Death Comes Hot

by Michael Jecks

  However, after a pint of ale and a slice of sausage – a good, thick sausage made with pork and barley – the world began to look a happier place. I could tell when things were improving, because I saw a man in the roadway smiling. If a man was smiling, there must be something to smile about, I reasoned, and I was about to rise and make the fellow’s acquaintance when a hand landed on my shoulder.

  I did not need to turn and look. In my experience, a lot can be told by a hand on one’s shoulder. Sometimes, and for the best of reasons, it can be a joy: a friend long unseen, who appears after a long absence and entices a fellow to join him in a cup or two of wine or ale. But all too often it is the hand of a tipstaff who appears from the murk and grabs a man’s shoulder for more ungratifying reasons.

  This was not the light, amusing touch of a mistress playing catch-as-catch-can, or a hail-fellow-well-met grip; no, this was the grip of the tipstaff – or perhaps that of an assassin preparing to remove the obstacle to another’s fortune. I felt the hand and sensed the trickle of terror run up my spine at the mere contact of the palm and fingers. If they were the devil’s own, I would not have felt more horror.

  I turned slowly and looked up into Geoffrey’s serious face. ‘In God’s name …’ I breathed.

  ‘Good day to you, Master Blackjack. My sincere apologies if I caused you alarm,’ he said, and I would have snapped at him for his foolish act, and for giving me the shakes, but there was no humour in his face. He was deadly serious. ‘We must talk, my friend.’

  THREE

  ‘What do you mean by this? Have you been following me?’ I said, hoping that my heart would not leap from its moorings.

  ‘I asked at your house, and your servant said you had probably come here. He said something about the tavern here settling your stomach when you have a touch of liver.’ He peered closer. ‘What happened to your—’

  ‘Shaving,’ I said quickly, and then, ‘A touch of the liver?’ I snorted at that. But the act reminded me of my earlier pain, and I quickly agreed to a fresh pot of strong ale when Geoffrey suggested it. ‘Well? You wanted to find me, and so you have.’

  ‘I scarcely know where to start,’ he said, and then demonstrated the lie. ‘When we spoke yesterday, I told you of my poor brother, and how he was captured and murdered.’

  ‘Burned at the stake, you mean,’ I said.

  ‘Murdered,’ he repeated firmly. ‘It was your words about the time between his sermon and his arrest. The poor fellow was not taken on the day of his so-called offence, because as soon as his sermon was complete, he was seen to leave the church and go to a carriage. He climbed in and was taken away.’

  ‘But not by his captors?’

  ‘No. He was taken somewhere, and then brought back two days later, on the Tuesday. He was arrested on the Wednesday, charged, and soon taken to Smithfield to be burned to death by that drunken sot of an executioner.’

  ‘I see. What has this to do with me?’

  ‘James was taken somewhere. Where?’

  ‘You think I know?’

  ‘No! Of course not! But it is one question I must have answered. Where was he taken, and why?’

  He was sitting beside me now, and I felt a flare of irritation. ‘Why does it matter? Your brother is dead, and there is little to be done about the fact. What, will this bring him back? No! Will it ease his pain in his final moments? No! Will it do anything to help others?’

  And there I had to stop, because the answer was sitting beside me.

  There are times when I have seen Hector look ridiculously appealing. Usually, it is when there is food available, but just out of his reach. He will sit and stare at me or Raphe with eyes made wondrously huge with hopeful adoration, and he will try to indicate that if only he were to be given that bone, that cube of pork, or that steak, he would for ever after be the best behaved, most obedient creature known to any man.

  Not that it ever worked, of course, but sometimes it did make me consider, just for a moment or two, succumbing to his outrageous lies.

  Just now, it would have been easy to believe that, were Hector miraculously turned into human form, he would look exactly like Geoffrey. There was appeal in his eyes, aye, and hope. They glistened like a maiden’s after her first kiss. It made me feel queasy to see it.

  ‘It would help me and his family,’ he said quietly.

  And I knew I was lost.

  ‘What good can it really do?’ I said to him.

  His answer lay in his eyes. ‘If it tells us why he was taken and executed, that will be enough.’

  ‘And what will truly help you?’

  ‘The men who took him – they were in a carriage that had a crest on the side. Two golden wings, joined, on a crimson background.’

  I shrugged. Heraldry had never been a vital item of study for me when I was living with my father, the leatherworker and maker of blackjacks.

  ‘It is the arms of the Seymour family,’ Geoffrey said, and sat back, staring at me as if that explained everything.

  It didn’t.

  ‘So?’

  ‘The Seymours must have taken him away. And later, when James was captured, he was executed for something he did with the Seymours.’

  At that, I felt duty-bound to make an obvious comment. After all, this was London, and a man never knew who might be listening and storing comments for later repetition to a court for treason or some such similar accusation. There are many easy ways of dying painfully, and in London one of the easiest was to slander the Queen or one of her nobles.

  ‘Come now! The Seymours are an ancient, respected family. You think they would stoop to grabbing a priest from the streets and then seeing him murdered? Why? If they pulled him from his chapel, did they have to force him into their wagon? It sounded as though they invited him to enter, and he did so willingly. Was he pushed inside at sword point? No. So it sounds much more as though the Seymours invited him to join them, allowed him to stay with them for a pair of nights, and then brought him back. There is nothing here to suggest that they might have forced him against his will, or that he was given any form of injury, is there?’

  ‘The Seymours are not enthusiasts for the Catholic Church. They might have sought to ingratiate themselves with the Queen by throwing suspicion against my brother.’

  ‘But since they are more keen on the new Church, they would be more likely to spirit him away and protect him,’ I countered.

  ‘Why would they take him? What did they do to him?’

  ‘Why do you think they did anything? They brought him back, hale and hearty.’

  ‘And then he was accused and died in the flames.’

  ‘Yes, that was unfortunate.’

  ‘It was tragic.’

  ‘I can see you would think that.’

  ‘What else could a man think? An innocent priest was captured and murdered in the flames of an unjust pyre. It is surely the duty of any Englishman to seek the truth and avenge any dishonourable acts. Especially when directed against a mere priest!’

  ‘Well, if you are set on such activities, I wish you Godspeed,’ I said.

  ‘And you are an honourable man.’

  ‘I hope so.’

  ‘So you will help me.’

  I goggled. ‘No, wait, that is something I can’t do.’

  ‘It is the only thing a man of honour could do. You must help me.’

  ‘What, go against the Seymours?’ I thought again of the cold malevolence in the face of Anthony Seymour’s brother. What was his name?

  ‘Perhaps to support the Seymours,’ he said.

  That was a thought. I had no idea on which side the Seymours were positioned just now. It was so difficult: some were for the Queen, others for Lady Elizabeth; some were for the Catholic Church, others for the new religion created by King Henry; some were for peaceful coexistence with Spaniards, others wanted to throw them all back into the sea … but that was not for me to worry about. The main thing for me was that the Seymours could be on one side or the oth
er, or, depending on how the wind stood, on both. Families of such noblemen were like trees. They did not so much bend with the wind, as let the wind blow through their branches, and every generation could be assured that one or another branch of the great tree would survive to the next gale.

  ‘No,’ I said.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I have my head on my shoulders, and I want it to remain there,’ I said. It was too dangerous for a simple man like me to get involved in the activities of the rich.

  But I was already involved, whether I knew it or not, whether I liked it or not.

  I left him there and stood outside in the street. A cart and two cars came past me, and three men on horseback, and all I could think of was the story that Geoffrey had told me. I needed help with this. I should speak to someone, but to whom? If I were to go to John Blount, he would be duty-bound to tell his master, Thomas Parry, and I had not a doubt in my mind that if I were to go to him and tell such a tale, the first thing to occur to him would be that I was potentially an unreliable person, and such information would be far better held secret. I would be quickly presented with a prize of a nice new chain to wrap about me, and thrown into the river. I had no doubt of that whatsoever. After all, they would be able to find many other men who could perform my duties as an assassin. There were many, like Westmecott, who would be delighted to take on my income and rewards.

  Although not many of them would be able to escape capture by the use of a glib phrase or cheeky rejoinder as I could. That was the difference between me and so many of the other fellows who tried to eke out a living in London. I could succeed because of my talents, but they would inevitably become mired in the investigations. They would never be bright enough to ensure that they had a working alibi. I could only achieve that myself by the simple fact that I was never near the potential victim because I am no assassin. All such work had to be passed on to my accomplice.

  I wanted nothing more to do with any of this. It all felt too hazardous. I left the road and made my way homewards once more, and did not feel secure until I had closed the door behind me and could lean my back on it. ‘Raphe, bring me wine!’ I bellowed, setting Hector off again. There were times when having that four-legged walking bag of fleas was a pleasure, but more often he was just a nuisance. Barking when I spoke to him was not the behaviour I expected of him. He should know me by now.

  Sitting once more in my chair, I glared at the fireplace. When Raphe appeared, I pointed at it. ‘You have not built the fire!’

  ‘I’ve been busy.’

  ‘With what? Drinking my best wines, eating my best hams?’

  ‘With taking messages for you,’ he said grimly.

  It was a note from my master. I was summoned to John Blount’s house.

  ‘Oh, God’s hounds!’

  If you have not read my chronicles before, this will no doubt appear curious, but my master was a grim-faced, black-hearted son of a maiden of limited moral compass. He was the sort of man who could fall into a cesspit and come up not only smelling of lavender but also blaming someone else for the foolish act of pushing him in, and generally winning over the audience to his own innocence and incorruptibility. He possessed an iron will, steel for muscles and a total lack of conscience. This was the kind of fellow who could see an innocent executed on a whim, and then salve his sense of guilt by setting another to be hanged.

  I set off. There was little point in hiding from John Blount. After all, he was my master, and he did have the right to demand my presence when he wanted it. And just now, I was sure that it was not going to be a good meeting. You see, it had been some while since he had last asked me to see him, and then it had been a matter of a spy who had been deemed necessary to … well, to be made to disappear. I won’t go into that affair more than to say that from the first everything went wrong. The death happened, to my horror, but … No, I will not dwell on that.

  Suffice it to say, the last weeks had been wonderfully free of commands to murder people. The need for an assassin had never appeared to be so limited. Perhaps I was to be made redundant. Not that I would object to never being told to commit homicide, but there were other aspects to consider: the loss of my house, my income, my self-respect, for three.

  ‘So you got here at last,’ he said when I was shown into his little room.

  It was one of those rooms in which a man would wonder how the furniture arrived. In pieces, I would guess. The table at which he sat was large enough to seat twelve, but for all that it was a mass of papers and ledgers. As I walked in, he was reading a small note that could have fitted into his palm. The writing on it was tiny, and I thought that my eyes would have surrendered under the strain of trying to decipher the letters in the dim light of the chamber. Seeing me, he folded it into four and set it under another sheet of paper.

  He was a black fellow – black of heart and black of feature. His scowl could have been hidden in a coal cellar in broad daylight. It was that black. I walked in and sat before his table on a stool that was six inches too short.

  ‘Mark Thomasson has told me that you have a little local difficulty. He tried to advise me that someone was looking for a woman with a young boy. He made quite the song and dance about the matter, which I thought intriguing. And it was obvious to me that it was you looking for them. You are trying to find the boy who is the son of Westmecott and his woman?’

  I would break Mark Thomasson’s leg for him next time I saw him. I fixed a sickly grin on my face. ‘Yes. I don’t know what I can do to—’

  ‘That is most useful.’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘By the way, I have a new commission for you,’ he said. ‘There is a boy who needs to be removed.’

  ‘A boy?’

  ‘He is only young, and shouldn’t present you with any problems that you cannot overcome,’ he said glibly.

  ‘Who is he?’

  ‘He goes by the name of Ben. He’s living with his mother. Her name is Moll Cripplegate.’

  I started on hearing that and almost gave a gasp of surprise. ‘What?’ for that, of course, was the name of Hal Westmecott’s wife and the boy he had thought was his son.

  ‘It is fortunate that you have already started to look for them. It should save you time.’

  ‘But … I was going to ask you to help find them,’ I said, floundering. I could not comprehend the order I had just been given.

  ‘I have no information, other than she may be with the Seymours, either Anthony or Edward, or perhaps their father. They have houses near London Bridge and at Whitehall.’

  ‘What has he done?’

  ‘Who?’ He looked up at me as though surprised I was still there. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘What has he done? A mere boy? He can’t even be eight years old! What sort of a threat is a lad like that?’

  ‘It is not a matter of what he has done, but what he might do,’ Blount said, peering at me over the top of another missive. ‘It is very sad, but he could be a danger to people who matter.’

  ‘But he’s only a boy!’

  ‘Yes. You will find him and deal with him. If his mother gets in the way, you can consider it a benefit to remove her, too. There will be the usual bonus, with a certain additional sum should you manage both at the same time. How you do so is entirely up to you.’

  ‘Thank you,’ I said. He was already returned to his papers, and I might not have been there.

  I left.

  I confess, my feet took me meandering about London that evening. It was one thing to be walking the streets with a definite destination in mind, but quite another to be marching about the place with the conviction that the city was a place that was despicable, foul, hate-filled and not somewhere to want to remain. I could happily have packed a bag and left that very night.

  What was I become? A mere pawn in the service of a man who cared as much for the innocent as he did for a snake. He had no fellow feeling for me, only a determination to do all he could to make the life of his precious mistres
s as easy as possible. And to support him, I was expected to slaughter a mother and her child. It was disgusting.

  Of course, I would have nothing to do with the actual murder myself. John Blount was always very happy to learn that, no matter who the actual intended victim, I was always ready with my excuse, and away at the farthest corner of town when the murder was committed. It was one of my attractions for him at present – although one day that must change. He must come to realize that it was impossible for me to keep satisfying his need for blood and remaining far away from the crime when committed. Even a purblind idiot must realize that I must be innocent, and that someone else was conducting affairs.

  Yet that had little importance to me that day as I walked the streets, ignoring the entreaties of the whores, the beggars and the children who tried to cut my purse while they had a starveling stand before me holding out his or her hands in that appealing manner that professional conmen all adopt.

  The roads were thick with men and women desperate to take me to a darkened room, where I might be persuaded to part with a few coins by a woman with a figure to tempt a saint, or a man who stood hidden with a gun or dagger until the door was shut and the woman safe from me. The number of methods of gulling visitors to London had increased and grown infinitely more inventive with every passing year. It was a testament to the imaginative spirits of Londoners.

  I caught a fleeting glimpse of a scantily filled bodice and thin face in the distance, and instantly thought of Peggy. She had been so desperate to take me to her friend’s house and see me captured. And why? So that the men there might slaughter me? Just like the fellow who had been slaughtered in Westmecott’s room. Who was he? Why was he there, and who had killed him?

  Searching for something? Why did that spring into my head? I cast my mind back to the room, the body lying on the ground, the head stoven in. At the time, I had thought it was Westmecott, because the figure looked to have opened the door, turned away and then been struck. If it was Westmecott, it would make sense for the man to have let a friend in through his doorway, but it was not Westmecott – so why would he have turned his back on his visitor? Because the visitor was known to him, I suppose. And that led to the thought of why would another fellow walk in? Because both were searching for something. It seemed to make sense. If they were, for example, searching for diamonds or gold, and one found it, he might well have slaughtered his companion to keep all the profit for himself.