Twisted

by Jeffery Deaver

  Marr wiped his unpleasant mouth, revealing as few teeth as a puking babe, and said, “I knew well that this would be thy answer.” He looked about and whispered, “Faith, sir, I have intelligence about what truly happened that sad day.”

  “Continue,” Charles commanded.

  “Westcott was as many nobles then and now,” Marr said. “His life was lived far beyond his means and he found himself increasingly in debt.”

  This was well known to anyone who read the Fleet Street pamphlets or listened to gossip in the taverns. Many of the nobles were selling off their goods and portions of their estates to meet the costs of their extravagant lifestyles.

  “There came to Westcott an ignoble scoundrel named Robert Murtaugh.”

  “I know the name,” Margaret said. “For reasons I cannot recall, there be an unsavory association accompanying it.”

  “Faith, good lady, I warrant that is so. Murtaugh is a peer of the realm, but a lowly knight, an office he himself did purchase. He hath made an enterprise of seeking out nobles deep in debt. He then arranges various schemes whereby they come into lands or property through illicit means. He himself takes a generous percentage of their gain.”

  Charles whispered in horror, “And my father was a victim of such a scheme?”

  “Faith, sir, he was. It was I and those other scoundrels I made mention of who waylaid him on his own land and conveyed him, bound, to Lord Westcott’s fields. There, by prior arrangement, the sheriff’s bailiffs did arrive and kill him. A dead hart and a bow and quiver were set next to his cold body to testify, by appearance, that he had been poaching.”

  “Thy father, murdered,” Margaret whispered.

  “O merciful Lord in heaven,” Charles said, his eyes burning with hatred. He drew his bodkin once more and pressed the blade against Marr’s neck. The rogue moved not an inch.

  “No, husband, thou cannot. Please.” Margaret took his arm.

  The man said, “Verily, sir, I did not know the bailiffs had murder in mind. I thought they be merely intent on extracting a bribe from thy father for his release, as such rustic lawmen are wont to do. No one was more shocked than I by the deadly turn the events that day took. But I am nonetheless as guilty of this heinous crime as they, and I will not beg for mercy. If God moves thy hand to slit my throat in retribution for what I have done, so be it.”

  The memory of that terrible night flooded through him—the sheriff’s ignominiously carting the body to the house, his mother’s wailing in grief, then the long days after: his mother’s decline, the poverty, the struggle to start a new life in the unforgiving city of London. And yet Charles found his hand unable to harm this pitiful creature. Slowly he lowered the dagger and replaced it in the scabbard on his girdle. He studied Marr closely. He saw such penitence in the man’s face that it seemed he had spoken truly. Still, he asked, “If Murtaugh be as thou say, then many would have cause to despise him. How know I that thou art not merely one of those aggrieved by him and have spun this tale to—as thy very name suggests—mar his reputation?”

  “By God’s body, sir, I speak the truth. Of bitterness against Sir Murtaugh I have none, for it was my choice to corrupt my soul with the foul deed I have revealed to thee. Yet thy jaundiced view of my motives I do comprehend and can offer unto thee a token of proof.”

  Marr took from his pocket a golden ring and placed it in Charles’s hand.

  The vintner gasped. “It is my father’s signet ring. See, Margaret, see his reversed initials? I remember I would sit with him some evenings and watch him press this ring into hot wax red as a rose to seal his correspondence.”

  “I took this as part recompense for our efforts; my comrades partook of the coinage in thy father’s purse. I oft thought: Had I taken and spent his money, as did they, thus disposing of the mementos of our deed, perhaps then the guilt would not have burned me like smelter’s coals all these years, as hath this tiny piece of gold. But now I am glad I kept it, for I can at least return it to its rightful owner, before I cast away my mortal sheath.”

  “My father, not I, be the rightful owner,” Charles muttered darkly. He closed his hand tightly around the ring. He leaned against the stone wall beside him and shook with rage and sorrow. A moment later he felt his wife’s hand upon his. The fierce pressure with which he gripped the ring subsided.

  Margaret said to him, “We must to the courts. Westcott and Murtaugh will feel the lash of justice upon them.”

  “Faith, madam, that cannot be. Lord Westcott is dead these five years. And his brigand son after him hath spent every pence of the inheritance. The land is gone to the Crown for taxes.”

  “What of Murtaugh?” Charles asked. “He lives still?”

  “Oh, yes, sir. But though he is well and keeps quarters in London, he is further from the reach of justice than Lord Westcott in heaven. For Sir Murtaugh is much in favor with the duke and others highly placed at Court. Many have availed themselves of the villain’s services to diminish their debt. The judges at Queen’s Bench will not even hear thy claim and, in truth, thou will put thy freedom, indeed thy life, in jeopardy to bring these charges into the open. My desire this night was not to set thy course on a reckless journey of revenge, sir. I intend merely to make amends to one I have wronged.”

  He gazed at Marr for a moment and then said, “Thou art an evil man and though I am a good Christian, I cannot find it in my heart to forgive thee. Still, I will pray for thy soul. Perhaps God will be more lenient than I. Now, get thee gone. I swear that should ever thou cross my path again, my bodkin hand will not be stayed from its visit to thy throat and thou shall find thyself pleading thy case in the holy court of heaven far sooner than thou didst intend.”

  “Yes, good sir. So shall it be.”

  Charles’s attention turned momentarily to the ring so that he might place it on his finger. When he looked up once more, the alleyway was empty; the ruffian had vanished silently into the night.

  Near candle-lighting the next day Charles Cooper closed his wares house and repaired to the home of his friend, Hal Pepper, a man near to Charles’s age but of better means, having inherited several apartments in a pleasant area of the city, which he let out for good profit.

  Joining them was a large man of deliberate movement and speech. His true name was lost in the annals of his own history and everyone knew him only as Stout, the words not referring to his girth—significant though that be—but to his affection for black ale. He and Charles had met some years ago because the vintner bought Stout’s wares; the man made and sold barrels and he often joked that he was a cooper by trade while Charles was a Cooper by birth.

  The three had become close comrades, held together by common interests—cards and taverns and, particularly, the love of theater; they often ferried south of the Thames to see plays at the Swan, the Rose or the Globe. Pepper also had occasional business dealings with James Burbage, who had built many of the theaters in London. For his part, Charles harbored not-so-secret desires to be a player. Stout had no connection with the theater other than a childlike fascination with plays, which he seemed to believe were his portal to the world outside working-class London. As he would plane the staves of his barrels and pound the red-hot hoops with a smithy’s hammer he would recite lines from the latest works of Shakespeare or Jonson or from the classics of the late Kyd and Marlowe, much in vogue of late. These words he had memorized from the performance, not the printed page; he was a poor reader.

  Charles now told them the story that Marr had related to him. The friends reeled at the news of the death of Richard Cooper. They began to question Charles but he brought all conversing to a halt by saying, “He who committed this terrible deed shall die by my hand, I am determined.”

  “But,” Stout said, “if thou kill Murtaugh, suspicion will doubtless fall immediately upon thee, as one aggrieved by his foul deeds against thy father.”

  “I think not,” Charles replied. “It was Lord Westcott who stole my father’s land. Murtaugh was merely a
facilitator. No, I warrant that this brigand hath connived so much from so many that surely to examine all those with reason to kill him would keep the constable busy for a year. I believe I can have my revenge and escape with my life.”

  Hal Pepper, who being of means and thus knowledgeable in the ways of the Court, said, “Thou know not what thou say. Murtaugh hath highly placed friends who will not enjoy his loss. Corruption is a hydra, a many-headed creature. Thou may cut off one head, but another will poison thee before the first grow back—as it surely will.”

  “I care not.”

  Stout said, “But doth thy wife care? I warrant thee, friend, she doth very truly. Would thy children care if their father be drawn and quartered?”

  Charles nodded at a fencing foil above Hal’s fireplace. “I could meet Murtaugh in a duel.”

  Hal replied, “He is an expert swordsman.”

  “I may still win. I am younger, perchance stronger.”

  “Even if thou best him, what then? A hobnob with the jury at the Queen’s Bench and, after, a visit to the executioner.” Hal waved his arm in disgust. “Pox…at best thou would end up like Jonson.”

  Ben Jonson, the actor and playwright, had killed a man in a duel several years ago and barely escaped execution. He saved himself only by reciting the neck verse—Psalm 50, verse 1—and pleading the benefit of clergy. But his punishment was hard: to be branded with a hot iron.

  “I will find some way to kill Murtaugh.”

  Hal persisted in his dissuasion. “But what advantage can his death gain thee?”

  “It can gain me justice.”

  Hal’s face curled into an ironic smile. “Justice in London town? That be like the fabled unicorn, of which everyone speaks but no one can find.”

  Stout took a clay pipe, small in his massive woodworker’s hands, and packed it with aromatic weed from the Americas, which was currently very much in style. He touched a burning straw to the bowl and inhaled deeply. Soon smoke wafted to the ceiling. He slowly said to Hal, “Thy mockery is not entirely misplaced, my friend, but my simple mind tells me that justice is not altogether alien to us, even among the denizens of London. What of the plays we see? Ofttimes they abound with justice. The tragedy of Faustus…and that which we saw at the Globe a fortnight ago, inked by our friend Will Shakespeare: the story of Richard the Third. The characters therein are awash with evil—but right prevails, as Henry Tudor doth prove by slaying the ‘bloody dog.’ ”

  “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 Crown’s 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.”
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br />   “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!”