The Changeling Murders (The Thief Taker Series Book 4)

by C. S. Quinn

  Lily swung to glance down, then lurched back, green-faced. ‘Why did you make me do that?’ she muttered, holding his hands tight and closing her eyes.

  Charlie stooped low.

  ‘Don’t let me go!’ she shrieked.

  ‘It’s only for a moment,’ he assured her. ‘I won’t let you fall.’ He could make out the plank behind Lily’s shaking foot. There was a crest carved into it. A sun with waving rays. It was enclosed in a bobbled circle of dots.

  ‘There’s a sun crest,’ said Charlie. ‘In some kind of circle. Lily,’ he added, ‘it looks like a Royalist thing. You might have seen it before.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Just take a quick look.’ He stood and held tight to her hands. ‘The barest of glances,’ he pleaded. ‘I’ll hold on to you.’

  Lily glared at him, took a breath, then flashed her eyes briefly towards the carved crest. She stood for a moment, steadying herself. ‘It’s Sun in Splendour,’ she said. ‘I recognise it. There’s an inn of the same name towards Islington,’ she added. ‘It’s heraldry.’

  ‘Heraldry as in knights of yore?’ asked Charlie.

  Lily nodded. ‘King Arthur again.’ She rolled her eyes, then staggered slightly. ‘Just get me off the walkway,’ she said. ‘Please.’

  He drew her carefully along and helped her over the crossed boards barring the far side. She sighed in relief.

  ‘The size of the keyhole in that door,’ Charlie was saying. ‘The thickness of the planks. You don’t see that in ordinary houses. The Tower used to have an old wooden lockup by the gates. An overnight gaol for felons waiting to be assigned to a prison. It was demolished years ago.’

  ‘So that plank was carved by a prisoner?’ said Lily.

  ‘Most likely,’ said Charlie. ‘And the foreman thought it should mean something to us. Something he didn’t want us to deduce.’ He thought hard. ‘The ring,’ he said, ‘the puzzle. The sun is a sign of gold in alchemy,’ he suggested.

  He called the plank to mind. The heraldic sun, surrounded by the circle of dots.

  ‘The circle surrounding the sun,’ he said. ‘It was made up of different-sized circles, wasn’t it? Like a fairy ring.’ He was picturing the mushroom fairy rings that grew on the common land surrounding the city. Fungus sprung up in a perfect circle, made of different-sized round mushrooms.

  ‘It did look like a fairy ring,’ agreed Lily. ‘A large circle made of different-sized small ones. But the Sun in Splendour isn’t how alchemists represent gold. They use a simple sun. And that sun was in the ring,’ she pointed out, ‘not on it.’

  ‘So the Sun in Splendour could represent London,’ said Charlie. ‘Surrounded by a fairy ring.’ Charlie looked out to the walkway, feeling he was missing something.

  ‘Only the worthy,’ said Lily, her tone slightly scathing. She drummed her fingers on her lips. ‘I’ll bet this puzzle is something high-borns were taught as schoolboys. The fairy ring around London.’

  Shapes flashed in Charlie’s mind. The uneven circle around the sun, and the wide vista of London he’d seen from the Tower.

  ‘London’s fairy ring,’ he said slowly. ‘We weren’t thinking large enough.’ He turned excitedly to Lily. ‘London Wall,’ he said. ‘A circle to repel bad things. The whole old city is a fairy ring. A circle bordered by gates and turrets.’

  ‘One big fairy ring,’ said Lily, calling to mind the London Wall, punctuated by sentinel gates with the Tower of London closing the loop. ‘So what’s the gold?’

  ‘The Mint,’ said Charlie. ‘The Mint is the gold. This is where the city’s gold is kept.’

  ‘We’ve been in the right place all along,’ said Lily excitedly.

  ‘It fits,’ said Charlie. ‘Whoever made this ring was a Royalist. If they worked in the Mint, they could easily have kept a key here, for those who solved the riddle. But we’re back to where we started,’ he concluded. ‘The Mint doesn’t make keys.’

  Lily frowned in thought. ‘Charlie,’ she said slowly. ‘What was it the foreman didn’t want us to find?’ She grasped his hand. ‘The seals, Charlie,’ she said, ‘the old Royalist seals.’

  ‘You think a key is hidden with the seals?’ he suggested.

  She shook her head. ‘Think of what a seal is, what it can do. The right seal can get you into select places. So a seal is a kind of a key, is it not?’ she added.

  ‘Which means the foreman knew the entire time what the puzzle meant,’ said Charlie.

  Lily was nodding. ‘We should go back to where he is,’ she said. ‘First rule of spying. If someone’s on edge, lying, watch what they do when they think you aren’t looking. Likely it will reveal something important. He might go straight to where this secret room is.’ She chewed a fingernail. ‘The only problem is,’ she said. ‘How do we spy on him without being seen? This whole place is full of men pressing coins.’

  ‘In all my years of thief taking,’ said Charlie, ‘there’s something that has always held true.’ He pointed to the dusty network of old beams holding the crumbling ceiling in place. They spread outwards in complicated overlapping shapes. ‘No one ever looks up.’

  Chapter 41

  Mother Mitchell raised her jewelled fist, hesitated, then knocked. The door began to open. There was a young girl on the other side. Mother Mitchell didn’t recognise her.

  The girl tilted her head insolently. ‘Muvva Mitchell, is it? I’ve seen your fine carriage.’ She made a mock curtsey. ‘Think you’re better than us. Does noble cock taste better than sailors’?’

  She was eyeing Mother Mitchell’s jewels and coiffed hair. An unusual sight in Wapping.

  Mother Mitchell moved slightly closer. ‘Mind your manners, girl. This fancy dress don’t mean I won’t box your ears. I’m here to speak with your mistress . . .’

  They were interrupted by a commotion in the hallway. A tall woman was shouldering her way angrily through a gaggle of morose-looking girls.

  ‘What is she doing here?’ demanded an African-accented voice. ‘She may not enter this house.’

  Mother Mitchell held up a pacifying hand as Damaris strode to the door, glaring. She was taller than Mother Mitchell remembered, and her black skin still had its sheen of youth. Her pink dress wasn’t real silk, Mother Mitchell noted. It was taffeta, and her cuffs were thick-stitched Cheapside imitations of Chantilly lace.

  ‘What do you want?’ demanded Damaris. Her large dark eyes were narrowed.

  Mother Mitchell caught sight of the wound on Damaris’s cheek and raised a hand towards it, her face drawn. ‘Oh, Rissy,’ she said, reverting to Damaris’s old nickname, ‘what did they do?’

  ‘What’s one more scar?’ Damaris shrugged. ‘Don’t be pretending you care. You stole my best customer.’

  Mother Mitchell stamped her foot. ‘You used a lock of my hair for voodoo!’ she accused.

  ‘It din’ work,’ said Damaris. ‘He never came back.’ Her voice was pained. ‘Mens is all the same. They think us animals. All of us with black skin.’

  ‘And now you press-gang the poor young men who come to your house?’ said Mother Mitchell. ‘You must have known there would be consequences.’ She was looking at the wound on Damaris’s face. ‘These aren’t just apprentices’ high jinks.’

  Damaris waved her hand, with its single battered tin ring. ‘I know it,’ she said. ‘The fire. People poor. Got nothing. Lookin’ for someone to blame.’ She smiled sardonically. ‘Everythin’ always the fault of the whores.’

  ‘They’re heading to Covent Garden. The apprentices,’ said Mother Mitchell meaningfully.

  Damaris’s round eyes widened. ‘The apprentices never go to Covent Garden,’ she said. ‘That’s the King’s place. His women.’

  ‘Her women,’ corrected Mother Mitchell. ‘Mrs Jenks manages the whores in Covent Garden. She took the theatres for herself, didn’t she? London’s richest pickings. Left us common bawds the dregs.’

  ‘That’s what high breedin’ gets you,’ said Damaris. ‘Jenks is friends with
high-ups. Ain’t no one going to cross her.’

  ‘’Cept now there is,’ said Mother Mitchell. ‘The mob is so riled up I think they might dare an attack on Covent Garden. And, after all these years, the doxy Queen’s got no guard. She’s sat fat on her high breeding.’

  Mother Mitchell took a breath. ‘If Jenks falls we should move in together,’ she said. ‘We could divide Covent Garden in two.’

  Damaris hesitated. ‘That’s the difference between you and me,’ she said. ‘I never was a builder of dynasties. I happy enough with Wapping.’

  Mother Mitchell absorbed this. ‘I don’t believe you,’ she said. ‘I think you’re scared of her. Of Mrs Jenks. Mutton-dressed-as-lamb with her sugar-paste blonde curls.’

  ‘She like a salamander,’ said Damaris. ‘She evil. Besides,’ she added, ‘I don’t believe them ’prentices would dare Covent Garden. It’s treason.’

  Mother Mitchell opened her mouth to say something. For a moment Damaris thought she might demand her lock of hair back. Then she turned to go, her huge silken skirts making an impressive orbit around her broad hips.

  ‘Your boy was here,’ said Damaris as Mother Mitchell walked away. ‘The one you raised. The thief taker. Charlie.’

  Mother Mitchell turned her head back.

  ‘He’s a credit to you,’ said Damaris, stepping back from the threshold.

  Mother Mitchell nodded. ‘Tell your girl that noble cock does taste better than sailors’,’ she called back as she left. ‘Though I’ve never been partial to either.’

  Chapter 42

  Charlie inched forward, tensing to propel himself across the beams.

  Beneath him men carried crates rattling full of coins. If the heat of the forge-heated rooms was unbearable, the rising trapped air in the rafters seemed to wrap tight around them.

  ‘I can hardly breathe,’ said Lily. ‘I think I may faint.’

  ‘You’re wearing too many clothes,’ said Charlie.

  Lily glowered at him, sweat beading her face.

  They’d tracked the foreman to the part of the Mint where the latest machines had been employed. The roar of clanking metal, slamming presses and tinkling new coins enveloped them.

  Sweating men with downturned mouths manned the machinery. Several worked to turn the huge iron press, propelling a heavy stamp rhythmically downwards. One man rapidly slid blanks into the machine’s ravenous maw, whilst an unfortunate boy quickly flicked the pressed coins free before the next heavy stamp of the press broke his fingers.

  The foreman was talking to a worker and Charlie inclined his ear towards the conversation. But the noisy presses drowned everything out.

  ‘We need to get closer,’ he hissed, inching further along the beam. ‘This way.’

  ‘It won’t take our weight,’ said Lily, eyeing the ancient structure.

  Charlie looked at the dowel pinning the beam in place. ‘It will most likely hold,’ he decided.

  ‘Most likely?’

  Charlie was thinking of Maria, captive somewhere. ‘Stay here if you like,’ he said. ‘I need to hear what’s being said.’

  Lily muttered one of her strange gypsy curses. Then the beam shuddered, and she began working her way towards him, her silk dress rustling as she moved.

  A door opened. Charlie saw an incredibly beautiful woman enter, dressed in a dizzying display of wealth, flanked by a pack of five guards. He recognised her instantly. It was Lady Castlemaine, the King’s infamous mistress. She approached the foreman, who seemed to be expecting her.

  ‘What’s she doing here?’ asked Lily. ‘If she sees me, we’re both dead.’

  ‘You’ve made an enemy of Lady Castlemaine?’

  ‘Something like that.’

  ‘I have a bad feeling,’ said Charlie, ‘that the foreman must have sought out Lady Castlemaine and told her we were here asking questions. Which suggests this missing lord and lady are important.’

  The coin pressing stopped, and the workers stood out of respect to their visitor. But their faces barely disguised their contempt. Charlie could imagine what the coin-pressers would say to their plain-dressed wives, eating their supper of watered oatmeal. The King’s whore wore a dress expensive enough to pay the Mint’s annual wages several times over.

  ‘Where are these spies now?’ Lady Castlemaine’s cut-glass vowels rang around the now-silent room.

  ‘I sent them to the old pressing house.’

  Lady Castlemaine nodded. ‘I have guards at the exits. The girl is called Lily Boswell. She’s dangerous. We’ll arrest her along with whoever she is with and throw them in the Tower.’

  Fear coiled through Charlie’s stomach as the guards hurried off to search for them.

  The foreman said something that Charlie didn’t hear. He moved closer.

  ‘We have no hope of finding the green-and-gold dress,’ said Lady Castlemaine to the unheard question. ‘The talk of the brothels is it’s been stolen by a Wapping whore. She vanished into the stews near Temple.’ Lady Castlemaine sighed. ‘It’s only fortunate the thief doesn’t know what she has stolen. Whoever gets hold of the dress can find the Lord and Lady. What of the seals?’ she demanded.

  ‘Safe. No one uses the shaft anymore. And men won’t go near the old forge. Not after the horrors done there,’ the foreman said, crossing himself. ‘The Lord and Lady escaped the flames. But the others were burned there.’

  Lady Castlemaine’s small jaw tightened. ‘You burned them?’ Her eyes narrowed in disgust.

  The foreman shook his grizzled head. ‘Not I, Your Ladyship. Nor any men I knew. They had to bring in a special man. One of Cromwell’s lackeys. He was the only one who would do such a dreadful deed and even he baulked at it, I reckon.’

  Lady Castlemaine’s face darkened. ‘How?’ she demanded. ‘How could the Lord and Lady have left the Tower unseen?’

  The foreman rubbed his jaw. ‘Old magic?’ he suggested. ‘The fairy folk can disappear and reappear at will.’

  Lady Castlemaine gave an unladylike snort of disbelief. ‘More likely someone thought to make his fortune by protecting them.’ She thought for a moment. ‘You’re certain they won’t go near the old forge?’ she demanded. ‘If Lily Boswell finds the key to Avalon it will be all your necks. She might piece something together.’

  Charlie heard a strange noise behind him. He turned to see Lily had turned a waxy pale, her face slick with sweat. She was fainting from the heat.

  Charlie inched back as fast as he dared. Lily’s eyes were rolling upwards as he made it back level with where she lay. She began to slip sideways and he threw a desperate arm out, pinning her to the wooden rafter.

  She blinked, shook her head and looked at him in confusion.

  ‘You were fainting,’ he explained. ‘The heat.’

  Lady Castlemaine was turning to go now.

  ‘Come on,’ said Charlie. ‘Let’s get out of here.’

  Lily nodded and, as she did so, a large droplet of sweat shook free from her forehead and splashed down. It hit Lady Castlemaine’s ringed fingers and there was a long moment whilst she looked at her wet hand in puzzlement.

  Charlie and Lily stayed completely still on the rafter above, not daring to breathe.

  Then, very slowly, the King’s mistress lifted her beautiful face and looked up.

  Her large violet eyes landed square on Lily and Charlie, clinging monkey-like to the beam.

  ‘Get them,’ she commanded. ‘Find out what they heard.’

  Chapter 43

  Maria awoke with a start. Someone in the dark room was screaming. She sat up, alert, heart beating fast. It was a man’s voice, so thick with fear it filled her with panic. He was pleading with someone. Then she realised: it was Tom’s voice. He must have fallen asleep on the floor near her.

  ‘Tom?’ she called into the dark. ‘Tom?’

  The shouting was close, and she managed to feel for his hand. It was cold, the skin flaking away. She gripped it hard and squeezed. Her eyes had adjusted now, and she could see
a sliver of moonlight barely illuminating the attic. She made out the shape of her captor, rolling around in his sleep, face wracked with terror.

  ‘Stop!’ he shouted. ‘No more! He will die of it!’

  It occurred to Maria that Tom must have inadvertently rolled nearer to her in his sleep. She might be able to search his prone body for a key or a weapon. Her first reaction had been pity, but now sense took over.

  Her gaze dropped to his hip where a short sword was sheathed. She took a gentle hold and tried to pull it free. But the blade was stuck, rusted and old. She slipped a hand under his coat. There was something inside. A leather vial of liquid. Poison? She remembered the dead girl. Could she steal it, use it?

  The sudden possibilities overwhelmed her. She was manacled, she didn’t need to remind herself. He would likely realise she had robbed him. Perhaps his sleeping was another trick. Could he be acting to entice her to try to escape?

  He quietened, and she drew her fingers back fearfully, contemplating her options. Perhaps she could pour the liquid directly into his sleeping mouth.

  Suddenly Tom’s eyes were open, pale pools in the half-light. Maria felt bitter disappointment fill her stomach. The chance to escape had slid away. She’d missed it.

  He was staring at her.

  ‘You’re frightened of ghosts?’ asked Maria. She didn’t know why she said it.

  He sat up and she felt his fingers flex. She realised she was still holding his hand.

  ‘You tried to comfort me?’ he asked. ‘In my sleep?’

  She nodded, not daring to speak in case her voice gave away the lie.

  ‘You didn’t try to escape,’ he said. ‘Why?’

  ‘I . . . I pitied you,’ said Maria, feeling guilty. ‘You sounded so frightened.’

  There was a pause. He slipped his hand free and moved away from her.

  ‘What did you dream of?’ she asked.

  His face clouded. ‘Fairies do not dream. We have . . . thoughts, is all. Thoughts that come back at night.’