by C. S. Quinn
Why would she have trapped him here?
He looked down again. If he made anything other than a clean break or sprain an amputation was unavoidable. Half the regulars at the Bucket wielded wooden limbs of some kind, and he had no intention of joining them. He didn’t have twenty shillings for the surgeon in any case.
It was then he saw Maria walking back down the street towards the house.
She was accompanied by two burly looking men whose uniform Charlie recognised as from Newgate Prison.
Guards.
His hand dropped to the bag of counterfeit groats in his pocket. Owning forged coins counted as treason and was punishable by being half hung before having your heart ripped out and shown to you. Less fortunate counterfeiters were boiled in oil.
He stuttered out a silent curse. The men at Newgate tended to use a hands-on approach to questioning and would certainly empty his pockets.
Charlie swore. This ruled out escape by the window or the landing. If he fell badly the guards would easily catch him.
He scanned the room. Nothing. Only the bed and bare floorboards secured with thick nails. The few handfuls of straw inside the mattress offered nothing to break his fall.
Think. Why has she trapped you here and brought guards?
If he could work out the reason, perhaps he could talk his way out of danger.
His eyes flicked to the corpse. Maria had said her sister had been brutally murdered. Had she been telling the truth?
The winding sheet was not quite finished at the neck and Charlie took out his knife to slice open the wool.
He paused for a moment and then gripped the blade more determinedly. Maria had, after all, tricked and trapped him for no reason he thought he deserved.
‘Bring out your dead!’
The call galvanised him to a decision. Newgate guards would soon be in the house and if he wanted to avoid a traitor’s execution he needed to act. Ignoring his finer instincts he forced his attention back to the body.
His knife sliced the first inch of winding sheet and he paused for a moment.
The dead girl’s coin eyes glared at him accusingly.
Images of the last traitor’s execution swam before him. Twitching eyes. Shining intestines.
Charlie firmed his grip and slashed down. The wool winding sheet parted inch by inch, giving up a powder of woollen dust.
Voices floated up from the street below. Maria and the guards were closing in.
Turning back to the body, Charlie continued to cut.
An arm. A leg.
Pale and bloodied skin.
His hand began to shake.
A sharp pain bit into his arm. He jerked the knife down in shock, tugging and tearing the cloth fully away from the corpse.
It was just a flea bite, and he raised the injured wrist to rub the rising red weal, allowing his juddering heart to dance its rib-bruising beat.
He turned back to the bed, and the full vision of the murdered girl was before him.
His dagger clattered to the floor in alarm.
The corpse was now naked and exposed from neck to calf. And Charlie was confronted with the full madness of the murderer’s work.
Maria’s sister had been decorated all over in flowering branches of hawthorn and white ribbon. Each finger and toe had been carefully tied and long lengths wound up each leg.
Her brown hair was knotted all over with fabric and foliage. The dead mouth was stuffed with it. Thorns from the branch sliced at her lips.
His eyes skittered over the rest of the body.
Dripped over the pallid torso was white candlewax. It seemed to have been arranged in the shape of . . . letters. Charlie struggled to make out the words.
‘He Returns’.
He returns?
His eyes slid to the throat. The girl’s neck had been cut down to the spine, and cream vertebrae were visible against the blackening meat of butchered tissue.
On the lower torso a livid red mark stood out against the rivulets of blood which had dried all over.
The killer had branded the girl.
The burned mark blazed out from the cold dead body. And the crimson lump of burned skin was raised in a shape he was only too familiar with.
It was a crown, over three knots.
Charlie’s hand flew to his keepsake, fingers tracing the identical pattern on his key.
For years he had searched for the meaning of the symbol, and he had never found any indication that it meant anything to anyone. But here it was, burned into the body of a dead girl.
It was then he realised why Maria had brought him here. The shock shook him so bodily he spoke out loud. ‘She does not want a thief taker,’ he said. ‘She thinks me her sister’s murderer.’
Chapter Nine
He returns. Charlie turned the phrase over in his mind and the key in his hand.
He checked again for plague marks on the corpse. There were no ruptured veins. No swellings. The neck had been cut in a single deep slash which went nearly to the spine. Though the arrangement of the dead features suggested the girl had died without much struggle.
Then there was the hawthorn which decorated the body. On May Day young men hung hawthorn on the door of the girl they hoped to marry. But now was July and the thorn bush had no obvious use.
Think Charlie. Your life could depend on this.
With effort, he compartmentalised his thoughts, forcing his attention away from the approaching guards.
Branding. Words. Hawthorn. Candlewax.
It was a sacrifice, he decided. The more he thought about it the surer he was. The body had been laid out like some gruesome ritual.
But for what? ‘He returns’? Something to do with the new King?
Charlie sifted through his thoughts on who might be motivated to kill in this way.
Witches, perhaps. There were a few in the countryside. And since the King had returned, some had risen up in the city. They were known to sacrifice victims. Was this a witchcraft killing?
But something jarred at his deeper instincts.
What is wrong with the picture?
Somehow, something was missing. He didn’t quite know what. The murder scene felt unfinished. It was a nagging feeling that he couldn’t quite resolve.
He shelved the idea for a moment, turning to the matter of the guards. He was imprisoned on the upper floor, with a bag of forged coins, wearing a key whose symbol marked a dead girl. Even if he managed to convince the guards of his innocence it would likely follow some interrogatory procedures. London’s condemned criminals were often wheeled through the public streets, and Charlie had always held a cold terror that he might one day join the mangled wretches on the hanging cart.
You need to solve this crime. The thought spiked him, urgently.
His eyes settled back on the branded corpse. There was no mistaking it. The crown over three knots. The same Charlie had carried since he could remember.
Never in his life had he seen the symbol anywhere else. Something stirred in him. That this could be a chance to find out his own hidden past.
Forcing his mind to be calm Charlie let the facts settle in.
The murderer used a knife to cut the throat.
He took hawthorn from somewhere. Likely Kings Cross where it grows most freely.
Candlewax. White. It can be got anywhere.
The crown-and-knots mark. He would have needed a special brand.
And suddenly he knew how to catch the killer.
The brand.
Only a few in the City could have made it.
‘All I need do is find the right blacksmith,’ Charlie was so struck by the simplicity of the plan he spoke aloud. ‘Find the blacksmith, find the killer.’
If not for the guards outside it would have been easy. But the Newgate men would never allow him to hunt out the murderer. They would take him straight to prison and ask questions later.
After weeks in Newgate, Charlie would be tortured to confess and executed as a counterfei
ter and murderer. And as far as he knew, guards didn’t allow their victims out into the City, to gather evidence of their innocence.
The idea of losing a limb on the cobbled streets suddenly seemed more manageable, and he moved back to the window. Out on the street Maria and the guards had stopped. They were waiting for the dead-cart to trundle past them.
Her choice of Newgate guards brought with it an idea of how Maria had connected him with the key. Charlie occasionally reported to the prison with criminals. The Newgate magistrate must have recognised the shape on the body and told Maria that a thief taker wearing the same sign could be found in the Bucket of Blood.
The thought that he might be known as a wanted man in Newgate prison filled him with a bursting dread.
A kind of horrible inspiration dawned. The dead-cart was making its way towards the house. When the wagon drove under the window he might be able to jump on the back – into the mound of bodies. If he judged it right they would cushion his fall. It might give him a headstart outrunning the guards.
He stared out at the street, judging the distances involved. If he could get enough distance from the house as he fell, he would make it. His gaze fell on the piled-up corpses.
Ordinarily he crossed the road to avoid dead-carts. But what choice did he have? Given an opening Charlie knew he could outrun the guards. He took work as a sedan-chair carrier to keep him primed for chasing criminals through London’s twisting alleys. Few could match his speeds.
The only other option was to stand and fight.
His eyes settled on the approaching men. They had not yet thought to look up towards the window. From his vantage point Charlie could make out the weathered sword hilt of an ex-Civil War soldier.
Despite now being in their thirties and forties, those who had fought the Civil War made superb guards. Having survived the atrocities they lacked the rational fear of the average person and were battle-hardened in violent combat.
Charlie’s thin chest was latticed in hard sections rather than slung with heavy muscle, and his legs were slim. Carrying the sedan-chairs had added bulk and prominent veins to his forearms, but he was no match for the two Newgate guards. Charlie rated his chances in the average street brawl. But he was astute enough to pick his fights.
It was typical, he thought, that it had come to this. One minute he was happily selling forged certificates and making good money and the next he was forced to choose between torture, amputation or leaping into a pile of corpses. It was the kind of thing which always seemed to be happening to him.
His head span with trepidation as he put one foot up on the casement, and then another, splitting the dry wood as he heaved his weight into the space.
A cry came from the street. Maria had seen him and was pointing.
Beneath him the driver of the death cart urged his horse forward, and the wheels turned over the uneven street. The vehicle began to roll past the house until it was almost directly under the window.
Seizing his chance Charlie flung himself from upper storey.
Chapter Ten
Charlie landed almost square on his face, clamping his mouth shut against the unwholesome load. Most of the corpses had been stacked face down and his cheek was pressed against the cold greasy hair of an uppermost body.
Feeling a jolt the driver looked around, his face setting in anger as he spotted the unexpected passenger. ‘Hi there!’ he called. ‘What do you mean by it lad? There could be plaguey infection in those dead!’
Charlie placed his hands gingerly on the stiff cargo and heaved himself upright.
In the middle distance he could see his plunge into the dead-cart had unsettled the guards. They stood uncertainly, wondering whether the risk of chasing a criminal who had mingled with plague bodies was too great.
Maria’s voice echoed thin and high, berating the guards. ‘This is your duty! It is a murderer you let loose for the sake of your own skins!’
The rest of the street had stopped to watch the strange scene now, with Maria’s loud petition and the presence of guards all alerting them to the drama. A few had also noticed Charlie standing on the funeral pile and were staring at him aghast.
Ignoring the stares he positioned himself to jump from the cart. As he leapt from the mound of bodies onto the cobbled street a corpse shifted beneath him, making him twist and land awkwardly.
He felt something in his ankle wrench and gingerly tried a little pressure on his foot.
It hurt enough to slow him down, but he could still run.
Ahead on the street the guards had begun heading his way. But slowly. Anxious to keep well clear of the cart of bodies.
‘I know nothing of how the symbol came to be there and have nothing to do with the crime!’ He shouted, gritting his teeth as he took a few steps on the sprained ankle.
When the guards saw him step away from the dead-cart they broke into a run.
For a brief moment Charlie caught a glimpse of Maria’s face. Her drawn features looked sorry.
Then he turned and fled as fast as his injured foot would allow.
Charlie turned at the end of the cobbled street, heading towards the East of the city. The pain in his foot pulsed in electric jolts.
‘Hold! Arrest that man!’ He heard rather than saw the guards give chase.
Holbourne Bridge jerked hazily before him and he tried to force his mind away from the agony and to the practicalities of escape.
The Bridge connected the newer London town to the medieval city over the Fleet River. If he could get inside the London Wall he could vanish into the warren of ancient backstreets. But this meant passing through either New Gate or Alders Gate.
In a flash decision he made for Alders Gate, which was further but easier to vanish through.
He raced towards it, hoping for heavy traffic on Charterhouse Street. With his practice weaving through carts and riders at speed it might earn him greater distance from the guards.
But as the route hove into view he saw the usual thoroughfare had been vastly thinned. Plague had decimated the mayhem of jostling carts and livestock drawn to nearby Smithfield. A quick glance over his shoulder revealed the two guards were pressing their advantage. Both were heavily dressed in thick woollen jerkin-coats, leather shoes and felt hats, and the youngest was clearly feeling the strain, his sword knocking clumsily against his legs. But the elder appeared to experience no such encumbrance and was tearing over the cobblestones on powerful legs.
His more experienced pursuer was gaining fast, and on the empty road with his damaged foot Charlie was losing ground.
Charterhouse Street seemed to yawn as an immense distance.
Up ahead three farmers had blocked the road completely with a vast gaggle of geese which they were herding into the city through Duck Lane.
Charlie slowed. Behind him the soldier-guard drew his sword and turned it expertly, angling the heavy handle forward so as to smash it down like a club. It was a manoeuvre so practised he didn’t even break his stride. Clearly he was planning to split skulls first and ask questions later.
Setting his mouth determinedly Charlie ran straight at the flock. The herders turned in alarm and then outrage as the birds squawked and flapped, filling the air with an explosion of downy feathers and beating wings.
Charlie caught a quick glance of the farmers’ furious efforts to bring the flock back under control. Then the geese were behind him and the heavy towers of Alders Gate came into view.
If he could make it through he would be safe. As soon as he passed through Alders Gate he could easily disappear and decide his next course of action.
The gate joined the City by a wooden bridge, crossing over the scrubland which had once been a moat.
Too late he realised his mistake. Plague times meant that Alders Gate was now guarded. And since it was made of two wooden doors rather than the metal grill at New Gate, each could be swung closed far faster than the portcullis could be lowered.
The approach was crowded with people, but C
harlie could make out a sleepy-looking guard behind the crowd.
A shout came from behind.
‘Close the gate!’ The ex-soldier had made it past the teeming geese and was calling to the men at the gatehouse.
The sentinel guarding the Alders Gate entrance straightened from his previously slumped posture and stared.
‘Close it!’
Recognising a Newgate uniform the sentinel swung down his pole and disappeared behind the entrance. The vast door began to close.
Charlie slowed, his mind racing through escape opportunities and finding none.
‘Have a care!’ came another voice. It came from the younger guard who had now caught up with the first and was standing hatless and panting. ‘He may have the plague!’
His colleague turned to him in disbelief, but it was too late.
Screams and gasps went up from the people crowded onto the Alders Gate approach. Then chaos broke out as they began to scramble for a way off the bridge.
The sentry who had been in the act of closing the gate dropped his pikestaff and ran backwards into the city.
Charlie raced towards the entrance. Frightened citizens threw themselves bodily into the scrub as he passed. With a growl the soldier-guard had shoved his younger companion and was racing in pursuit. But Charlie had already made it through the London Wall.
Sanctuary and squalor closed around him simultaneously as his feet hit the soft mud track of the Old City. But the landscape of the East had changed. When he had last seen it the plague was spreading fast. Now it had been declared a thiefdom.
Cheapside still bore sedan-chairs carrying noblemen who wouldn’t risk their footwear on the muck roads of the City. But not a single pedestrian walked the streets. Stalls which had once sold second-hand clothing had been swept away. In their place were sellers of plague protection. Phials of plague water, cloves of smoked garlic, nosegays and facemasks now formed the thin trade.
Normal families had fled. The only residences still populated had opened up as fortune tellers and astrologists. Painted signs of Merlin’s head were everywhere. As were the ominous flashes of red. Plague crosses. Infection was all around.