The Counterfeit Crank Read online

  ‘Thank God you came to stay with us, Jonathan!’ he declared. ‘You’ve been our salvation. Westfield’s Men owe you so much.’

  ‘They owe me nothing, Lawrence,’ said the other man, quailing before the frank display of emotion. ‘If anything is owed, it’s my apology. I hoped to get to the Queen’s Head this afternoon to watch the play, but I was detained by a bookseller with whom I was doing some business. Will you forgive me?’

  ‘After what you did, I’d forgive you anything.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’ asked Margery, suspiciously. ‘You’ve hardly had a word to say to Jonathan since he’s been here, yet now you greet him as if he’s the best friend you have in the world.’

  ‘I do so on behalf of the whole company,’ said Firethorn. ‘Has your brother-in-law not told you what help he rendered us, Margery?’

  ‘No, Lawrence.’

  ‘How could I tell what I did not even know about?’ said Jarrold.

  ‘Have you ever heard such modesty?’ cried Firethorn, taking him by the cheeks to plant a kiss on his forehead. ‘But for you, Jonathan Jarrold, all would have been lost. But for you, Edmund would have languished in his bed forever. But for you, that wicked doctor would have gone on poisoning him while Michael Grammaticus reaped the benefit of his absence. You exposed their villainy.’

  The bookseller was baffled. ‘Did I? When was this?’

  Firethorn explained how Doctor Mordrake had been called in, and how Zander and Grammaticus had been arrested for their crime. Jarrold was shocked to hear that his former customer had been involved in such gross deception, but glad that the information he supplied about Stephen Wragby had been crucial. For her part, Margery was torn between joy and remorse.

  ‘Edmund recovered?’ she cried with delight. ‘Back with us again?’

  ‘He will be very soon,’ said Firethorn.

  ‘And this is where you were last night? Helping to catch those two villains?’

  ‘Yes,’ lied her husband, seeing a way to get off the marital hook. ‘They fought hard, Margery. By the time that Nick and I hauled them off to a magistrate, the city gates had been closed. I know that I promised to be back early, but I had to look into the truth of what Jonathan told me about Michael Grammaticus.’

  ‘I only spoke of him to Nicholas Bracewell,’ said Jarrold.

  ‘Nick and I have no secrets.’

  ‘What will happen to The Siege of Troy? Michael claimed to have written it.’

  ‘We’ll perform it as a play by Stephen Wragby.’

  Jarrold was about to ask another question but he was elbowed gently in the ribs by Margery. Realising that he was now in the way, he mumbled an excuse and backed out of the kitchen. She gazed up lovingly at her husband.

  ‘It appears that I mistook you, Lawrence.’

  ‘I bear no grudge, my love.’

  ‘But I locked you out of your own house.’

  ‘You felt that you had good cause.’

  ‘Why did you not explain it all to me this morning?’

  ‘Because I had to get to the Queen’s Head early and did not wish to disturb you. As you’ve heard, my love, I’ve had much on my mind these past few days.’

  ‘And all that I did was to add to your woes.’

  ‘You were not to know, Margery.’

  ‘I feel so mean and unjust,’ she said. ‘You’ve every right to despise me.’

  He laughed artlessly. ‘Why on earth should I do that?’ He spread his arms. ‘Come to me, Margery, and we’ll say no more about it.’

  She hurled herself into his embrace and surrendered willingly to his kiss, leaving the imprints of her flour-covered hands on the back of his doublet. After a moment, she pushed him away and wrinkled her nose.

  ‘I can smell horse dung,’ she said.

  Dorothea Tate took some time to find her bearings. Having crossed London Bridge on her own, she searched for the place by the river where she and Hywel Rees had spent their nights when they first came to the city. It brought back some happy memories and she stayed to enjoy them until she was driven away by other vagrants who had claimed the refuge as their own. Dorothea wandered aimlessly, sorry that she had let everyone down by fleeing without explanation, but driven by the fear that she had been an unfair burden. She felt that it was wrong of her to impose on compassionate people like Anne Hendrik and Nicholas Bracewell. Now that they had helped her over the death of her friend, it was time for her to stand on her own feet again.

  When she grew hungry, she begged some stale bread off an old woman in the market and drank water from a pump. It tasted brackish. Dorothea spat it out. Recalling the meals she had been served in Bankside, she was full of regrets but she did not even think of returning. Since she had run away, she believed, they would not have her back again. Theirs was one world, hers another. She trudged on until her feet brought her to a building she recognised with a tremor of fear. The façade of Bridewell towered over her and seemed to crush her spirit. It was then that she realised why she had come. An unseen hand had guided her to the workhouse. This was where she could get revenge.

  Deep in her pocket, her hand gripped the large stone that she had picked up from beside the river. Dorothea had grabbed it as a means of defence, but it could also be used in attack. She felt the rough contours with her fingers. They would never anticipate an assault from her. If she could somehow get close enough to Joseph Beechroft – or, better still, to Ralph Olgrave – she could dash out his brains with her weapon. Finding a place in the shadows, she sat down to watch and wait.

  Dorothea was still keeping Bridewell under surveillance when two officers dragged a beggar into view. The man was lame and had his arm in a sling but that earned him no sympathy. The officers pulled him to the gatehouse then pushed him to the ground. Knowing what lay ahead for the beggar, Dorothea wanted to reach out and comfort him. One more anonymous victim was about to suffer an ordeal.

  Nicholas Bracewell cowered before the gatekeeper’s searching gaze. One of the officers hauled him to his feet while the other handed over a writ.

  ‘What’s his name?’ asked the gatekeeper.

  ‘Tom Rooke,’ replied Frank Quilter, ‘but it might as well be Tom o’Bedlam for he talks nothing but nonsense. He’s been whipped at the cart’s-arse so we’ve no more use for him. Lock him up and throw away the key.’

  ‘We’ll want work out of him,’ said the gatekeeper. ‘One arm may be useless but we’ll find labour for the other. Leave him to me, friends. I’ll take care of Tom Rooke.’

  Quilter and Ingram nodded a farewell and set off again. After checking the writ that committed the prisoner to Bridewell, the gatekeeper wrote details of the newcomer in his ledger. He then summoned another man, who promptly punched the beggar to make him move. Nicholas scrambled forward through the main gate.

  ‘What’s your name?’ said the keeper.

  ‘Tom Rooke, sir,’ croaked Nicholas.

  ‘You’ll be plain Tom in here. Remember that.’

  ‘I will, sir.’

  ‘What’s wrong with your arm?’

  ‘I cut it badly, sir.’

  ‘Every beggar pretends to have a bad arm or leg or foot,’ sneered the keeper, tugging the limb free of the sling and producing a yelp of pain. ‘It’s an old trick to get out of doing heavy work.’

  He examined the arm. Nicholas had bound it with filthy strips of linen that had been soaked in pig’s blood beforehand. His fair beard was grimed and he had rubbed dirt all over his face. Leonard had given him some sour milk from the kitchen at the Queen’s Head and he had poured it all over his ragged clothes. The keeper reacted to the stench.

  ‘You stink of foul vomit,’ he complained. ‘We ought to toss you into the Thames to clean you off, you leprous scab! Put that arm back in the sling and follow me.’

  Nicholas did as he was told and went across the first courtyard, taking careful note of its design and dimensions and seeing that Dorothea Tate’s description of the place had not erred too much. When the
y went through into the next courtyard, he saw young boys helping to unload boxes of food from a cart. The keeper turned on him.

  ‘That’s not for the likes of you,’ he said, ‘so you can look away.’

  They went through a door and climbed a winding staircase. Nicholas was led along a passageway to a large oaken door that the keeper had to unlock. Both of them entered a long, narrow room with a number of soiled mattresses along one wall. There was little in the way of furniture beyond a small table and a single stool. The keeper pointed to the mattresses.

  ‘You’ll sleep in here,’ he told Nicholas. ‘Choose someone else’s mattress and they’ll soon let you know it with their fists. Tomorrow, we’ll put you to work.’

  ‘How many of us are in here?’

  ‘Enough.’

  ‘Will I be fed today?’

  ‘No,’ said the man, gruffly. ‘Only those who work can eat in Bridewell.’

  The keeper went out and locked the door behind him. Nicholas was able to straighten up and lift his eye patch so that he could inspect the room in more detail. It was not difficult to identify the mattresses that were in use. Meagre belongings lay beside each of them. Since the mattress at the far end of the line was the dirtiest and most shredded, he knew that it would be his. Light flooded in. The three windows all overlooked the courtyard where the boys were still unloading produce from the cart.

  According to the sketch that was drawn from Dorothea’s memory, Nicholas was in the same room where Hywel Rees had been kept. It was from one of the windows that he must have seen the girl being taken reluctantly to the feast in the hall. If that was the case, Nicholas wondered how the Welshman had been able to get out in order to go to the girl’s rescue. The window was too high from the ground for him to drop down with any safety, and the door far too solid to force.

  Nicholas remained at a window to watch. There was no sign of either Joseph Beechcroft or Ralph Olgrave, but a number of other people came into view. Some were obviously inmates, forced to do whatever chores were necessary, and there were several keepers on duty as well. But he also noticed a few men who came and went from doors on the opposite side of the courtyard. They moved around with complete freedom and, judging from their attire, they could hardly be described as paupers. Nicholas asked himself what function they had in Bridewell.

  When the cart had been unloaded, one of the boys was clipped around the head by the keeper and sent through an archway to do another task. The keeper then took the second boy towards the door through which Nicholas had come. Leaving the window, Nicholas went to the last mattress and dragged it away from the others, then he put his arm back in the sling and arranged the patch over his eye. He crouched on his mattress and waited. After a while, the door was unlocked and a weary young boy came in, only to have the door locked immediately behind him. Seeing Nicholas, the boy stopped.

  ‘Who are you?’ he asked, warily.

  ‘My name is Tom Rooke,’ said Nicholas, in the cracked voice he had practised earlier. ‘I’m convicted of vagrancy and sent here. What do I call you, lad?’

  ‘Ned. Ned Griddle.’ He approached slowly. ‘What’s wrong with your arm?’

  ‘I was stabbed in a brawl, and lost a lot of blood.’

  ‘They’ll want you to work in here.’

  Nicholas held up a hand. ‘Stay back, Ned. I do not smell too sweet.’

  ‘Have you been in Bridewell before?’

  ‘Never,’ said Nicholas, adjusting his sling, ‘but I had a friend who was sent here recently. I hope to see him again.’

  ‘Who is he?’

  ‘A young Welshman by the name of Hywel Rees. Do you know him?’

  ‘I did,’ said the boy, sadly. ‘I liked him. Hywel was discharged.’

  ‘So soon? Why was that, Ned?’

  ‘They said he caused too much trouble. There was a girl he knew, she was in here as well, but they would not let him see her. So Hywel escaped.’

  ‘How?’ asked Nicholas. ‘If he’d jumped from the window, he’d have broken his legs. There’s no way out.’

  ‘Hywel found one,’ explained Griddle. ‘He climbed on the roof and worked his way along until he came to an open window. He went through it. That room was not locked because I later saw him run across the courtyard to the hall.’

  ‘Brave man! The girl must have been Dorothea, then.’

  ‘Did you know her as well, Tom?’

  ‘A little,’ said Nicholas. ‘They’d not been in London for long.’

  The door was unlocked again and four youths came into the room. Thin and dishevelled, they had obviously been working hard because they all dropped down on their individual mattresses. One of them fell asleep at once, the others barely gave the newcomer a glance. Ned Griddle’s mattress was the one next to Nicholas. He squatted down on it and slipped a hand inside his shirt. Making sure that the others did not see him, he passed Nicholas a piece of the bread he had scrounged from the kitchen. Both of them munched in silence for a few minutes.

  ‘How many of us are there altogether?’ said Nicholas at length.

  ‘No more than fifty or sixty in all,’ replied Griddle, ‘most of them girls.’

  ‘I heard there were the best part of two hundred people here.’

  ‘There are, but they’re not all sent for punishment. Many of them live here.’

  Nicholas was surprised. ‘They live in a workhouse?’

  ‘Master Beechcroft rents out rooms to them,’ said the boy. ‘He makes more money that way. He sells what we make but it brings only a poor profit.’

  ‘What sort of work do we do?’

  ‘We make nails, draw wire, cut timber to size. When my brother was here, they had him unloading supplies on the wharf. We’ve no skills, Tom,’ he complained. ‘Hard labour is all we’re fit for. Those with skills are the ones they treat much better.’

  ‘Skills?’

  ‘Look at Ben Hemp, for instance. They’ll never let him out.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘He brings in too much money,’ said Griddle, resentfully. ‘That’s why he has a room of his own to work and sleep in. Ben is a cunning forger. He makes false dice and packs of cards for cony-catchers. He was taught by the best in the trade.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Nicholas. ‘And who was that?’

  ‘A fiendish clever fellow, according to Ben. A true master of the art.’

  ‘What was his name?’

  ‘Lavery,’ said the boy. ‘Philomen Lavery.’

  Philomen Lavery dealt the cards with nimble fingers and shared a disingenuous smile among the people sitting at his table. Because it was his last night at the Queen’s Head, he had invited some of those who had played regularly with him to partake of food and drink in his room. It had put the visitors in a pleasant mood. They were sorry that Lavery would be leaving and taking his cards with him. None of the actors was there but Adam Crowmere had drifted in to play for a while. He soon accepted that he was not going to win. After losing every game in a row, he rose from the table with a chuckle.

  ‘I’m not going to let you rob me of my last penny, Master Lavery.’

  ‘Sit down again, Adam,’ coaxed the dealer. ‘You may yet have good fortune.’

  ‘Not at cards. Everyone at the table has better luck than me tonight.’

  ‘It was not always so. There was a time when you emptied all our purses.’

  ‘Then lost the money the next night,’ said Crowmere, amiably. ‘A card table has too many risks. To tell the truth, I prefer dice. Real skill is involved there.’

  ‘Yes,’ said one of the other players. ‘I’m a man for dice as well.’

  ‘Nothing gives me the same thrill as a game of cards,’ argued Lavery. ‘Turn one over and it could mean the difference between wealth and beggary.’

  ‘The same is true of dice,’ said Crowmere. ‘One throw could make you rich.’

  ‘Or very poor, Adam, if you do not have the knack of it.’

  ‘I have that knack, Master Lavery. At least, I us
ed to have.’

  ‘I confess that I do not possess it.’

  ‘Then you must stay with your beloved cards. I know that you feel much safer with them, and they clearly favour you this evening. Dice would give the rest of us more of a chance to win back what we have lost.’

  Lavery blinked up at him. ‘Do you really believe that, Adam?’

  ‘Yes, I do,’ said the other.

  ‘You feel at a disadvantage with cards?’

  ‘Only when I play against you.’

  ‘Yet you’d be prepared to wager on the throw of a dice?’

  ‘Time and again.’

  ‘Then we’ll put it to the test after this game,’ decided Lavery, looking around the table. ‘As it happens, I do have some dice with me somewhere. If we can find them, we’ll see if our cheery landlord really does have the knack of which he boasts.’ He beamed at the others. ‘Are we all agreed?’

  Standing at the window, Nicholas had counted four carriages. One by one, they had rolled into the courtyard to disgorge their raucous occupants. All the visitors were men and they were welcomed at the door of the hall by Joseph Beechcroft. Other guests arrived on horseback and a few came on foot. Arrayed in their taffeta, the women soon came out to join them. Nicholas gazed around the room. Most of his companions were fast asleep, uninterested in a banquet from which they were excluded and too exhausted to remain awake to talk. Ned Griddle was the only one whose eyes were still open. He crept across to the window.

  ‘Get some sleep while you can, Tom,’ he counselled in a whisper.

  ‘I like to watch,’ said Nicholas. ‘Who are these people?’

  ‘Friends of Master Beechcroft’s or Master Olgrave’s. They eat well.’

  ‘By the sound of them, they’ve already drunk well. How long will they stay?’

  Griddle yawned. ‘I’ve never stayed awake long enough to find out.’