The Changeling Murders (The Thief Taker Series Book 4)
Page 1
ALSO BY C.S. QUINN
The Thief Taker Series
The Thief Taker
Fire Catcher
Dark Stars
Death Magic (Short Story)
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Text copyright © 2018 by C.S. Quinn
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
Published by Thomas & Mercer, Seattle
www.apub.com
Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Thomas & Mercer are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.
ISBN-13: 9781477805114
ISBN-10: 1477805117
Cover design by Lisa Horton
Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
Chapter 75
Chapter 76
Chapter 77
Chapter 78
Chapter 79
Chapter 80
Chapter 81
Chapter 82
Chapter 83
Chapter 84
Chapter 85
Chapter 86
Chapter 87
Chapter 88
Chapter 89
Chapter 90
Chapter 91
Chapter 92
Chapter 93
Chapter 94
Chapter 95
Chapter 96
Chapter 97
Chapter 98
Chapter 99
Chapter 100
Chapter 101
Chapter 102
Chapter 103
Chapter 104
Chapter 105
Chapter 106
Chapter 107
Chapter 108
About the Author
Prologue
It was an inauspicious day for a wedding. Dark clouds had gathered as Maria tightened the ribbons on her blue dress. She’d begged and borrowed pieces of lace and silk, tucked flowers into her long blonde hair and curled the front into fashionable ringlets. But she still didn’t feel ready.
Maria could hear the church bells ringing the hour across London. She was late for her own wedding, she realised with a sliding sense of panic. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d been late for anything.
Be honest, whispered a snake voice in her head. Your heart is still with Charlie Tuesday.
A hackney carriage drew up outside, large metal wheels striking loudly on the cobbles. Maria watched from the window of her rented room. She frowned in confusion as the driver emerged and knocked on her door.
The man was dressed strangely. Courtly clothes, old-fashioned and moth-eaten. Unease swirled in Maria’s stomach. ‘I didn’t send for a carriage,’ she said as she opened the door.
‘It looks to rain,’ he said in a clipped voice. ‘Your betrothed thought it best you were driven to church.’
Maria eyed the carriage behind him. It was small, black and slightly scruffy. The kind of modest vehicle that ferried middling sorts about the city. It had large wheels, one horse and space for two people. A considerate yet frugal expense from a lawyer to his wife-to-be on her wedding morning. Exactly like Percy. So why did she feel so apprehensive?
The driver smiled in a way that didn’t reach his unusual blue-green eyes. ‘I have no other passengers inside,’ he said. ‘You have it to yourself.’
For some reason, this filled Maria with fear. She swallowed, trying to pull herself together. Every bride feels anxious on her wedding day, she told herself.
She glanced up at the sky. She’d been looking forward to the walk, to collect her thoughts in the green of Lincoln’s Inn Fields on the way to St Dunstan’s Church. But she couldn’t very well refuse the gesture. It was so thoughtful of Percy.
Maria stepped towards the carriage, ignoring the sense that something wasn’t right. The driver opened the small door to the black space beyond. You mustn’t keep Percy waiting, Maria thought.
She ducked through the opening. The dark interior smelled of damp wood and horses. Maria settled herself on the padded leather seat, arranging her skirts as the driver shut the door.
The windows were covered with thick canvas curtains. When she moved to push them aside she found they’d been nailed down on all sides. A spurt of alarm jolted through her. It’s a London cab, she reminded herself. They seal the windows to keep out bad air. But it had been over three years since the plague that had claimed Maria’s family. A long time not to open the curtains again.
There was a narrow opening at the back, just wide enough to pass coins for the fare, and through it she saw the driver sit on the narrow plank seat. He flicked his long whip and the horse jolted forward.
As the large wheels were set in motion, Maria forced her anxiety to subside. Percy must have been listening after all when she’d told him how hard she’d worked on her dress, that rainfall would ruin the watered-silk panels. Such thoughtfulness boded well.
The carriage rolled through Fetter Lane, loud with tin kettles and pans being beaten into shape. The smell of frying pancakes and fritters drifted from a huddle of food stalls; hot butter and woodsmoke.
Maria leaned back, closed her eyes and tried not to let the nerves overwhelm her. She regretted deciding to travel to the church alone. But she had no one to give her away, and she hadn’t wanted her friends to witness her uncertainty.
Maria cou
ld hear the colourful sleaze of Covent Garden now and guessed they’d passed the huge maypole marking the beginning of the party district. She imagined the bright dandies and beautiful hopefuls weaving drunkenly along the dirt streets and past the brothels. Tallow candles would be burning in every rickety wooden window, despite the spring sunshine.
Then she felt the carriage wheels strike spongy ash, the sodden beginning of the Great Fire’s devastation. The vast black desert of blackened nubs of burned buildings.
Maria sat up. ‘Why do we come this way?’ she demanded. ‘It’s dangerous in the ruins.’
The carriage shuddered to a halt. Maria glanced through the narrow opening at the back. She could see the driver’s knees and a glimpse of a sooty backstreet amongst a jumble of charred walls. She could hear a chicken clucking and scratching around in the dirt.
‘Why do you stop?’ she asked, her nerves making her speak more sharply than she’d intended.
‘Someone wants to see you,’ said the driver’s disembodied voice. ‘Before you are wed.’
Maria digested this. Something in her heart fluttered. ‘Who?’ she demanded.
‘Charlie Tuesday. The Thief Taker.’
A bubble of joy rose up. He wants to see you. Beg you not to marry.
Of course, she would never betray Percy, who was likely already waiting at the aisle. Honest, sensible Percy, whose courtship had been faultlessly mannered, who had offered her the life she’d always wanted – before Charlie came along. A comfortable wife in a comfortable home.
Maria opened her mouth to say ‘drive on’. But temptation pricked at her. Surely there was no harm in talking to Charlie one last time? Afterwards she would be married and never see him more.
‘Take me to him,’ she said, attempting to sound indifferent.
The carriage lurched down one narrow street and along another. Maria found herself trying not to smile at the thought of seeing Charlie. It wouldn’t do to give him hope. She would be measured, sorry and sympathetic.
Maria peered from the window. The streets were getting darker, the buildings closer.
A deep unease prickled back through her. She’d heard of girls being driven out of London and robbed in the hackney carriages. The driver knew you were to be married, she reminded herself. He knew Charlie’s name and his thief taker work, chasing down criminals.
‘Wait,’ she said. ‘I’ve changed my mind. We’ll to the church straight.’
But the carriage kept moving.
Maria knocked on the roof. ‘If you please,’ she said loudly, ‘I want to go to the church.’
The driver was silent. Trepidation took hold. Maria put out a hand and tried the door handle. It turned, but something was preventing it from opening.
A feeling of panic rose up, tightening her throat. She pushed at the tightly nailed canvas window covering. It didn’t move. She turned to look out of the back. The alley they were travelling along was completely deserted. Not a soul in sight.
Maria took a full few seconds to think about what this might mean. No innocent explanation was forthcoming.
‘Let me out!’ she demanded in a louder voice. ‘Now!’
The driver’s knees bent. He lowered his head level with hers.
Maria’s blue eyes silently took in the mad smile playing on his face, the twitching fingers. She was absorbing everything about him now. His hair was jet black and his skin was clean-shaven and youthful. But the eyes were old, and he was deathly pale.
‘Who are you?’ she whispered.
‘You know me very well,’ he said. ‘You have always known me. I am Jack in the Green. I am Robin Goodfellow. I am all the dark things that stalk the night.’
She suddenly realised what was wrong with his clothes. They were inside out. A charm to deter fairies.
‘What do you want?’ she said, forcing herself to speak calmly.
‘You know very well what I want,’ he said. ‘The Lord and Lady.’
Maria’s stomach turned to ice. He somehow knew of the mystery she’d stumbled across whilst transcribing Percy’s legal documents. She’d been so careful to conceal her findings. Maria closed her eyes as the magnitude of her situation drew in. The Lord and Lady, vanished from the Tower of London during Cromwell’s reign.
‘You won’t find the Lord and Lady,’ she said. ‘There’s only one man who can. And he’ll never help you.’
‘Charlie Tuesday?’ The man smiled. ‘The man you jilted?’
‘He isn’t . . .’ Maria stopped herself.
How could he know that?
It didn’t matter. Not now.
‘You think Charlie Tuesday worth dying for?’ he asked.
‘No,’ she said quietly, ‘I wouldn’t die for Charlie Tuesday. But I’d die to protect the Lord and Lady.’
A sudden rush of calm filled her. He would kill her, Maria knew. Nothing she could do about that. But she could choose how she died.
‘I won’t help you,’ she said steadily. It felt unreal, as though she were reading lines in a play.
‘You will,’ he said, straightening out of view. She heard the whip crack and felt the horse pick up speed.
Maria began kicking at the door with all her strength. It held firm. She threw herself against the window. ‘Help!’ Maria shouted, pressing her mouth to the curtains. ‘Help me, please!’
‘No one can hear you,’ came the driver’s voice as the carriage raced on. ‘Didn’t your mother warn you about fairies? We make people disappear.’
Chapter 1
Charlie Tuesday was running. He’d easily kept pace with the carriage as it left Temple Bar and moved along the half-burned remains of Fleet Street. But as it passed Lud Gate into the sooty devastation of Paternoster Row the vehicle gathered speed.
Charlie sprinted past the scorched stationers’ shops, his bare feet stirring up a pale-grey confetti of burned books. Street children were playing on the road ahead. Charlie shouted a warning and they scattered as the carriage barrelled towards them and out of sight.
He made a quick calculation. Only busy Cheapside was broad enough for horse-drawn traffic. This hackney carriage would be lost amongst the multitude of identical vehicles.
Charlie swung right, cutting across the great black void where St Paul’s Cathedral had once stood. Ash-streaked labourers were erecting the beginnings of a mighty scaffold and filling sacks of dark rubble.
Charlie’s gaze landed on a parked stonemason’s wagon, wheels thickly grimed with red clay from Brick Lane. He raced towards it, freed a handful of rosy earth from the wheel-spokes and bolted for the scaffold. A few men shouted a protest as Charlie climbed the timber frame with a speed born of his street-urchin childhood. He made the top and ran easily along the narrow beam of a large crane, eyes scouring the black streets below. The scaffold beneath his feet shook and he glanced down to see a stonemason’s apprentice moving determinedly towards him brandishing a hammer.
Charlie looked north. The wake of the recent Great Fire spread out before him, like a monstrous black bite out of the chaotic city streets. Then he spotted the carriage, cornering at speed towards Cheapside. Behind him, the apprentice was closing in.
Keeping the carriage in his sights, Charlie jumped onto the arm of another large wooden crane, this one stretching high over the building works. Taking aim, he threw the clod of red earth. It arced towards the departing carriage, then burst in a bright scatter on the hackney’s dark wood roof.
He heard a creaking beneath him. The hammer-wielding apprentice had made it onto the highest part of the scaffold.
Charlie held his hands up. ‘Easy, friend,’ he said, keeping his bare feet balanced on the crane. ‘I’m a thief taker. Following that carriage.’ He inclined his head to the red-spattered coach now easing into the Cheapside traffic.
The apprentice lowered his hammer slightly. ‘Thieves don’t ride in carriages,’ he said.
‘True,’ agreed Charlie. ‘But lawyers do. And I need to see where that man goes.’
Char
lie was keeping half an eye on the carriage. Yesterday, he’d received an anonymous request from an address in the legal district, to meet in a backstreet theatre. Charlie wasn’t naïve enough to trust mysterious invitations. So tailing the carriage of the suspected author prior to their meeting seemed a sensible precaution.
Charlie assessed his aggressor. ‘You’re an apprentice?’ he said. ‘It’s Lent. Why don’t you go pull down brothels with your fellows?’
The boy narrowed his eyes. ‘How did you know I’m a ’prentice?’
‘Young men not permitted wives have a certain look about them.’
‘Who do you think you are?’ challenged the apprentice.
‘I’m Charlie Tuesday.’
The apprentice laughed contemptuously. ‘Charlie Tuesday is tall as King Charles and broad as an ox.’
Charlie smiled. ‘Quick thinking and middling height serve me well enough.’
‘If you’re so clever,’ said the apprentice, ‘you would never have let yourself be cornered.’ He hefted his hammer. ‘Up here there’s no way out.’
‘Only if you lack a certain perspective for distances,’ said Charlie. He stooped and cut the rope at his feet. The crane went swinging wide, the beam on which Charlie stood heading fast towards Paternoster Row. He spread his bare toes, then braced as the beam jolted to a halt and leapt towards the blackened roof timbers of a burned-out shop.
Charlie landed on a charred rafter, then ran across the rooftops. As he took in Cheapside below he saw the carriage, now clearly distinguished by its red dusting.
He watched as it headed towards Covent Garden.
‘Just as I thought,’ muttered Charlie under his breath as he slipped down to the spongy burned earth of Newgate Street. ‘Headed to the theatre.’
Now he knew for certain the identity of the man inside the carriage. But Charlie could think of no good reason why this individual would want to meet.
Chapter 2
Charlie slipped into the theatre and was greeted by the familiar smell of spilled beer and trodden orange peels. The benches in the pit were dotted with ragged boys holding seats for wealthier folk. At the edges, women were laying out baskets of stewed apples and greasy pig knuckles.
The Birdcage was London’s most dangerous illegal theatre. It attracted an explosive mix of drunks, prostitutes, prize fighters and the odd pack of thrill-seeking aristocrats.
Charlie stepped down behind the stage, where a bulky man with a bad skin condition lounged on a wooden stool. A well-worn truncheon rested near his feet.