A Murder on London Bridge (19 page)

‘Disturbed?’ queried Chaloner warily.

‘Troubled, unstable,’ elaborated Farr. ‘It ebbs when it is supposed to flow, and flows when it is supposed to ebb. In other words, it is warning us that Catholics are planning an attack.’

‘Then there is the fact that bits keep dropping off the cathedral,’ added Stedman. ‘That is an omen, too. Why else would it be falling to pieces, unless it is God showing His displeasure?’

‘Because it is old, and nothing has been spent on its upkeep for years?’ suggested Chaloner.

Thompson shot him a grateful look. ‘Quite. But the Clarendon Code is far too contentious a topic for me this morning, so let us discuss something else instead. What does
The Newes
say today?’

The government provided its people with two newsbooks each week –
The Newes
on Mondays, and
The Intelligencer
on Thursdays.
The Newes
was hot off the press that morning.

‘It says the Swedish ambassador has a chill,’ said Stedman, flinging a copy on the table. ‘And that the King’s House theatre is being measured for new curtains. And very little else.’

But it transpired that Farr had strong opinions about curtains, too, so that even a discussion about draperies turned acrimonious. Chaloner tuned out the bickering, and read the newsbook instead.

As usual, it contained no domestic intelligence, on the grounds that the government preferred its people not to know what it was up to. There was not much in the way of foreign news, either, although Chaloner read with growing despair an editorial that urged war with the Dutch Republic. He knew diplomats could avert the crisis, because Hollanders had no wish to squander money on needless conflict, but hawks like Buckingham wanted a fight, and their braying, insistent voices were going to prevail over the moderates.

When the conversation turned to his Earl’s mansion – and on this, everyone agreed: it was too grand and a wicked waste of taxpayers’ money – Chaloner left. He did not want Thompson to recall that
he
worked for the Earl, and demand justification for the project.

Once outside, he walked to Chancery Lane. Thurloe was a man of habit, and just after dawn each day, he strolled in Lincoln’s Inn’s fine gardens. But he was not there that morning, and his manservant did not know where he had gone or how long he would be.

Chaloner experienced a twinge of unease, and wondered whether Thurloe’s atypical behaviour had something to do with Herring. Since Prynne had told him what he had seen in Rider’s Coffee House, Chaloner had been telling himself that either the poisonous old pamphleteer was mistaken, or that Thurloe had just forgotten to mention his meeting with the iconoclast. But in his heart he knew both were unlikely. He waited a while, but the ex-Spymaster might be gone for hours, and Chaloner could not afford to waste time when he had so much to do.

He returned to his rooms, where he donned a brown wig, a fashionable long-coat with lace down the front, and shoes with red heels. By the time he was ready, he looked like a courtier, which he hoped would be enough to disguise him from the people with whom he had fought recently – the Dowager’s Frenchmen, the masked men in St Mary Overie, and Phillippes and Kaltoff. They would recognise him at close quarters, but he did not intend going near any of them that day.

He headed for the Bridge, intending to spend a few hours watching it and its various inhabitants. But first, he went to Black Friars Stairs, near where the greasy grey smear of the Fleet River emptied into the Thames, and hired a boat. He knew what the Bridge looked like from the road, but he wanted to see it from the river, to gain a different perspective.

He gazed up at it as the little craft bobbed about on the water. It stretched across the Thames in a long ribbon of uneven rooftops and bristling chimneypots. Smoke poured from them, adding their own pall to the fog that hung over the water. The tide was coming in, so the boatman was hauling hard on his oars, fighting the current. The vigorous exercise did not stop him from talking, though, and he was more than happy to answer questions.

‘The starling under Chapel House is larger than the others,’ said Chaloner. He had never noticed this feature before, although it was an obvious one. ‘Do you know why?’

The man nodded, pleased to display his superior knowledge. ‘To support the church that once stood on it. It was pulled down years ago, but its cellar is left. A crypt, I suppose you would call it.’

‘Are we going through one of the arches now?’ asked Chaloner uneasily. The Bridge formed a sizeable barrier to the river’s natural flow, and when the tide was in full spate, the water on one side could be more than six feet higher than on the other. It roared between the starlings at a colossal rate, and reports of drownings while people ‘shot’ the Bridge were distressingly common.

The boatman laughed. ‘Not when we are upstream and the tide is coming in. No man in the world could row against that. If we were going in the other direction I might risk it, because old Father Thames is oddly sluggish today, and I believe we could make it.’

‘Sluggish?’ Chaloner thought about Phillippes’s contention that the river was playing odd tricks.

The boatman lowered his voice. ‘The river has not been itself these past few weeks. It is an omen – the King is allowing Catholics to gain favour in his Court, and this is God’s way of showing us that He does not like it.’

Chaloner suppressed a sigh, but did not argue lest the boatman tried to tip him overboard. He turned his attention back to the Bridge. It towered above them, its great piers dark with weed and slime. He wondered what secrets it held – and whether it would relinquish them to him.

Chaloner asked to be let off at the Old Swan Stairs, then walked up the narrow alley that led to Thames Street, to join the stream of traffic that was moving towards the Bridge. It was unusually busy, and carts and carriages had been forced to a standstill. Pedestrians were able to weave their way forward, but anything on wheels was out of luck.

He wondered whether the Dowager had decided to visit Chapel House again, selfishly deciding that the rest of London could wait. Then he smiled to himself when he saw her carriage was one of those caught in the jam. He eased towards it, although when he spotted Doucett and Martin sitting with the driver, he was careful to keep his face shadowed by his hat.

Her coach was accompanied by three horsemen, all Penderels. He looked for the fourth, but he was not there. Chaloner edged closer. The brothers were trying to keep their voices down, but the Bridge was noisy, and they needed to speak at a reasonable volume to make themselves heard.

‘—do not know where Edward might be,’ said Rupert, the oldest and biggest.

‘But
someone
must know,’ said the youngest – Neville. ‘A man cannot simply disappear.’

‘We will find him,’ said scar-knuckled Oliver with grim determination. ‘And if I learn our dear brother has been whoring these last two days, I will skin him alive.’

‘He has not,’ said Rupert firmly. ‘Edward knows better than to worry us like this.’

‘We should be looking for him,’ said Neville unhappily. ‘Not jaunting off to Winchester Palace again. Personally, I am getting a bit tired of all this homage to St Thomas Becket.’

‘Hush,’ said Rupert urgently, nodding towards the Dowager’s carriage. ‘She will hear you.’

At that point, the coach door opened, and Progers stepped out. The King’s pimp jerked his thumb towards the inside of the vehicle, and addressed the Penderel brothers, lowering his voice as he did so. They craned forward to listen, and so did Chaloner.

‘She is getting impatient. She wanted these prayers finished by noon, because she has cooks coming to discuss the food for her ball. She aims to poach the Earl of Clarendon’s baker.’

Oliver grinned, delighted. ‘The old goat will be livid when he finds himself deprived of the best chef in London. He will have to send out to a cookshop for his bishops’ bread!’

They began to discuss other ways to spoil the Earl’s plans, although Chaloner doubted they would manage to block his chimneys, exchange sugar for salt, or rub lard on his dining room chairs. The Earl’s servants were used to thwarting those kinds of tricks. He edged to the other side of the carriage, where a window had been cracked open for air. It was ridiculously easy to eavesdrop on what was being said inside.

‘England will not be whole again until she is a
Catholic
country,’ came the Dowager’s harsh, uncompromising voice. ‘And I do not care who needs to die for that to happen.’

‘Yes, ma’am.’ Chaloner recognised the calm, conciliatory tones of Father Stephen. ‘But this is not the place to express such views, because the Bridge is crowded, and who knows—’

‘I do not care who hears! I care nothing for the opinions of shopkeepers and ruffians. Indeed, I have asked St Thomas Becket to send a plague, to rid us of every last Anglican among them.’

‘My Lady!’ Stephen sounded shocked, and so was Chaloner.

‘The saint will listen to my petitions,’ the Dowager went on, unmoved by her chaplain’s horror. ‘I feel a kinship to him like no other saint, and I know he will do as I demand.’

‘Then I hope he only strikes down
sinful
Anglicans.’ When the speaker leaned forward to tweak the curtains for more air, Chaloner recognised Luckin, the purple-nosed vicar of Wimbledon. ‘The rest of us do not deserve such a fate.’

The carriage was full, because two Capuchin friars were in it, too. They were exchanging uncomfortable glances at the nature of the conversation, but made no attempt to stop it.

‘
You
are acceptable to us, Luckin,’ acknowledged the Dowager loftily. ‘But the rest of Anglican London deserves a pestilence. It is full of grasping Puritans and unscrupulous merchants, who—’

‘Here come the wardens, ma’am,’ called Rupert, unwittingly interrupting her tirade. Chaloner saw the Capuchins exchange a glance of relief. ‘They want to apologise for the inconvenience.’

‘A fish-cart overturned,’ explained Hussey. Next to him, Scarlet walked like a man in a dream, his face pale and drawn. Chaloner wondered whether Jane had taken a turn for the worse.

‘It is unforgivable,’ snapped the Dowager. ‘Fish-carts will be banned from the Bridge from now on. I order it. And anyone who ignores my edict will be hanged.’

‘But the city will grind to a halt without the fishmongers, ma’am,’ said Hussey uneasily.

‘And, more to the point, we do not want to antagonise them when we have ordered three loads of sole for your ball next Tuesday,’ added Progers reasonably. ‘They may send us rotten wares in retaliation. Perhaps it is wiser to let the incident pass.’

The carriage began to move off at last, and Chaloner stared after it unhappily. Could his Earl really survive long-term when he had enemies like the Dowager? If she prayed for plagues to wipe out London, then to what other depths would she sink? He thought about the gunpowder that Sir John Winter had obtained for her fireworks. Could she be trusted to use it innocently? He decided she could not, and that a visit to Nonesuch House was in order.

Nonesuch House, so named because there was ‘nonesuch’ like it anywhere else, was indeed an unusual place. It had four turrets topped by green onion domes that had been striped white by seagulls and pigeons, and more glass than Chaloner had ever seen in a single building; he could only imagine it must be very cold to live in, exposed as it was to the full brunt of the wind.

He knocked at the door, and asked to see Winter. A servant conducted him to a large chamber on the first floor that had a stunning view down the river. When he opened a window and peered out, he could see white water foaming between the piers below.

‘If you want yet
another
report, you must tell her to wait,’ came a voice. Chaloner turned, and saw a look of confusion immediately cross Winter’s face. His mammoth moustache quivered in consternation. ‘Forgive me. I mistook you for someone else.’

‘Who?’ asked Chaloner curiously.

Winter waved a dismissive hand. ‘How may I help you? Do you want to buy lead or timber?’

Up close, Winter was large, and looked as if he knew how to handle the blade that hung at his waist. It was not an ornamental ‘town sword’, like those favoured by gentlemen of fashion, but a functional weapon that was ready for action, like Chaloner’s own. Chaloner thought he would be a formidable opponent, especially when his knowledge of explosives was taken into account. But his brown eyes were kindly, and the laughter lines around them indicated a sense of humour.

‘How about gunpowder?’ asked Chaloner.

Winter’s eyebrows shot up. ‘No one knows more about gunpowder than me, but my interest is strictly civilian these days – I use it for fireworks only. Indeed, I have been asked to make some for the Dowager’s Shrove Tuesday ball, and when I first saw you standing there, I thought you were someone from her retinue, demanding yet another update on my progress.’

‘Such a commission is a great honour,’ said Chaloner, hoping flattery might encourage Winter to talk.

Winter beamed at him. ‘Well, yes, it is, and I intend to produce a display so delightful that the King will appoint me Green Man on the spot. No one can create a Purple Fountain like me.’

‘Where do you buy the powder you will need?’ Chaloner asked curiously.

Winter regarded him askance. ‘One does not
buy
powder. One
applies
for it from the Master of Ordnance. It comes from government supplies, you see, and is strictly controlled.’

‘You do not manufacture your own?’

Winter looked shocked. ‘I do not! Fireworks cannot be made from any old stuff, such as might be shoved in cannons and muskets. It needs to be pure. But why do you want to know? If you are in the market for rebellion, you have come to the wrong place. I have no truck with traitors, or the kind of fanatic who is always itching to blow something up.’