Low Treason

by Leonard Tourney

  She was unable to proceed, and Matthew felt tears gather in his own eyes. It was not pity. He was thinking of his daughter Elizabeth. Elizabeth was older than Mary Skelton, somewhat stout, and darker in complexion, and their present circumstances were incomparable, yet somewhere there was a man like himself who had watched this child grow, bloom, and now, were he to see how her life had been blasted, his heart would surely break.

  He caressed the girl’s tangled hair and kissed her on the forehead, sharing her tormented recollection of a life now irretrievably lost while memories of the earlier days of his fatherhood filled him with a bittersweet longing.

  “I have a sister—”

  “Catherine.”

  “Yes. You know about her?”

  “Your mistress told me.”

  “She took me in. I had nowhere else to go.”

  “Could you not have gone home?”

  For Matthew it was a logical question: home, place of refuge. She turned deathly pale, and began to shudder and look about her wildly.

  “No,” she said. “There was no welcome for me there.”

  “Why not?”

  She hesitated, unwilling to answer. Matthew decided not to press her. She said she was afraid, afraid of the men. What men? Matthew wanted to know. Who had threatened her?

  She shook her head. No one had threatened her. But she had been followed and watched.

  “At first I thought they only wanted In an unlawful way, I mean. A girl gets used to that.But then I realized it was something more they wanted.”

  “What men?” asked Matthew again.

  She did not know. Some stared at her as she passed; others dogged her footsteps through the streets. She had not told her mistress, for fear of losing her place. No employer wants a girl who causes that kind of trouble. But then it became more than she could bear.

  “So you came to your sister?’’

  “Yes.’’

  “But you did know the men, did you not—I mean why you were being followed?’’

  She turned to him, then suddenly she buried her face in his shoulder and began to weep again.

  “Easy, easy.” Matthew fell into the father’s part without difficulty. This strange, helpless girl.

  She continued to weep; when she came to herself again, she wiped her eyes on a thin woollen shawl she had taken up from the bed and took a deep breath as though she were about to launch into a bitter truth.

  “I knew a boy—”

  “Thomas Ingram?”

  Her eyes grew round with surprise; she nodded and continued.

  “He ran away from his master.”

  “Thomas told you why?”

  Yes, he had told her.

  “Tell me, then,” Matthew asked reassuringly, fearing that she wouldn’t.

  “Your life will be in danger if you know.”

  But he shrugged this off with comfortable resolution, feeling himself safe enough at the moment.

  “Thomas told me his employer, Gervase Castell, the jeweler, was a thief. ’ ’

  “A thief?”

  “A purse snatcher.”

  Matthew laughed without wanting to. All that wealth, a king’s ransom. “Why, what could Castell have found in a pocket he could not have discovered amidst his own stock of goods?”

  She ignored his laughter. She said: “He cared nothing for the money. He wanted letters, notes, jottings on paper.” She hesitated, searching for the other word Tom had said. “Documents,” she said, finding the word. “He had used documents to get these great ones to do what he wanted them to do.”

  She didn’t know what that was, what Castell had wanted from his victims.

  “How did Tom come to know of this?”

  “By accident. He overheard, saw things. He was curious, made a point of listening. He wanted to know what he had got himself into.”

  “By Christ,” exclaimed Matthew, marveling at this. She continued: “Tom never went to the house. Few if any of the apprentices have been there. Even Castell’s bodyguards only accompany him to the threshold. He found out about Castell by overhearing his master converse with one of the gentlemen whose pocket Castell’s men had harvested. It was all hugger-mugger. The gentleman comes very late, after the shop is closed. There’s a chamber in the back of the shop, very private, Tom says.”

  “What were they conversing about?”

  But Tom had not told her that, only that it was clear Castell was blackmailing the gentleman. “Tom wouldn’t lie, ’ ’ she insisted defensively as though Matthew had said he would. “He’s honest and he’s clever.”

  “I know him to be so,” Matthew replied. “He is the brother of my son-in-law, William Ingram. ’ ’

  “Why, then,” she said, “you are Matthew Stock himself, constable of Chelmsford!”

  “The same,” Matthew said, realizing that he had forgotten to tell her his name.

  “Tom spoke of you,” she said. “The day before he left London he said that he was returning to Chelmsford and that you would know how to proceed against Castell and the Basilisk.”

  “Castell’s shop?”

  She cast him a confused sidelong glance, and he hastened to make his own confusion clear. “The Basilisk— what you said just now. Proceed against the Basilisk. ’ ’ “That’s the sign of his shop to be sure,” she said, wiping a lone tear from her pale cheek. She looked at him very seriously. “But the Basilisk is more than that.”

  “I have seen the jewel. Castell himself showed it to me, mounted on a velvet cloth.”

  “The Basilisk of which I speak is neither shop nor stone,” she said, gazing at him now intently. Her lips were set in full resolve. “He is a man. Mr. Castell’s employer.”

  “His employer!” exclaimed Matthew.

  “The jeweler is nothing more than an agent himself. Though he has underlings enough, he is himself an underling to a great one.”

  “To someone in the City—or about the court?” prompted Matthew.

  She shrugged. She knew only the name. Thomas Ingram himself had known no more. Matthew thought her story an unlikely turn. A man named the Basilisk? It was a most unlikely name and he said as much to her.

  “I doubt he was bom with it,” she replied, without seeming to have paid attention to Matthew’s tone of incredulity. “Tom told me himself. Castell, said he, goes regularly about the business of this Basilisk. Those were Tom Ingram’s very words.”

  They sat pensively on the edge of the bed while Matthew thought more about the Basilisk. He remembered the creature as it had been depicted on the jeweler’s sign—the monstrous round eye, the brutal claws. Not merely a freak of nature but a tool of Satan—vicious, predatory, and insatiable. If this Basilisk of whom the girl and Tom Ingram had spoken was well named, what had Matthew got himself into?

  He thought to ask: “So it was Tom Ingram’s intention to return to Chelmsford?”

  “Oh, yes,” she responded. “He was sick enough of London. He told me he never wished to see it again, but for me,” she added, and even in the half-dark Matthew could see the girl blushing at this admission of mutual affection. “He left the jeweler’s because, having denied his service to his employer, he feared for his life. Somehow Castell found out that Tom knew.There was nothing else to be done.”

  “Then the men who followed you were doubtless seeking Tom? ’ ’

  “Yes, when Tom left, Castell must have ordered him followed . . . and killed to keep him silent.”

  She swallowed hard and began to whimper again. Matthew took her hand and tried to comfort her, attempting to mask his own anxiety about the boy’s fate.

  “We have no reason to believe Castell succeeded,” Matthew said. “Indeed, the fact that the men were watching you proves he did not, for they doubtless supposed Tom would try to see you. I would wager my purse that Tom is alive.”

  “I love him,” she said in a thin voice between sobs. “Were he to know how I pass my time—”

  But now she had touched upon the thing that for so
metime waited in the back of his own mind.

  “I didn’t dare return to my home. My father is besotted and brutal. Six. beatings a week is the welcome I’d have from him. My sister, Catherine, is the only friend I have. At first Mrs. Smalley who operates the Dove let me stay with Catherine. For my keep I swept the parlor, changed the rushes in the bedchamber; then, presently, she demanded of me work—of the sort that is done here.”

  The girl stopped speaking for shame, but Matthew encouraged her to proceed.

  “I refused—at first,” she continued. “But Mrs. Smalley has two stout young men to do her bidding and take a share of the house. One plies the lane of nights and draws gentleman hither; the other dwells below and keeps the girls in good order. His Christian name is Samuel. The latter threatened to beat me. I gave in, because I was afraid of the pain. He said he would break my nose . . . blind me by thrusting a burning candle into my eyes.”

  “Could you not escape? Surely you could find opportunity during the day?”

  “They keep a close watch on us. There are six girls in the house, all beneath the age of twenty save for one who is twenty-eight, although she seems more like forty, so gray is her hair and lined her face. Catherine would like to leave, too. She fears for her life. Samuel threatens her, too, and has twice beaten her upon some trivial matter. He has his way with her when he will.”

  “Your mistress permits this?”

  “I think she is half mad herself for fear of Samuel.”

  “Well,” said Matthew fiercely, “we must have you out of here and at once. It is only a matter of time before you are found by Castell’s men—and I fear I may have led them here myself. I, too, have been followed. I am certain.”

  She looked at him with dread. “Then if they know I have spoken to you it will be my life.”

  “If they find you,” said Matthew.

  “They will find me.”

  She thrust her face into her hands and began to wail. In a stem voice, Matthew bade her be silent. He himself cared nothing for fate or destiny. There was no misfortune that could not be escaped—if one were clever enough. Or God merciful enough. That he believed as firmly as he believed in anything. He tried to comfort the girl but it was no use. She would not be comforted now. Fear had dissolved her will.

  Then Matthew seized her and shook her hard until she stopped weeping and stared at him blankly. He had heard something and he wanted her to listen, too.

  Footsteps. Running. On the stairs, he thought, where there were no rushes to muffle the sound.

  Now Mary Skelton was listening, too, her eyes wide with concern. Suddenly there was an urgent knocking at the door. Mary said, “Enter,” and another girl rushed in, bolting the door behind her.

  The newcomer did not have to identify herself to Matthew. Catherine Skelton was an older version of her sister—their eyes, noses, and mouths were cut from the same mold. She was obviously much agitated.

  “You are the gentleman from Sussex?” she asked, gasping for breath.

  “I said as much to your mistress,” Matthew replied, staring at the girl in wonder now. “I did so that I might speak to you and your sister. The truth is that I am of Chelmsford.”

  “Well, whoever you may be, some men below seek you out. They’re in an ugly mood, half drunk, and armed with cudgels. And they say they have sworn an oath to make mincemeat of your brains.”

  Ill

  “It’s about Tom. I know it,” cried Mary Skelton. “It’s Castell’s men for sure!” She turned to her sister. “This is Matthew Stock. Thomas’s brother is married to his daughter. You remember, I told you of him. ’ ’

  Catherine Skelton glanced quickly at Matthew in light of this new information, and flashed a hurried but agreeable smile. She was a pretty girl and had been prettier. At the moment she was wearing a cheap tafleta gown that exposed a good deal of her white flesh and she had made up her face with bright rouge and painted her lips crimson. Despite this, her face shone with courage and resolve.

  Suddenly there was a rumble of footsteps on the stairs, a deal of swearing and blaspheming, and soon a woman’s piercing scream from the chamber beyond. It was the proprietress. Terrified at the prospect of strange men invading her establishment, she had cried out and incited the hound who, now, fully awakened from her stupor, was barking savagely in response to the threats and curses of the invading men. Other patrons of the Dove, equally alarmed by the uproar, were pouring into the corridor in a mindless panic. Matthew could hear their clamor and for the moment he was grateful for Mrs. Smalley’s hound. Unlovable creature that she was, she would surely hold the invaders at bay until he could determine what to do.

  But Catherine Skelton had already decided that. “The bolt will not hold,” she cried. “There, there’s the window. You can climb down by the vines.”

  “But I can’t leave you two behind,” Matthew protested. “Go, man,” said Catherine, “it’s you they seek now. They’ll rush to the window and heigh-ho after you when it’s clear you’ve escaped that way. We’ll conceal ourselves and be safe enough. Look to yourself, Constable. For God’s sake go and be quick about it.”

  “Very well,” said Matthew dubiously as vigorous pounding and snarling voices indicated his pursuers were now directly without. Matthew rushed to the window, threw open the lattice, and clambered up on the sill while the sisters crawled beneath the bed. Unsteady, he seized a handful of leaves, relieved to find the stem thick and sinewy like rope, and hung precariously there until a moment later the door to the chamber yielded with a splintery crash. Matthew waited only long enough to be sure the two menacing shadows in the doorway had seen him. Then he made an undignified descent, dropping the last halfdozen feet to the ground and nearly breaking his ankle in doing so. Sure he was being pursued still, he fled through the garden, favoring his injured ankle as he could, and then scrambled through a break in the hedge and limped down a long lane of dark cottages.

  The men did not catch him. He thought he must have lost them somewhere in Bankside, somewhere before his arrival at the river. It was after midnight by the time he got back to the Blue Boar. There he found a message awaiting him. It had come from Abraham at the prison and said simply that Ralph Harbert was dead.

  Two whores had been clubbed to death in a Bankside brothel. A quarrel over the reckoning, the authorities would say, if they investigated the deaths at all, if they bothered to trace the two ruffians with cudgels who witnesses said did it.

  By dawn the word had got back to Castell through a long chain of intermediaries, few of whom knew the ultimate destination of the word, or for that matter, the identity of anyone in the chain beyond his immediate contact. The jeweler had just finished his breakfast.

  “What about the constable?”

  “Pyncheon says he fled through the window.”

  “It was Stock, then?”

  “Without a doubt. Pyncheon got that out of one of the drabs he found concealed beneath the bed.”

  “It’s likely he knows all now,” Castell murmured, almost to himself.

  “All?” queried Starkey, standing just before his employer’s chair as though he were preparing to remove the trencher, greasy napkin, and table wastes.

  “Well, Stock probably does not know all—but he knows enough. There’ll be no stopping him now. His nose is to the scent, that’s for sure,” said Castell, very melancholy. “Tell me, Starkey, were I to complain of a pebble in my shoe, between the soft inner sole and the flesh of my foot, and were this pebble to become a great vexation, rubbing raw the flesh, cutting it to the quick at last, what course would you recommend?”

  ‘‘Why, to remove it forthwith,” said Starkey, a glint of amusement in his little eyes.

  ‘‘Then see to it, Starkey, and the quicker the better. Be my surgeon. Do you get my meaning?”

  Starkey did.

  ‘‘And Starkey,” Castell continued, “make the constable’s death appear by misadventure. I have made inquiries. Evidently he has friends of some stature in Lo
ndon, although I cannot begin to imagine why he should. I would not want to encourage their interest in his reasons for being here.”

  “No,” said Starkey, “we should not want to do that.”

  Starkey went about his business, while Castell remained at the table, thinking about Starkey and how the man did good work. How fortunate he was to have come upon him, gallows-bait at lybum, not half an inch from the rope and damnation until Castell, sensing the man’s talent by pure intuition, greased the palms of the jailers and brought him away. Since then, Starkey seemed to have no private life; he was always available, and Castell trusted him as much as the jeweler trusted any man, referring to him—to himself but never to Starkey—as his familiar spirit.

  Then he thought about the dead whores. He had never seen the one sister, but Starkey had told him she was a puny thing, with breasts no bigger than apricots. Her sister must have been much the same. Now they were dead, and whatever they had known would be preserved in the silence of the grave. A very discreet place, the grave. A dead man might babble all he liked but as long as he who listened was four or five feet aboveground there was no harm done.

  Matthew Stock would be the next to die.

  Castell pushed back his chair and rose from the table. A mastiff dog that had lain at his feet slunk over to the comer and began to lick its paws. The animal made loud slurping sounds, and Castell stared at the dog. Presently, as if aware it was the object of its master’s attention, the creature’s face broke into a silly dog-grin, its tongue extended and pink like an old menstrual rag.

  The whores, the constable.

  Where would it end?

  The question no sooner took its place in his mind before it was joined by an answer. It would end when Castell had what he wanted. It would end when he had evened the score.

  Seven

  “TOM INGRAM!” Joan Stock exclaimed as she held the candle aloft to illuminate the unfortunate creature before her in the street.

  He was half naked and filthy, top to bottom; he wore a kind of loincloth for modesty’s sake, his feet were bare and bleeding, and he smelled strongly as though he had been keeping company with swine.