The Dead Don't Wai

by Michael Jecks

  ‘Except,’ Hamon rumbled.

  ‘Hmm? Oh!’ Arch slapped his brow. ‘Oh, where would I be without you, ’Amon? I’d clean forgotten that the Coroner asking him ’ere still doesn’t pay the interest or my loan, does it?’

  ‘No, Arch, it doesn’t, does it?’

  And having reached that conclusion, both stared down at me again.

  ‘I have the money,’ I began.

  ‘Oh, ’e ’as it,’ Arch said. ‘That’s a relief, isn’t it, ’Amon? So give us our six guineas, then, master.’

  ‘Six?’ I yelped. ‘It was only—’

  ‘Yes, but since then you ’ave led us a merry dance from London to this nice little village, ’aven’t you? You still owe the base amount, and so far you ’aven’t been interesting me in ’ow you’re going to pay. So I think a little sum to reimburse us for extra effort, for wear and tear, for preventing us using our money to our own advantage – all that comes to a bit more. And if we add in the benefit to you of not losing a finger or two, perhaps we should make it a round eight guineas. So, where’s the money?’

  I confess, just at that moment it was very tempting to tell them about the box in the church. Hamon was staring at the little finger on my left hand, and I knew that he was thinking it would make a splendid addition to his collection of ‘fingers I have snipped’. But I didn’t know for certain yet that the box was the one Dick Atwood had spoken of. If I sent Arch and Hamon on a wild goose chase, they would start thinking more imaginatively than only one finger. They would be more likely to want to investigate behind my codpiece. I squirmed at the thought of his snippers down there. ‘Come, now, Arch, you don’t want to cause pain for no reason.’

  ‘I do,’ Hamon said.

  I looked at him, careful not to glare. ‘But you don’t want to hurt your chances of getting your money, do you? It’s not here. It’s at my house.’

  Hamon pulled a rusty pair of shears from his belt pouch and made a show of studying them. He clenched his fist about the handle, closing them. They made a metallic hiss as he moved the two surfaces together, and again when he released them. He held them close to my nose, where I could smell the dried blood on them. I wanted to turn away, but the man’s eyes were hypnotic. And then the shears edged closer, until they touched my nostrils, the blades at either side of my nose. ‘I don’t think our chances would be hurt by your losing your nose or a finger, or something.’

  ‘But if you injure me, I won’t pay you,’ I said. I tried to speak firmly, but it did come out as a bit of a squeak.

  Arch leaned down into my field of view now. ‘Trouble is, you see, my friend ’Amon doesn’t trust you anymore. It’s a terrible thing, suspicion, but ’e thinks that someone who doesn’t pay ’is debts is a terrible person. ’E really does. And that means ’e is keen to express himself.’

  ‘I—’

  The door opened and Sir Richard entered. He had a face like thunder, and he glared at the two standing with me. ‘What are ye doin’, Jack, eh? Come on, stir yourself. We still have to find this miller. Are ye comin’ or not?’

  ‘I, I—’

  ‘Get yourself ready, Jack,’ Sir Richard said, adding to Hamon, ‘My apologies, good fellow. This man must leave now. We have business to attend to.’

  Hamon stood slowly from his crouch over me. ‘He’s with us now.’

  Sir Richard glanced at him briefly. ‘No, he’s not. He’s coming back to London with me.’

  I winced and desperately tried to indicate with my eyebrows and eyes that Hamon was a very dangerous man. Sir Richard didn’t appear to notice. ‘Come on, Jack. On your feet. My brother won’t wait.’

  Hamon stepped between us and lifted his little shears, the blades together so it looked like a fat-bladed knife. ‘You didn’t listen to me, you old—’

  Sir Richard’s left hand whipped past Hamon’s face, and I heard, rather than saw, the snippers whizz through the air, so close over Arch’s head that I was sure I saw strands of his hair parted by the blades. His mouth formed a perfect ‘O’, as did his eyes as he ducked. The shears came to a shivering halt in the lintel of the door to the screens and garden. At the same time, Sir Richard had drawn his dagger and stepped forward. His blade’s point was under Hamon’s chin now and pressing upwards.

  ‘And you didn’t listen to me, you whoreson cut-purse! I’m not some fool visiting the big city for the day, who you can laugh at, get pissed, and cut the purse from. I’m the Queen’s Crowner, and if you try to prevent me in my duties, ye’ll learn what the inside of Newgate’s like. They’d like a pretty boy like you in there. Unless you want to try to fight me now. Do ye?’

  ‘No,’ Hamon said. He would have shaken his head emphatically too, but that might have been dangerous.

  ‘Good,’ Sir Richard said. He threw a look towards Arch. ‘You – yes, you, you gangling wastrel. If you don’t want to swallow it, I’d take yer hands off yer dagger. If you try to pull a knife on me, master, you will not regret it for very long. Do I make meself clear?’

  Hamon gave a pleading sort of a squeak, his eyes cast sidelong at Arch, who reluctantly took his hand from his knife’s hilt. Meanwhile, Sir Richard’s blade was pressing higher, and Hamon was forced to stand on his tiptoes to prevent a puncture. Sir Richard nodded, and then took his blade away and thrust it into its scabbard in a single, fluid movement.

  He was about to walk from the room when he noticed I was still sitting on the bench. ‘Did ye not pay attention? Get yourself on your feet, master.’

  I trotted along beside Sir Richard with a sense of disbelief.

  ‘Those friends of yours,’ he said as we crossed a small stream. ‘They didn’t seem friendly.’

  ‘I’m glad you noticed. They were going to hurt me.’

  ‘Why?’

  I saw no reason to deceive him. ‘I owed them a small debt from gambling, but what was a few shillings has grown to guineas in a week.’

  ‘Oh, he’s one of them, eh? Lures his victims into his nets, and then won’t let ’em go till he’s skinned them and taken everything but the bare bones.’

  ‘Yes. And Hamon takes that scenario seriously.’

  ‘Hmm. You should get yourself rid of them somehow.’

  ‘At the rate they’re going, I’ll never be able to afford to pay them. They want more and more.’

  ‘Aye. It’s how they work. So you need to find a way to make them seek some other victim, or else have them removed.’

  That was an idea that had occurred to me. Because of my new position as unofficial assassin to Master John Blount, who worked for Lady Elizabeth’s comptroller, I was aware of other men in a similar line of business, and had made use of a subcontractor on many occasions. However, I tended to use him when someone else was paying for his services. It was an unpleasant idea that I must use him for my own protection. I knew how expensive he was.

  ‘I don’t know how to. If I could, I would point them in another direction like a shot, but Arch is a hard man to evade. He even followed me all the way to St Botolph’s.’

  ‘I wonder how he learned where you had gone?’ Sir Richard said.

  I could guess. With only one servant, it wasn’t hard to work out.

  The church was quite full. A priest had been brought over from the next village, and he officiated with all the compassion and empathy of a chicken. Indeed, he rather reminded me of one, his head pecking down with every emphasis, his arms flailing together like wings to make a point. It would be coarse to call him a fool, but then I am coarse.

  Dorothy stood at the front near her husband’s body, her brood all about her. Roger was standing behind the priest, waving a thurible about and wafting incense that must have cost Sir Richard a pretty penny. He had not stinted on the costs of the funeral, I saw. Candles of wax were burning brightly, and the body was wrapped in a fresh, clean winding sheet. The congregation had turned out for the funeral, with many of the local peasants standing in the nave, hands clasped in prayer at the correct moments, while the priest rattled
his way through the liturgy incomprehensibly.

  The woman Sarah was at one wall, and there was a slight gap about her, as though she was ostracized, or perhaps because others feared her a little. She did look a rather daunting woman. Harknet was not far from her, and eyed her with unconcealed longing, I thought. It earned him a glare from Roger. Sir Richard himself was as upset as only a thorough-going hypocrite could be. I didn’t get the feeling that his emotions were entirely genuine.

  Of course, Dorothy survived only as far as the last mumbled words before collapsing in paroxysms of despair, wailing and weeping. Her two elder sons supported her on either side, while the youngsters looked on, two joining her in her demonstrations of misery. Ben stood stoically, wiping his eyes at regular intervals.

  At the graveside we all stood about while Roger climbed down into the mud, and took the body as it was passed to him. The intention was to lower Peter gently, of course, but Roger fumbled it, and the body tumbled head first with a loud crack. If he wasn’t dead already, he would have been killed by that.

  It was a relief when the priest finally gave up at the graveside and we could make our way down the path and through the gate, away from that grim little church.

  Sir Richard joined me on the ride back to London. There was little enough for either of us in the village, and I was glad of the company, bearing in mind that I could have met Arch and Hamon at any time.

  As soon as we reached my house and Raphe let us in, his expression of pained resentment was enough to clear the question of how Hamon had known where I had gone.

  ‘They came in here, and the big one, he held me with my back to the door, and threatened to cut off my tarse and ballocks if I didn’t answer him,’ he said in his familiar whine. ‘He held a big pair of shears to my—’

  ‘Yes, yes. What then?’

  ‘They were going to kill Hector!’

  ‘Who?’ I said, surprised.

  ‘My dog.’

  I groaned, Sir Richard scowled, and Raphe continued quickly, ‘I told them all I knew. I wasn’t going to have my cods cut off. You don’t pay me enough for that.’

  ‘Fetch wine, you inveterate fool,’ Sir Richard said, and dropped into my favourite chair. Sitting there, he looked up at me with a frown of bemusement. ‘Master Jack, I worry about you. Ye get yourself into trouble with men like those two, and think you can ride away without needing to worry. They are exactly the sort of men who would never give up once they had found a gull. Although I am surprised that they made their way to St Botolph’s. I would have thought that would be far enough away from London to worry them.’

  ‘I know – there are not many of their kind who would travel so far!’ I said. I was close to telling him that, as a retired cut-purse, I was perfectly well aware of what sort of men they were, and that I didn’t need any warnings about them, but I reflected that informing a Queen’s officer that I had been a cut-purse and was now an assassin might not endear me to him. Having seen how he despatched the threat posed by Hamon, I was under no illusions about his ability to capture me, if he desired. I took out the pistol and set it on the bench beside me. He looked at it, and then at me.

  ‘Is that a threat to me?’

  I looked down at it with surprise. ‘No! It’s just heavy on my belt!’

  ‘Good,’ he said.

  Raphe appeared at that moment and poured us wine. In the silence of the room, the liquid seemed to make an appalling noise.

  When he had left again, Sir Richard cleared his throat.

  ‘I know ye saw me with the woman Sarah this morning.’

  ‘Yes. I was going to talk to her, but you beat me to her door.’

  ‘Yes. Not that she was very helpful. According to her, Harknet felt he owned her. He has made several advances to her, although she has told him to leave her alone. Not that it helped.’

  ‘What of the vicar, your brother?’

  ‘Ah, as to that, she said she spoke to him on occasion, but he was always thoroughly respectable and decent towards her.’

  ‘Really?’

  He gave me his most patronizing smile. ‘I did tell you me brother was an honourable fellow.’

  ‘Yes, you did. And I suppose you mentioned to Sarah that you were his brother?’

  ‘She guessed. She said that he told her he had a brother who was a coroner.’

  ‘She told you that?’

  ‘Yes. Why?’

  I shook my head, astonished at the foolishness of the knight. ‘Because that means she saw more of him than you would expect a single woman to see of her priest. How many priests speak of their family and friends with members of their congregation? She was having longer conversations with Peter if she was learning about you.’

  Sir Richard’s face fell. ‘That means nothing. She told me that there was nothing between them.’

  ‘So she learned that you were his brother, that you were angry over his death, and then denied anything to do with horizontal exercise? Of course she did. She didn’t want to upset you.’

  ‘You see the bad in everyone,’ he snorted.

  ‘I’ve found it more realistic in my dealings with people.’

  ‘Some people are not that bad. They can surprise a fellow.’

  ‘And sometimes men will wilfully refuse to see what is in front of them,’ I said, ‘just as you refuse to see it in a wench with a pleasing smile and warm body.’

  He glowered at his pot, drank off his wine and refilled the jug. ‘Do you really think so?’

  ‘Yes, not that it matters. You have two concerns,’ I said. ‘First, the widow and her children. You should help them. Second, you must learn where the miller has gone. We should try to find him and learn where he buried his daughter.’

  He left me soon after, telling me that he was going to scour the drinking halls and alehouses all about the river. A man who had been a miller was most likely to want to stay near the river, he thought. Personally, I doubted that. Having seen his home and the lovely mill pond nestling quietly in the valley, I doubted that living near to the sludgy mess that was the Thames would hold much attraction for the man.

  However, I didn’t say so. Sir Richard was one of those men who must always be up and about. He had a need for action, whereas I was content to occupy myself. Just now I had two key problems to deal with: Arch and Hamon. ‘Raphe?’ I bellowed.

  ‘What?’

  He appeared so suddenly that I thought he must have been listening especially to make me jump. On his face there was a nasty grin, as though he knew he had shocked me. About his feet, not barking for once, was the flea-trap. I glared at the mutt. ‘Get out!’

  Raphe grunted something, and, to my surprise, the dog fixed me with a mournful expression, in which hurt and regret were dominant, and slunk away.

  I fixed Raphe with a serious glare. ‘That thing stays out in the kitchen with you, not in here. Now. I would like you to find Humfrie.’

  ‘Where is he?’

  ‘That is the point of saying I would like you to “find” him. It implies that you will need to hunt him down. Because, Raphe, I don’t know where he is.’ I suggested a few places where he could be – mostly the taverns and alehouses about Ludgate – and Raphe resentfully agreed to go. I almost had to boot him from the door. It was a surprise: I had thought he would appreciate an opportunity of visiting various taverns. And then I realized: at taverns and alehouses he would have to spend his own money. Sitting in my kitchen, he drank my wine for free.

  When he was gone, I sat back in my favourite chair and closed my eyes. Instantly, a vision of Cat came to my mind. She was so appealing, and all the more so when I was feeling lustful, as I was just now. Somehow the nearness of danger would often have that effect on me. I was feeling threatened after the morning’s meeting with Arch and Hamon, and that left me wanting feminine companionship.

  I had no idea where to find her, though. Cat was not the sort of woman who would stick to the same haunts, I felt. Her demeanour when I saw her at the Cheese indicated t
o me that she was anxious about something – or someone.

  Of course, I knew a lot about women like her. I had met plenty of streetwalkers and inmates of brothels in my time, and if there was one thing that was obvious, it was that women in her line of work often lived in fear of their associates. She was plainly terrified of Henry.

  He had not been a particularly scary man, in my estimation, it is true. The fact that I had seen his gun was not real had helped me when I snubbed him, but even then there was little violence in him. There are some men for whom violence is a way of life. Men like Arch and Hamon, for example. But there are others, such as Henry, who like to project it, but who simply fail. When Henry tried to threaten me, it came across as mere bluster. There was no conviction in it.

  However, a young maid, fresh to her new career, trying to snare men like me while not getting hurt, I could easily imagine being terrified of Henry. He was strong enough to punch. I only had to think of Dorothy’s face to realize how a woman could be forced to live in constant fear of being attacked and hurt.

  Of course, Henry had not been present at the Cheese. Cat had been on her own there, which perhaps meant that she had run away from him, or, at the very least, she had left him.

  If so, the poor thing was all alone, scared and lonely in the city. She would be desperate for a friendly face. And she would be grateful to be rescued, no doubt.

  I smiled at that thought. But how to find her?

  In my time in London, I had been lucky enough to make the acquaintance of several women who catered for the better quality of client, and Alice Pendle was one of the best.

  I looked for her along Ludgate, where she was wont to idle her time between clients, and when I found her, she was peering at the bolts of cloth at a stall and discussing the merits of a green material that matched her eyes, compared with a reddish-gold one that set off her hair perfectly: it had delicious strawberry tints, and always made me think of summer, although her face and figure brought altogether more lustful thoughts. It was clear that the merchant was suffering the same conflicting emotions as she daintily tormented him, standing close to him, speaking breathily and making the poor devil redden like an apprentice on his first visit to a brothel. He was desperately trying to keep his mind on profits, but all he could see was the picture in his mind of Alice naked. It was the effect she had on men.