Dark Stars (The Thief Taker Series Book 3)

by C. S. Quinn

  Amesbury reflected that he was probably the closest thing the King had to a real friend. His eyes drifted to a succession of paintings depicting the King’s famous mistress Barbara Castlemaine and their children. There were none of Queen Catherine. Charles doted on his children and had given them all titles and lands despite their illegitimacy.

  ‘Your Majesty,’ Amesbury begun, clearing his throat, ‘we have some trouble in Deptford.’

  ‘Oh?’ The King held his hand up for an extra wine goblet.

  ‘Janus escaped,’ said Amesbury, taking the proffered cup.

  A servant splashed Burgundy. Amesbury nodded his thanks and drank.

  The King raised his heavy eyebrows, the long nose furrowing into his dark deep-set eyes.

  ‘Not like you,’ he said after a moment, ‘to fail.’

  Amesbury bowed his head in acknowledgement of the compliment.

  ‘Janus asked about the rings,’ he added. ‘I think he is looking for the Eye.’

  ‘The Eye?’ The King seemed to be searching his memory.

  The attempt was interrupted by a short fanfare from the musicians. Servants were covering the windows with thick red velvet curtains.

  King Charles turned away from Amesbury and gestured to the stage. ‘Lady Castlemaine has a surprise for me,’ the King explained.

  ‘Surely,’ said Amesbury, who had often borne witness to Lady Castlemaine’s shocking behaviour, ‘she has no surprises left.’

  ‘Never underestimate her,’ said Charles, tapping his large nose. ‘She notices my interest in the new lady-in-waiting.’

  Her and everyone else, thought Amesbury privately. The King’s love for fifteen-year-old Frances Stewart had become the talk of the court.

  A servant arrived, bending his knee to offer the King a plate of meat, fruit and cheeses. Charles took the plate with a gracious nod of thanks and plucked up food with his fingertips.

  ‘I treasure Lady Castlemaine,’ sighed Charles. ‘I adore our children. There was a time I wanted to make her Queen.’

  Amesbury kept a tactful silence. Rumours of Lady Castlemaine’s faithlessness had become ridiculous.

  ‘All summer Frances has resisted my attempts to make her happy,’ confided Charles, chewing meat, ‘but she is starting to yield. Only yesterday . . .’

  He stopped mid-sentence as the stage curtains rolled back, revealing a candlelit bed. Lady Castlemaine stood next to it wearing an open white man’s shirt showing almost all of her naked chest. Her legs were clad in tight breeches, revealing a scandalous portion of bare lower leg and the tantalising outline of her curving thighs. A cloud of auburn hair framed her beautiful features, the large violet eyes set in calculated seduction. In her hand was a large wooden phallus, graphically carved in intimate detail.

  The King gave a short applause. One of the musicians’ mouths dropped clean open.

  Amesbury tried unsuccessfully not to imagine where Lady Castlemaine might have bought such a lifelike object.

  ‘It’s been some time since we saw a wedding,’ announced Lady Castlemaine, shaking out her shining hair and fixing her lovely eyes on the King. ‘But,’ she continued with an arch smile, ‘for a wedding you need a virgin bride. And as Your Majesty well knows, virgins are difficult to find in court.’

  Charles laughed and gestured for his wine goblet to be refilled.

  ‘But there is one little virgin,’ continued Lady Castlemaine as the King drank, ‘who is famed.’ She paused for dramatic effect. ‘La Belle Stewart.’

  Charles’s eyes widened as Frances Stewart tripped on to the stage, her face soft with drink. Amesbury sat a little upright. How had Lady Castlemaine done it? Frances was renowned for her modesty, and she was play-acting half naked.

  The King moved forward in his large chair. Frances had been dressed as Venus, Goddess of Love, in a flowing white toga that was practically transparent. Her hair was decorated with roses and tiny apples to represent the goddess.

  The poor girl never stood a chance, thought Amesbury grimly. She’ll be ruined without even knowing Lady Castlemaine plotted her downfall.

  As Queen Catherine’s prettiest lady-in-waiting, Frances appeared younger than her fifteen years. Her chubby frame was girlish, her fresh blue eyes not yet hardened in courtly manners. As they watched, Lady Castlemaine wrapped a seductive hand around Frances’s nubile waist, plucked an apple from the younger girl’s hair and took a suggestive bite.

  The King sat a little straighter, his eyes roaming the illicit glimpses of Frances’s young body through the shifting fabric. Frances stumbled slightly, giggling childishly, her little dark curls bouncing around her face.

  ‘I shall be the lucky groom,’ continued Lady Castlemaine, holding her dildo aloft theatrically. ‘The priest shall perform the ceremony.’

  A man in priest’s robes walked on to the stage and began the process of marrying Lady Castlemaine and Frances.

  The King watched, transfixed.

  ‘The Dutch are well positioned to invade,’ said Amesbury. ‘De Ryker is the best admiral Holland has ever known. Little stands in their way. If Janus finds the Eye, they could be unstoppable.’

  Charles frowned at the mention of De Ryker. The admiral was famed for his ruthlessness and skill at sea.

  Lady Castlemaine was slipping a ring on to Frances’s finger and leaned forward to give her a lingering kiss. ‘The wedding night!’ announced Lady Castlemaine. ‘The bridal bed!’

  Stagehands were quickly assembling a stack of thick eiderdowns and cushions behind them. Lady Castlemaine led Frances slowly to the bed.

  Charles swigged deliberately from his wine goblet as though his mouth was dry.

  ‘My virgin bride has much to learn,’ continued Lady Castlemaine with a wink, twirling the wooden sex toy, ‘but I will teach her everything.’

  She began loosening Frances’s dress. The younger girl allowed herself to be manoeuvred under the covers.

  The King tried to focus on Amesbury. He felt an important issue was evading him.

  ‘So Janus knew of the codebreaker rings,’ confirmed the King. ‘I thought them lost.’

  ‘I know of one still in London,’ said Amesbury. ‘It’s owned by Judge Walters. He came by it a few months ago from a pirate in his custody, according to my informant in the Marshalsea.’

  ‘The others?’ The King was watching the stage.

  ‘I believe the Cipher had a ring,’ said Amesbury. ‘Where it is now, no one knows. Thorne likely had one. There was talk one ring was given to a royal.’

  His eyes flicked to the King.

  ‘Who is Judge Walters?’ Charles was trying to match the name to a face.

  ‘He used to sail in your navy,’ said Amesbury helpfully. ‘Now he runs the prison at Marshalsea. Drowns pirates,’ he concluded.

  Charles’s dark brows lifted in memory.

  On stage Lady Castlemaine was working to free Frances’s toga. She threw it triumphantly over the side of the stage. Frances, now naked beneath the sheets, pulled the bedcovers high and giggled.

  ‘You think Janus is killing girls to find the Eye?’ asked the King.

  ‘It’s possible,’ said Amesbury. ‘Identical killings took place while Thorne was your father’s astrologer. There was something familiar about him. I don’t believe he is Dutch. Perhaps a seafaring noble with a reason to be bitter towards his King.’

  The King gave a short laugh. ‘You name half my court,’ he said. ‘Including my own brother.’

  ‘What of Buckingham?’ asked Amesbury carefully. ‘You banished him two years ago. He is a great sailor.’

  The King’s eyes automatically moved to the empty spot on the wall, where a picture once hung. His eyes softened in adoration as they took in his painted children. But the portrait of Lady Castlemaine’s sixth child was noticeably absent. She’d been born two years ago, when rumours about Buckingham and Lady Castlemaine were at their height.

  ‘I don’t doubt Buckingham’s loyalty to England,’ said Charles, ‘but I do
n’t wish to speak of him.’ The King’s dark eyes tracked back towards the stage, their expression brooding. He lowered his mouth to drink.

  Lady Castlemaine was taking Frances’s face in her hands. She kissed her full on the lips. Then she raised the large wooden dildo. The King swallowed.

  ‘Since I am ill-equipped,’ Lady Castlemaine announced, ‘a widow’s comforter must play the part.’

  Her bewitching gaze swept the stage, gauging her audience. Frances lay prone.

  ‘The delights of the flesh,’ Lady Castlemaine announced to the King with a wag of her finger, ‘may only be enjoyed in wedlock. Frances must retire to her own chambers.’

  Barbara exited the bed. On cue the curtain was untied, shielding her young bedfellow in a thick swathe of velvet.

  The King’s face registered disappointment.

  ‘But if His Majesty joins me in my apartments,’ continued Barbara, ‘I shall play the willing bride.’

  The King sat watching the stage for a long moment. Behind him servants moved like a well-oiled machine, letting in daylight, rearranging the rugs. He tried to focus. The room seemed warm and liquid. He got unsteadily to his feet. Something was nagging at him. He needed to make a decision about the Dutch threat. But Lady Castlemaine’s apartments seemed much more inviting, even without Frances. Then from beneath the fug an idea took form.

  ‘We shall go to Deptford,’ decided Charles, thinking aloud. ‘Judge Walters is at Execution Dock today. We shall secure his ring and be sure the Eye cannot be found.’

  Amesbury felt relief wash over him. He’d been trying to persuade the King to take the Dutch threat seriously for months.

  ‘Frances will accompany me in the carriage,’ continued the King, ‘and see aboard our magnificent Royal Charles. We’ll show her why she need never fear Dutch invasion.’

  Amesbury resisted the urge to put his head in his hands. The King’s true motive was embarrassingly clear. He wanted a pretext to get Frances alone in the royal carriage and impress her with his Naval Majesty.

  What Charles had likely forgotten was that the Great Fire had decimated royal funds, leaving Deptford Docks on a bleak skeleton crew. The King would be mortified. And when Lady Castlemaine discovered Frances had been toured at the Royal Dockyard, the King’s most volatile mistress would be furious.

  Chapter 11

  Charlie and Lily were ankle-deep in the mud at Dead Man’s Curve. The body was staring up at them.

  ‘The bodies from nineteen years ago,’ said Charlie. ‘They were just like this one?’

  Norris nodded. ‘I was just a boy. But you don’t forget such things. People blamed the old King. He and his crow of a Queen had fled to Greenwich Palace, just over the way.’ Norris scratched his testicles reflectively.

  ‘The murderer carved star signs?’ Charlie suggested, turning to Lily.

  ‘I think it’s a map of the heavens,’ said Lily. ‘See how it’s arranged? Like a star chart in an almanac.’

  Charlie examined the shapes. Most prominent was a large pentagram.

  ‘Devil worship?’ suggested Lily.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Charlie, frowning.

  ‘Perhaps the girl’s birth chart?’ suggested Lily.

  Charlie shook his head. ‘Look at the hands,’ he said, pointing to the fingers. ‘There’s the marks of an old prison brand on the thumb. She’s a convicted thief. Folk as poor as her don’t often know when they were born. I only know my nativity because . . .’

  Charlie stopped. It suddenly occurred to him he had no idea how he knew his birthdate. Only that he did. Had his mother told him? Charlie remembered hardly anything before the orphanage. Sometimes scraps came to him in dreams. Dark images he’d rather forget.

  ‘Perhaps the charts show the time of her death,’ Charlie theorised, trying to shake off the uneasy feeling that always surrounded shrouded memories of his past.

  He noticed something else. A flash of silver where the mouth now gaped slightly.

  Charlie took a stick from the bank. He knelt and carefully opened the dead girl’s mouth. There was a coin inside.

  ‘What are you doing!’ cried Lily in horror as a squirming shrimp writhed free of the dead tongue.

  ‘It’s a silver coin,’ said Charlie, pulling it free. ‘A shilling.’ He turned it. ‘Minted near St Ursula’s Church,’ he said. ‘That’s a sailor’s place, downriver. They buy coin there after landing at Custom House.’

  ‘So the killer is a sailor?’

  ‘Could be,’ said Charlie. ‘But it’s a busy part of the city. Could have been a local from Deptford.’

  He thought for a moment. ‘Didn’t Ishmael Boney live in Deptford?’ he asked Norris.

  The old man gave a snort of annoyance. ‘He did, but he’s long fled,’ he said. ‘If we could find Ishmael Boney, we’d have justice. Us poor river folk could get on with our business, without Deptford folk cursing us, and the King’s men poking their noses,’ he added bitterly. ‘No,’ he concluded, ‘Ishmael has disappeared to whatever close and dark hole he came from, and we’ll not find him now.’

  Charlie logged this. Then he tossed the silver coin to Norris, who caught it gratefully, pocketing it in one swift movement.

  Charlie moved forward and gently turned the body. It rolled wetly in the mud, exposing the naked back.

  They all stared. The mud-dappled skin bore yet more patterns. On to the girl’s back had been carved a crude image. Four rudimentary angels fluttered around a cross.

  ‘Why are you staring?’ asked Lily, taking in Charlie’s haunted expression.

  ‘That picture,’ said Charlie. ‘I see it every day. On a tapestry. A tapestry stitched by my mother.’

  Chapter 12

  Lily and Charlie were walking fast back to Covent Garden.

  ‘In my mother’s lost bundle,’ Charlie was explaining, ‘there wasn’t just a ring. She’d stitched a sampler. Angels around a cross. I never thought it anything more than a maid’s seamstress work.’ He called the tapestry to mind. ‘Four angels with different heads,’ he said, ‘just like on the back of the dead girl.’

  ‘You think there could be a hidden code in the sampler?’ asked Lily excitedly.

  ‘It’s possible.’

  A man holding a rooster was passing a lively coach house, on his way to a cockfight. Automatically Charlie assessed the scar-mangled bird’s chances and noticed its head drooping to one side. Then sharp instincts caught an impression of something amiss by the coach house. A figure standing upright and alert – not nearly drunk enough for the company he kept. But before Charlie could properly take him in, the man twisted away and vanished into the thick crowd. The impression Charlie was left with was the man had been tall, smoking a Dutch pipe. Charlie was suddenly certain it was the same man who’d followed them from the Marshalsea prison.

  ‘Come on,’ he said uneasily to Lily. ‘My room isn’t far.’

  They crossed London Bridge and passed through the bizarre hotchpotch of London’s Great Fire aftermath. Rebuilding had happened in spurts, and pockets of the city boasted smart new buildings of white stone.

  They passed by Cornhill, where the Royal Exchange was being rebuilt in earnest. Large white arches were already taking shape, and well-dressed architects and planners watched from the Olde Mitre Tavern, sipping warm ale.

  On Cheapside traders took a more hands-on approach, peddling stoically from temporary stalls erected in the ruins of their former shops. Towards Fleet Street the expanse of black ash was punctuated by posts nailed into the ground. String perimeters plotted the shape of a new house, shop, tavern or church. Thick huddles of Londoners queued outside temporary shacks, erected to resolve the constant boundary disputes.

  They entered the unburned west of the city, now heaving with extra occupants. Charlie led Lily through a sawdust-strewn butcher’s shop to his lodgings. The butcher looked up, knife in hand, and nodded a greeting.

  ‘If you pass by Southwark today, don’t bet on the cockerels,’ advised Charlie as
they passed. ‘One of the fighters is doped. Things could turn ugly.’

  ‘I’ll save my pennies,’ agreed the butcher amiably. ‘I’ve already got money on us winning the war with the Dutch this year.’

  The butcher gave a last lingering look at Lily as they mounted the stairs to Charlie’s small room, then went back to his carving.

  ‘You remember my rooms?’ Charlie asked, eyeing Lily as he pushed open the badly hung door with effort.

  Since he’d met Lily, it had never really been clear what their involvement was. They’d discovered a long-lost chest together, retrieved papers that threatened England, narrowly escaped the Great Fire and spent the days after scarcely leaving Charlie’s bed. But then Lily had vanished, only to return touting the ruby ring, a new mystery to solve and an apparent amnesia for their prior intimacy.

  ‘I never noticed your mother’s sampler,’ was Lily’s only observation as they entered.

  The stitched cloth was displayed over the straw mattress. The threads were still bright and depicted a thick red cross, surrounded by four angels. Beneath was written:

  When the sun goes down, you shall return your pledge to Him.

  Charlie nodded. They both stood and looked at it.

  ‘When the sun goes down, you shall return your pledge to Him?’ read Lily.

  ‘It’s common enough to make a tapestry with a Bible quote,’ said Charlie.

  They looked at the angels, flying around a squat red cross.

  ‘The cross could represent the shape of the joined rings,’ suggested Lily. ‘It’s stubbier than a usual Christian cross.’

  Charlie was looking at the angels. Instead of serene human features, these angels had animal heads. A fierce lion and snorting bull glared out. One was a strange-looking bird, and the last was a man glaring a challenge.

  Lily was scrutinising each angel.

  ‘They’re cherubim,’ Charlie explained. ‘Warrior angels, closest to God. You see them in churches.’