by C. S. Quinn
‘Please,’ said Charlie, dispensing with his pride. ‘I need your help.’
Lily sat back, drinking, considering. ‘Maria did come to me,’ she said, after a moment. ‘I liked her.’
‘She was looking for a dress?’ asked Charlie.
‘An old one,’ agreed Lily, her forehead wrinkling in memory. ‘Said it would be decorated with green-gold leaves and ribbons. Made of fine silk. The way she described it . . .’ Lily hesitated, looking down at the table.
Charlie sat a little forward.
‘It made me think of fairy tales,’ she said, raising her eyes to his with a half laugh. ‘Enchantresses or sorceresses. Fair maidens and dragons.’
‘Old as in old-fashioned?’ Charlie was trying to match his scant knowledge of female fashion.
‘More than that,’ said Lily, toying with her glass. ‘But . . . We didn’t have the dress she wanted. Ozinda’s turns over a lot of dresses. Old theatre stock, trader-auctions, anything that looks foreign. If we ever had that dress, it was likely sold and passed around the city.’ She shrugged. ‘A dress like that could be anywhere.’
Charlie was thinking rapidly. ‘What happened then?’ he asked. ‘When you didn’t have the dress?’
Lily’s dark brow furrowed again. ‘She wanted me to get her into Damaris Page’s brothel. Black-Damaris,’ she added. ‘Used to be a slave.’
‘I know of her,’ said Charlie. ‘She hates Mother Mitchell. They fell out, years ago, over a man.’
‘I’ve had some trade dealings with Damaris,’ said Lily. ‘A few smuggled barrels here and there. Maria hoped I could gain her a favourable audience. Damaris isn’t a woman for cosy chit-chat.’
‘No.’ Charlie was picturing the dark-skinned Wapping brothel-keeper. ‘It takes a hard woman to run a sailors’ whorehouse. Did you take Maria there?’
‘No,’ said Lily. ‘I told her it was too dangerous to visit a Wapping brothel at Lent. Said I’d take her in a few weeks for the right price. She never came back.’
Lily picked up the bottle and drained the remaining wine in one large mouthful. ‘By your leave,’ she said, making to stand.
‘Wait,’ said Charlie. ‘What if I told you I could make you enough money to buy another ship?’
‘Remember the last time you promised me great wealth?’ answered Lily. She leaned forward angrily. ‘Treasure?’ she continued. ‘I ran halfway around London with you, near got myself killed. And when we found your great treasure, you threw it in the ocean. I made not a penny.’
‘You left with a boat!’
‘A boat now sunk.’ Lily stood. Her eyes flicked to the servant and she nodded to the empty bottle. He hastened forward to eject Charlie.
‘Maria was looking for a lost lord and lady,’ said Charlie, glancing towards the impending servant. ‘You spied for the King. You must have heard of them.’
Lily hesitated. ‘The Lord and Lady are a fairy story,’ she said. ‘How can two people be the magic behind the throne? And if they ever did exist they are long murdered, died during the war.’
There was a sudden commotion near the door. Charlie turned, expecting to see another man being ejected. But instead the large manager and several other men were shouting. The skinny boy raised a large bell and clanged it with all his might.
Lily jerked in her chair. ‘That’s the alarm,’ she said. ‘Apprentices.’
Chapter 27
Ozinda’s was wild with panic. Actresses ran in all directions. Several were cowering under tables. One was stuffing boxes of snuff into her pockets. The security men were clustered by the door, grim faced and armed with blunt cudgels.
‘We’re not prepared for Lent riots.’ Lily was pale. ‘They never come here. We’re’ – she searched for the word – ‘reputable.’
‘You mean you have male staff to protect you,’ said Charlie. ‘And skinny apprentices only like to attack defenceless women.’ He looked at the door. Shouts could be heard from the other side. ‘But you’re right,’ he said. ‘Apprentices have never attacked coffee or chocolate shops at Lent.’ He grasped her arm. ‘Maria thought you could get into Damaris Page’s house. Can you?’
‘Maybe.’
‘Whoever the Lord and Lady are, they’re worth a fortune,’ said Charlie. ‘The dress Maria was looking for, it leads to them. It’s hidden in a brothel.’
Lily considered this. ‘That’s a bad coincidence,’ she opined. ‘With the apprentices tearing up brothels.’
‘Perhaps not,’ said Charlie. ‘What if these riots are just a cover for something? And perhaps someone’s already found some clue to the Lord and Lady, hidden all these years.’
‘What else?’ Lily leaned forward. ‘I’m a card sharp, remember, just like you. I can tell when you’re hiding something. You’re not looking for money, Charlie Tuesday, or some long-lost treasure neither. So what is it that would make you want to run through the city’s brothels during Lent?’
Charlie hesitated. ‘It’s Maria,’ he admitted. ‘She’s gone missing, and then a body turned up wearing her wedding clothes with a demand to find the Lord and Lady.’
Lily was silent.
‘Help me,’ said Charlie. ‘Get me into Damaris’s brothel. We could buy you a new ship.’
She considered for a moment. ‘No,’ she said. ‘Not for any price. Besides,’ she added, casting an assessing glance at the door, ‘it’s not just a ship I need.’
‘Then what?’
‘A privateer’s licence.’
‘Permission to be a legal pirate? I thought you had one?’
‘Mine was . . . retracted.’
‘Why?’
Her face darkened. ‘Mistakes were made,’ she said.
There was a roar of splintering wood and the men at the door raised their weapons.
‘They’re in,’ said Charlie. ‘I can help you. Only say you’ll help me.’
‘I don’t need your help,’ said Lily. She was removing a knife from under her skirts. ‘The first apprentice who lays a hand on me loses an eye.’
‘And what of the third and fourth?’ asked Charlie. ‘You’ve never seen an apprentice riot. They’re ugly. Women get torn apart.’
‘I thought they only broke up property?’ Lily’s voice had risen an octave.
‘Half the old whores in London have scars from apprentice riots. I can help you.’ He held out a hand. ‘This building is an old mansion house,’ he said. ‘During the war, London nobles built escape tunnels and I’ve a good idea where one might be.’
Lily hesitated. Apprentices had begun pouring in. Young men began overturning tables, smashing bottles.
‘Very well,’ said Lily, staring at the apprentices. ‘Only get me out.’
‘Say you’ll help me.’
‘I’ll help.’ Lily waved her knife in annoyance.
‘Swear it,’ insisted Charlie.
Lily breathed out through her nostrils. ‘I swear it,’ she said. ‘Now will you please get us out before those men tear us to pieces?’
‘There’s a trapdoor,’ said Charlie, ‘beneath your feet. I noticed it when I sat at your table. Most likely it leads to the tavern across the street.’
He knelt and heaved it open. A set of old wooden steps yawned below.
‘After you.’ He gave her a little push. She stumbled through the hatch, giving him an angry look. Charlie stepped down after her.
Chapter 28
Tom’s hand shook slightly as he approached the cell.
She was inside.
The stone corridor reminded him strongly of the Tower of London. He had a sudden memory. The shock of realising the Lord and Lady had gone. Tom had raced down the stone staircase to the deepest darkest depths of the Tower. He’d seen the iron prison blasted apart by gunpowder. Felt the sinking horror of his failure.
Tom gathered his courage and pushed open the thick door. As usual when he arrived, his mother was deep in prayer, lips muttering, Bible gripped in her hands.
She turned and stood as he entered.
Bridey Black’s dark greying hair was neatly tucked under a white cap. Her face retained its striking contours around the eyes and cheekbones, but the jowls and mouth had fallen slightly. She was thin, save for a protruding pot belly; a side effect of frequent purges.
‘Hello, Mother,’ said Tom.
Bridey put the Bible down and crossed the well-swept stone floor. Her room was large and scrupulously clean, as Puritan living dictated. There was a hard chair and a small functional table on which a plain loaf of bread had been half sliced, but no bed. Bridey Black slept on the floor. It was one of many mortifications she visited on herself for the purification of her soul and better attainment of her visions.
‘They won’t let you stay here unless you start prophesising again,’ said Tom. ‘This cell is expensive. Others of this size house seven lunatics.’
‘You told them about Lent?’ she said. ‘My powers are low.’
‘They are saying other things,’ said Tom. ‘About men who visit you.’
Bridey twitched in annoyance. ‘I thought you had money enough?’ she demanded, shaking her head. ‘Your blood money. Your father would have been so ashamed at what you turn your powers to. Remember how disappointed he was when you began working in that theatre? Tricks and illusions.’
Tom nodded. She loved to remind him of this.
‘It doesn’t matter what they think,’ said Bridey. ‘We will spin straw to gold. The Lord and Lady can bring endless wealth, if managed correctly.’ She looked at him. ‘Don’t you want to go home? Back to your own kind?’
Tom nodded.
‘I knew the thief taker was a gift from God,’ she said. ‘A man raised in brothels, thrown straight into your path by that girl.’
Her eyes flicked to his face. ‘The problem haunted you,’ she said. ‘How do you fool a clever man into going against what he believes in? The fairies gave you the answer,’ continued Bridey. ‘You don’t persuade him. You force him. You take away something dear to him.’ Her lips trembled dramatically. ‘How did it please God to take your father and brother and let you live?’ she said, shaking her head. ‘God knows how I have suffered. The sights of the Shambles brought daily horrors to my delicate constitution. Yet I was a devoted wife. The best of mothers.’
It was a sentence he’d heard her say many times.
‘Royal court are the fairy folk,’ she said. ‘Selfish. Interested only in trinkets and gold, power and tyranny.’ Bridey nodded to herself. ‘You are one of that cursed kind.’ She thought for a moment. ‘Lent will be over in two days,’ she said. ‘On Good Friday your chance to return home will have passed. Your thief taker isn’t moving fast enough.’
‘Maria thinks he will succeed,’ said Tom, ‘though she doesn’t want me to know her thoughts.’
‘Maria?’ Bridey pronounced the name pointedly, raising her eyebrows.
‘It is the name of the girl,’ said Tom. ‘The thief taker’s jilt.’
Bridey had gone very quiet.
‘What’s the matter?’ asked Tom. ‘You’re having a vision?’
She shook her head. ‘I’m only wondering what the fairy folk would make of it all,’ she said. ‘I’m wondering if there’s any need for this . . . Maria’ – she eyed him as she said the name – ‘to be kept alive.’
Chapter 29
Scattered broken things littered Wapping’s dirt tracks as Charlie and Lily approached Ratcliffe Highway.
‘It’s an old spy trick to leave a coded confession,’ Lily was explaining as they approached. ‘If you’re condemned to death with vital information, you confess a clue only your allies can understand. The court is legally bound to keep an accurate record of your words,’ she added, ‘so it’s much safer than a verbal message, or a letter that could be intercepted. But it’s a desperate trick,’ she concluded. ‘By confessing you seal your fate.’
‘Then someone thought this lord and lady were worth being half-hanged, castrated and gutted for,’ said Charlie. ‘But his friends never got the message. Perhaps they would have known which brothel he meant.’
Shattered wine bottles and chamber-pot shards ringed the dirt. Burned scraps of dresses and bright parrot feathers drifted on the breeze.
Lily’s eyes widened as they took in the destruction that had befallen the famous pleasure district. Windows were smashed in, signs hung askew and the smoking remains of large bonfires punctuated the dirt track.
‘Look at it,’ she breathed. ‘They’ve broken up the whole street.’
‘This was no disordered mob,’ said Charlie, taking in the dusty air as he and Lily moved through the streets. ‘Look at the path they took.’ He pointed towards Blue Anchor Yard and Cartwright Street. ‘Apprentices usually charge down Smithfield. Gives the old houses time to close their doors. Those people came from the side streets in a pincer movement.’
Charlie eyed the usually packed-out taverns. They were almost empty save for a few bruised-looking drinkers. A drunk old woman with a faded anchor tattoo raised her skirts hopefully as they passed.
‘So, this missing lord and lady,’ Lily was saying. ‘You think they’re related to a butcher’s son named Tom Black? And this man has taken Maria?’
‘The local Shambles folk seem to think them relations of his,’ said Charlie. ‘They believe his mother an adulterer, and her son to have noble blood. But Bridey Black thought her son a fairy changeling.’
‘And the legend of the Lord and Lady speaks of them as a fairy king and queen,’ Lily filled in.
They walked in silence for a time. Street children were picking through the half-burned remnants, searching for anything of value. On the road up ahead, strange dust hung in the air.
‘Whole aristocratic families fled England during the civil war,’ said Charlie. ‘Anyone with a claim to the crown had a price on their head.’
‘But why would people like that stay in hiding after the King’s return?’
‘Because they still pose some threat to the Crown?’ suggested Charlie. ‘Perhaps our Merry Monarch isn’t as nice as you think. What if the riots are somehow linked to the Lord and Lady?’ continued Charlie. ‘Bawdy houses were known Royalist sympathisers. They often hid noble-born fugitives. Perhaps one hid the Lord and Lady.’
‘You think the apprentice riots are an effort to flush out two long-lost fugitives?’
‘Well, they would give someone the perfect cover to search brothels. The Gilded Lock got the worst of it,’ observed Charlie as they approached. He remembered it as having a tumbledown grandness, with wrought-iron balconies and full-length windows clustered with bare skin and colourful skirts. ‘There’s hardly anything left.’
The Gilded Lock’s familiar wrought-iron sign hung at a dangerous angle. The first two floors had been completely destroyed. Pulled down into the street and smashed into tinder sticks.
‘They burned their nice things,’ said Lily, looking at the scraps of silk in the fire. ‘For no reason. Just to hurt them. Who would do that?’
‘Angry young boys with nothing to lose,’ said Charlie.
The door bore an ugly rent where a large boot had smashed it open. A pathetic barricade of an old cotton scarf was looped across the threshold.
Charlie stepped forward and knocked loudly on the broken doorframe. When there was no answer he shouted into the gloom. ‘Damaris Page?’
A movement came from the dark of the devastated house. Then Lily jumped back with a gasp. They were both staring into the barrel of a gun.
Chapter 30
Lady Castlemaine looked left and right. No one had seen her. Carefully she slipped into the bedroom. There was a familiar perfume on the air. She was here, sleeping in this room. Did the King love her? Everything hinged on it. Holding her breath, Lady Castlemaine tiptoed further inside, trying not to make a sound.
There was a sleepy female murmur in the dark and she froze. But then a rhythmic breathing resumed and she moved further forward. Lady Castlemaine’s face softened. Her baby was sleeping peacefully in her expensive crib. She reache
d out and stroked the soft cheek with her ringed finger.
‘My little darling,’ she whispered. ‘My treasure.’ She leaned deeper into the crib, cupping the little head in her hand. ‘They want to take your fortune, my darling,’ she said. ‘I know all of what happens to girls with no dowry. I’ve lived it. But you mustn’t fret.’ She arranged the bedclothes. ‘Your mama wouldn’t let that happen,’ she said. ‘You will never have to do the things I’ve had to. Never.’ She smiled at the sleeping child. ‘Best beloved,’ she whispered, stroking the curled fingers. ‘He will protect you. I will make him. There is a darkness behind his throne,’ she said. ‘It has always been there. From the very beginning of kings. The magic ones who shadowed King Arthur and Queen Guinevere. The sorceress and the wild man. I know it, my precious. I have seen.’
Lady Castlemaine looked at her baby sleeping on white linen, a lacy cap tied under her chubby chin. The room was vast, the crib enormous, of dark beautifully carved mahogany, high at the top, like an arc. A marble fireplace gave gentle heat from a cleansing sandalwood fire.
‘People talk of the Lord and Lady as fairies,’ she smiled. ‘But I know the truth. Without them, a king cannot be legally crowned. That is why they are so important.’
The door opened and the royal wet-nurse bustled in. She saw Lady Castlemaine, curtsied, and approached the crib.
‘God has brought you an angel,’ she clucked, fussing about the linen covers. ‘Such beauty.’ The wet-nurse looked about the room. ‘I didn’t sleep a wink until your wee jewel was christened,’ she said. ‘You know fairy folk covet pretty babes. They will have been lying in watch for this little one. But she’s safe now,’ added the wet-nurse, happily. ‘Christened into God’s church. The fey folk must have champed their teeth in envy,’ she concluded.
Lady Castlemaine watched as the wet-nurse left the room. Her fingers tightened on the wooden crib. ‘He’d not be five minutes cold and they’d take all this away,’ she said. ‘All the maids that fuss and pet you, the courtiers that bow. They’d be no friends to you.’ She arranged the covers carefully. ‘I will find the Lord and Lady. I will take their power. For you, my most beloved, for you.’