by CS Quinn
‘So Nancy, the good Christian girl, was secretly betrothed,’ said Charlie thoughtfully.
One of the fighters hit the floor with a crash. Cheers went up. The fallen man staggered up, pulled over a table and righted himself to riotous shouts.
‘Do they have any particular features, these betrothal thimbles?’ asked Charlie.
The silversmith considered. ‘Nothing I can call to mind,’ he said eventually. ‘Puritans aren’t for fancy decorations. Perhaps a little more working. A turned edge, more patterning. They cannot make them too elaborate, you see. For fear of upsetting God.’
He crossed himself.
‘But then the girl has two gifts instead of one,’ Charlie pointed out. ‘They must have a band for the ceremony.’
‘Women are clever, are they not?’ grinned the silversmith. ‘Especially when it comes to weddings.’ He nudged Charlie. ‘You’d know about that,’ he added.
Charlie, infamous for choosing the wrong women, gave a slight smile.
‘A good thing too,’ opined the silversmith. ‘Cromwell’s republic nearly starved us jewel men. Plain dress and nothing showy.’ He shook his head. ‘You’ll never hear me say a bad word against King Charles,’ he concluded, lifting his tankard. ‘His mistresses have been the making of me.’
‘There can’t be many betrothal thimbles made now,’ said Charlie. ‘Can you find out who made one recently?’
The silversmith looked meaningfully at his empty tankard.
Charlie refilled it and chalked a mark by his symbol on the barrel. He flicked a glance at the two fighters. They were rounding on one another warily, panting with exhaustion. Charlie was relying on the outcome to settle his tab.
‘It’s not a common item nowadays,’ agreed the silversmith, as Charlie handed him the foaming beer. ‘I might be able to find out who commissioned it. But not if it were struck during Cromwell’s rule,’ he added. ‘Too many thimbles. Too long ago.’
‘How long would it take you to find out?’
The silversmith drained half the tankard in one.
‘Give me a day or so,’ he said. ‘I’ll ask about. Only three men who do that kind of work. If I learn something, I’ll find you.’ He tipped the last few drops from the tankard into his mouth, nodded thanks and left the Bucket of Blood.
While Charlie was thinking over his next move, the bare-knuckle match ended and the bloodied victor pocketed his prize money. Charlie raised a hand and beckoned him. The boxer grinned a gap-toothed smile and sauntered over.
‘A good fight, John,’ said Charlie, slapping him on the back. ‘You must have enough to marry that girl of yours by now.’
‘Next week,’ said John, grinning. ‘We’re in your debt. I’d still be hod-carrying for four pence if you hadn’t arranged my first fight. What brings you to the Bucket?’
‘I’m in search of a silver thimble,’ said Charlie. ‘Stolen from a murdered Puritan girl.’
‘A murdered Puritan,’ said John, wrinkling his nose. ‘Them black and white folks?’
‘Cromwell’s religion,’ agreed Charlie. ‘From before our Merry Monarch.’ He eyed John’s bulky physique. ‘Would you like to repay that favour?’ he asked.
‘Any time you ask it of me,’ replied the boxer genially. His face was flush with drink and victory.
‘How about now?’ said Charlie. ‘I need muscle. We’re going to the Clink.’
Chapter Five
The guard led them down the steps into the Clink. Charlie steadied his breathing. He had a deep dislike of prisons and a healthy distrust of gaolers. Having grown up an orphan in the City, he had always obeyed the cardinal rule of those who danced in the twilight of legality.
Never enter a prison without a friend larger than the gaoler.
While John plodded next to him through the narrow corridors, whistling the cheerful tune of a law-abiding man, Charlie’s litany of goods-off-the-back-of-carts, angry husbands and starving thieves he’d let escape the noose rolled through his mind.
The damp corridors closed tighter around them and the air grew impossibly humid and stinking. They passed a furnace where manacles and a selection of hideous tools were laid ready for use. A low babble of moans washed over them.
‘Mistress Fitzgilbert is one of the lucky ones,’ opined the gaoler as they approached several thick doors. ‘Her husband paid for a private cell.’
‘Has she had any visitors?’ asked Charlie.
‘You’re the first. People fear gaol fever. It’s rife.’
As he spoke, eyes began appearing at the narrow gratings of the cells. Charlie heard a reedy voice beg for bread. The guard thumped a door and the sound ceased.
‘Doesn’t do to keep them well fed,’ said the turnkey philosophically. ‘Gives ’em ideas. This way,’ he added. ‘She’s the door at the end.’
Charlie slipped behind John, and pushed a piece of bread he’d stowed for his dinner through the cell grating. He heard hands fall on it hungrily.
Now the gaoler was unlocking Elizabeth Fitzgilbert’s cell with a large key.
Charlie couldn’t say what he’d been expecting to see. A mad woman cowed with fear perhaps, or staring out at them in confusion. But he wasn’t at all prepared for the calm countenance that greeted them.
Elizabeth Fitzgilbert was in her early forties, sitting tall and erect with straight handsome features and large green eyes. Her brown hair was mostly hidden beneath an old-fashioned cloth cap and she wore a sober black dress with a large white collar. A plain brass cross hung around her neck and a small Bible was her only noticeable possession.
She looked like a woman who had not been told Cromwell had died and a flamboyant king now sat on the throne.
Elizabeth stood to greet them. Charlie watched her buckled black shoes scrape the muddied straw.
‘The Thief-Taker,’ she said, bobbing a half-curtsy. ‘My husband wrote, telling me to expect you.’
‘What did he tell you to expect?’ asked Charlie, thrown by her calm manner.
‘He said you would prove my innocence,’ she said. Her large eyes suggested she wasn’t sure of this herself. ‘He seems to have great faith in you.’
Her eyes landed on John.
‘Perhaps you have means I’m unfamiliar with,’ she added, looking now at Charlie’s scarred face.
‘Incident with a horse,’ said Charlie, touching the kink in his nose and the sliver of scar on his lip. He winked. ‘I tell larger men it was a knife fight.’
Elizabeth gave a brief smile.
‘But I’m not here to prove your innocence,’ he added. ‘I’m a thief-taker. Here to find the silver thimble.’ He paused. Elizabeth’s eyes had darkened.
‘You’re not a good man as I hoped,’ she muttered.
‘No,’ agreed Charlie apologetically. ‘Your husband …’ he added, ‘you’re not what I expected.’
She lifted an eyebrow.
‘You expected someone confused? Raving? My husband does like to exaggerate my condition,’ she said.
‘What is your condition?’
‘I can’t say for certain,’ said Elizabeth. ‘Only sometimes I wake up and don’t know what happened. My husband tells me I rave. Speak in tongues. It doesn’t happen often. But it makes me seem devout, you see. Touched by angels. And my husband is very concerned that we are seen as proper.’
‘His illegitimacy?’ guessed Charlie. ‘He’s ashamed of it?’
‘All bastards are,’ said Elizabeth. ‘And with Lord Gilbert’s drinking and carousing, my poor husband has a heavy atonement to bear. But you didn’t come here to talk of his religious fervour.’
‘No.’ Charlie drew out the shoe. ‘I came to talk of this.’
Something seemed to shrink back in Elizabeth’s eyes.
‘What would I know of that?’ she said.
‘I would expect a great deal,’ said Charlie. ‘Since this is your shoe.’
Chapter Six
Elizabeth stood straight-backed, her face impassive.
&nbs
p; ‘What makes you say that?’ she said.
You just told me, thought Charlie.
‘I’ve an eye for detail,’ he said aloud, holding out the shoe. Charlie nodded to the muddy footprints on the gaol floor. ‘It looks the right size for your foot,’ he added, placing the shoe next to an identically sized print.
‘You can’t be certain of that.’
‘Put it on and prove me wrong,’ he said.
Elizabeth hesitated. Then she sighed.
‘It’s from before my marriage. Puritans are scathing of frivolous things. But some belongings … Some things I kept. A dress. A few gloves and shoes. My husband doesn’t know,’ she added, glancing up at Charlie.
‘Did you give the shoe to Nancy?’
Elizabeth nodded. ‘She needed an old shoe,’ she said. ‘For some charm or other.’
‘She didn’t say what the charm was for?’
‘Protection, or good luck or some such.’ Elizabeth shrugged. ‘She was a country girl. From Lancashire. Nancy had some strange ways, but they kept her happy. So long as she went to church we didn’t begrudge it.’
There was something in Elizabeth’s face that didn’t quite fit what she was saying.
‘What other strange ways did she have?’ asked Charlie, watching her carefully.
Elizabeth smiled faintly. ‘Nothing different from most country maids. There was a fortune-teller she went to see after church on Sundays. Old Joan or Jenny or the like.’
‘Do you know where this fortune-teller practised?’
Charlie recalled Fitzgilbert’s description of Nancy. The sensible girl who only left the house to visit church.
‘Somewhere near Ald Gate. She never mentioned the street.’
Charlie sucked at his scarred lip in frustration. The streets around Ald Gate were clustered with fortune-tellers conning silly women from their pennies.
‘Your husband thinks Nancy only left the house for church,’ he said.
That faint smile again. ‘My husband was mistaken, Mr Thief-Taker. But men tended to be, when it came to Nancy.’
‘She had a way with men?’ suggested Charlie.
‘Her beauty was only part of it,’ said Elizabeth, her eyes far away. ‘Nancy was captivating. She could compel people to do whatever she wanted. Not just men.’ She nodded to the shoe and shook her head. ‘Men became obsessed with her.’
‘Which men?’
‘The red-headed boy who had me arrested.’ Elizabeth smiled wryly. ‘He thought himself in love with her. Why else do you think he took such an interest in Nancy’s bedroom window?’
‘Your husband didn’t mention knowing the lad,’ said Charlie. ‘He took your accuser for a common apprentice who happened to be passing by.’
‘My husband isn’t the most astute of social observers.’ Elizabeth looked away. ‘The red-headed boy was always skulking near the house,’ she said. ‘Hoping for a glimpse of Nancy. He witnessed some of my … episodes. My fits. He thought my witchcraft was keeping Nancy away from him.’ She raised her eyebrows to signal the ludicrousness of this. ‘That was how Nancy was. No one held her responsible for things,’ she added.
‘What of your husband and Nancy?’ asked Charlie.
Elizabeth flinched.
‘My husband is a faithful man.’
‘He didn’t find Nancy beautiful?’
Elizabeth’s fists clenched.
‘All men found Nancy beautiful,’ she said shortly. ‘Likely my husband looked. He may have even imagined. But he never acted upon it.’
‘How can you be so certain?’ pressed Charlie.
She smiled thinly. ‘He’s a bastard son. Hanging by a thread on Lord Gilbert’s favour. His reputation could take no misdeed.’
‘What of Nancy’s reputation?’
‘Everyone thought her an angel,’ said Elizabeth. She gave a scoffing kind of laugh and Charlie heard bitterness.
‘You didn’t think of her as pure?’
‘No, Mr Tuesday, I did not.’
‘Nancy had lovers?’ he asked.
‘How else would she come to possess a silver thimble?’ Elizabeth gave a sad smile. ‘Men see purity when it suits them. And it always seems to match a pretty face.’ She lifted her eyes to Charlie’s. ‘I feel sorry for men in that way,’ she concluded.
‘What of your husband?’ asked Charlie. ‘Do you feel sorry for him?’
Something twitched in her face then. Fear or hurt. It was gone almost as quickly, but they both knew Charlie had seen the slip.
‘You didn’t marry for love,’ Charlie discerned.
She let out a long sigh.
‘There’s nothing in the Bible to condemn it. I am a good and obedient wife to him.’
‘But you’ve no children.’
Her green eyes flicked sharply up at Charlie.
‘God never blessed us. I am a good wife, Mr Tuesday. I always did my wifely duty.’
‘There is something you don’t tell me,’ said Charlie. ‘About the thimble. I usually know when people are lying to me. But mostly it’s to save their own skin. You stand accused of witchcraft and I think you know something that could prove your innocence.’
Elizabeth opened her mouth and closed it again. Her hands shook very slightly.
‘If I don’t find the thimble,’ said Charlie, ‘you’ll likely burn.’
A hardness settled over Elizabeth’s handsome features.
‘Do you believe in God’s divine wisdom, Mr Tuesday?’
The question took him by surprise.
‘I believe in God,’ he said. ‘But He’s no lover of London.’
‘I offer myself to God’s mercy,’ said Elizabeth, folding her hands. She was locked away now. A pillar of piety.
‘God may be merciful,’ said Charlie, growing frustrated, ‘but if I had a penny for every innocent hanged I wouldn’t live on Cheapside.’
‘What makes you so sure I’m hiding something?’
Charlie glanced to the door. He could see the gaoler’s heavy form lumbering towards them. ‘It’s a gift,’ he said distractedly. ‘If you want to prove me wrong, swear on the Bible you’ve told me all you know.’
Elizabeth looked away.
There was a hammering on the other side of the cell door.
‘Time to go!’ shouted the turnkey. ‘Your visit with the witch is over.’
Chapter Seven
‘Did you notice the string around her neck?’ said Charlie as he and John followed the gaoler through the winding prison.
John shook his head.
‘Elizabeth keeps something concealed beneath her dress,’ said Charlie.
‘A crucifix,’ reasoned John. ‘Valuable, so she hides it from the gaoler.’
He shot a glance ahead to check they couldn’t be overheard.
‘Could be a crucifix,’ said Charlie. ‘Could be a thimble. Certainly she knows something she’d rather burn for than confess.’
‘Loyalty to the husband,’ suggested John.
‘Or she’s scared of him.’ Charlie’s instincts were telling him this was more likely.
They passed through a thick door and up into another dark corridor.
‘Nancy only left the house to visit church and a fortune-teller,’ said Charlie as the guard turned the heavy lock behind them. ‘If she had a lover, she likely met him at church. But why keep the betrothal secret?’
He thought for a moment.
‘First I’ll find Nancy’s vicar,’ he said. ‘He saw the thimble. Maybe he can tell me something more of it. Then I’ll go to Bethnal Green. Ask some questions. Try and find the red-headed apprentice. If only we knew which fortune-teller Nancy visited. I’ll wager she could tell us much.’
They were passing by longer-term felons now. Filthy arms stretched from the cell grates.
Charlie eyed John. ‘I imagine your Rosie is impatient for the wedding?’
‘We make each other oaths every day,’ said John. ‘Rosie will wash her dress especially and has made a garter from an old ribbo
n. She is clever in that way.’ There was a faraway look in his eyes. ‘She is my sun and moon, Charlie,’ he said. ‘We shall be the happiest people you ever saw wed.’
‘How should you like to buy her some extra pretty gifts for the day?’
John tilted his head, only half comprehending.
‘A Puritan church won’t take kindly to questions,’ explained Charlie. ‘Not while King Charles sends men to break them up. If you come along with me and we find the thimble, I’ll be sure you’re well rewarded.’
‘I’ve never known you fail,’ said John agreeably. ‘I have a fight tomorrow, but can otherwise be at your disposal. My Rosie would like some coins for luck,’ he added, his heavy features softening at the thought.
Charlie nodded gratefully. Infractions regularly broke out in churches. Pockets of bad feeling had festered since the civil war twenty years ago.
‘First we’ll have to find it,’ said Charlie. ‘Most Puritans worship in secret. Unless they’ve a private chapel like the Gilberts.’
Charlie ran through his mental map of the City.
‘Nancy saw a fortune-teller near Ald Gate,’ he said. ‘She lived near Bethnal Green. Even Fitzgilbert wouldn’t spare his maid a whole Sunday morning to say her prayers. Nancy’s church must have been somewhere between the two.’
‘I thought you knew all the secret places in the City,’ said John.
Up ahead the gaoler slowed his pace. Something about the movement made Charlie uneasy.
‘Not outside London’s walls,’ he said, lowering his voice. ‘And Puritans keep their churches well hidden. Attics, basements.’
Charlie could sense the turnkey straining to hear their conversation.
‘Nancy told Fitzgilbert her church was damp and cold,’ he said, trying to dispel the fear of being locked in.
‘A cellar then,’ said John. ‘But there’s probably a hundred cellars between Bethnal Green and Ald Gate.’
‘Not all are damp enough to invite comment,’ said Charlie. He cast a quick look to the gaoler. ‘Nancy joked her church should be Baptist for all the water.’
As he said the words something came to him. An idea.