Blood's Game

by Angus Donald

  Contents

  Part One

  Wednesday 23 November, 1670

  Monday 28 November, 1670

  Tuesday 6 December, 1670

  Sunday 11 December, 1670

  Sunday 18 December, 1670

  Thursday 22 December, 1670

  Friday 23 December, 1670

  Saturday 24 December, 1670

  Sunday 25 December, 1670

  Part Two

  Tuesday 21 March, 1671

  Monday 17 April, 1671

  Wednesday 19 April, 1671

  Thursday 20 April, 1671

  Tuesday 25 April, 1671

  Wednesday 3 May, 1671

  Thursday 4 May, 1671

  Saturday 6 May, 1671

  Sunday 7 May, 1671

  Tuesday 9 May, 1671

  Part Three

  Friday 12 May, 1671

  Saturday 13 May, 1671

  Sunday 14 May, 1671

  Monday 15 May, 1671

  Sunday 21 May, 1671

  Tuesday 23 May, 1671

  Wednesday 24 May, 1671

  Thursday 25 May, 1671

  Friday 26 May, 1671

  Saturday 10 June, 1671

  Historical note

  About the Author

  Copyright

  Part One

  Wednesday 23 November, 1670

  As he picked his way through the muck and puddles of Cock Lane, Holcroft Blood found himself thinking about the queen of diamonds. She was the best-loved of all the fifty-two hand-painted Parisian playing cards that lay, dog-eared, grubby and tied up with a piece of string, in the pocket of his threadbare coat. She was his favourite; more than that, she was his friend.

  She was not as dark-eyed and daring as the queen of spades, nor as honey-sweet as the queen of hearts, but she had an air of amused tolerance on her painted face that Holcroft found particularly appealing. She was attractive, he thought, without being sluttish: tall, slender, with brown eyes and a pile of blonde curls under an enormous black hat. An elegant black velvet choker with a large single diamond at the front enclosed her slim neck. Holcroft felt that she understood him, that she already liked and admired him, that, if only she were a real, flesh-and-blood person, she would truly be his friend – someone he could share his secrets with, someone to laugh with, talk with, walk with, someone who was always at his side.

  Holcroft did not have friends – at least none who were not constructed out of card, linen, lacquer and lead paints. There was a stray dog that lived in the Shambles of which he was warily fond. He had a large number of noisy brothers and sisters, some of them living with him and his mother and the baby in the little cottage at the end of Cock Lane, Shoreditch, a village just north of the City of London. But he had managed, somehow, after fifteen years of life, to be completely without companions. He knew that he was different to other boys and girls – his mother had told him early on that he was special; his oldest brother Tom just called him a buffle-head. He did not like to look other people directly in the eye, for example, it made him feel they were challenging him; he disliked change of any kind and surprises in particular, and he liked things to be neat and ordered at all times. Mess, even the smallest amount of chaos, was frightening and when he was scared the dizziness would threaten to overwhelm him. As a child, when this had happened, he had sometimes screamed and lashed out at those around him.

  It seemed to Holcroft that being special made it impossible for other people to be friends with him, although God knows he had tried. They were not interested in the things he liked doing – counting all the visible bricks in the walls of the houses in Cock Lane, or recording the number and colour of the horses that passed by in the street in a single hour – and they drifted away, looking at him out of the side of their eyes or, worse, called him names and laughed at him. But Holcroft told himself he did not care: he had the queen, who was just as good as a real friend, right there in his pocket. He would talk to her later, when he had completed this errand for his mother and tell her about his day and what he had seen. She would be interested.

  The pack of cards had been a gift from his father, Colonel Thomas Blood, on the occasion of one of his rare visits to the Cock Lane cottage. He usually came after dark, heavily cloaked and with his big black hat with the beautiful ostrich feather plume pulled down low. There were bad people, powerful people who wished him harm, he said, and who were best avoided. That was why he did not live with them and only came to visit on special occasions. When he did, the children would be evicted for the night from the big four-poster bed in the cottage’s only upstairs chamber and had to sleep curled together like dogs by the hearth-fire on the floor in the parlour.

  Holcroft did not mind. He enjoyed his father’s visits. The colonel would drink his brandy and tell them stories of his adventures in the wars, when he had ridden at the head of his troop of gallant men in the cause of Parliament, fighting bravely to end the tyranny of evil men – so many adventures, so many glorious battles, so many narrow escapes from death. Once, when he had come back from a trip abroad, he had given Holcroft the Parisian pack and showed him the four suits, the numbers on each card, and the interesting people painted on the royal cards. His father had introduced him to the queen of diamonds: she was a tough lady, he told him gravely, kind and clever but a little bit dangerous, too. Holcroft liked her immediately.

  The Wheatsheaf was surprisingly full that Wednesday morning, when Holcroft pushed in through the door and made his way up to the counter. It smelled of tobacco smoke, old sweat and fresh-brewed ale and a whiff of urine in the mix as well. He stood on the stone flag before the counter, making sure to keep his shoes inside the mortar lines, and waited till the harassed tavern-keeper was ready to serve him. He put his mother’s pewter pint pot on the wooden boards and passed the time by counting the small shiny blue-and-white tiles on the wall behind, and had just got to sixty-eight when . . .

  ‘Your ma’s usual order, is it, young Holcroft?’

  ‘Three gills of Barbados rum, if you please, sir.’

  ‘As I said, the usual.’ The man dipped a measuring ladle into the rum barrel and carefully poured the brown liquor into the pint pot, three-quarters filling it. The sweet, pungent smell of alcohol burned in Holcroft’s nose.

  ‘And she’s keeping well, is she, your ma?’

  ‘She says she feels a little poorly today, sir. She says she just needs a drop of good Barbados to make her right.’

  The tavern-keeper said: ‘I’ll wager she does. I saw her in here last night,’ and gave a nasty little snorting laugh. ‘She wasn’t poorly then. In very high spirits, she was! Very cheerful. Cheerful as a lord, you might say.’

  Holcroft said nothing. He stared at the counter. The man was chuckling.

  ‘Just a joke, youngling – don’t take offence.’

  A joke – Holcroft wasn’t good with jokes. They made no sense to him. The man had not said anything funny yet he was grunting like a madman.

  Holcroft had his penny ready, held out in his open palm, and the tavern-keeper, taking his continued silence for a rebuke, took the coin without another word. Holcroft then placed his left hand flat over the top of the pot, grasped the vessel’s handle with his right, turned and walked to the door.

  ‘You should try a drop of rum yourself, lad. Do you good. Might put a smile on your face for once.’

  Holcroft ignored the tavern-keeper and pushed out through the door and into the bright street. He turned right and began to make his way home. He had not gone more than twenty yards, carefully carrying the pewter pot in both hands to make sure it did not spill, while stepping round the brimming potholes in the unpaved street, when he heard the first cat-calls.

  ‘Hey, jingle-brains, what you got there?’

  Holcroft ign
ored the voice. He stepped over a dead dog and carried on walking down the street. It was only another hundred yards to his home.

  ‘A tot for your cup-shot mummy, is it? Give us a sip, mummy’s boy.’

  Holcroft lowered his head and kept walking.

  ‘I’m talking to you, blockhead. What you got in the pot?’

  Holcroft finally looked round. There were three of them. Tough, lean, raggedy boys about the same age as he was, or a little younger, on the far side of the road. He knew their faces but not their names. It did not matter. He knew the type. He knew what would happen next. He looked ahead to the end of the street where his cottage was. He could run, but that would almost certainly mean spilling the rum. If that happened his mother would scream and weep and pull her hair out. He knew that they did not have another penny to replace the liquor if it was spilt.

  One of the raggedy boys, the smallest one, ran ahead of Holcroft, and crossed the road barring his path. The two behind him were closing in. Holcroft heard the litany of familiar taunts about his stupidity: ‘Tom-noddy . . . buffle-head . . . ninnyhammer . . . nump-son . . .’

  He could see a pair of squat, red-faced women, standing outside their front doors, strong arms folded, looking on with amusement as the predatory boys closed in around Holcroft. He did not like this. These boys were going to spoil his errand. His mother had given him strict instructions: go to the Wheatsheaf, buy the rum and come straight home. And he had tried his best to do just that. But these three were going to ruin everything. He felt sick and dizzy. By the side of the street he saw a mounting block, a waist-high cube of stone, with three steps cut into one side. He walked over to it and carefully placed the pewter on the top step.

  Then he turned to face his tormentors.

  The leader was clearly the biggest one – as tall as Holcroft, but thicker in the chest, and he moved with the rangy grace of a street cat. He had a shock of ginger hair, a wide grin and a black gap where his two front teeth should have been. The little blond one to Holcroft’s left, the one who’d run ahead to cut him off, was of no account. He was a follower, and younger than the others by some years. The redhead’s other companion, dark, bull-necked and vicious-looking, might be even more dangerous than the red.

  Holcroft was no stranger to bullies. All his life people had objected to him in one way or another. And he had taken beatings with regularity until his older brother Tom, at his mother’s tearful pleading, had reluctantly taken him aside and taught him the rudiments of pugilism and Cornish wrestling. Tom had then taken pleasure in knocking him down again and again, day after day, while he lectured his brother in the finer points of the fighting arts.

  Holcroft did not think there was any point in saying anything to these three, so he merely jumped forward and pumped a straight left into the redhead’s nose, smashing his head back. Then he dipped a shoulder and buried his right fist into his enemy’s now-open belly. He hit him a third time, again with his left, and with all his weight behind it, smack on the right cheekbone. The boy went down. Holcroft whirled, saw the dark boy nearly on him, fist raised. He blocked the punch and seized the boy by the lapels of his coat, pulled him in and crashed his forehead hard into the bridge of his opponent’s nose. He felt the crunch of cartilage, and the boy’s weight as he staggered, but Holcroft kept hold of him, shifting his position slightly as he brought his knee up smartly into the fellow’s groin. Holcroft released him and the boy slid bonelessly to the ground.

  The tall redhead was gasping and spitting blood, back up on his feet but tottering. Holcroft took his time and clubbed him on the join of the jaw with his right fist, hard as he could, then followed in with a left uppercut to the chin that cracked his teeth together and hurled him on his back into the mud.

  He looked at the third one: the blond child. Both Holcroft’s hands were hurting now, and he felt as if he were about to burst into tears, as he always did after a bout. He screamed, ‘Haaaaa!’ pushing his face right forward and scowling like a gargoyle, and the urchin gave a squeak and took to his heels. Holcroft looked at his two foes, now both curled in the mud, coughing, spewing, writhing feebly. He had nothing to say to them. He turned his back and went over to the stone mounting block to collect the pewter pot of rum. He looked, looked again and saw that the pot had disappeared.

  The burly women spectators had vanished, too.

  Holcroft’s heart sank into his shoes. No rum for Mother now. He felt cold and tearful. He would never hear the end of this.

  *

  One eye cracked open: the iris blue as innocence, the white curdled and veined with decades of debauchery. It focused slowly on a fat black beam set in a lime-plastered ceiling. There had been a noise. Raised voices from the parlour beneath the bedroom: anger, a denial, insistence.

  The second eye opened. The shaggy grey-brown head lifted from the damp pillow. Full-blooded shouting billowed up from below. Thomas Blood was fully awake now; he swung his long legs off the bed and stood, naked, a little dizzy, swaying, listening to the rumble of feet on the wooden stairs. Two fast strides and Blood stood beside the door, a flimsy thing of elm boards and ash laths. He slid the iron bolt home but knew it would not hold. He looked round the room. There was an empty wine jug and smeared glasses on the dresser; the dismembered carcass of a bird squatting in its own jelly and a basket of torn bread on the table by the window. The stale bedroom air reeked of chicken gravy, sour wine and sex. The girl was still asleep, her bright-auburn hair spread across the sheets like a splash of heart’s blood, one pink breast lolling sideways against the ridges of her bare ribs.

  He scooped a pair of mouse-coloured breeches from under the bed and was struggling to get one leg inside, his damp skin making the wool cling, when the pounding on the elm began.

  ‘Blood! Colonel Thomas Blood – open up this damned door!’ It was an educated voice for all its crude bawling, the voice of a man who was born to command.

  Blood’s head was encased in his linen shirt. He could smell the rancid funk of a dozen days’ wear. But his arms were through now. He shoved the tails roughly into his breeches. Where in the name of God were his boots?

  ‘Thomas Blood, open this door or we will break it down. Open up this very instant!’

  ‘What? Who is it? We’re trying to sleep in here!’ Blood mumbled the words like a man still gripped by Morpheus. But he had found one of his boots and, hopping ludicrously, he managed to get it over his bare foot and stamp it into its proper fit. The girl was awake now, sitting up with the sheet clutched to her bosom, the back of one wrist rubbing her eye. Blood winked at her, gave her his best grin, equal parts big white teeth, lust and mischief.

  ‘I order you in the name of my father, His Grace the Duke of Ormonde, Lord Steward of the Household, to open this door. Open the door by the time I count to three, or I swear I shall break it down.’

  So it’s Ossory, thought Blood, Thomas Butler, Earl of Ossory. Ormonde’s eldest. How did that arrogant pup track me down?

  ‘One moment, sir, the merest instant, if you please. Let me find a gown to cover my nakedness and I shall be with you directly!’

  Blood strode over to the bed, swooped down and kissed the girl hard. He snatched up his silver-topped cane and his blue coat from the side table, jammed the black broad-brimmed hat with the white ostrich plume on his head, walked to the window and flung wide the shutters. Golden sunlight streamed into the room. He winced at the brightness of the morning.

  ‘One!’

  ‘I’m coming, sirs – have a little patience for the love of God.’

  ‘Two!’

  Blood jerked the sash window up and got one leg out. He blew the girl a kiss.

  The girl gave him a languid wave.

  ‘Three!’ The elm boards shuddered as the weight of a man was hurled against them. But, astoundingly, the fragile door held.

  ‘I’ve borrowed a shilling or two from your purse,’ Blood told her.

  ‘What! Hey . . .’ The girl sat fully up in her
bed, dropping the sheet to expose her sleep-pink torso, naked to the waist.

  ‘Knew you wouldn’t mind, Jenny-girl.’

  The door burst open. Three large young men in moss-green coats tumbled into the room, followed by a hatchet-faced man of some thirty-five years wearing a fine black periwig and an even finer scarlet cloak. The men froze, staring at the half-naked girl in bed.

  ‘Keep the faith, my darling, we’ll all come up smiling yet,’ said Blood – and dropped from sight.

  Blood landed awkwardly in the muck of the street and a shaft of pain lanced up his left leg. He was a big man, fifteen stones and an inch over six foot, but he was no longer as young as he had once been. There were threads of grey now in his shoulder-length chestnut locks, and his belly was no longer greyhound lean – too many years of drinking and fucking, too many years of fighting and running from the law had taken a toll on his once-endless strength. He felt old, and not for the first time.

  He limped down Southwark Street towards the stables, shrugging on his long blue coat as he walked and, looking over his shoulder, he saw a thin angry face thrust out of the bedroom window he’d just exited.

  ‘Halt in the name of the lord steward!’ bellowed the Earl of Ossory. ‘Halt or I shall give fire!’

  Blood caught a glimpse of a pistol, a gleam of silver and polished brown wood. He gave the nobleman a cheery wave and hobbled onwards at his best speed. There was a bang and a splash from a long horse trough a yard to his right. No one can shoot straight any more, Blood thought. If that over-bred dandyprat had been in my troop during the war, I’d have had him flogged bloody for wasting a bullet. But the war had ended nearly twenty years ago and, despite a victory for Parliament, a King was now back on the throne of England and Royalist lickspittles like Ossory and his thief of a father were once more the most powerful men in the land – even if they couldn’t shoot to save their souls.

  Nevertheless, the worst shots did sometimes hit the target by accident and Blood did not care to be pistolled in the back by an incompetent lordling on a lucky day, so he limped onward a little faster and rounded the corner of the street with a sigh of gratitude.