by Peter Tonkin
'And this work,' asked Poley, his intellect involved now. 'Has it yielded aught?'
'Yes,' said Will roundly. 'I believe that it has.'
'Expound, then, oh Master of Cyphers,' directed Tom quietly.
'By Socratic method, then, for I have not yet plumbed the depths.'
'By Socratic method if you must,' said Tom, glancing across at Poley. Teaching through asking questions seemed to be a popular method among intelligencers, he thought.
'Whose house has received the most pernicious visitings of the plague?' asked Will.
'Most every house in London during the last two years,' answered Tom.
'More than the common run. More than any,' insisted Will.
In the little silence, Tom glanced across to Poley and caught the frown which dis figured his lean, saturnine face. Poley knew the answer, he realised with a prickle of revelation that came close to an icy shiver. 'Master Poley has an answer to your question, Will,' he said, his voice suddenly gravelly and hoarse.
They all looked at Poley and the spymaster's frown deepened. 'The player speaks of the House of Outremer. In the last year almost every person living at his London house at Wormwood in Jewry has died. Lord Outremer himself, his wife and children, servants, cats and dogs. Even the very rats, they say, die in the cellars of Wormwood in Jewry. And that's an odd thing for a family whose fortunes were founded on herbs, medicines-'
'Spices,' added Will. 'Peppers and the like ... And there you have it,' he cried, so excited that he overlooked the tone in which Poley had described him as a 'player'. 'But you do not have it all. For with old Lord Outremer dead without issue, who is like to inherit?'
'Hugh Outram,' answered Constanza, who had not wasted her year in London without picking up whispers from all quarters, and the juicier the better. 'Baron Cotehel. Third of the Unholy Trinity with Wriothsley and Devereux, Earls of Southampton and Essex. I hear tell the three of them are Raleigh's School of Night reborn, dealing in alchemy, necromancy, all manner of unholy arts. And wait, wasn't Kit Marlowe supposed to be-'
Will cut off her gush of gossip with uncharacteristic rudeness. 'And the London home of Hugh Outram, Baron Cotehel, soon to be Lord Outremer, master of the pepper trade?' he persisted, aglow with febrile, almost frenetic excitement.
But Tom knew this answer, for he had been invited there to give young Baron Cotehel the benefit of his tuition. 'Highmeet House,' he said. 'In the parish of St Magnus.'
'Highmeet St Magnus,' confirmed Will. 'You have it.'
'I have what?' Tom glanced around the steamy little room. Constanza pouted, hurt by Will's rudeness. The kitchen wench rubbed Poley's back, lower and lower, her expression dreamy. Poley himself still frowned, and Tom suspected he saw all too clearly what his dazzling friend was driving at. But Tom had teased him once already. Time to stir his own heat-addled wits. 'Two houses, then, Wormwood already cursed by plague and Highmeet like to succeed it. Literally, if you have the right of Morton's curse. One family, the elder line deceased, the cadet bound to inherit.'
'You have it, Tom. The houses. The names of the houses.'
'Wormwood and Highmeet. Dear God, Will, you're in the right. Wormmeet. 'Tis the two conjoined. Could this be?' he asked, turning to Poley. 'Could Morton have been warning his contact against Hugh Outram?'
'He's the only one of the Three not at Nonesuch,' admitted Poley heavily. 'Essex is Master of the Horse and the Queen needs him to oversee her next move down to Richmond. Southampton is there with Lord Burghley, his guardian, for four more months to the very day. If Morton was caught spying on any of them, then it would be Outram he would have to avoid.'
'If,' said Tom. 'If. If. If. We have too much conjecture and not enough certainty, even from you, Master Poley.'
Poley stood up so swiftly that the steaming water cascaded out on to the rough wooden floor. He stood for a moment, looking around. His clothing was with Tom's steaming in front of the fire and there was no sheet brought by fair hands to cover his loins. But he cared not, it seemed. 'Then we had best look over the letters he had sent us,' he said. 'At the very least your playercodemaster here can reclaim the lines Morton had secreted at his lodgings amongst other, weightier writings. I need a napkin,' he concluded. 'A gown and a private chamber and for God's grace, some peace.'
Poley got his napkin and, soon after, a gown. He and Tom were made free of the tapster's Sunday best. They removed into the quietest of the public rooms, but peace was hard to come by. Will, signally unsatisfied with the mere return of his playsheets, departed moodily, for it was well past ten now and the exigencies of two performances and much brainwork were taking their toll, and his bed in St Helen's beckoned. Constanza, at Tom's request, went off to see whether something more solid than the usual supper could be culled from the ordinary pot below. And so they were, briefly, alone. But before Poley could fall to his urgent inspection of Morton's papers another interloper arrived. It was Ugo.
'They say Alsatia's still alight,' he reported at once. 'But the blaze is dying back, so I'm told.'
'God's death, Ugo, you haven't been waiting there all this time?'
The Dutchman laughed grimly. 'Nay. I've had other business to keep me busy, Tom. Did you know you were followed to Hanging Sword Court?'
'No. By whom?'
'A shiftless scoundrel attired in black.'
Tom shivered, suddenly, and the wound in his arm gave a poignant twinge. He thought of the ambidextrous, dressed all in black, looking back up Rose Alley as Julius Morton lay dead on the table, killed at his hand. Perhaps there was more blood to be shed before his account was settled in full. 'This watcher in black,' he said. 'Could you see what he carried? One sword or two? Could he have been of Spanish blood d'you think? A Mediterranean man?'
'I cannot say,' said Ugo in his solid, forthright manner. 'I can tell you little more than I have. But he has dogged your heels like the veriest hound all day.'
'That must have taken some cunning,' observed Poley.
'Cunning indeed, and from both of us. I've never seen such shift to speed out from under a maze of falling bricks and down the very banks of the Fleet with the pair of you bobbing like mermen on the back of your river horse. You kept my guns safe, I trust.'
'Safer than my sword.'
'Aye, I heard tell. And that's the next point of my news. For when my man had followed you across the river - with me scarcely a wherry-length behind - I saw him talking to three ruffians. Solid-looking men, armed with solid-looking clubs. I chose to follow him rather than them and so I think I missed something of your battle. But I did not miss its aftermath, for when all the hue and cry was done, with my man sitting supping sack in the Bear as quiet as you like, a bloody man came running up to him, all distressed. I heard little of the conversation but the pair of them started up again at once and were off through the door like hares at a coursing. I followed the pair of them down to the waterside - a quiet little bank below Goat Stairs - where they hauled me out another ruffian with his leg all torn and his privities on show. After a moment more of talk the wounded birds limped off into the night and my man came back up on to Bankside.'
'Well, God's my life,' breathed Tom. 'And whither went our fight-maker then, pray?'
'Down to the counter, as bold as brass, with his purse in his hand. When I saw that I thought I'd best come here with all good speed.'
'He's gone to buy the third man free,' said Tom, pulling himself to his feet, stiffly and a little unsteadily. 'He'll be done before we can stop it and vanish into the night.'
'Hold, Tom,' said Talbot Law. 'He'll not have bought him out of the counter. 'Tis my prison and I left word. No one can get him out of my cage except myself. And that, I think, I shall do presently. If I'm quick, I'll get the both of them.'
As Tom gave the guns to a tutting Ugo, and Constanza stuck her head round the door to promise a resurrected pottage, then vanished to get Tom her fork, the two men at last found the leisure to turn to Morton's papers.
They starte
d with the letter addressed to Poley, talking quietly as they gingerly opened it and fell to closer scrutiny of its contents. 'It was probably a mere trap,' said Poley. 'Morton must have left it for anyone who knew what he was about and for whom he was working.'
'Men such as he feared the most,' agreed Tom. 'Knowing that of all the papers there they would hasten to open this first, and so fall victim to the Spanish pins. Take care. There is one still left. Here, let me take it and keep it safe. All the uses I have heard of this device require that the pins be poisoned. Do you know an apothecary skilled in poisons?'
'Perhaps,' admitted Poley guardedly. 'But such knowledge is dangerous.'
'Almost all your knowledge seems to be dangerous,' said Tom seriously, and Ugo snorted with grim amusement. 'However,' continued Tom, 'let us consider the letter further. Let us suppose that Morton wrote a genuine letter to you, but had not the means of opportunity to put it in your hands. Could he have relied upon your finding it should anything happen to him?'
'All things being equal,' said Poley slowly. 'I did find it, after all.'
'In that case, the pins are a way of making certain that yours would be the only eyes to see the message. Would you have taken care how you broke the seal, as I did with my sword?'
'Of course. The package was heavy. Stiff. I would have opened it most circumspectly. He would have known that.'
'Then we can assume that he would have written freely to you. This is his parting word. Quod erat demonstrandum, I believe. What does it say?'
' "Poley. In haste and in the knowledge that if you read this I am dead. In that case look well to Kate. I have warned Gil Brown to stay close at the Rose for fear of her, but he is not to be relied on for he is slow. My end may be swift but hers would be lengthy and torturous. I fear the Three, though only one is abroad. They have at play not one Don but two, and it is with one of them that the matter of Lathom lies, I fear. They have at play also Phellippes and his crew, I believe, but their object remains obscure. Of one thing I am certain, there are more than are found in Mantua and one such has visited Wormwood in Jewry with what results all the world knows, but with what object and at whose behest? After the play I have told her to ask Master Seyton of Wormwood the manner of things there. I have also given her the name of the Searcher of St Margaret's Old Jewry. But which of the other concerns have been so visited as Wormwood? Kenilworth, or Buckstones, rather? St Augustine's Papey? And what part of the great plan can so many deaths pretend? Such men as you and I must look about us, Poley. Warn Gil Brown. Have a care to Kate, I prithee." '
'I would hazard,' said Tom when Poley had finished reading this, 'that it was Gil Brown who told you of the play?'
'It was.'
'And who lay under the dust pile in Alsatia with his gullet torn asunder?'
'Sadly, yes.'
' 'Tis too late to warn him, then. But what of her?'
'She would not go to Wormwood in Jewry. She would not dare.' But Poley did not sound too certain.
'If she went, she went a day since,' warned Tom. 'And knowing nothing of Morton's death, like as not. But his words on stage would be likely to send her to the house as agreed, if she's of any determination at all.'
'She is My Lady Determination,' admitted Poley.
'Then she has gone.'
'But it is the Lion's den. Death to all who enter there, save only Seyton, the Chamberlain.'
'Then we'd better shift to follow her straightaway.'
'Not without some preparation. And not without some force.'
'We are a force of three,' said Tom.
'Well-armed if we can call in at my rooms to supply our want of guns and blades,' added Ugo, grimly.
'Four if we can tempt the Bishop's Bailiff north of the Thames with us. He might well come exploring on the strength of Lord Hunsdon's writ.'
'On the strength of that I could command the Watch,' said Poley, growing thoughtful.
'If the City Watch are worth commanding, then I'm a Cardinal,' growled Ugo.
'Five indeed,' persisted Tom, all restless energy now, 'if we could stop off at St Helen's and rouse Will Shakespeare. 'Tis hard by Wormwood Street and no distance from Old Jewry.'
'Indeed,' said Constanza suddenly. 'And have you noticed that, when things begin to gather into trouble, at the Rose, at Southampton House, at Wormwood in Jewry, why there, right at hand, is your Master of Cyphers? And remember, Tom,' she added, sending a darkling glance across at Poley as he spoke, 'Will Shakespeare was as good a friend to Kit Marlowe as he is a friend to you.'
Chapter Fifteen - Wormwood
The invasion of Wormwood in Jewry began with a mess of pottage. The serving girl who had bathed Poley arrived with two wooden trenchers piled with the thick stew of pork belly, root vegetables and beans thickened with oatmeal and spiced with sage. There was salt, but it never left the ordinary room, where it sat on the high table. The scrapings of the ordinary pot were supplemented by two legs of capon, spit-roast, and a slab of coarse bread broken in two. Poley fell to at once, using the one horn spoon provided, his dagger and his fingers. Tom, suddenly ravenous, would have done so too, though he lacked the spoon until Poley was done with it - and a dagger come to that. Had not Constanza slipped off to get her fork, Tom would have been reduced to eating with his fingers like a beggar. Or, more likely, to waiting like the poor gentleman he was until the implements were wiped and passed. A bottle of sack completed the repast, and Tom got to the pewter tankard first.
He was on his second cup when Talbot Law returned. 'I have your assailant,' he said shortly, 'but his would-be liberator's gone.'
'Bring him up,' suggested Tom.
'He's coming,' said Talbot, and a rhythmic crashing proved his words. After a moment more, the door heaved open and two burly warders hauled the leader of the cardsharps and Tom's main assailant into the room. Round his neck he wore an iron collar which was attached to two solid bars perhaps a yard in length reaching down between his knees to ankle gyves. From midway on each bar there stood out to right and left another shorter bar ending in wrist cuffs. The effect of the whole device was to hold the unfortunate wearing it in a painful squat from which position any movement was impossible. It was a brand-new fettering system recently invented by the Warden of the Tower. It was called the Scavenger's Daughter. When the warders dropped their burden he balanced on his feet for a moment, like a goose laying, then he toppled slowly on to his side.
Talbot had said the man had been crying assault on Tom. But that was before his employer had failed to release him and he had begun to suspect just how powerful Tom might be. Also, no doubt, before the irons went on. He was silent enough now.
Tom used Constanza's fork to strip the flesh off his capon's thigh. He did it slowly, lingeringly, threateningly. The coney-catcher had certainly never seen a fork before and its novelty alone was likely to prove unnerving. Tom chewed a sliver of meat and they all sat silently looking down at the silent man. 'Let us begin with you,' said Tom at last. 'Your name is not Paul Carter and you are not a merchant up from Chiddingstone with a load of early apples for the Cheap.'
'No, master. That's true.' The man's words were slow but his eyes darted quickly enough around the room, assessing the situation and measuring the odds against him.
'Then, as the first step on the long road you will need to follow before you are out of the counter and out of those gyves, tell us your real name.'
'I was christened Nicholas Blunt, your worship. Parish of St Mary, Islington, the year of the Queen's sickness, sir.'
'But Islington is a thieves' haunt little better than Alsatia or Damnation Alley. You won't be known as Master Blunt in such quarters, will you? How are you known amongst your confederates, the coneycatchers?'
'Quick Nick, your worship.' The answer came far too swiftly. A thief's trade name was an important commodity jealously guarded; for upon it rested his reputation and his fortune.
Tom's eyes flicked across to Talbot and his men. Infinitesimal shakes of their hea
ds told him they had never heard of anyone by that name. 'You're lying, Master Blunt. You're a man well set up in your business. You look like a merchant from Chiddingstone. You sound like one and you dress like one. Only a man of established reputation could achieve such things. We will know your name when we hear it. And we will know you are lying in the meantime.'
'We have no time for these courtesies,' suddenly spat Poley. He turned to the kitchen maid who had stayed to make sheep's eyes at him. 'Go down to mine host and tell him I want a rope. We have strong beams up aloft,' he continued as she vanished, 'and I can show you a trick for loosening tongues that was taught me by no less a man than Rackmaster Topcliffe himself.'
Master Blunt had come up with several names by the time that the rope arrived, but he had convinced nobody that he had achieved a state of truthfulness and grace as yet. He had, however, begun to sweat. His words became more effusive, tumbling over each other as Poley slung the rope up over the stoutest beam and looped it around the ankle end of the gyves. 'This is nothing but coney-catcher's cant,' snarled Poley when the rope was tight. 'Take him up, Master Law.'
Tom knelt stiffly at the babbling villain's head. Such sympathy as he displayed was largely feigned, for this man had broken his beloved rapier and had been within a whisker of breaking his skull to boot. But he displayed sympathy nonetheless, to balance Poley's brutality. ' 'Tis only the beginning, man,' he said as the rope creaked over the beam and the gyves began to rise. 'We have an infinity more of questions and you are like to meet an eternity of pain if you equivocate with us. I was lately talking to a friend called Kydd, a scholar and playwright racked more than a year ago in the matter of Kit Marlowe's death, and he was scarce able to walk since. A broken man after an hour or two's examination; not long for the world. And what Master Poley has in mind for you is worse than ten rackings, I can see that plain. Be straight with us, man, or you'll be Blunt the Beggar, crutched or crawling, with your limbs askew and your business gone, your sons in the Islington brick kilns and your wives and daughters turned to bawds. There are houses here,' he persisted, 'as will take a girl from eight years old, for the gentlemen that like them young.'