He packed what he would need for his brief sojourn in Stock’s chambers, put out fire, candles, and cat, and went to do his assigned duty with a sense of fate and opportunity.
He knocked softly at Stock’s door and then entered without waiting for a summons within. He found Stock awake; he was sitting up in bed and holding a pistol aimed at Phipps’s chest.
With instincts bom of natural cowardice, Phipps threw his hands up before his face and cried out in alarm. Stock lowered the pistol, uncocked it, and put it down beside his pillow. “Vety sorry, Phipps. Master Hutton left the pistol with me—as protection.”
His heart pounding, Phipps walked over and put his things in a small valise, down on the smaller bed. “Jesus, you gave me a fright,” he said.
“I didn’t mean it,” Stock said. “What hour must it be?”
“Near unto twelve. ’ ’
“I’m told we are to be chamberfellows for a few days— until I get on my feet again.”
“So it would seem.”
“Hutton instructed you in your duties?”
“He did.”
“Good. Go ahead, unpack. Make yourself at home.”
Phipps said thank you but knew very well he would not be making himself at home, not in a chamber where Monk had hanged himself. He was not superstitious, but he wondered that Stock could face a night alone in the chamber so complacently, especially after what he had encountered in the passage, but then perhaps that more than explained the pistol.
Stock shut his eyes, and Phipps undressed; the fire on the hearth had burned down to ashes, and the chamber was taking on that sodden chill that makes slipping beneath the covers on a December night one of life’s fiindamental pleasures. But Phipps, still uneasy about the pistol and unable to rid himself of the image of the hanged man, despaired of sleep despite the lateness of the hour.
“Too bad about Braithwaite,” Stock murmured suddenly, substituting one corpse for another in Phipps’s mind.
“Too bad indeed.”
“We all thought he would recover—even Ley land, the physician.”
“Oh, doctors don’t know everything,” Phipps remarked casually. He went to the door and bolted it. Stock said that was a good idea. It never hurt to be safe. He wished Phipps good night.
Wearily Phipps climbed into bed. He knew the bed had been Litchfield’s, and he found the thought of sleeping in it both depressing and frightening. But it had also been the chamber where, according to Keable, the conspirators had met, and so he was thereby closer to the truth he sought. There was something to be said for that.
Strangely, however, the thought provided him with little consolation.
At the Gull it was past midnight and near closing time. A handful of patrons remained, entertained by a couple of Mother Franklin’s scrawny birds who had come down to scratch and preen amid the survivors of the long evening, three gentlemen of Gray’s. Ned Hodge, the proprietor, stood behind the bar haranguing one of the drawers. A torrent of epithets drowning the poor fellow in a year’s abuse. Hodge
stopped as the door to the outside opened and a rush of frigid air blew in to clear away some of the evening’s accumulation of stale tobacco smoke.
Hodge waved the offending drawer away with an abrupt motion and turned his wrath upon the visitor. “Close the door behind you, curse you. What do you think, firewood is free?” Squinting, he recognized the newcomer. “Oh, it’s you, is it? Come back, have you? Well, close the door then. Where have you been all night? Setting up shop in the Strand, I’ll warrant.”
Nan Warren made no reply, and Hodge noticed the wench’s face was waxy pale and her expression unusually grave for one who was normally as merry as could be. He thought she might be sick, even, and prayed God it wasn’t the plague she was afflicted with. Not that he cared about her personally. To him, one slut was like unto another, although he did allow Nan Warren to be better endowed in complexion and form than most.
Curious, he drew her a cup of ale and took it over to where she had taken a stool in the comer. “It’s cold out, is it?”
“As your heart,” she said, not looking up at him.
“So what were you doing still abroad?”
“Looking for someone, if you must know. ”
He repeated her words, sneering. “Take care no one’s looking for you, mistress, after that trick you pulled the other night.”
She looked up at him with sudden anger. “What trick do you mean?”
“Easy, Nan. I mean the trick you pulled with that proud ironmonger’s wife or whatever she was who thought herself so grand and dealt a low blow to my good friend. I tell you, I was hard put to make peace after you disappeared with her.”
“Were you?” said Nan with a dry laugh. She took the cup and raised it to her lips. “Well, I am heartily sorry for your pains, Master Hodge, but I thought it inconvenient for either of us to be mauled by your good friends, and so we took our leave.”
“They were only having a little fun,” Hodge said.
“Their idea of fan, not mine.”
“I suppose she paid you handsomely for helping her escape.”
“If she did, what business is that of yours?”
“Watch your tongue, mistress. If you want to keep those fancy lodgings I provide upstairs.”
“I won’t be needing them anymore—-at least not after tonight.”
He laughed. “You’ve found a friend, then?”
“Maybe.”
He laughed again, but less confidently now. Nan Warren had always been more plucky than the other giiis who worked for Mother Franklin. Hodge could have twisted her neck off in an instant, so slender it was, and yet there was something about her that made him hesitate, some hidden strength within her that told him she was no woman to be regarded lightly.
The two whores had gone upstairs, and the three gentlemen of Gray’s left behind were staring at Nan with quiet interest. She looked over at them and then looked down at the table. A man in a heavy cloak came in.
“Good evening to you, Master Leyland,” Hodge called out with sudden cheerfulness. “Been up late bleeding the sick, have you? Well, you’ll want a flagon of sack to brace you against that which no physician can cure.”
Leyland returned Hodge’s greeting, smiling amiably. He said he had been at the Middle Temple, tending wounds.
“Wounds, is it?” returned Hodge, with a hoarse, mocking laugh. “What, the young lawyers have been cutting each other’s throats, have they?”
“Two casualties,” said Leyland, turning to look at where Nan sat. “One an accident at fence, of which the poor devil died unaccountably later.”
“You don’t say!” exclaimed Hodge, interested.
“And the other a visitor—a father of a prospective student.”
“Died too?” asked Hodge, bringing a glass to Leyland and then putting the doctor’s coin into the little pocket in his apron. “Serves the old fellow right for mixing up with men half his age.”
“True, it was no accident,” Leyland said, glancing over at Nan again. “Someone stabbed him. Got him in the thigh not six inches from his privates. But he’ll live to procreate as he pleases.”
“A lucky man on both accounts,” said Hodge.
Leyland walked over to where Nan was and stood for a moment looking down at her. Then he said, “Why so hangdog, Nan? You look like death.”
She turned her face up to him and regarded him coldly. “And what if I do, is that your concern?”
“Maybe,” he said. “Come upstairs with me.”
“Not tonight.”
“We have business.”
“I lack good company,” she said.
“I’ve been known to answer to that description.”
Nan finished her drink without replying. Behind the bar, Hodge watched the interchange with interest, straining to hear. He liked Leyland, and although the physician spent his days healing gentlemen, Hodge suspected that beneath, he was an unscrupulous rogue of the same uncouth tribe as hi
mself. Leyland asked Nan if she would have another drink and she said no. He asked Hodge to bring her one anyway. “A good drink will melt the ice in her blood.”
“I have no ice in my blood,” Nan said.
“Take it from a man of science, Nan,” Leyland said. “The blood may chill as much as water since, like water, it is a liquid.”
“Spare me your philosophy, sir physician,” Nan said bitterly. “I will endure none of your sophistical wooing tonight.”
“I, a sophistical wooer?” Leyland asked, turning around to Hodge as though he should judge between them. “Now you do me wrong, Nan, to call my sincerity into question.” It was Nan Warren’s turn to laugh, but Hodge heard no merriment in it. Her laugh was rancorous and derisive, and the soft features of her face had been transformed into a mask of harshness and cruelty. But none of this seemed to deter Leyland, for which Hodge admired the man all the more,
and he wished him success in taming this willful whore and enjoying her before morning.
Leyland sat down opposite Nan and reached into his purse. He withdrew some coins; Hodge could hear them tinkling together in the physician’s hand. “In faith,” said Leyland, “a penny or more in the right palm can do more than alchemy to turn the base, metal of refusal into the gold of compliance. Isn’t that right, friend Hodge?”
Hodge, who had heard that part of the conversation, agreed readily that it was true. “I know nothing of alchemy or any such hocus-pocus, but the rattle of coins rubbing one another is the prettiest music I know.”
Leyland laughed and opened his palm so that Nan could see how many there were and of what worth. Hodge watched Nan’s gaze fall to the open hand. For a moment she seemed prepared to utter another rejection, then she looked into Ley-land’s face and said, loud enough for Hodge to hear this too, “Well, Master Leyland. You have a new patient for the evening after all. Pray, let us see how you can restore me to health.”
Leyland laughed again, a deeper, throatier laugh, as large men make when they have had their way about something. He turned and winked at Hodge, whose eyes reflected his own pleasure in witnessing these negotiations.
Hodge continued to watch as Nan and Leyland went upstairs. He smiled to himself and then looked around to bid the last of his customers good night, not realizing until that moment that he was now alone.
“A pretty performance,” Leyland said when they were alone in the little chamber that was Nan’s. He thought to flatter her out of her melancholy, not about to have so sullen a bedfellow.
“Downstairs, you mean?”
“There—and also at the Middle Temple. Braithwaite will say nothing now, save perhaps to the Devil when he meets him. But tell me, the attack upon this Matthew Stock, that wasn’t in the plan. I suppose that was some sudden whim of yours.”
His question caused her to look at him strangely. “Who did you call the man?”
“Matthew Stock—a clothier from Chelmsford. They say his son desires to study the law and he is there to inspect the premises. Bad luck for him, eh? In the wrong place at the wrong time, poor devil.”
She repeated the name, and Leyland wondered if she had heard it before, a friend’s name perhaps, of, more likely, given her profession, a former client. Then she said: “I didn’t know who he was—only that he saw me coming out of Braithwaite’s door. I struck only to distract him, to prevent his following. He might have identified me had he had more leisure for observation.”
“Why didn’t you kill him?”
“I never kill without a purpose, Master Leyland,” she said, regarding him with a severity that dampened his ardor a bit. “I tell you I didn’t know who it was I struck.”
“Well, let’s to bed,” Leyland said, sorry that the conversation had taken this turn when he fully intended another. “It’s very late. The matter is settled at the Middle Temple. We’re out of danger now. ”
‘‘Not yet, ” Nan said, a worried look on her face that made her seem to the physician suddenly older than she was and of harder mettle. “Stock is no innocent bystander, but a greater danger to our enterprise than ever Braithwaite was. Before we sleep, I’ll tell you a story about him that will convince you my fears are no mere woman’s fretting. And tomorrow we’ll lay plans as to what must be done.”
Fourteen
WITH its oval fur cap, freshly scrubbed cheeks, and ruff collar upon which the head rested like a melon on a plate, the face in the mirror might have been a young man’s. It was a face upon which age had softly writ, except for webbing radiating from the comer of the eyes. Granted it was a soft, beardless face, but then, so was many a young man’s of brown complexion. The least that could be said was that it was a face that would not draw a second look should the body below it be sheathed in doublet, hose, and stocking and carry itself with a resolute, manly air.
It might have been the face of Joan and Matthew Stock’s son had such a person ever been bom to Joan, whose very reflection now stared back at her with mild surprise from the glass, daring her to the enterprise she contemplated.
No wonder, she thought, the ruffians at the Gull had been fooled. And dour Robert too in thinking she was other than she was indeed. More art would make the disguise perfect.
She would have to do something with her hair—crop it shorter, but not so much. Not lower than her ears, and lank, not curled or rolled, but then, she thought, one saw almost every style on London streets in these days of shame when
ancient marks of male and female dress seemed to have converged in an indecent androgyny.
As for her figure, Joan had not been so richly endowed by nature that under wraps her woman’s breasts could not be discreetly closeted in loose-fitting doublet and sweeping cape.
In sum, she had convinced herself she could pass for her own son—a young man secured against the cold, quiet out of habit, soft-voiced and reverent like a bishop’s clerk. Nothing her husband had conveyed to others about her fictional offspring would be denied by her superficial appearance. Nor did she plan to invite closer scrutiny of her person than a casual inspection.
Besides, she considered further, she had not lived with men for all the years of her life—first father and brothers, then husband, and more recently her young son-in-law—for naught. Did she not know their manner, expressions, voices, and gestures? Had Matthew not complimented her more than once on her ability to counterfeit and mimic this Chelmsford acquaintance or that? Was it not a goodly time to put her talents to a practical end?
For practice, she carried on a short conversation with herself, responding in various voices. She stalked the bedchamber, affecting a masculine swagger. She thrust her hand out boldly as men do to shake another, invisible hand.
Then she set about inventorying her store of clothing.
It was a paltry store, consisting only of the one suit of clothes Matthew had not taken with him to his Temple lodgings. The suit she well knew would not fit at all. The garb she had been given by Nan, however, was so well suited in shank, thigh, girth, and shoulder that indeed all might have been made for her, yet they were threadbare, and she was to be a prosperous merchant’s son, no tradesman out at elbows. Would she not be ashamed to be seen so dressed?
Then she thought of Nan. Nan would make an excellent ally. Nan knew London and would not have Frances Cooke’s certain reservations about Joan’s plan. For Joan did worry about her hostess’s response. What would the former Royal Maid think! Her guest running off to the Middle Temple disguised as a man! Would Frances not point out the obvious danger—not to mention the violation of God’s ordinance against one sex dressing as another?
On this thorny point Joan had some qualms herself. Actors, of course, did it with impunity, since it was unseemly that any natural female strut and fret upon the public stage. For women to garb themselves as men was another matter, although it had been presented as a device in the play Twelfth Night, of which Thomas Cooke had spoken with so much admiration. Could therefore art not serve as guide to life, even though Scripture rail
ed against such practices?
Now, Joan’s own case, she reasoned, was a valid exception to the prohibition. For she intended not to repudiate her natural sex, but to succor an ailing, vulnerable husband, who, having not the good sense—or healthy cowardice—to flee from a place of danger, required her to come to his rescue. Must not charity come before a foolish compliance with rules?
Besides, would she not make an even better spy?
But. then she wondered, what if the imposture was detected? Would there not be embarrassment beyond enduring? Public disgrace? Perhaps even punishment?
It was well past midnight as she contemplated these things, and finally weariness overtook her. She replaced the masculine dress with feminine bedtime attire, tossed another faggot in the fire, and knelt down beside the bed to pray.
Earnestly she prayed for Matthew, for her daughter and son-in-law, for her grandchild. She prayed for the souls of her stillborn children, one of whom might have grown to be the son she intended to portray, and she prayed even for the success of the child of her brain, the young man John Stock. Then she climbed into bed and blew out the candle.
Sometime before dawn Joan dreamed a strange and disturbing dream. She was in some dark corridor of the Middle Temple, passing chamber doors standing open. Inside of each, young men gowned in burial weeds watched her as she passed, their expressions disapproving, as though they knew she did not belong there. She walked what seemed a very long way, passing open door after open door, and all the men she passed were the same and their expressions were alike and Joan was sorely afraid. Finally she came to a door that was closed, and somehow feeling Matthew was inside, she opened the door and went in.
She found herself face to face with the old man of queer speech who had brought word of Matthew’s injury and had accompanied Joan and Frances to the Temple in die coach. He was not disapproving like the others but was smiling broadly with his toothless old man’s smile and he motioned for her to enter.
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