"Exactly," Charles whispered.
"But they be make-believe, my friends," Hal countered.
"They are of no more substance than the ink with which Kit Marlowe and Will penned those entertainments."
Charles would not, however, be diverted. "What know thou of this Murtaugh? Hath he any interests?"
Hal answered, "Other men's wives and other men's money."
"What else know thou?"
"As I said, he is a swordsman or so fancies himself. And he rides with the hounds whenever he quits London for the country. He is intoxicated with pride. One cannot flatter him too much. He strives constantly to impress members of the Court."
"Where lives he?"
Stout and Hal remained silent, clearly troubled by their friend's deadly intent.
"Where?" Charles persisted.
Hal sighed and waved his hand to usher away a cloud of smoke from Stout's pipe. "That weed is most foul."
"Faith, sir, I find it calming."
Finally Hal turned to Charles. "Murtaugh hath but an apartment fit for a man of no station higher than journeyman and far smaller than he boasts. But it is near the Strand and the locale puts him in the regular company of men more powerful and richer than he. Thou will find it in Whitefriars, near the embankment."
"And where doth he spend his days?"
"I know not for certain but I would speculate that, being a dog beneath the table of Court, he goes daily to the palace at Whitehall to pick through whatever sundry scraps of gossip and schemes he might find and doth so even now, when the queen is in Greenwich."
"And therefore what route would he take on the way from his apartment to the palace?" Charles asked Stout, who through his trade knew most of the labyrinthine streets of London.
"Charles," Stout began. "I like not what thou suggest."
"What route?"
Reluctantly the man answered, "On horse he would follow the embankment west then south, when the river turns, to Whitehall."
"Of the piers along that route, know thou the most deserted?" Charles inquired.
Stout said, "The one in most disuse would be Temple wharf. As the Inns of Court have grown in number and size, the area hath fewer wares houses than once it did." He added pointedly, "It also be near to the place where prisoners are chained at water level and made to endure the tides. Perchance thou ought shackle thyself there following thy felony, Charles, and, in doing, save the Crowns prosecutor a day's work."
"Dear friend," Hal began, "I pray thee, put whatever foul plans are in thy heart aside. Thou cannot —"
But his words were stopped by the staunch gaze of their friend, who looked from one of his comrades to the other and said, "As when fire in one small house doth leap to the thatch of its neighbors and continue its rampaging journey till all the row be destroyed, so it did happen that many lives were burned to ash with the single death of my father." Charles held his hand up, displaying the signet ring that Marr had given him yesterday. The gold caught the light from Hal's lantern and seemed to burn with all the fury in Charles's heart. "I cannot live without avenging the vile alchemy that converted a fine man into nothing more than this paltry piece of still metal."
A look passed between Hal and Stout, and the larger of the two said to Charles, "Thy mind is set, that much is clear. Faith, dear friend, whatever thy decision be, we shall stand by thee."
Hal added, "And for my part I shall look out for Margaret and thy children — if the matter come to that. They shall want for nothing if it be in my means to so provide."
Charles embraced them then said mirthfully, "Now, gentlemen, we have the night ahead of us."
"Wherefore shall we go?" asked Stout uneasily. "Thou art not bent on murder this evening, I warrant?"
"Nay, good friend — it shall be a week or two before I am prepared to meet the villain." Charles fished in his purse and found coins in sufficient number for that evening's plans. He said, "I am in the mood to take in a play and visit our friend Will Shakespeare after."
"I am all for that, Charles," Hal said as they stepped into the street. Then he added in a whisper, "Though if I were as dearly set on saying heigh-ho to God in person as thou seem to be, then I myself would forego amusement and scurry to a church, that I might find a priest's rump to humbly kiss with my exceedingly penitent lips."
* * *
The constable, whose post was along the riverbank near the Inns of Court, was much pleased with his life here. Yes, one could find apple-squires offering gaudy women to men upon the street and cutthroats and pick-purses and cheats and ruffians. But unlike bustling Cheapside, with its stores of shoddy merchandise, or the mad suburbs south of the river, his jurisdiction was populated largely with upstanding gentlemen and ladies and he would often go a day or two without hearing an alarum raised.
This morning, at nine of the clock, the squat man was sitting at a table in his office, arguing with his huge bailiff, Red James, regarding the number of heads currently resting on pikes upon London Bridge.
"It be thirty-two if it be one," Red James muttered.
"Then 'tis one, for thou art wrong, you goose. The number be no more than twenty-five."
"I did count them at dawn, I did, and the tally was thirty-two." Red James lit a candle and produced a deck of cards.
"Leave the tallow be," the constable snapped. "It cost money and must needs come out of our allowance. We shall play by the light of day."
"Faith, sir," Red James grumbled, "if I be a goose, as you claim, then I cannot be a cat and hence have not the skill to see in the dark." He lit another wick.
"What good art thou, sir?" The constable bit his thumb at the bailiff and was about to rise and blow the tapers out when a young man dressed in workman's clothing ran to the window.
"Sirs, I seek the constable at once!" he gasped.
"And thou have found him."
"Sir, I am Henry Rawlings and I am come to raise a hue and cry! A most grievous attack is under way."
"What be thy complaint?" The constable looked over the man and found him to be apparently intact. "Thou seem untouched by bodkin or cudgel."
"Nay, it is not I who am hurt but another who is about to be. And most grievously, I fear. I was walking to a warehouse on the embankment not far from here. And —"
"Get on, man, important business awaits."
"— and a gentleman pulled me aside and pointed below to Temple wharf, where we did see two men circling with swords. Then I did hear the younger of the two state his intent to kill the other, who cried out for help. Then the dueling did commence."
"An apple-squire fighting with a customer over the price of a woman," Red James said in a tired voice. "Of no interest to us." He began to shuffle the cards.
"Nay, sir, that is not so. One of them — the older, and the man most disadvantaged — was a peer of the realm. Robert Murtaugh."
"Sir Murtaugh, friend to the lord mayor and in the duke's favor!" Alarmed, the constable rose to his feet.
"The very same, sir," the lackey said breathlessly. "I come to thee in haste to raise hue and cry."
"Bailiffs!" the constable cried and girded himself with his sword and dagger. "Bailiffs, come forth at once!"
Two men stumbled into the room from quarters next to the den, their senses muddled by the difficult marriage of this mornings sleep and last nights wine.
"Violence is afoot upon Temple wharf. We go forthwith."
Red James picked up a long pike, his weapon of choice.
The men hurried out into the cool morning and turned south toward the Thames, over which smoke and mist hung thick as fleece on a lamb. In five minutes they were at the porch overlooking Temple wharf, where, as the lackey had assured, a dreadful contest was under way.
A young man was fighting vigorously with Sir Murtaugh. The peer fought well but he was dressed in the pompous and cumbersome clothing then fashionable at Court — a Turkish theme, replete with gilt robe and feathered turban — and, because of the restrictive garments, was lo
sing ground to the young cutthroat. Just as the ruffian drew back to strike a blow at the knight, the constable shouted, "Cease all combat at once! Put down thy weapons!"
But what might have ended in peace turned to unexpected sorrow as Sir Murtaugh, startled by the constable's shout, lowered his parrying arm and looked up toward the voice.
The attacker continued his lunge and the blade struck the poor knight in the chest. The blow did not pierce his doublet but Sir Murtaugh was knocked back against the rail. The wood gave way and the man fell to the rocks forty feet below. A multitude of swans fled from the disturbance as his body rolled down the embankment and into the water, where it sank beneath the grim surface.
"Arrest him!" cried the constable, and the three bailiffs proceeded to the startled ruffian, whom Red James struck with a cudgel before he could flee. The murderer fell senseless at their feet.
The bailiffs then climbed down a ladder and proceeded to the waters edge. But of Sir Murtaugh, no trace was visible.
"Murder committed this day! And in my jurisdiction," said the constable with a grim face, though in truth he was already reveling in the promise of the reward and celebrity that his expeditious capture of this villain would bring.
* * *
The Crowns head prosecutor, Jonathan Bolt, an arthritic, bald man of forty, was given the duty of bringing Charles Cooper to justice for the murder of Robert Murtaugh.
Sitting in his drafty office near Whitehall palace, ten of the clock the day after Murtaugh's body was fished from the Thames, Bolt reflected that the crime of murdering an ass like Murtaugh was hardly worth the trouble to pursue. But the nobility desperately needed villains like Murtaugh to save them from their own foolishness and profligacy, so Bolt had been advised to make an example of the vintner Charles Cooper.
However, the prosecutor had also been warned to make certain that he proceed with the case in such a way that Murtaugh's incriminating business affairs not be aired in public. So it was decided that Cooper be tried not in Sessions Court but in the Star Chamber, the private court of justice dating back to His Highness Henry VIII.
The Star Chamber did not have the authority to sentence a man to die. Still, Bolt reflected, an appropriate punishment would be meted out. Upon rendering a verdict of guilt against the cutthroat, the members of the Star Chamber bench would surely order that Cooper's ears be hacked off, that he be branded with a hot iron and then transported — banished — probably to the Americas, where he would live as a ruined beggar all his life. His family would forfeit whatever estate he had and be turned out into the street.
The unstated lesson would be clear: Do not trouble those who are the de facto protectors of the nobility.
Having interviewed the constable and the witness in the cases — a lackey named Henry Rawlings — Bolt now left his office and proceeded to Westminster, the halls of government.
In an anteroom hidden away in the gizzard of the building, a half dozen lawyers and their clients awaited their turn to go before the bench, but Coopers case had been placed top on the docket and Jonathan Bolt walked past the others and entered the Star Chamber itself.
The dim room, near the Privy Council, was much smaller and less decorous than its notorious reputation imputed. Quite plain, it boasted only candles for light, a likeness of Her Majesty and, upon the ceiling, the painted celestial objects that bestowed upon the room its unjudicial name.
Inside, Bolt observed the prisoner in the dock. Charles Cooper was pale and a bandage covered his temple. Two large sergeants at arms stood behind the prisoner. The public was not allowed into Star Chamber proceedings but the lords, in their leniency, had allowed Margaret Cooper, the prisoner's wife, to be in attendance. A handsome woman otherwise, Bolt observed, her face was as white as her husband's and her eyes red from tears.
At the table for the defense was a man Bolt recognized as a clever lawyer from the Inns of Court and another man in his late thirties, about whom there was something slightly familiar. He was lean, with a balding pate and lengthy brown hair, and dressed in shirt and breeches and short buskin boots. A character witness, perhaps. Bolt knew that, based on the facts of this case, Cooper could not avoid guilt altogether; rather, the defense would concentrate on mitigating the sentence. Bolt's chief challenge would be to make sure such a tactic was not successful.
Bolt took his place beside his own witnesses — the constable and the lackey, who sat nervously, hands clasped before them.
A door opened and five men, robed and wigged, entered, the members of the Star Chamber bench, which consisted of several members of the Queen's Privy Council — today, they numbered three — and two judges from the Queen's Bench, a court of law. The men sat and ordered the papers in front of them.
Bolt was pleased. He knew each of these men and, judging from the look in their eyes, believed that they had in all likelihood already found in the Crown's favor. He wondered how many of them had benefitted from Murtaugh's skills in vanquishing debts. All, perhaps.
The high chancellor, a member of the Privy Council, read from a piece of paper. "This special court of equity, being convened under authority of Her Royal Highness Elizabeth Regina, is now in session. All ye with business before this court come forward and state thy cause. God save the queen." He then fixed his eyes on the prisoner in the dock and continued in a grave voice, "The Crown charges thee, Charles Cooper, with murder in the death of Sir Robert Murtaugh, a knight and peer of the realm, whom thou did without provocation or excuse most grievously assault and cause to die on fifteen June in the forty-second year of the reign of our sovereign, Her Majesty the queen. The Crown's inquisitor will set forth the case to the chancellors of equity and judges of law here assembled."
"May it please this noble assemblage," offered Bolt, "we have here a case of most clear delineation, which shall take but little of thy time. The vintner named Charles Cooper did, before witnesses, assault and murder Sir Robert Murtaugh on Temple wharf for reasons of undiscerned enmity. We have witnesses to this violent and unprovoked event."
"Call them forth."
Bolt nodded to the lackey Henry Rawlings, who rose and, his oath being sworn, gave his deposition, "I, sir, was making my way to the Temple wharf when a man did bid me come running. He said, 'Behold, there is mischief before us, for that is Sir Robert Murtaugh.' Faith, sirs, before our eyes the prisoner there in the dock was challenging Sir Murtaugh with a sword. Then he did leap toward the unfortunate peer and utter words most threatening against him."
"And what, pray, were those words?"
"They were somewhat to this order, sirs: 'Villain, thou diest!' Whereupon the dueling commenced. And Sir Murtaugh cried, 'Help! Help! Murder, murder!'
"I then did run to seek the aid of the constable. We did return, with the advantage of bailiffs, and arrived to see the prisoner strike poor Sir Murtaugh. He fell through the railing to his death. It was a most awful and unpleasant sight."
The court then allowed the defense lawyer to cross-examine the lackey Rawlings but the attorney for Cooper chose not to ask any questions of him.
Bolt then had the constable rise and take the witness's dock and tell much the same story. When he had done, Cooper's lawyer declined to examine this man too.
Bolt said, "I have no more to present by way of the Crown's case, my lords." He sat down.
The lawyer for the defense rose and said, "If it please this noble body, I shall let the prisoner report on the incident, and thy most excellent chancellors and most noble judges will behold, beyond doubt, that this is but a most egregious misunderstanding."
The men on the bench regarded one another with some irony, and the high chancellor administered the oath to Charles Cooper.
One of the judges from the Queen's Bench asked, "What say thou to these charges?"
"That they, my good lord, be erroneous. Sir Murtaugh's death was but a tragic accident."
"Accident?" a privy council member said with a laugh. "How say thou 'accident' when thou attacked a man with thy
sword and he fell to his death? Perchance the instrument of his death was the rocks upon the embankment but the instigating force was thy thrust, which sent him headlong to embrace the unyielding stones."
"Aye," offered another, "I warrant to say, had the unfortunate Mr. Murtaugh not fallen, thou would have skewered him like a boar."
"I respectfully submit, lord, that, nay, I would not have harmed him in any way. For we were not fighting; we were practicing."
"Practicing?"
"Yes, my lord. I have aspirations to be a player in the theater. My profession, though, as thou have heard, is that of vintner. I was at Temple wharf to arrange for delivery of some claret from France and, having surplus time, thought I would practice a portion of a theatrical role, which chanced to involve some sword-play. I was so engaged when Sir Murtaugh happened by, on his way to Whitehall palace. He is — sadly, was, I should say — quite an accomplished swordsman and he observed me for a moment then reported to me what, alas, is true — that my talent with a blade be quite lacking. We fell into conversation and I said that if he might deign to show me some authentic thrusts and parries I would inquire about getting him a small part on the stage. This intrigued him greatly and he offered me the benefit of his considerable expertise at dueling." The prisoner cast his eyes toward the constable. "All would have gone well had not that man disturbed us and caused Sir Murtaugh to lose his stride. I merely tapped him on the doublet with my sword, Most High Chancellor, and he stepped back against the rail, which tragically was loose. For my part, I am heartsick at the good man's demise."
There was some logic to this, Prosecutor Bolt thought grimly. He had learned something of Cooper in the hours before the trial and it was true that he frequented the theaters south of the Thames. Nor could he find a true motive for the murder. Cooper was a guildsman, with no need for or inclination toward robbery. Certainly much of London would rejoice at the death of a lout like Murtaugh. But, as the nobles wished the case prosecuted swiftly, Bolt had not had time to make a proper inquiry into any prior relationship between Cooper and Murtaugh.
Twisted: The Collected Short Stories of Jeffery Deaver Page 16