The Changeling Murders (The Thief Taker Series Book 4)

by C. S. Quinn

  Chapter 24

  Ozinda’s signature blend of cocoa, cinnamon, vanilla and jasmine wafted along the wide-paved streets of St James’s. There were crystal street lamps outside handsome brick mansions and a neat green. On the grass, a boy in a suspiciously clean shepherd’s outfit was spritzing a cluster of dozing sheep with oily perfume from a hand-operated pump.

  As always, the broad pavements of the gentrified district made Charlie uneasy. He preferred an alley or lane to duck down.

  The heavy chocolate smell grew more intense as Charlie passed by into the luxurious entrance hall, brightly painted with murals of exotic jungle and cocoa trees. Ozinda’s was a mansion house, with high windows and stylish fittings. Sitting at the back was a crowd of women dressed in various exotic costumes. There was a Turk in an open-fronted dress and turban and an African queen in a gaudy gold headdress and see-through white chiffon dress.

  An immaculately dressed man stepped forward. ‘Welcome to Ozinda’s,’ he said without warmth. ‘I presume you have an account with us?’

  ‘Since I’m certain you memorise every visitor,’ said Charlie, ‘you’ll know I don’t. I’m here to see Lily Boswell. She’s . . . a friend of mine,’ he finished lamely.

  ‘We’re not a tavern,’ said the man. ‘If you want to speak with her you must buy her drink. That’s the rules of the house. The gypsy’s price is a flagon of burgundy. One guinea.’ He took in Charlie’s patched breeches and well-worn coat. ‘And you, friend,’ he said, ‘look not to have that kind of coin about you.’

  They were interrupted by the entrance of two peacock aristocrats, resplendent in plumes of frothy lace, bright ribbons and shining buckles.

  The manager was suddenly all smiles, pushing Charlie to one side. ‘Gentlemen,’ he beamed, clicking his fingers impatiently at a servant loitering in the background. ‘You come to us early. Will it be the usual table? Burgundy?’

  ‘The apprentices are out in force,’ grumbled one, adjusting his powdered wig and causing a drift to dislodge like falling snow. ‘Half the bawdy places in the east have been pulled apart.’

  ‘No fear of apprentices here,’ said the manager, his false smile never shifting. ‘Who shall it be? Elizabeth again?’

  ‘Only have her a little more lively this time,’ said the first, taking a snuff box from his coat and inhaling deeply.

  ‘She was acting at the Duke’s all last week,’ apologised the manager. ‘I’ll be sure she is all smiles for you.’

  He glared in the direction of the assembled women and a familiar actress rose in an eddy of perfumed skirts, painted mouth drawn tightly upwards, a loose approximation of a dress falling off her bare shoulders. Both men instantly brightened. Once they were seated, the manager returned his attention to Charlie, all pretence of civility gone.

  ‘Don’t look to the girls,’ he snapped haughtily, as Charlie tried to spot Lily. ‘Unless you can afford some accord with one.’

  Charlie saw her, sitting alone throwing cards. Lily had been dressed as a native American, in a thin red cotton dress that tied at her waist and crossed to cover her bust. She was as strikingly beautiful as he remembered, her long dark hair falling haphazardly amongst a thick collection of charms and trinkets strung around her neck. Her ring-decked fingers shuffled cards rapidly with a restless energy that reminded Charlie of an animal trapped in a cage.

  There was a clear space between her table and the others.

  A passing drunk man shot a leering glance down her low-cut red dress and she glared at him until he looked away.

  ‘She knows me,’ said Charlie, pointing to Lily.

  ‘That’s your hard luck,’ opined the manager. ‘If it was up to me, I’d have sent her away long ago. But she’s popular in her way. Some men love danger.’

  ‘Only ask her. She’ll spare me a moment.’

  The manager shook his head. ‘No exceptions.’

  ‘How about I give you a shilling just to pass a message?’ tried Charlie.

  The manager considered, then held out his hand for the coin. ‘You’re lucky it’s Lent,’ he said, pocketing it. ‘No one looking for much in the way of sin. I’ll ask.’

  Charlie let out a sigh of relief. The manager clicked his fingers and nodded meaningfully to an over-worked boy racing around the tables.

  ‘The gypsy,’ said the manager. ‘This man claims to be her friend.’

  The boy looked alarmed at this possibility, but ventured nervously towards Lily nevertheless. She looked up from her cards, then glanced across at Charlie. Her expression soured, and she shook her head.

  ‘Hard luck,’ said the manager. ‘She doesn’t want to talk to you.’

  ‘Might I not just take a drink with her?’ asked Charlie. ‘A full barrel of burgundy can be got for a shilling.’

  ‘Not in Ozinda’s,’ replied the manager. ‘Take your leave.’

  He tilted his head towards the door. As if by magic a heavy-set guard lumbered over, his white silk waistcoat and jaunty yellow silk cravat straining at his thick middle and bullish neck.

  ‘Wait!’ protested Charlie. But the guard took this as a sign to begin manhandling him out.

  Charlie was fruitlessly trying to resist the wall of muscle. ‘A moment, please,’ said Charlie, addressing the manager. ‘You collect Royalist things, do you not? War mementos?’

  The manager frowned.

  ‘I’m a dealer in such things,’ lied Charlie. ‘So I notice your buttons are from the coat of a cavalier soldier and your snuff jars were once owned by a Royalist household.’ He paused for effect. ‘And it’s just your good fortune I came across a sacred royal relic,’ Charlie concluded, hoping he sounded persuasive. ‘Only yesterday.’

  The manager raised a hand and the guard halted, still holding Charlie by the collar.

  Charlie delved into his pocket and pulled free the bloodied strand of rope in his coat, pocketed from the theatre corpse.

  ‘I took this from a Cheapside thief,’ said Charlie. ‘Before she met her end on the gallows, she admitted to stealing it. A strand of rope,’ he concluded grandly, ‘that once bound the hands of the late King Charles, before he lost his head.’

  The manager leaned towards the bloodied rope. He took it reverently. ‘This is his blood?’ he asked. ‘His Majesty’s?’ His hand quivered slightly.

  Charlie nodded. ‘Worth a bit, a trinket like that, to the right person,’ he added pointedly.

  ‘Blood looks fresh,’ observed the guard suspiciously.

  ‘Which proves it’s royal blood,’ supplied Charlie quickly. ‘Keeps its colour. Not like the common sort.’

  The manager made a rapid benediction and kissed the rope. ‘Very well,’ he said. ‘I’ll give you one glass of wine with the gypsy.’

  ‘A true Royalist would pay a guinea for a memento like this,’ replied Charlie smoothly. ‘That’s a full barrel.’

  The manager’s eyes shifted to Lily, who was now watching them with interest.

  ‘The lady don’t seem to like you,’ he said. ‘Two glasses is all I’ll give.’

  Charlie looked over to Lily. ‘A bottle,’ he said, closing the manager’s hands over the bloody rope. ‘She’s likely to throw at least two glasses in my face.’

  Chapter 25

  Lynette was lying on thick linen sheets, tracing her fingers across the King’s broad chest.

  ‘This one?’ She touched on a raised mark.

  ‘I fell from a horse escaping Roundheads.’

  Her fingers danced down to the next scar. ‘This?’

  ‘Yachting with James. The prow caught me.’

  ‘You’re quite the adventurer.’

  ‘I was.’

  ‘And what about your feet?’ she added. ‘I’ve never seen such a mess.’

  He drew up his mangled feet, the undersides criss-crossed with thick raised scars.

  ‘I was escaping from Cromwell,’ he said. ‘I lost my boots and had to run five miles through scrub forest barefoot.’

  Lynette winced. ‘Mu
st ’a hurt,’ she said sympathetically.

  ‘They’d just killed my father,’ said Charles. ‘I didn’t really feel it until afterwards.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said.

  ‘Be sorry for my brother,’ he said. ‘Poor young James had to escape England dressed as a girl. I’d take scarred feet over that indignity any day.’

  She tilted her head, not quite believing his casual tone. ‘So tell me the truth,’ she said. ‘Why did your thick-skinned old soldier send for me?’

  ‘Amesbury?’ Charles laughed. ‘He thought you would lift my mood. He’s good like that.’

  ‘I’m sure he is.’ She narrowed her eyes, assessing. ‘Did you know,’ she said carefully, ‘the apprentices are running hotter than usual? Lot of the girls are afraid, really afraid. They need protectin’.’

  Charles sat up in the large bed, reached for their wine goblets, poured two and handed her one.

  ‘I thought we were talking about war stories,’ he said. ‘My brave escape from Cromwell’s soldiers.’

  ‘And what about your other stories?’ she said.

  ‘Oh, everyone knows everything about me,’ he said easily. ‘I don’t even shit without a man to attend me.’

  Lynette took the smallest of sips and lowered the goblet.

  ‘You don’t drink?’ he said, watching her hands.

  ‘Not anymore,’ she admitted. ‘Led me to bad places. Me old mum died of it.’

  Her eyes rested on his face. She let her fingers drift up to his chin. ‘Who’d ever believe it,’ she said. ‘Me, in bed with a king. Tell me true, was it my acting, or the parts where I wore less clothes?’

  He rested back, a smile on his face. ‘There was a particularly good play with you and Sissy Leech.’

  ‘She’s a friend of mine,’ said Lynette. ‘More like a sister. It would be incest.’

  ‘You’ve not spent enough time with royalty,’ said Charles, ‘if you think a king would be against incest.’

  Lynette laughed. ‘You’re funny,’ she said. ‘I didn’t think you would be so funny.’

  ‘What did you think?’

  She breathed out, making her mouth a little ‘o’, resting her fingers on her perfectly shaped lips. ‘Well,’ she said, tilting her head to one side and clasping her hands under her chin, ‘we’ve all heard things about your sceptre.’

  He laughed, pleased.

  She rested the glass and stood, moving towards her clothes.

  ‘You’re leaving?’ His voice was filled with disappointment.

  ‘I’ve never missed a performance,’ she said, kissing him on the nose. ‘Not even for royalty.’

  He leaned back and took a gulp of wine. ‘Most women would stay,’ he said, leaving the bed to stand opposite her. There was an edge to his voice. Hurt mingled with annoyance.

  She smiled, turned to a large mirror and began plaiting her hair. ‘When I was eleven,’ she said, ‘my mother sold me, to a merchant. Not a nice man. I worked my way out. Got into acting. Never let a man tell me what to do since.’

  ‘England sold me to a Portuguese wife,’ he said. ‘In return for Bombay. Women tell me what to do all the time.’

  ‘I wondered why you had so much Indian calico.’

  She began pulling on her dress, throwing him a smile over her naked shoulder.

  ‘Have you any idea how much I want to run away with you, right now?’ he asked. ‘Disappear into Covent Garden and never come back? I’m due a conjugal visit this evening. The Queen eats whole garlic bulbs, you know.’ He feigned an expression of terror.

  Lynette laughed loudly. She pulled up the dress, pretended to let it drop and gave a faux gasp as it slipped to her hips.

  The King stood and moved to her, dancing his fingers across her shoulders and down her back. ‘There’s a story,’ he said, ‘of a man who fell in love with a fairy. He stole her dress whilst she was bathing in a river and trapped her in the mortal world.’

  ‘Oh?’ She watched his face.

  ‘What if I were to keep your dress?’ he suggested, holding it at the waist. ‘Trap you here, with me?’

  She pretended to consider. ‘Did she have any children, this poor fairy prisoner?’

  ‘Seven,’ said Charles. ‘They became England’s first kings and queens.’

  ‘Temptin’,’ said Lynette. ‘But I’m hopin’ to raise me children to better. Seems you royals have a lot of cares and responsibilities.’

  ‘And you are a free spirit.’ He smiled at her.

  ‘Money never did bid me keep my mouth shut,’ she agreed.

  ‘I’d be sad if it did.’ He gave her a roguish grin. ‘And there are other ways to keep you quiet.’

  ‘You know,’ she said, ‘it was you who set me free. ’Long with a lot of other girls. You brought back theatre. You let women act. You allowed us to believe we could be more than wives and mothers.’ She nodded to the street outside. ‘You should defend those girls,’ said Lynette. ‘They love you. When the apprentices attack them, they attack you.’

  ‘I thought you weren’t interested in politics.’

  ‘This isn’t politics,’ said Lynette. ‘It’s . . . people. I’m good at people. You are too, I think.’

  ‘What if I shut the theatre?’ he suggested, drawing her close. ‘I could, you know.’

  ‘You wouldn’t, I know you wouldn’t,’ she said, inching the dress back up. ‘In any case it’s you I act for.’

  ‘Oh? Then why not act in the King’s Company?’

  Her expression twisted. ‘Nah,’ she said. ‘Actin’ in your fancy new theatre on Drury Lane? For a licensed theatre troupe?’ She rolled the word in exaggerated aristocratic tones. ‘Me friends would all reckon I got above meself.’

  He looked hard into her eyes. ‘My brother and I made the licensed theatre companies for a reason,’ he said. ‘We wanted to show our respect for the art. The illegal playhouses, some of them are little more than brothels with stages. You’re good.’

  Lynette swallowed. ‘Brothels with stages ’s what I was raised to,’ she said. ‘Besides, someone should show those apprentices,’ she concluded, drawing her ribbons tight, ‘us sinners have no fear of them.’

  Chapter 26

  A violinist had started up in Ozinda’s.

  ‘So you want my help?’ Lily didn’t hide her incredulity.

  When Charlie didn’t answer she leaned forward, resting her weight on her elbows. The bracelets on her toffee-skinned wrists slid down her forearms with a tinkling jangle.

  ‘What could you possibly have to offer me, that would make me want to help you?’

  ‘Would it make a difference if I said I was sorry for throwing your share of the treasure in the ocean?’

  Her face flashed suddenly with anger. ‘I didn’t care about the money. We were partners. And you let me go without a backwards glance.’

  Charlie hadn’t expected this. ‘You left!’

  ‘Did I? Like Maria left?’

  ‘I . . .’ Charlie hesitated, sensing a trap. ‘You wanted me to come with you?’ he tried. ‘Out to sea?’

  ‘No. London is your place. For all the good it does you. Are you still sleeping in a dusty truckle-bed above a butcher’s shop?’

  Charlie was speechless. Never, not even in three lifetimes, would he understand women. He tried a change of subject. ‘I heard you’d stopped spying for the King. You were making your fortune at sea as one of his privateers. I would imagine legal pirating suits you now there’s less call for spies.’

  ‘There’s more need for spies than you might imagine, but I’m not currently engaged.’ Lily drained her glass meaningfully. Charlie refilled it. ‘I’m trying to get back to sea,’ she continued, drinking more wine. ‘Merry Monarch or no, there are too many Puritans in London for me. A woman is either a good wife or a whore.’

  Charlie’s eyes caught a quick movement from under the opposite table. An actress had flicked the contents of her glass onto the rug at her feet, then brought the empty vessel back to her lips
and pretended to take a sip. None of her companions had noticed. Charlie watched her gesture her cup and smile demurely as more was ordered by her resigned gentlemen.

  ‘You cannot talk to a girl with an empty glass,’ said Lily, following his gaze. ‘When the wine is gone, they’ll throw you out.’ She drained her glass with relish. A servant moved forward and quickly refilled it. ‘I don’t make a habit of spilling mine,’ she added, taking a long swig, ‘but there’s a first time for everything.’

  Charlie sipped slowly. The bottle had already diminished by a third.

  ‘So you need another ship,’ he tried, flashing her a smile.

  ‘And you’re the man to get me it?’ she suggested coldly. ‘The problem with you, Charlie Tuesday, is you think your charm will get you through life. It won’t.’

  ‘You think I’m charming?’

  Lily hid her smile with another deep swig of wine.

  ‘We worked well together,’ said Charlie. ‘Tell me you missed me.’

  ‘I don’t like lying to people.’

  ‘You’re pleased to see me though. I can see it in your eyes.’

  Lily leaned forward and knocked over her glass. Dark wine spilled across the lacquered table and dripped onto the floor.

  ‘I am all thumbs today.’ She gave him a dazzling smile.

  The servant stepped forward and dispensed another long measure of wine. Lily lifted it, downed the contents and held the glass high for more.

  ‘Maria’s gone missing,’ said Charlie, speaking quickly. ‘Mother Mitchell said she was asking about you before she disappeared.’

  He saw something in Lily’s face then. A glimmer. The servant refilled her wine and withdrew. She sat back, rolling the glass back and forth in her ringed fingers.

  Charlie glanced at the bottle. It had only half a glass of wine left.

  ‘She came here, didn’t she?’ said Charlie, reading something behind her inscrutable eyes. ‘Maria came to see you.’

  Lily leaned forward, putting both elbows on the table and letting her necklaces swing free of her scanty dress. She rested her fingers on his and looked deep into his eyes as if trying to work something out. Charlie realised he was holding his breath. Then Lily eased free the wine from his hand, upended the drink into her mouth and put his glass back on the table a little too hard.