch no further.
‘Where do you live?’
‘Ebbgate Street,’ he squealed. Too quick. I pulled out my knife.
‘Listen. I’m going to let you go. But I want to be able to find you again if we need to discuss things further. Tell me where you live.’ I laid the watered steel blade against his cheek. ‘Because it’s easy to find a man without a nose,’ I said. The knife bit ever so gently into the bulge of his nostril.
‘Oh, Christ!’ he yelled. ‘Christ almighty! It’s Candlewyck Street, right by the church! Don’t do it, your lordship! ’Tweren’t my idea, I fucking swear!’ He cast his eyes desperately around the room and winced horribly, as if I had already sliced him. ‘He … he paid me to do it!’
‘Oh, come on, damn you! D’you expect me to believe that?’
‘No, I swear, my lord! I was put up to it … by the Frenchman, the wineseller in my street …’
‘Jesus.’ I sighed, and rubbed my forehead with exasperation. Suddenly I was more infuriated by his pathetic lying than by his botched thievery.
‘Right.’ I stepped back and sliced through the cords at his wrists, and then his ankles. ‘What’s your name? Your real name, mind?’
‘Stevin, sir. Honest.’
‘Honest, is it? Get out. I’ll be here for a few more days. If I see you in the street anywhere near here, or if the landlord’s boys see you, I will kill you. Do you understand?’ He nodded earnestly.
‘Thank you, your lordship,’ he said, levering himself upright. He limped to the door and I watched him go, knowing that the landlord’s three sons would give him a kicking to remember before he finally left this place. Wiping Thorn on my cape I felt a little upset that I had convinced the fool quite so easily of my savagery, for whatever else I had done in my life I had never been intentionally cruel. By God, I had scared him, though. Reluctantly I climbed the stairs to my chambers. The landlord was right: the thief had made a bloody awful mess. My satchel had been shaken out and my papers strewn about the floor, and my saddlebags treated the same way. By the way the papers were scattered I knew that the thief could not read, and as I had my purse with me, and the rest of my money safe in the landlord’s muniment chest, the only thing of value in the room had been information. Nothing was missing. But curiously, every item of clothing I had with me had been shaken out and thrown into a corner as if the thief had been sorting it. All the linens from the chest had been taken out and unfolded, and the bed had been stripped and the pallet turned over and ripped open. Cursing volubly, I retrieved my papers and clothes and stamped downstairs again, there to drink off a jug of the landlord’s Rhenish wine while the sleepy chambermaid put my room back together.
I was out of my bed the next day as the first cockerel of the morning was clearing his throat. I would be going to Westminster, of course, but first I had it in mind to see whether my burglar had been telling the truth, for after I had seen the curious damage he had done to my room I had begun to wonder what exactly he had been looking to steal, and it had woken me much too early with a headache that was probing the inside of my skull with a thin blade as sharp as spoiled wine. Something was not as it should be if the wretched Stevin was as clumsy and inept a burglar as he seemed to be. His tale about the Frenchman was, I reckoned, nothing more than a fool’s attempt to steer blame away from himself, but … but what had he been up to?
The bastard had woken me up early, and I resolved to return the favour. So I wrapped my cloak about me and slipped out past one of the landlord’s sons dozing by the embers in the fireplace, out into the bone-gnawing chill of dawn mist. The frigid vapour swirled lazily around me as I hurried up towards Saint Paul’s. I let the grey wisps play around my nostrils like the fumes of a fine wine: cat piss, nightsoil, chicken dung, rotten fruit and damp plaster, the rich, foul breath of London.
There were a couple of people up and about in Candlewyck Street: a newly wakened drunkard flopping like a beached fish in a doorway, and a peddler-woman setting off on her day’s rounds. Thinking her a more likely guide, I hailed her and, as she began to scowl, slipped her a brace of coins.
‘Is there a Frenchman in this street, mother?’ I asked her. ‘He’d be a rich man.’
She squinted at me and at the money in her hard, creased palm, and licked speculatively at a large coldsore on her upper lip.
‘The wineseller,’ she said at last. ‘Master Thybaut. Up there, the ’ouse that’s new-painted. ’E’s French, and e’s fucking rich an’ all.’
‘Well, then he’s who I want,’ I told her, and gave her another penny. She looked at me grimly, shugged her pack higher on her shoulders and stumped off in the direction of the Bridge. I peered in the other direction, and through the mist, rising like smoke from the kennel now that the noxious waters were growing warm, I saw the looming gables of a freshly whitewashed house. Walking closer I saw it was quite a grand building, not just newly painted but studded with bright coats of arms, carved heads of dogs and bearded men. Stevin, as I guessed, had picked the name of his street’s most conspicuous inhabitant. I should have known better. I spat out the taste of the city, which had worked its way, as it always did, up my nose and down my throat. Thybaut the unpopular Frenchman. Perhaps that ought to have been good enough for me, but I had come this far without breakfast and still felt a lingering fury over last night’s intrusion, so without really thinking I jumped across the kennel and stalked up to the Frenchman’s door. I knocked once, twice, and as I was raising the bronze mermaid for a third knock the latch rattled and the door opened a hand’s breadth. A pale face peered out.
‘What do you want?’ The servant demanded rudely.
‘Is your master at home?’
‘He is not. He is at the palace.’ The man placed an extra emphasis on the last word, and narrowed his eyes at me, as if he had uttered the spell that would make me vanish.
‘Ah. Where I shall be in an hour or so. Tell me: what does Monsieur Thybaut do for a living? Is he a wineseller?’
The servant’s eyes widened at my impertinence.
‘A wineseller? Monsieur Thybaut de Fouras
is no wineseller, sirrah! My master is purveyor of wines to Her Majesty Queen Isabella …’
‘Fouras – your master is a Poitevin, I take it.’
‘What business of yours could that possibly be?’ The man was almost choking with indignation, but stepping back from the door I flicked a silver coin through the dark slot between his upraised arm and the door-jamb and we both listened to it tinkle on the flagstones inside.
‘For your trouble,’ I told him brightly, and left him to his grand airs. No wonder Thybaut the Wineseller was not a popular man on Candlewyck Street. If I were a wretch like Stevin, I would have named him too. A simple burglary then, no more, and Stevin a more than usually simple burglar. What a waste of time – and on an empty stomach, to boot.
Even in the short while I had been distracted, Candlewyck Street had come to life. Folk were trudging out to work, or to market or, in the case of the two crones who leaned upon each other, the folds of their grimy black dresses blended into one shadowy garment, doubtless on their way to some empty chapel. There was a growing thud and clatter and here came a huddle of bullocks, wide-eyed, heads down, bound for Smooth Field and the chopper. I stepped into a doorway to let them pass, and turned towards my hostelry and breakfast, but I had not gone twenty paces when I heard loud voices raised in a mix of sorrow and irritation – a curiously Londonish sound – and peering down a shadowy and damp-looking alley, I saw a group of men struggling to lift something from the ground. Something long and awkward. With a wobble and a heave they hoisted it up onto their shoulders. An arm fell slackly onto one man’s back and he cursed vehemently, trying to shrug away the pale hand, its fingers already beginning to curl around whatever it is that Death puts into the hands of those he has taken. The men came towards me, and the bare feet of their burden passed through a shaft of tentative sunlight, which striped across toes and then ankles, and showed me that one of them, the left, was swollen and bruised reddish-blue.
‘Do you know this man?’ I asked the nearest fellow. He was red-faced, sweating even though the morning was still cool, his thin black hair plastered to his forehead.
‘Stevin,’ he said shortly.
‘What happened to him?’
‘Listen, I don’t mean to be rude, brother, but fuck off out of it, will you?’ It was the man on the other side of Stevin’s knees who spoke, taller and younger than his mates, his face a welter of pimples, a fresh scar from a knife or a ring on his jaw.
‘Not rude in the slightest, brother,’ I replied easily, stepping in front of them and making them halt, clumsily, in the mouth of the alley. The three men behind muttered something foul. ‘Listen to me,’ I went on. ‘Here’s two farthings for the sexton, and two more for the innkeeper of your choice.’ I tucked the four coins under the legging band on the corpse’s right leg. ‘And all I want to know is what happened to poor old Stevin here. What about it, lads?’
‘Waste of your time and money, mate,’ said the spotty young man. ‘As you know him, you’ll know he’s always been a waster. And what would a gent like yourself be wanting with a mudlark like Stevin, anyway?’
‘Shall I ask the questions?’ I said. ‘Or shall I pay for the sexton’s beer instead of yours? I just want to know how he ended up dead.’
‘Got pissed and fell out the window,’ said one of the men at the back. ‘Broke ’is back. Now ’e folds the wrong way in the middle. Hinged like a fucking door. Want to feel?’
‘So he lived down there?’ I went on, ignoring the offer. A forlorn reek of stale beer and fresher piss was beginning to rise from the corpse, and the men were wrinkling their noses.
‘I rented out a corner to him,’ said the sweaty man. ‘Nice pile of rags, and away from the damp spot. He was out most nights anyway, so I never saw him.’
‘And when you did ’e was pissed,’ added the spotty one.
‘Up your pipe, Daniel,’ chimed the man at Stevin’s head. ‘He was a good shit. And what he was doing to fall out the windy, I can’t imagine.’
‘Bothering a tart, I expect,’ said Daniel.
‘The sill might have been rotted,’ muttered the sweaty man, ‘but not badly, not badly. Shouldn’t ’ave put his weight on it, should he?’
‘So you saw him fall?’ I said.
‘No, no. Spent the night … elsewhere, if you get me. Came back to find him on the front step. And it gave me a bit of a turn.’
‘What time?’
‘Oh, before sunup. The brothers were starting their racket over in the chantry. Can we be off now, mate? He was a skinny bastard, but death puts lead into ’em, if you know what I mean?’
‘On your way, lads, and I thank you.’ I turned to go, but another thought struck me. ‘By the by, what do you think of Master Thybaut the Wineseller?’
‘Who?’ scowled the young man, wincing as he adjusted Stevin’s weight on his skinny shoulder.
‘Thybaut de Fouras. He lives in that big house yonder.’ I pointed, and they looked, and shook their heads.
‘The Frenchie?’ said the man who had defended Stevin’s memory. ‘Don’t know nothing about him.’
‘Seems a decent enough soul,’ said the red-faced one. ‘Gave my sister a groat at Christmastide.’
‘Did Stevin know him?’
‘Fucked if I know,’ said the mudlark’s friend. ‘But I’d doubt it. Stevin was at the river, or about his night’s work, or in the ale-house when he wasn’t sleeping. What would he want with a Frenchie, save to rob him? And as to that, he wouldn’t ’ave dared. A villain, God rest him, but he didn’t ’ave great daring in him. And that …’ and he dipped his head towards the Frenchman’s house, new whitewash beginning to gleam in the sunlight. ‘That would have been shitting on his own doorstep, wouldn’t it? He wasn’t the brightest spark, but he wasn’t stupid.’ A drop of sweat was beading on his beer-veined nose, and the look in his eyes was almost pleading. The dead are heavy.
I let them stumble off, and made my own way back west, to my lodgings and, after I had broken my fast, to Westminster. I almost wished that I had not gone to Candlewyck Street, for instead of a simple answer I had more questions – or did I? Men fall out of windows and break their backs, and a man would be more apt to do it drunk than sober, perhaps. He would have been lame from that twisted ankle, and I could imagine him dejected or angry at the painful humiliation his adventure had brought him that night. That there was a wealthy French merchant in Candlewyck Street did not surprise me: there might be twenty more of them for all I knew. A wretch like Stevin would have harboured many grudges against rich men, those who lived in nice houses, and perhaps he had some reason to hate the French. One thing was certain: I could not picture that whey-faced popinjay of a servant admitting a mudlark to the house of Monsieur Thybaut under any circumstances whatsoever.
By the time I had drawn near to Westminster the whole thing had shrunk to yet another of the inconveniences of city life, and I was resigned to my tedious routine, though in a much worsened mood than yesterday. But when I had made my way to the antechamber, following a path through the halls that had become all too familiar, I was greeted with something like a smile from Sir Edward.
‘This way,’ he said graciously, with a twitch that might have been a grudging bow. Amazed, I followed him into the inner room that I had penetrated on my first day at the palace, and with a tremble of excitement watched him turn the handle of the smaller door. But instead of the king’s chamber, or a great hall, or whatever else I had expected, I followed Sir Edward down a wide corridor hung with old but still bright tapestries that I knew must have cost a small fortune a hundred years ago. We came to a door, and with an obsequious smile daubed, I thought, unwillingly across his livid features, Sir Edward opened it and ushered me into a large room with a long window of leaded glass that looked out over the water meadows of Thorney Island. Many racks of candles added warmth to the watery spring light, and a fire burned in the hearth. Around it sat five or six people, most of them court ladies in the finest clothes I had seen at We
stminster. As I stepped over the threshold, they turned to me, and a tall man stood up and strode over to me, hand outstretched.
‘Monsieur Petrus? I bid you welcome! I am so sorry that you have been marooned in the waiting room – when we heard that such a distinguished and interesting guest was being neglected, it seemed plain that we must put matters to rights! Come, sit with us.’
This was more like it, I thought, though it was not the audience I wanted, and still counted, in truth, as more buggering about. I could not deny, however, that the four ladies, who I now saw were nothing less than royal ladies-in-waiting, were comely. By their dress and braided hair I guessed they were Queen Eleanor’s companions, and the young man sitting with them looked to be a royal equerry, as did the fellow who had greeted me. It was too late to politely refuse their hospitality anyway, for the doorman had shut the door behind me. So I bowed my finest court bow and allowed myself to be led to a bench close to the fire, where I settled myself onto a fine cushion of purple India silk. This was, certainly, better than the waiting room, for instead of my usual sort of companion – bored or angry merchants, nervous petty noblemen, all of them twitching, sniffing and spluttering their impatience – a pale young woman with red hair and a lovely oval face gently brushed with freckles was leaning towards me.
‘You are the famous hunter of relics, aren’t you?’ she breathed.
I shrugged, making a show of modesty. ‘I’m not sure if I am famous,’ I replied. ‘I merely serve the Lord.’
‘Oh, we all serve the Lord!’ cried another woman. She had a large bow-shaped mouth and green eyes, and her chestnut hair curled out from under a cloth-of-gold mantle. ‘But few of us get to be so bold, or to see such treasures, as you have.’
‘Dear ladies, who have you been listening to?’ I laughed. ‘My life is no more interesting than that of a counting-house clerk.’
‘So it was not you who brought the Crown of Thorns out of Constantinople?’ said the redhead, pouting in a most charming manner.
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