The Roaring Boy nb-7 Page 17

  Sir John Tarker had finally come to the end of his practise. Dismounting from his destrier, he handed the reins to his esquire, then crossed to one of the armourers who was standing on the sidelines. There was an animated discussion as Tarker appeared to complain about some problem with his breastplate, gesturing at it with his gauntlet. Contrite and apologetic, the brawny armourer pointed towards the workshops as if suggesting that he effect the necessary adjustments there and then. Chaloner was delighted when Tarker agreed to go with the man. The desired opportunity might have come at last.

  He gave them plenty of time to reach the workshop because Tarker could only walk slowly in his suit of armour. Most of the other knights stayed in the tilting yard and the viewing stands were dotted with palace guards or servants, stealing a moment away from their duties to enjoy the impromptu tournament. Sir Godfrey Avenell was still talking with the Dutchmen in the gallery, all three of them now oblivious to the combat down below. Chaloner judged that the workshop would be largely deserted. He and Sir John Tarker might meet on equal terms at last.

  ‘Why is your armour so expensive?’

  ‘Because it is the best, Sir John.’

  ‘It costs a king’s ransom.’

  ‘That is because it has to be tailored to each knight,’ said the armourer in a guttural voice. ‘And we have to import the metal. That only adds to the price. Only finest and strongest metal is used and that cannot be found in England.’

  ‘The finest and strongest knights are English!’

  Sir John Tarker let out an arrogant laugh, then ordered the armourer to look more closely at the part of the breastplate that was chafing the side of his chest slightly. They were in one of the workshops, a vast and cavernous place filled with glowing coals and curling smoke. Armour and weaponry of all kinds stood around the walls. Hammers and anvils abounded. The two men were beside a forge with their backs to the door. Chaloner let himself into the chamber, then eased the door shut again as quietly as he could before slipping home the bolt. They were completely safe from intrusion now.

  Pulling out his rapier, he closed on Tarker.

  ‘Turn, you vermin!’ he shouted. ‘Show your vile face!’

  Tarker had removed his helmet so the expression of amazement showed when he spun round. His hand went for his own sword but Chaloner was too quick for him, wielding his rapier to first strike the gauntleted hand away from its weapon, then flick upwards into the knight’s face. Tarker yelled as a gash opened up in his cheek to send a stream of blood running down his breastplate. He shook with rage. Grabbing a stave from a pile against the wall, he swung it viciously at his attacker. Chaloner ducked and used the rapier to prick the other side of Tarker’s face. More blood flowed.

  Howling even louder, the knight flung the stave at him and pulled his own sword from its scabbard, using its heavier blade to knock the rapier from Chaloner’s hand. When he raised his weapon to smite his young adversary, however, he found himself staring into the barrel of a pistol. It was the weapon that Nicholas Bracewell had remarked upon and it was aimed directly at Sir John Tarker’s forehead.

  ‘Drop your sword!’ ordered Chaloner.

  ‘We should have killed you at the start!’

  ‘Drop it or I shoot.’

  Tarker glared at him. ‘You do not have the courage.’

  Simon Chaloner looked into the swarthy face with its coal-black eyes and its taunting smile. He thought of Thomas Brinklow lying butchered in his own home and he thought of Emilia being molested. The pistol remained steady in his hand as his finger tightened on the trigger. Retribution was indeed sweet. His finger tightened again but he did not fire. Before he could discharge the weapon, Chaloner was hit from behind by a swinging blow from armourer’s tongs. In concentrating all his attention on one man, he had forgotten the other. He went down with a thud and rolled over on the floor. The armourer raised the tongs again to smash at the unconscious figure.

  ‘No,’ said the grinning Sir John Tarker. ‘Leave him to me.’

  Chapter Seven

  Owen Elias set out that evening on the trail of an escaped murderer. He was in the unlikely company of George Dart. The assistant stagekeeper was alarmed to be pressed into service and taken off to the stews of Southwark with the exuberant Welshman. Dart was a short, thin, drooping youth in ragged garb with the timidity of a church mouse and the modesty of a vestal virgin. Bankside was not his natural milieu. Though he enjoyed those privileged occasions when Westfield’s Men played at the custom-built Rose Theatre, he never tarried with his fellows to explore the taverns and ordinaries. Roistering made him fearful and whores made him blush. Since Bankside was notorious for its combination of the two, Dart flew into a panic before they reached London Bridge.

  ‘Why me, Owen?’ he said in his reedy voice.

  ‘Why not, George?’

  ‘You need someone strong and skilled with a sword.’

  ‘I need you.’

  ‘Bankside frightens me.’

  ‘That’s why I’m taking you.’

  ‘But you say we are on the trail of a killer.’

  ‘That is so,’ confirmed Elias.

  ‘If he has killed once, he may kill again.’

  ‘You will be safe from harm, boy.’

  ‘Will I?’

  ‘Maggs would never lay a finger on you.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘He would not kill his own son.’

  George Dart gulped. ‘His son?’

  They were on the bridge now, picking their way between the shops and houses, and dodging the occasional horse and cart that rattled along the narrow gap between the various buildings. Owen Elias explained that they were picking up a trail already abandoned by the officers of the law. Until he was caught up in the Brinklow murder, Maggs was a denizen of Southwark, well-known in its darker haunts and in its most disreputable company.

  ‘They were as arrant a pair of knaves as any in London,’ said Elias. ‘Freshwell and Maggs. Freshwell was the roaring boy and Maggs was a sly little rat of a man. You should have chosen your father with more care, George.’

  ‘My father?’

  ‘I see only faint resemblance to him in you.’

  ‘But I have never met this Maggs.’

  ‘You have something of his fierceness,’ teased Elias.

  ‘My father worked for a fishmonger in Billingsgate!’

  ‘Not tonight. You play a different part.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘It keeps us both alive.’ Owen Elias chuckled as Dart’s face whitened. ‘Be ruled by me, George, and you will see the wisdom of my device. We rub shoulders with true villains. They would steal the clothes off each other’s backs but they have a code of loyalty. If we barge in there and demand to know where Maggs is, we will finish up in a ditch with out throats cut. My trick protects us.’

  Dart was terrified. ‘What must I say?’

  ‘Nothing. Leave all the talking to me.’

  ‘What, then, must I do?’

  ‘You are already doing it.’

  Elias let out another chuckle and pounded him between the shoulder-blades. They were soon leaving the bridge and heading for the sinful streets and lewder lanes of Bankside. The Welshman strode along with the sure-footed confidence of a man who knew the area well but his companion trotted nervously along beside him like a fawn in a forest of lions. The first few taverns they visited yielded nothing more than curses at the mention of the murderer’s name. One innkeeper confidently claimed that Maggs was dead, another that he had fled the country. Nobody spoke of Maggs or Freshwell with affection.

  As the brothels became fouler, the trail became warmer. They eventually began to meet with some success. Maggs was definitely still alive. Several people vouched for that. One man boasted that he had actually seen him though he would not disclose where. It was in the most revolting place of all that they finally got some real help. The Red Cock was an unashamed den of vice, a dark, filthy, smoke-filled hole of a place, where constant drinking, gamblin
g and debauchery were interrupted only by the occasional brawl.

  George Dart began to retch when he inhaled its fug and he jumped a foot in the air when a bold female hand caressed his trembling thigh in the gloom. Owen Elias was unperturbed by the sordid surroundings. He ordered beer, found a table in a corner and invited the oldest and fattest punk to join them. A trawl through the stews had taught him something of his quarry’s taste in women. The diminutive Maggs liked to spend his nights on top of huge mounds of flesh.

  Her name was Lucy and she had a rich cackle that made her whole body shake violently. When the massive powdered breasts leaped free from their moorings, George Dart covered his eyes with his hands. Elias spent some time working his way into her friendship before he dropped out the name he had brought with him to Bankside. Lucy became defensive.

  ‘I may have known such a man,’ she said. ‘Why?’

  ‘Because we have good news for him.’

  She snorted. ‘For Maggs? What is it-a royal pardon?’

  ‘No,’ said Elias, ‘but it is a pardon of a kind. From beyond the grave, as you might say.’

  ‘What mean you, sir?’

  ‘We have a small legacy for him.’

  ‘Legacy?’

  ‘Part of it sits beside you,’ he said, pulling Dart’s hands down from his eyes. ‘This is his son.’

  She was sceptical. ‘Maggs? A son? He never married.’

  ‘A bastard child. Born out of wedlock.’

  ‘He had enough of those, I daresay,’ she said with a cackle. ‘Maggs was a lusty little rogue. I miss him.’ She peered at George Dart. ‘So this is his son, is it? He’s as skinny as Maggs for sure, with the same mean face, but I doubt that he could stand to account in a woman’s arms like his father. Maggs had a pizzle the size of a donkey’s. Does this lad have anything between his legs at all?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Elias. ‘He’s no gelding.’

  Cheeks like beetroot, Dart put his hands over his ears this time. Lucy was the most frightening woman he had ever met in his life. Her vivacity was overwhelming.

  ‘What is this legacy you speak of?’ she asked.

  Elias dropped his voice. ‘From the boy’s mother. She died of the sweating sickness. Poor wretch! She had cause to hate Maggs yet she still loved him. And she doted on his issue here. Did she not, George? On her deathbed, she made her son promise to take a small sum of money to Maggs as a token of her love. Thus it stands.’

  ‘If that is all,’ she said obligingly, ‘I’ll save you the trouble. Give me the money and I’ll see that Maggs gets every penny of it. You have my oath on that.’

  Elias shook his head. ‘We would happily do that, for I am sure that we could trust you, Lucy, but there is a solemn oath involved here. George is compelled to hand over the bounty himself. How else can he get to meet his father?’ He put a familiar arm around her shoulders. ‘Tell us where he is and we will be more than grateful. So will Maggs.’

  She eyed them for a moment, then let out another cackle.

  ‘I know where his father dwells but it would not help the lad to know. This dribbling booby would not get within a hundred yards of Maggs.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘He would be eaten alive as soon as he ventured there.’

  ‘Where, Lucy?’ coaxed Elias. ‘Where is Maggs?’

  ‘The Isle of Dogs.’

  ***

  Darkness had fallen on the house in Greenwich but Valentine was still moving stealthily around the garden. It was his true home. Plants and flowers blossomed under his ugliness. Trees gave forth their fruit without recoiling from his touch. Nature accepted him in a way that human beings could not. Valentine lived alone in a hovel nearby but he often neglected it for days in summer months, curling up instead under a bush in the garden with one eye on the house itself. His vigil was sometimes rewarded with the sight of Agnes, the maidservant, coming to her window at the very top of the house to close the curtains or to tip a bowl of water out on to the grass far below. Moonlight once gave him a fleeting glimpse of her naked shoulders. It kept him below her window every night for a month.

  As he looked up at the house now, light was showing in various rooms. Through the windows of the buttery, candles were throwing a ghostly glow out on to the ruins of the laboratory. Agnes would still be at her duties and it might be hours before she was allowed to retire to her own room. Valentine would wait. She might despise him but she gave him an enormous amount of pleasure, albeit unintended. It was enough. Night under the bushes brought rich compensation.

  This particular night also brought a surprise. As he took up a vantage point in the undergrowth, he was alerted by a noise that seemed to come from the front of the house. Living so close to nature had given him the instincts of an animal and his back arched for a moment in fear. He quickly recovered and set off through the darkness towards the source of the disturbance. Valentine heard it more clearly now. There was the faint jingle of harness mingled with an unidentifiable dragging sound. Someone grunted under a strain, then he caught a few words that baffled him. Feet moved away from the house and a horse neighed as it was mounted. Two riders departed quickly into the void.

  Valentine moved close enough to the front door of the house to pick out the shape of something on the hearth. It made him step back quickly into the bushes to consider what he should do. If he went to investigate more fully, he might be caught and unfairly blamed. If he knocked on the door to rouse the household, awkward questions would be asked about his presence there at that time of night.

  He opted for another solution. Bending to gather some stones, he threw one at the lighted window beside the door. It bounced off harmlessly but produced no enquiry from within. He took a bigger stone and hurled it with more force at the door itself. Its thud was heard throughout the house and response was swift. The front door was opened by a manservant. Light spilled out from his lantern to illumine the figure on the ground. Valentine saw that it was a dead body which had been dragged up to the hearth.

  The servant was so shocked that he let out a shriek.

  ***

  Nicholas Bracewell was the first to react to the noise. He told Emilia Brinklow to remain in the parlour, then he ran along the corridor to the front door. The servant was now backing away in horror. Nicholas took the lantern from his quivering grasp and knelt down to hold it over the supine figure. Simon Chaloner lay on his back. Sightless eyes gazed up at heaven with a look of supplication but it was the grotesque wound in the forehead which transfixed Nicholas. A pistol had been fired at point-blank range into the skull to lodge deep in the brains. Dripping with blood, the gaping hole was like a third eye. Whatever else happened, Emilia had to be prevented from seeing such horror.

  He stood up to give a stern order to the manservant.

  ‘Go to your mistress,’ he said. ‘Bid her stay where she is until I return. Say nothing of what you saw or you will answer to me. Do you understand?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘About it straight.’

  The man scurried away and Nicholas used the lantern again to make a closer inspection of the corpse. Matted blood in the hair at the back of the neck showed that there was another wound. He wondered if Simon Chaloner had first been knocked senseless before being shot. When he searched for the German cavalry pistol, it was gone from its holster. Sword and dagger were also missing from their scabbards. His killer was obviously fond of souvenirs. Yet the dead man’s purse had been left unmolested. He was not the victim of thieves.

  Stifled gasps made Nicholas turn round. Other servants had now come to see what was happening and they were deeply shocked. Simon Chaloner was a regular and popular guest at the house but it was this last gruesome visit that would stick in their minds. Nicholas urged them to say nothing to Emilia, then sent most of them back into the house. The ostler stayed behind to guard the body while the book holder conducted a search of the front garden. The lantern failed to pick up the bloodstains on the grass but it clearly showed the route al
ong which the body had been dragged.

  Nicholas came to a verge in which eight hooves had gouged their autographs. Two horses had been spurred away from the spot only recently. They had galloped off in the direction of Greenwich Palace.

  Two priorities existed. The murder had to be reported and-a far more difficult task-Emilia had to be informed of the death of the man she was betrothed to marry. Nicholas went back to the house. He told the ostler to let nobody near the corpse, then sent a manservant to fetch the local constable. Noises from inside the parlour told him that Emilia was protesting bitterly at being kept there without sufficient reason. When Nicholas went in, she was upbraiding the manservant for daring to give her orders in her own house. Anger faded to alarm when she saw the book holder’s grim expression.

  The manservant left them alone and closed the door behind him. Nicholas conveyed the message with a glance. Emilia swallowed hard and her eyes filmed over.

  ‘Simon?’ He nodded. ‘Where is he? I must see him.’

  ‘No,’ said Nicholas, catching her as she tried to run past him. ‘It is better if you do not. There is nothing that you can do. His body lies at your door. Who put it there, we do not yet know. The constable is on his way.’

  Emilia almost swooned. ‘Simon is dead?’

  ‘Shot through the head.’

  ‘Dear God!’

  She collapsed in his arms and he helped her to a chair. Fate was cruel. Before she had even come to terms with one violent loss, another had been rudely visited upon her. A brother and a betrothed had been murdered. Emilia was in despair. Her life no longer had direction or meaning. There suddenly seemed to be no point in going on.

  ‘Simon was such a good man!’ she said. ‘A brave man.’

  ‘Perhaps too brave for his own good.’

  ‘I knew that he would do something too wild in the end. I stopped him a dozen times from riding off to confront Sir John Tarker on his own. I warned him this would happen.’