The fair-headed brute stood straight and stared down his nose like he would pick me up by the scruff of the neck and throw me out the door. The dark-haired man placed a hand upon his shoulder and whispered into his ear, glancing at me long enough to ensure he remembered my face, then the two of them headed to the door. Before he disappeared, the fair-haired man tapped his temple and pointed his finger at me, straight to the pit of my bowels. I breathed steadily in an attempt to calm my beating heart.
Burke sat alone, slumped forward onto his elbows, raking at the back of head with his fingers. I asked the hostess for another ale and watched him dig his nails into his scalp while I waited. He nursed his beer like it was his last.
Time to screw my courage to the sticking place. I sank another half a pot afore dragging myself to his table and falling into a chair at his side. ‘Who is that coarse lout, talking to me like I be some common criminal?’ I slammed my palm upon the table. ‘Have I offended him?’
Though Burke’s flesh was soft his eyes were callous. ‘How should I know if you have offended him? I don’t know who you are.’
‘I am Harry Baker,’ I lied. ‘Who is he then? I saw you with him.’
Burke shook his head. The corners of his mouth sloped downwards and the lines about his eyes wrinkled in abject loneliness. He supped at his ale, saying nothing.
I pressed on. ‘I worked as a clerk at the Tower, before the plague. Now the Tower is commandeered and I cannot work there until the sickness is lifted, and how long might that be? Every week the bills show more dead and the pest grows stronger.’ All true, though I toiled at the Tower a long time afore the plague started and harboured no intention of ever seeking employment there again, sickness or not.
Burke grunted.
I dangled some bait. ‘My maidservant would have me leave because she is afraid to stay, yet I cannot persuade her that to leave would be doubly dangerous.’
Burke scowled at me. ‘Your maidservant.’
I waved a hand. ‘She is insistent.’
‘Hah!’ Burke exclaimed. ‘You have problems with your maidservant.’
‘Every man has his problems.’ I did my best to act offended. ‘What great problems do you have?’
Burke snorted and sat sullen.
‘I have enough money to live a few years, if I live so long,’ I taunted him again. ‘And I am not sure I want to be a clerk again, for I find little fulfilment in it.’
Burke’s lip curled in filthy disdain. ‘You lack fulfilment?’
I did my best to appear as miserable and self-distracted as he. ‘Aye, I am not fulfilled.’
‘Sir, I don’t know who you are, but look about you.’ His small, red mouth pouted angrily amidst the abundance of his face. ‘Death is in all parts, and you complain you are not fulfilled?’
I waggled a finger as Dowling often did at me. ‘Verily I say unto you, this generation shall not pass away, till all be fulfilled.’
‘What nonsense!’ Burke sneered. ‘You have sufficient funds to last a few years? I once had prospect of becoming the wealthiest merchant in London, until cheated by nobility.’
‘Nobility?’ I laced my words with doubt.
‘Aye, nobility.’ Burke gripped his pot so tight the veins on the back of his hand stood out like roots from a tree. ‘Now I have more debt than cash and will likely lose my business, my house and all else that I own.’
I patted his sleeve. ‘Well, let me buy you another ale and a pipe.’
‘Aye, well, thanks,’ he ceded reluctantly.
We both shuffled upon our chairs and worked out where best to put our elbows. He blinked slowly while staring at the table. The wench appeared quickly with fresh mugs and full pipes.
‘You say nobility cheated you.’ I sucked at the pipe and blew smoke out upon my own arms. ‘That would make the nobility most ignoble.’
Burke glared at me. ‘You worked at the Tower, you say?’
‘Aye,’ I nodded keenly, ‘and in my role enjoyed insights into the machinations of the court. The dignity and wisdom of our noble lords never ceased to impress.’
Burke’s head bobbed up and down, incredulous. ‘How so?’
How so indeed? All I learnt was that our noble lords maintained their status and fortune by means of ruthless self-interest. So I shrugged and tried to look smug.
‘Are you really such a fool?’ Burke asked.
I smiled. ‘You say I am a fool, yet you are the one cheated by nobility.’
‘You say I am a fool?’
I puffed again at the pipe. ‘It was you said it, not I.’
‘You listen to me.’ He jabbed a short stubby finger at my chest. ‘One lord cheated me, guaranteed by another!’ His face turned bright red.
‘So you say.’
He growled and shook his wobbly head. ‘He said he planned a great party for the King and invited me to supply the wine. Every vintner in the City coveted the contract.’
‘Guaranteed by a lord,’ I prompted.
‘Aye!’ Burke crashed his fist upon the table.
‘What lord?’
He wiped a sleeve across his mouth. ‘It is no business of yours.’
‘Then you should reclaim your money,’ I said.
‘I have tried every avenue to reclaim it,’ he snarled.
‘Those men you were with,’ I realised. ‘They represent this lord.’
‘Enough!’ Burke slammed the palm of his hand upon the table.
‘No business of mine,’ I remembered. ‘Why did you not simply take back the wine once this nobleman didn’t pay for it?’
Burke rumbled, a deep guttural noise speaking of wretched pain. ‘He is a devil and guards himself with four black dogs. Black beasts no man dare cross, for they will rip you with their teeth and tear you with their claws.’
‘Dogs or men? I am confused.’
‘Violent men with no fortune to lose, kennelled at Winchester’s Palace on the south side of the river.’
‘Men are men, and dogs are dogs,’ I said. ‘Who feeds them anyway?’ I laughed heartily and cuffed him about the shoulder.
Burke grabbed my wrist and held it tight. ‘Don’t mock me!’
‘I do not mock you,’ I protested, pulling back my hand. ‘Yet you must concede it is an unlikely tale.’
He sighed, anger exhausted. ‘You are a clerk and live a closeted life. I should not rile at your ignorance.’
I pretended to take offence. ‘You call me ignorant? So I tell you I doubt your tale, for it reads like fiction. Four men you call black dogs. Four men are four men, and you let four men stand between you and your prospects.’ I clicked my tongue.
Burke beheld me keenly. The dark clouds of ale and anger lifted, revealing sharp clear eyes. ‘Who are you?’
‘Harry Baker is my name, formerly a clerk at the Records Office, now poor and unfulfilled.’ I lifted my pot.
‘You came here to find me.’
‘I came here to escape my maidservant.’
‘No,’ he snapped. ‘You ask too many questions about Wharton and his colleagues. No idle curiosity, methinks.’
‘All curiosity is idle,’ I replied. ‘I drank alone when you came in and disturbed my peace.’
‘Nay, nay.’ He shook his head sharply. ‘I have lived long enough now to smell deception. God knows I have experienced sufficient of it, and I smell it about your person as strong as old cheese. Methinks I saw you at my house earlier this afternoon. So now I will take your leave.’
I remained seated as he stood. Then he leant across and spoke low and wet into my ear. ‘Beware that coarse lout,’ he warned. ‘Methinks he will wait for you on the street. When he talks to a man that way he usually means to kill him.’
I finished my ale and left through the other door, hurrying out onto Friday Street where I prayed Dowling awaited. The street was dark and quiet. I placed a hand upon my chest and breathed deliberately slowly. I didn’t want to leave this place alone. A heavy hand landed upon my shoulder.
�
��Your breath stinks of ale,’ Dowling whispered into my ear.
‘Burke insisted,’ I replied, hiding my relief. ‘Now walk me to Cheapside.’ I still had one last errand to run before curfew, a task to be completed without Dowling.
At Seething Lane Liz opened the door before I finished knocking. I reckoned she waited by the door for her father’s return. Her lips were blue and the skin about her cheeks stretched dry and tight. I felt guilty I had not come straight from Cripplegate.
‘Did Oliver find him?’ I asked, praying he got there before me.
Her eyes ranged the cobbled street behind, hair gently rippling in the evening breeze. ‘He is not returned.’
The nerves in my gut shrunk upon themselves. ‘I’m sorry.’ I stepped back into the street.
‘Why did you come, Harry?’ she asked, distracted.
Trapped. ‘I found James.’
She held herself tight about her chest. ‘Where?’
In the pit by now. I eased into the house, determined to talk where she might grieve in private. I climbed the same stairs we climbed that morning, she following.
Once she entered the room she slammed the door closed behind and stood afront of me, legs apart, fists clenched. ‘I asked you where?’
‘I found him at the Cripplegate Pesthouse,’ I said. ‘You said he was fevered. So he was.’
She clasped her hands to her mouth, misunderstanding what I tried to explain. ‘God have mercy! We must make sure he is well cared for.’
I caught a breath and felt my face flush. ‘I am sorry, Liz, but James died.’
She didn’t weep, nor scream, nor indeed react much at all. Her face paled from white to whiter, and the fingers of her clasped hands clawed at each other.
‘Well then,’ she whispered. She hesitated a moment. ‘Thank you for coming, Harry.’ She shivered, opened her mouth and closed it again, then walked quickly from the room, taking a piece of my pickled soul with her. I trudged home, exhausted and miserable.
My plans to go straight to bed were thwarted. Jane stood afront of me so I couldn’t pass, dress billowing as though fanned by some gust of fury emanating from somewhere betwixt her legs. She held the remnants of my burnt clothes up against my nose. ‘Where have you been?’
I attempted to squeeze past, but she threw herself against the wall to prevent it. In her rage she forgot to maintain the distance between us and I felt the wetness of her breath against my throat. I stopped trying to escape and moved so she breathed against my mouth. ‘Bedlam,’ I confessed.
Her arms fell to her sides. ‘Bedlam?’
‘Aye.’
‘And did you see the pit there?’ she hissed.
‘Aye, I did.’
‘Full, was it?’
‘Aye, full,’ I said. ‘You can smell it this side of Cripplegate.’
‘You can smell it this side of Watling Street!’
I placed a hand on her shoulder. An image of the black bubo upon the dying woman’s neck shaped itself unbidden in my mind, swollen and growing still. ‘Aye, terrible to behold.’
She threw my hand away. ‘You walk into the midst of it and bring it back with ye.’
I stepped quickly past. ‘I burnt all my clothes and smoked a pipe.’
She pushed me in the back as I headed towards the kitchen. ‘Why go there at all?’
‘The King,’ I answered.
‘The King,’ she repeated slowly, ‘asked you to go to Bedlam?’
‘In a manner.’
‘What manner? The King left London two weeks ago.’
‘Lord Arlington then,’ I conceded.
‘Lord Arlington told you to go to Bedlam?’
I edged about the kitchen table so it stood between us. ‘He told us to find out who killed Thomas Wharton. His wife told us to go to Bedlam,’ I lied.
‘What is at Bedlam?’
‘A lot of lunatics and a pest pit.’
‘What is that to do with the death of her husband?’
‘That remains to be established.’
‘The King is at Hampton Court,’ she repeated, fury mounting within her slender frame.
I took a step towards the stairs. ‘Aye, Jane, so he is, and we are still here in London where I will likely remain until I find out who killed Thomas Wharton.’
‘Harry.’ She seized my jacket and gazed into my eyes. ‘We must leave soon, afore it is too late.’
I pulled away. ‘Then I must find out who killed Wharton soon, afore it is too late.’ I was tired, too tired to talk. I ignored the hurt I saw in her face and hurried upstairs afore I said something even more loathsome. I crept into bed feeling like the Devil himself.
Just as my eyes closed so Dowling’s fist pounded at the door.
Chapter Eight
ARGUMENTS OF DEATH
When the five hylegical places at the hour of birth, at time of decumbiture of the sick, as also the Lord of the ascendant, are oppressed, judge death immediately to follow.
We heard the crowd before we saw the light. A hundred men at least. Half the gathering stood back, watching, torches held high. The other half formed a tight, heaving mass, surging again and again against the front of The Bull Head tavern. Apprentices mostly, giving vent to their ungratified appetence. I kept my distance, anxious to avoid the mass of sweaty bodies, wet and dripping. Somewhere in the tavern afore us another man was murdered.
‘They gathered two hours ago,’ Dowling said. ‘As soon as the killing was discovered.’
‘Why?’
Dowling put his mouth to my ear. ‘Every event is a sign these days, Harry. If a man is murdered in a tavern, then God is angry with those who drink.’
Which was ludicrous. It wasn’t Satan who turned the water into wine. I stood upon the tips of my toes, yet still couldn’t see what happened at the front of the throng.
‘How will we get in?’ I asked Dowling, for he was taller.
‘The only way is through.’ Dowling looked east. ‘They have blocked the alleyway leading to the back.’
‘Hold!’ a deep voice cried. The crowd hushed a moment, a pack of dogs scenting new prey. ‘Hold!’ it cried again, from near the tavern door.
‘Is that Benson shouting?’ I asked. The landlord.
‘No,’ Dowling stretched his neck. ‘It’s Andrew Vincent, standing on a box.’ Which explained why Dowling’s jaw twitched.
Vincent was a dissenter, forbidden to preach by the Conventicle Act. Yet with so many clergymen having fled London, many parishes welcomed any man of God with open arms. Since most of the church and the court left London weeks ago, few resisted their reappearance. Just Sir John Robinson and his garrison at the Tower. Dowling bristled like a wounded bear.
We eased our way forwards, Dowling barging aside ill-tempered adolescents. We closed to within ten paces of Vincent, close enough to see the deep lines scored upon his mouldering white head. His voice belied his age, echoing cavernous and rich. He lifted a finger to his lips and created a hush.
‘Come forth, all you drunkards,’ he exclaimed, ‘who have intoxicated your brains with the fumes of excessive drinking.’ The apprentices voiced their appreciation, forbidden to drink by their masters, jealous of those that partook. The crowd squeezed in on us, greasy, malodorous and vicious.
‘Come forth, you who have drowned your natural wit and ingenuity, which might have rendered you useful in the church where you lived.’ Vincent opened his arms as if he would welcome the whole crowd into his house, and paused to observe the effect of his words. A vein pulsed upon his forehead and his skin turned red. ‘You would have your strong drink without measure, and now also you shall have a cup to drink the wine of the wrath of the almighty God. By the wine of the wrath of God, we mean especially the dregs and bottom of it; the great plague and other eternal punishments of Hell!’ He lifted his arms to the heavens and the apprentices howled. ‘It will be most fierce, and so powerful that all the powers of men and devils shall be unable to make the least resistance.’
Two app
rentices eyed my silk jacket and twitched their noses. I dug a fist into Dowling’s ribs. ‘We have to keep going,’ I whispered.
Vincent sucked in a deep breath. ‘The wrath of God will come upon all the hypocrites. The hypocrites are those full of rottenness. They make it their business to appear religious, but are rotten at heart and cover carnal designs with a cloak of profession. As their sin is most offensive unto God here, so his wrath will certainly come upon them with the greatest severity hereafter.’ The crowd roared as one, sensing the possibility of redemption, for now he laid the blame for their sins at the feet of the clergy – those wretched cowards that fled the City.
I pushed harder against Dowling’s back.
A long, thin face leant towards me and breathed foulness into my face. ‘Where are you going?’ it spluttered.
‘Into the tavern,’ I replied, wiping spittle from my face.
‘You dare defy God’s word?’ he bellowed, ensuring others turned to watch.
‘We are King’s men,’ I assured him, expressionless, ‘and the King is God’s agent on earth. We are sent here to investigate this murder.’
He leered. ‘It is the act of the Lord God himself.’
An interesting theory, though hard to prove. Dowling looked over his shoulder. I caught his eye and jerked a thumb forward. He shoved hard, leaning into the wall of bodies afore us, pulling men aside by the collar. At the tavern door half a dozen apprentices exchanged insults with a gang of burly watchmen, pug-faced and ugly, itching to crack heads.
‘John Cummins,’ I called, recognising a short man amongst the watchers, flat-headed, with a scar upon his forehead.
‘Harry!’ He slid through the pack and stuck out his hand, wide grin slapped across his face. ‘I haven’t seen you for weeks. What you doin’ here?’
‘We’ve come to see the body.’ I waved a hand at Dowling. ‘We work for Lord Arlington.’
Cummins looked Dowling up and down. ‘Him? He looks like a butcher.’
‘He is a butcher and he works for the King too. We need to pass through, John.’ Apprentices surrounded us, listening to our conversation with dull expressions.
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