The Midsummer Crown (28 page)

I made my way westwards along East Cheap into Candlewick Street and suddenly realized that I was only yards from the place where Etheldreda Simpkins had her dwelling; the little bow-shaped alleyway that linked Candlewick Street to Dowgate Hill and bypassed the junction of both with Wallbrook. On impulse, I decided to pay another visit to the church and its crypt, for no better reason than that I could think of nothing else to do and didn't want to own to myself that, in the matter of Gideon Fitzalan's disappearance, my thinking had reached a standstill. I had no idea why he had vanished, where he was being held or who was holding him. It was time for prayer and a word with God in private.

‘You're not very gallant,' said a reproachful voice, and a hand caught hold of my arm. I turned to see Naomi, obviously on her way home to Bucklersbury with a covered basket in one hand. ‘I saw you come out of the Boar's Head,' she went on, ‘and I called to you, but you took no notice.'

‘I didn't hear you,' I protested.

She ignored this. ‘I've been buying meat for the master's supper tonight and dinner tomorrow. All the best butchers are in East Cheap, just as all the best drapers are here, in Candlewick Street.' She smiled happily, withdrawing her hand from my arm and raising it to finger the birch twig pinned to her bodice. ‘The master's treating me to some new material for my Midsummer Eve Queen's dress. I'm off now to choose it.' And planting a light kiss on my right cheek, she darted away across the road to a stall whose proud owner was shouting something about newly arrived ‘silks from the Orient'.

Of course, I thought, that was it! That was what I had been trying to remember. All four women in the Boar's Head had been wearing little sprays of birch twigs pinned to their gowns. Did the fact have any particular significance, or was it something many women did at this time of year? I recalled the two boys I had met on the downs at home, not far from the great gorge, and how they had been denuding a birch tree of its twigs and tender young branches. The Crown and the Bough. The birch leaf wreaths that encircled the Midsummer Eve Queens' heads. I sighed. It seemed like common practice after all.

I had paused for my moment's contemplation, leaning against the nearby wall of a house, letting the tide of humanity flow by me. Now, as I heaved myself upright once more, I glanced idly to my right – and saw a flicker of movement as if someone had suddenly ducked down out of sight. Was I being followed? But by whom and why? I stood still, staring, oblivious to the opprobrium of people trying to push past me, but knowing full well that I was being foolish. In those sort of crowds, how could one distinguish one kind of movement from another? After last night's attack, I was becoming unnecessarily jumpy.

A few more steps brought me to the mouth of the alleyway and I turned into its cobbled silence with a feeling of relief. The racket and bustle of Candlewick Street was making my head ache, especially as it had not really recovered from my drinking session with Jack the evening before.

The door of the church was still unlocked and I pushed my way inside, then waited a few seconds to allow my eyes to adjust to the gloom. I easily found the cupboard where candles, their holders and the tinderbox were stored and, having provided myself with light, proceeded to the back of the altar. Within minutes, I was descending the stairs into the crypt, its unpleasant smell rising to meet me. I spent a few minutes looking around, but nothing seemed to have altered since my last visit three days earlier until I noticed that the planks, previously propped against the second door, had been removed. For a moment, I hesitated, then telling myself not to be a fool, I opened the door and went down the second flight of steps into the fetid atmosphere of the lower chamber.

There was something different about it, but before I had time to work out what that difference was, something caught me a swingeing blow on the back of the head.

I descended into blackness.

SIXTEEN

I knew that for my past sins I was going down to Hell. The only thing that surprised me was that it should be so wet. Fire and brimstone I would have expected, but who could have supposed that the road to the nether world would be by water?

My head was throbbing and I had not yet dared to open my eyes. Lights – very bright lights – flashed across the inside of my lids, and there was a humming in my ears that sounded louder than a swarm of bees. But I could also hear people shouting, distant cries which I presumed came from other unfortunates like myself who were on their way to the realm of Old Nick. I reproached myself bitterly for not having lived a more blameless life. The shades of Juliette Gerrish and Eloise Gray haunted me, together with all the other women I had lusted after . . .

I was sinking lower. Water closed over my head and I swallowed a mouthful of something that smelled disgustingly of public latrines or the night-soil carts that rumbled about the city in the early morning. At the same time, a voice echoed somewhere in the depths of my mind, ‘I know who you'm talking about. I've seed her once or twice lately. Don't know who she is . . .' I wanted to protest that this statement was untrue; that I had just seen the speaker, Etheldreda Simpkins, and Amphillis Hill talking together in the Boar's Head in East Cheap as though they were old friends. I took another mouthful of water. An oar smacked me smartly on one ear – and suddenly I was fully conscious, horribly aware that I was struggling for my life in the River Thames.

I trod water as hard as I could while trying to get my bearings. A swift glance over my shoulder just before I went under again, informed me that I was not far from the bank, but I knew from experience that many of the boats and barges rowed dangerously close to the shore. Moreover, I had briefly recognized the great bastion of the steelyard where the Hanseatic merchants plied their trade; where vessels containing cargoes of timber and oil and pitch tied up ready to be unloaded, before being reloaded again with bales of the broadcloth that the Germans exported to all the markets of eastern Europe. And to the west of the steelyard was Three Cranes Wharf belonging to the vintners of the city, where ships from Bordeaux berthed.

My brain still wasn't functioning properly, but the instinct for danger is one of the strongest we have and I knew that I was in trouble. How I came to be in the Thames and why my head hurt so much were problems that would have to wait for a solution at a later time. For the moment, all my energy was concentrated on keeping myself afloat and trying desperately to avoid the water traffic all around me. I tried shouting, but in the general din my voice was lost. I tried waving, but no one noticed me (hardly surprising I suppose as half the time I was being sucked under by the wake of whatever was passing closest to me). I tried catching at oars as they flashed by me, but my strength was ebbing rapidly and I wasn't quick enough. Only sheer desperation and the determination to survive preserved me from simply giving up and letting the water take me. Heaven knew, I was tired enough for it to begin to seem like an attractive proposition. My mind was starting to cloud over again and reality and fantasy were becoming one. Sometimes I was at home with Adela and the children, at others in some church with steps leading down into a crypt. But whether it was St Giles in Bristol or somewhere in London, I really couldn't tell. And what was more, I really didn't care . . .

‘Fer the sweet Lord's sake, grab 'old of the bloody oar,' screamed a voice from above me.

I must have obeyed this injunction because the next thing I knew I was sprawled anyhow in the bottom of a rowing boat while a vaguely familiar face hovered between me and the sky.

‘God save us! I thought it were you, lad,' said a voice from the past. ‘What you up to now, then, eh? Poking yer nose into other people's business, I daresay. Lie still or you'll upset the fuckin' boat. I'll take you 'ome to Southwark and get you dry.'

Bertha Mendip! I recognized the West Country burr which, in spite of all her years in the capital, she had never quite lost. I had first met her twelve years earlier during my very first visit to London when I was enquiring into the disappearance of Clement Weaver, and then again some six years or so later. She had her home amongst the beggars and criminals of the Southwark stews, making a living by dragging dead bodies out of the Thames and selling the corpses' clothes, plus any other trinkets they might have had about their persons.

From what I could see, she looked much the same; a woman who had appeared old before she was thirty, but who seemed to have aged very little since, although the unkempt hair which straggled about her skinny shoulders had, when I first knew her, been a dark chestnut-brown. Now it was completely grey and, in places, turning white. But her eyes were just the same, a brilliant blue and still full of eagerness and life.

I smiled at her foolishly, too tired even to make the effort to speak, but I think I must have mouthed the word, ‘Bertha,' because she nodded and gave a gap-toothed grin.

‘Tha's right, lad. Jus' lie still and don' try talkin‘. I'll soon 'ave you right as rain again when I get you back to Angel Wharf.'

At least, I presume that's what she said because the last part of the sentence was lost as I either fell asleep or fainted.

Now I knew I really was in Hell. I could feel the heat of the fire as it warmed and dried out my shivering body. But it wasn't unpleasant; indeed, quite the opposite. Perhaps the nether world wasn't as bad as it was painted . . .

‘Comin' round then, are we?' There was a cackle of laughter.

I was suddenly fully conscious and in command of all my faculties. I remembered everything that had happened to me: St Etheldreda's Church, the crypt, the lower chamber, being hit over the head and, finally, my rescue by Bertha Mendip. I opened my eyes and immediately recognized her hut on Angel Wharf with its smell of drying clothes which had been too long immersed in water and in contact with decaying flesh. They hung from poles at one end of the single room, while smoke from the fire disappeared through a blackened hole in the roof. My own decent hose and tunic were being held in front of the blaze by Bertha herself and a scrap of a girl who looked no more than about ten years of age, but who, I guessed, was probably some years older than that. I realized also that I was naked – who had undressed me didn't bear thinking about – and that I was wrapped in a filthy old blanket which was almost certainly verminous.

‘Where's your son?' I croaked, saying the first thing that entered my head.

There was another cackle. ‘Lord love you, 'e's long gone. 'Opped it the moment 'e were old enough t' do without me. Got in with a gang o' cutpurses working' the city. Never seen 'im from that day t' this. Thirsty?'

I was suddenly conscious of a raging thirst, but Bertha didn't wait for my answer. She put down my tunic and vanished outside the hut, returning after a while with a beaker of ale which at first I sipped cautiously. But to my great surprise it tasted wonderful. Bertha picked up my tunic again and resumed her station by the fire.

‘This is good stuff, this is,' she remarked over her shoulder. ‘Gen'leman's stuff. 'Ow d'you come by it?'

‘It was a present,' I answered shortly.

There was an explosion of mirth. ‘From a woman, I'll be bound!' I didn't disillusion her. She went on, ‘So what 'appened? 'Ow you come t' be in the water?'

‘Someone hit me over the back of the head. But not hard enough, I fancy. I suspect I'm supposed to be dead by now. But how I came to be in the river is more than I can fathom.'

Bertha half-turned and looked at me thoughtfully. ‘There's a drain thereabouts,' she said, ‘what empties into the Thames. Years gone, when I first come to Lunnon, someone told me it were a stream what had been built over, but stills runs underground.'

The Wallbrook! I had a sudden vision of the semicircular aperture I had noticed on my first visit to the chamber below St Etheldreda's crypt. It must be a secondary pipe which connected to the main culvert . . .

Bertha was speaking. ‘I found a few bodies there at different times. Tha's why I goes there. It's a good spot fer pickins.'

‘Do you . . .? Do you think these bodies come out of the drain?'

‘Lord, I never thought about it! Maybe they does, maybe they doesn't. But I s'pose it's possible. Not my place t' question what the good God sends me. I just fishes out the corpses and am thankful for what I gets.'

‘And I might have been another of them,' I mused. ‘I feel certain I was intended to be.'

‘G'arn with you! Nobody ain't goin' t' kill you that easy.' Bertha was dismissive. Nevertheless, she added, ‘What you up to, then? Pryin' and pokin' about I guess, like the first time I met you?'

‘I suppose so,' I admitted sheepishly, not feeling up to telling her the whole story. I changed the subject abruptly. 'Will those clothes ever be any good again?'

She was indignant. ‘'Course they will! Think I don' know me own business? I bin restorin' clothes what've bin in the river fer years. And most of 'em've bin soaked a lot longer than what yours 'ave. But it won't be done in a trice. You may 'ave t' stay 'ere the rest o' today an' t'night. You can't run through the streets as naked as the day you was born, now can you?'

I was appalled at the prospect, but I could also see that I had no alternative. My tunic and hose would take some time to dry before they could be worked on to bring them back to anything like their former glory. And I suddenly remembered my hat with the fake jewel pinned to the upturned brim. Had I been wearing it? If so, it was probably gone for ever. Moreover, I wasn't certain that I could move, even if I were prepared to expose my manly body to the interested of Southwark. A great lassitude was stealing over me, and the heat from the fire was making me feel stupid.