by Barbara Kyle
Isabel’s grip tightened on the girl’s hand. “Would have? Do you mean …?”
The girl nodded. “Corpse cart took him out. But his boots and britches was still on him. I didn’t let the others do him, even then, see?” she said proudly, then added, as a statement of simple justice, “After all, he give Robin the boat, didn’t he?”
Isabel was running. Stumbling over bodies in the beggars’ ward, pushing past the idle cellarman, tearing up the stairs. She ran on, merging into the crowded corridor of the Commons’ Ward. Dead … dead …
She wrenched through the crowd and ran on to the main door. She ran without stopping, the surroundings a blur. But a sound pursued her … a scream from a man in the press room …
She bolted out of the prison and ran down Newgate Street. Her breath sawed painfully in her chest. Her feet slipped on the icy cobbles. Her hips and shoulders banged other pedestrians, who eyed her with annoyance. She ran on.
But her skirts were heavy, and the burst of energy that had sent her tearing from the beggars’ ward in panic was now spent. She staggered on among the customers of the Shambles of Newgate Market, hardly knowing where she was. As her legs began to weaken, a hand caught her arm from behind and yanked her to a stop. It was Carlos, panting steam.
“Let me go!” she cried, fighting to get free.
“Listen to me—” He stopped as a wagon rumbled by dangerously near. He took hold of her shoulders and pressed her back against a tavern doorway, out of the wagon’s way.
“Oh, God, let me go!” she wailed. “He’s dead!”
“Listen. Your father—”
“Don’t!” She shook her head, eyes closed. “It’s over. He’s dead.”
“Maybe not.”
“You heard the girl. She saw him! Saw his body carted out.”
“She saw them take him, yes. Does not mean he’s dead.”
“What are you talking about? The girl—”
“I was with your father in jail. He is strong. A tough fighter. And no fool. If he told that girl he was getting out, I think he may have done it.”
Isabel stared at him. “Got out? But … how?”
“The corpse cart.”
She blinked at him. Understanding flooded in. “Pretended to be dead?”
“Yes.”
Hope struck her like a blow. Her knees threatened to buckle. She clutched Carlos’s arm. He caught her.
“Where do they take the bodies?” he asked.
She tried to think past the blaze of hope. “The charnel house. At St. Paul’s cathedral.”
“You’re sure?” Edward cried, not yet trusting the rush of joyful relief. “Dead?”
“Dead, sir,” Palmer confirmed with a smile. “Of jail fever. Carried out this morning. When the Sergeant of the Guard came for him, it was too late. You see, sir, Sturridge and I waited on the roof for so long I knew something had gone amiss. So I went in to inquire of the jailer, Master Alexander, about the transfer. Told him you were anxious to see the Queen’s order carried out. And I got the report straight from his own mouth. Jail fever killed Thornleigh, he said. In fact, he was in the middle of explaining the circumstance to the sergeant when I came in. I left the two of them talking, and hurried back to tell you.”
Edward paced by his hearth, hardly daring to believe his good fortune. That sickness should have succeeded in removing Thornleigh when two botched attempts to hire assassins had failed! He almost laughed at the capriciousness of it.
Still, he must not allow this triumph to cloud his vision. Thornleigh was gone, and that was a fine thing, but there was still a loose end in this business. Thornleigh’s daughter, too close for comfort. How much did she know?
“Palmer, where did you say the Thornleigh girl was lodging?”
“The Anchor.”
“Thames Street?”
“Aye, sir.”
“Thank you. That will be all. Send Sturridge back to his troop.”
Alone, Edward stared into the fire, organizing his thoughts. Yes, it could all be arranged quite simply, he thought, and with no risk to himself that he could foresee. Not if he managed the girl properly. He would do it right away.
He was emerging from his front door, adjusting his cape, head down in thought, when a woman’s voice from the street reached him. “Sir Edward!” the voice sang out.
It was Amy Hawtry, Frances’s fellow lady-in-waiting. She hurried up to him, all smiles. “I was just coming to claim you,” she crooned.
Standing on his doorstep beside him she babbled on, congratulating him on his knighthood. She was slightly rocky on her feet, and Edward realized she was inebriated. He wished he could shake her off and leave.
“Now, you must come and join us, sir,” she said gaily, waving a gloved hand to indicate a small, waiting group of friends on horseback—another young lady, two older gentlemen, servants. They were on their way out for an afternoon of hawking, Amy said, and she had insisted they stop to invite Edward. She hooked her arm in his. “The palace is like a tomb,” she pouted to him, “with all the gallants off playing soldier. Do come, Sir Edward, and entertain me.”
“Forgive me, mistress, but urgent business calls me away.”
“Oh, dear,” Amy sighed. “And I did so want to hear all about the Emperor’s magnificent and naughty court.” She pressed her body against his and whispered in his ear, “Is it true the Emperor keeps a dusky Moorish wench?”
“I am afraid this pleasure must be postponed for another time, mistress,” Edward said graciously but firmly, turning her toward the street. “Please carry my regrets to your friends. Good hunting.”
Pouting, she sidled back to the waiting group.
Edward felt a ripple of disgust. He mistrusted sexually aggressive females as a blot on the proper order of things. The moment had unsettled him. But as he looked up at the pale sun struggling past a heap of cloud he felt confidence surge back. His troubles were almost over. The Thornleigh girl was a mere detail he could clear up easily himself. The main point—Thornleigh’s removal—was won. Striding off toward Thames Street, he allowed himself after all to savor the moment of triumph.
23
The Charnel Hous
St. Paul’s cathedral, resplendent with rare stained glass and the tallest spire in Europe, rose in the center of St. Paul’s walled churchyard, while the yard’s northwest corner held the magnificent palace of the Bishop of London. Foot traffic and noisy trade flowed around these two great edifices. Between them lay a valley of shadow in which were crammed a dilapidated chapel, a burying ground, and the charnel house.
Isabel knocked on the charnel house door, still catching her breath after hurrying with Carlos all the way from Newgate. Hearing the faint hum of haggling voices at the bookstalls between the cathedral’s buttresses, she remembered the day her father had teased her at the bookstalls because she was so anxious to make their meeting with Martin, the same day the mob attacked the Spanish lords at Ludgate. Now, waiting to be admitted to the charnel house, she dreaded with every thud of her heart what she might discover inside. That Carlos was wrong, and she would find her father’s body here among the dead.
No one answered her knock.
Carlos tried the latch. It lifted and he pushed the door open. The long, low shed lay in gloom, lit only by a small, unglazed window. And there was silence.
“There’s no one here,” Isabel whispered.
“No one alive,” Carlos said grimly. He stepped inside.
Before them were dozens of corpses. Partially naked, they lay on wooden tiers that lined three walls, and more lay on the earth floor in mounds, bristling with lifeless elbows and knees, males and females jumbled together indiscriminately, giving an odd impression of lewdness. Children lay in open coffins lined up on a worktable, as if obediently awaiting their lids. There were baskets of discarded clothing. And there were bones. Cemetery space in crowded London was limited, so the bones of common folk were not allowed to enjoy eternal rest. Dug up from the burying ground to make
room for the newly dead, they were piled in a wooden bin beside a far door.
Isabel stepped inside. The stench was overwhelming. “Stay out,” Carlos said. “I will do this.”
“No. I need to be sure.”
She came beside him and they stood still, gazing uneasily at the dead, unsure how to begin. Then Isabel noticed that the skin of the corpses on the shelves was unspotted, while the bodies heaped on the floor were speckled black, and many bore livid purple splotches on their abdomens as well—all were the marks of jail fever. She swallowed her revulsion. “These are from the prison,” she said, nodding at the heaps.
They began the gruesome search. They had to push corpses aside to check the identity of others buried beneath. As Isabel handled the cold flesh her stomach lurched, and with every push she dreaded that the next black-spotted face that lolled toward her would be her father’s. But Carlos didnot flinch. She noted with grateful respect how he went doggedly about the business despite his aversion, grappling the diseased bodies and dragging them out into the feeble light for her to investigate, not stopping until they had gone through each pile.
Finally, Isabel straightened from the grisly work. “He’s not here.” She said it quietly, almost afraid to acknowledge the remarkable conclusion: her father had escaped.
A creaking of the back door made her whirl around. Carlos, bent over to check the last bodies, did not notice.
A rotund man stood in the open doorway, a steaming Cheapside meat pie in his hand. He frowned at Isabel. “Here, what’s going on!”
Carlos suddenly straightened with a scowl, looming up from the corpses like one of their grim number sprung to life. The man gasped, dropped his meat pie, and crossed himself in horror.
Isabel sought to calm him, though her nerves were almost as jangled as his. “Sir, we are looking for someone. Are you the caretaker?”
Carlos stepped out of the shadows. This sudden evidence of his mortal reality made the gaping man slump in relief. “Pardon me, mistress,” he said, pulling out a kerchief and patting the sweat that sheened his face. “Now and then, you see, we do get a lousel rifling through the deceaseds’ clothing.” He looked down sadly at his meat pie splattered in the dirt.
“You are the caretaker then?” Isabel asked, handing him a coin.
“Aye, mistress,” he said, brightening at the payment and pocketing it. “And how may I be of service?”
“Sir, I am looking for my father.”
“Passed on, has the gentleman?” he asked solicitously.
She nodded, uncomfortable with this playacting. “But I was not able to view his body. It’s most distressing, as you can imagine, for I long to pay my last respects. And, of course, to furnish a proper burial through your services.” She lowered her eyes to give an impression of sorrow, not difficult to simulate since half her heart feared this man might produce her father’s body after all.
“Quite right, quite right,” the caretaker murmured, sensing profit. “Well, now, let me see what I can do. The name of the deceased, mistress?”
“Don’t,” Carlos warned her. “We will go.”
But she’d come this far. She had to be sure. “Richard Thornleigh,” she told the caretaker “His body was removed from Newgate jail this morning. A tall man, gray-haired, with one blind eye.”
The man’s eager smile vanished. His eyes narrowed with suspicion. “A jailbird? From which ward?”
“The beggars’ ward.”
“Out!” the caretaker ordered, pointing to the door. “Out with you!”
“What? But—”
“Out!” He bustled toward Carlos, waving his hands at him and Isabel as if to disperse a flock of crows. “Get out, or I’ll have the sheriff on you both!”
Carlos took Isabel’s arm and pulled her out the door. He strode off along the graveyard path and she had to hurry to keep up with him through the cemetery. He seemed to want to get past the graves as quickly as he could, and as they walked he looked down at his hands, scowling in disgust. Isabel understood. She, too, felt as though the diseased bodies had left some vile residue on her hands. At the churchyard wall they passed through Little Gate out into the busy thoroughfare of Cheapside. Beside a tavern Isabel saw a blue-smocked apprentice hefting a keg out of a loaded ale wagon. “Boy!” she called. He turned. Isabel reached him and quickly bargained with the lad, paying him a crown for the keg. Carlos frowned at her, baffled. Isabel told the apprentice to pour out the ale. He blinked. “Pour it out, mistress?”
“Yes.”
“Here?”
“Right here.”
He shrugged as though to say he wasn’t responsible for the lunacy of a paying customer. He set the keg on the edge of the wagon floor and jerked out the bung, letting the frothy contents gush onto the cobbles.
The moment Isabel thrust her hands into the stream of ale, Carlos was in doubt no longer. He plunged his hands in beside hers. They stood side by side, letting the cold foam wash away the charnel-house horrors.
Isabel felt a bubble of happiness rise inside her. She felt almost giddy—from joy at not finding her father’s corpse, from the icy zing of the ale, from the whole macabre search she and Carlos had just been through. She couldn’t hold back a chuckle. “The caretaker,” she said. “He thought you were one of his charges rising from the dead.” Her laughter burst out. “He thought you were a ghost!”
Carlos grinned. He threw back his head and laughed with her.
The apprentice shook his head at the folly taking place before him. As they went on laughing, he hefted out a fresh keg and carried it to the tavern where sane people congregated.
Isabel dried her hands on her skirt, then wiped tears of laughter from her eyes. She beamed at Carlos. “We did it. We searched every inch of that charnel house and he wasn’t there. He’s escaped.”
He nodded. “I think so.”
They stood smiling at each other, warmed by their success.
Isabel felt a shadow fall over her face as a horseman rode by. Her smile faded. “The question now is, where has he gone?”
“Home?”
“To Colchester?” She shook her head. “There’s no one left. Even if he wanted to, he has no horse, no money. He obviously lost the money he had, because he was thrown in with Newgate’s beggars. And he’s sick, too. Very sick, if the girl was right about his delirious talk. How long can he last, out on his own in such a state, in this cold?”
“He has friends?”
She brightened. “Yes, of course! He’d go to a friend’s house. He’d have to!”
Horsemen clattered into the crowd up the street. Carlos glanced in that direction.
Isabel watched him. She thought of how doggedly he had done what was required in the charnel house, how he’d manhandled the bodies, the tainted flesh that he loathed and feared. Just for his payment? she wondered. Surely more than that. He knew how little money she had left; she knew how paltry was the reward she had promised him. Was it for her, then? She forced away the dangerously exciting remembrance of last night in her moonlit room. That had been a frenzied half dream, a moment of delirium to be obliterated from her memory—never, never to be thought of again. But this was something else; he’d done things for her that could not be ignored.
“Carlos,” she said. He turned back to her. “You’ve done so much. Saved my life in the Fleet. Stuck by my side. And you thought of this, too—my father feigning death to escape. Back in Newgate, when the girl said she saw him taken out, I was ready to give up.”
“Not you,” he said quietly. His mouth curved into his crooked smile. “In a siege, I would hate to find you fighting on the other side.”
At this absurd image of her in combat against him, she had to grin. She looked up into his eyes, knowing her gratitude shone on her face. “Thank you,” she said softly. “For all you have done.”
He took her face between his hands tentatively, gently. She was ashamed at her body’s instant response to his touch—her breath quickening, her knees soften
ing. He seemed to be studying her. “What is it?” she managed to say.
“You …” He spoke as if it were something he’d been waiting for, hoping for. “You are smiling.”
She knew she should pull away. But his touch was so light, a caress. Not mastery, she thought, but sheer tenderness. It seemed to startle him as much as her, for he stared at her with a look of wonder.
The blast of a trumpet made them both turn. It had come from the knot of horsemen up the street. They had stopped beside the Great Cross and the crowd had thickened around them. Four of the horsemen, three dressed in rich fur-trimmed velvets, were mounting the steps of the Cross. Isabel recognized one: the Lord Mayor, Thomas White.
The Mayor held up his hands for silence from the milling crowd. He quickly introduced the men beside him: Lord William Howard, Sheriff Hewett, and the common crier. White beckoned the crier, who came forward, took a broad stance, and began to declare a proclamation.
Isabel could not hear all of it. The commotion of chattering people and whinnying horses drowned out half the crier’s words at this distance. But she caught the gist of it, a denunciation as traitors of all those who gave Wyatt succor. The crowd hushed and she clearly heard the last of the proclamation. “… and any man who delivers up to Her Majesty the traitorous Wyatt, his body living or dead, shall receive from the Queen’s Majesty a gift of lands carrying an income of one hundred pounds per year, to be the property of him and his heirs forever!”
Isabel felt suddenly cold. She saw that Carlos was listening intently.
The crowd erupted in questions and babble. Three merchants passed Isabel deep in a harangue. “Not a hope!” one said. “Lord Howard has the guns to defend the Queen.”
“But Wyatt has the soldiers!” one of his companions insisted.
“Guns, soldiers, bah!” the third put in. “The point is where will Londoners stand? Whither goes their allegiance, eh? That’s what everything hinges on. And all of us with property in the city must consider …” His voice trailed as the trio pushed on.