The Point of Death (Tom Musgrave Series Book 1)

by Peter Tonkin

  'The nearest way to do that is to go through his rooms before the authorities can, I agree,' said Tom. 'Which end of Holborn did he live? Not up by Southampton House-'

  'No,' said Will coldly. Will had spent much of the last few years on the fringes of the Earl of Southampton's circle, and had been his servant for the last eighteen months, dedicating some of his greatest poetry to his master and - some said - sharing his bed from time to time as Marlowe had sometime shared Tom Walsingham's. Will had left the young earl's household mere weeks since to rejoin the Burbages - and the recently formed Rose Company. There were whispers that Southampton, like the Earl of Leicester seven years ago, had given him a thousand pounds. But sign of such riches was there none.

  'Morton's rooms are at the east end, past the Inns, near Turnagain Lane,' said Will now, breaking Tom's chain of thought.

  'Close on Alsatia,' said Tom. 'A man of many parts, then, if he is privy to that thieves' den as well as the inns and the theatres. But not Southampton House, you say?'

  'Not while I have been there.'

  'Better known, perhaps, at Essex House, then. The two are close enough.'

  'In all but distance,' admitted Will.

  'I must across to Westminster in the morning at any rate,' continued Tom, quietly, ears a-strain for that near-silent footfall close behind, mind focused on what Will was letting slip about the relationships between the great Earls of Southampton and Essex to whom he had been so close, and the murky world of thievery and murder which clung to their cloak-tails like mud. 'I'm happy enough to talk to my Lord Strange's secretary. Even though Lord Strange is dead we still may have some call on his name and his purse. My name is on the list of the Rose's company and they know I can speak for Masters Henslowe, Burbage and the rest of you. But I am also known at Court as Master of Defence. More and more of them are making their pilgrimage out to my long room at Blackfriars. Lords of all stripe and seniority among them. Their Graces of Essex and Southampton soon enough, I daresay. And to be frank, my name is not unknown in certain corridors. The Musgraves are captains of the Bewcastle Waste. My Uncle Tom reports direct to My Lord Chamberlain and the Council.'

  'Hist...' spat Ugo. 'We are followed.'

  Tom nodded and the three of them fell silent again. They were coming close to the edge of the King's Field now. Beyond that stretched Lambeth Marsh, a sodden desert crossed by paths a little dryer than the mire.

  The King's Field was higher, a slight eminence around which the Thames wound between the twin cities of London and Westminster on the north bank and the separate conurbations of Bankside and Lambeth on the south. As the three men and the dog­ filled cart slowed to turn upwards along a pale path towards the Scavenger's dust heaps and the plague pits nearby, three men stepped out of the shadows, blocking their way. They held clubs and long, hook-topped poles.

  'Whaddayou want here, cully?' said the largest, the leader.

  Tom stepped forward, hand on sword-hilt, casual but ready enough. 'We're about Master Henslowe's business.'

  'Oh aye? What business be that?'

  'To carry these carrion dogs down to the Archbishop's palace at Lambeth.'

  'They're Scavenger's meat, them dogs. Scavenger's like to want them, Master Henslowe's business or no.'

  'The Scavenger'll have to take them then,' said Tom easily, and his sword whipped out into the moonlight like quicksilver.

  'Hold!' cried a great voice, even as the three ruffians took their first steps into battle. A light flared. Four large men stood under a flaring torch across the north-running reach of the road. The Watch did not patrol south of the river- nor in some areas north of it, Alsatia among them. Or rather the City Watch did not. These men were something else entirely. These were the Bailiff's men. As the Bishop of Winchester owned the South bank up to Lambeth Palace Walls, the officers employed by his Bailiff had jurisdiction to take down felons and lock them in his prison at the Clink. Under the aegis of the Bailiff, these men were the law south of the river. Tom, Will and Ugo knew it. The Scavenger's men knew it. 'If those dogs be bound to my Lord Archbishop,' said the leader of the watch­ men, 'then it is Master Henslowe's business and the Archbishop's business. It is no business for the Scavenger or his men. Go trawl your hooks through some other midden, club some of these triple-damned wildcats.'

  Thus was the law laid down.

  ***

  Had they been concerned about any guards - or indeed any noise - the cats laid their fears speedily to rest. The Scavenger's dust heap was alive with them, hunting the rats that also infested the place, quarrelling, courting, screaming at the moon. Tom essayed some dry exercise of his wit to cover some understandable nervousness as they unloaded Julius Morton and fell to with the crowbars and jemmies from his chest. On the third repetition he gave up, his words drowned by the cacophony of the cats - even though they were several hundred yards away on the dust heaps while the three men broke open the unguarded mouth of the King's Field Plague Pit.

  Under the skirts of the departing cloud cover, the winds were light and flighty, flirting from one way, then another, to ruffle hair and stroke cheeks like the coolest fingers of the hottest bawd. But they brought with them more sensations than delicate touch. They brought with them a range of odours which would have turned the stomach of the most hardened practitioner of physicke. From the river - though it was the cleanest part of London - came the stenches of mud, effluent, putrefaction and fish - living, recently deceased, long dead, rotten and near mummified. From the dust heaps came the stench of rotting food, clothing, excrement, overlain with a burning dose of wildcat scent, excrement and urine. But this was as nothing compared to the stench which came with the opening of the first rough board across the black maw of the plague pit. Mercifully, the moon was too low to penetrate far into the hollow where the dead lay. Carefully numbered in their hundreds in each of the boroughs and parishes where they had died, carefully entered into the records by the clerks, alerted by the Searchers whose job it was to search through the bodies, looking for information, valuables and probable cause of death. But away from the parish registers, the records simply stopped. No one knew how many unnumbered hundreds or thousands of corpses mouldered down here. And none of the three living men up here was going down for a closer look. Awed, they stood and stared into the black Hell's mouth they had opened. Little brightnesses winked back at them - white, red, green. Little scuttlings and scurryings told them of things alive down there - rats at the very least. Wild cats too, for the area was overrun with them. God alone knew what else. And God was welcome to the knowledge, thought the three of them all alike.

  'To business,' ordered Tom after a moment. They looped a noose around Julius Morton's body and pulled it tight beneath his arms, then they lowered him into the pit. As soon as the weight of the body came off the rope, Tom reached over to loop it round the lowest beam and tie it into place. If the time came, it would be an easy enough matter to pull him up again. Then it was but a matter of minutes before the covering was back in place, exactly as they had found it, and not even the most careful watch-keeper would have been any the wiser.

  It was as well they were quick about their work, for the wind, as fickle as the bawd it pretended to be, was carrying the reek of the carrion dogs up to the army of wildcats on the Scavenger's heaps, and the dangerous creatures were sidling down to explore already.

  The three of them turned away with great relief to finish their mission - they really did, after all, have to deliver Master Henslowe's dog meat to the Archbishop's Master of Hounds. Over the crest of the hill, the rough track they had been following led swiftly and easily down to the brightness of the Archbishop's lower garden gate hard by his kennels. The cart ran easily and began to rumble almost merrily, speeding downwards towards the light. So that none of the three adventurers knew of the seething black sea of wildcats which spread like liquid tar over the wooden mouth of the Plague Pit, then paused there to lick up the cold dogs' blood.

  So that the black-clad man wh
o had followed them from the Rose, overheard much of their conversation and overseen most of their work, had to kick the screeching creatures viciously out of the way before he could kneel and check in detail exactly what they had been doing here.

  Chapter Ten - The Mistress of the Game

  Will's wherry dropped Tom at Goat Stairs, having swung north to drop the sleepy Ugo at Blackfriars. Then, as it was slack tide at midnight, it turned to run eastward ready to shoot the bridge and drop the weary playwright at Fresh Wharf. Tom, unlike his two companions, felt full of restless energy still. He tossed a two-penny groat into the boatman's hand and turned to run up the bustle on the stairs into the seething cauldron of Bankside.

  The atmosphere, the excitement, gripped him at once. Since the closing of the City Gates, the whole area had changed its character. The cooling air was full of a heady mix of lust and danger. All sense of control and order, loosely in place during the day, was gone now. There was a feeling that the only rules were what a man made up for himself - and this, in Elizabeth's strictly ordered society, was as powerful as the most potent drug. Like the City Watch, God's own ordinance did not seem to run here. And the rules the Bishop of Winchester's men enforced had little enough in common with the commandments his Worship preached o' Sundays. This was Greene's graveyard where the poor mad poet had run with a whore, sister to the King of Cutpurses, Cutting Ball, famously hanged at Tyburn five years back; who had scrawled off his poems, plays and pamphlets while being consumed by the pox. And if Kit Marlowe had lost his life downriver in Deptford, here was where he had caused the death warrant to be written. It was no wonder that Master Henslowe, who owned so much, slept safe in his bed, far, far away from here; or that Hemminge and Condell crossed the river at nightfall to escape the dark temptations; it was no wonder the straitlaced Ugo or the weary Will, with two shows on the morrow, should cross the river or run the bridge rather than coming here. For there was nothing forbidden on the Bankside, if a man had the means to pay.

  Tom shouldered his way along the busy thoroughfare, past the fronts of tavern after tavern. There were no normal houses there - the stews separated merely by alleys that bore their names, leading back into gardens - walled for the most part - that were simply extensions of the business. He pushed past the Rose Tavern, past the Bear, the Hartshorn, Ad Leonem and the Horseshoe, all within fifty yards. Then he paused. The Elephant stood slightly back, its form squarer and taller than the rest, its famous grey sign dull in the pale moonlight. Beside it, on the far side of Oliphant Alley stood the Herte, its sign much clearer, the white deer catching the silver from the sky. Although it was a masculine hart on the sign, everyone knew that it was the fair soft female hinds within that the customers came to see. Hinds, jades, bawds, trugs, sluts, trollops, trulls or whores to the better class clients who thronged here. Morts, stales, doxies, punks or bitches to the cant of local thieves. Winchester geese, named for the Bishop who owned the place. Mistresses of the game. And the games were without number or limit.

  As Tom, careful of his purse, pushed across to the wide-flung portal of the Elephant, a vagary of conversation came through the hectic babble to his ear. 'Nah there's a mort in this stew thinks herself a proper coney-catcher. Foreign doxy. Italian. Thinks she's the queen of cozeners. But there's me for one as'd be happy to play her at her own game.'

  The moment he heard this, Tom was shouldering towards the source of it – that dark alley between the two taverns. His ears were pricked for more of the thieves' cant, flowing apparently unremarked through the noise and bustle all around. There was a gang of professional card-sharps close by planning to rob the game he was planning to join by the sound of things. His eyes narrowed.

  'Morts in these places is all trulls. And trulls is none too clever, leastways up in Islington they ain't. We can turn her from a bitch to a bird in less time it takes to tell. Shall I be setter? I can do the Kentish gab.' His accent deepened, became that of a well­to-do businessman.

  'Aye. We need no verser for she's at play. Jack, you be the barnacle, and I'll be the setter and Sam, you be the purchase, for you have the pale young courtier's look about you. Now walk gentle and cut benely. We're country cousins tonight.'

  Out of the shadowy mouth of the alley three sturdy ruffians, looking indeed like well-to-do yokels up from Kent with the first of the season's apples and cider, wandered into the place. Looking less conspicuous and much less out of place, Tom followed them in.

  The Elephant was heaving. In effect, like most of the taverns here, it was a private house with a licence to serve drink and allow gaming. The room Tom entered now was a good, big parlour, lit with candles and flambards. At a dozen or so tables sat a range of employees and customers. The whores for hire walked about, some of them doubling as waitresses, their white bellycheats or aprons announcing that they were for hire. Most of the tables were laden with drink - a range of types from cider through ale to various wines, all in a range of vessels - pewter, leather, thick green glass. At the back of the parlour roared an open fire and the potman's wife tended a cauldron as assiduously as he tended the barrels. The tables nearest the fire were laden with platters and spoons - of pewter, wood and horn. These were shared by anyone hungry enough to be partaking of the pottage also for sale. At the table nearest the fire sat three young girls with their tops open and their soft white breasts on display. Opposite them, eyes bulging, sat the real country cousins, parting with groat after groat as the girls ate and ate. These were not whores - the country cousins would get no ease from them - but they pulled in almost as much money. Tom's lip twisted in a half smile. The smell of the pottage wafted past his nose, but the odours of earlier in the night had killed his appetite. And he had other games afoot. He pushed on through.

  Behind the main parlour there were other, smaller rooms, leading past the busy staircase to the equally busy garden, from where he could hear the lazy, lascivious playing of a lute. And a boy, singing a languid love song. In the first of the rooms sat the card-players. Tom eased himself round the door, eyes busy. The three coney­ catchers, playing their parts too well, were still outside drooling over the merchandise. Tom could set himself up to take more of a hand in the game.

  The table was dominated by the most beautiful woman he had seen on the Bankside. Broad shoulders supported alike a deep bosom of ivory-white and a long, slim neck. Her face was oval, her mouth wide and generous, her nose short, her wide eyes the colour of dark Sicilian olives. Her forehead was broad, high, unlined and capped with a gleaming wave of ebony hair. The arms reaching past the beautifully proportioned, perfectly presented cleavage were round and slightly dimpled. The hands were long, the fingers exceptionally so, capped with almond-shaped nails buffed to an opaline sheen.

  Their eyes met. 'Signor?' At the sound of her warm, deep voice, the two men at play opposite her turned, frowning. They were both young gentlemen and were dressed like courtiers. Tom could hold his own in this company as well as in any other. 'Signorina,' he said easily. 'Gentlemen. Thomas Musgrave, Master of Defence.' His smile widened. They had heard of him. The lady's eyes flickered up and down, speakingly. 'Constanza d'Agostino,' she said, her voice deep, vibrant. He bowed. Their eyes met as he straightened; something hot passed between them.

  He sat. A glance across the table-top told him all he needed to know about the game and the stakes. He reached into his purse as the cards fell in front of him and scattered a handful of gold across the plain deal boards.

  There was little conversation, for Triomphe was a demanding game, and all the players were desperate to win. As he held hand after hand, Tom secretly checked the edges of the cards for folds or marks. He studied their backs as well as their faces. He glanced furtively around the room looking for mirrors, glasses, reflective surfaces. The audience - mostly watching the lady rather than the play - was restless, passing trade. There were no barnacles amongst them, spying cards and sending signals. So no one at the table was coney-catching or cheating yet. None of the other players was a setter
, in charge of a cheating game; none of them was a purchase set to walk away with the ill-gotten gains. The pile of gold in front of the beautiful Italian was there because she was a better player than the other two, and Tom was able to hold his own as he waited for the three from Oliphant Alley outside.

  'The King of Cups takes it,' he said at last, and reached across for the little pot of gold. As he did so, the atmosphere in the room changed and without looking up he knew who had arrived at last.

  'D'ye play, Mistress?' demanded the setter. Tom looked round like the other two, as jealous as they to be sharing the intimate interest of the bella donna. In the light he looked more presentable. A solid merchant - as well-dressed as Henslowe, though with none of the quiet élan which bespoke Tom to be a gentleman. This was the setter, though, getting ready to rob the game. 'Paul Carter. Merchant of Chiddingstone, up from Kent with a load of apples - best on the Cheap tomorrow. Now, what's our game?'

  'Triomphe,' supplied Sigorina Constanza as the big man settled himself at the table. 'Ha. I'm a Mumchance man myself,' admitted Master Carter, getting out his gold, but he fell to easily enough. A moment or two later a pale, almost courtly young man joined them. He introduced himself as Samuel something and mumbled into the fluff of his beard so that Sam was all they heard of him. Tom glanced at the two courtiers but they didn't recognise the newcomer. This would be the purchase, then, thought Tom and began to look around for Jack the barnacle.