A Conspiracy of Violence (21 page)

‘Possibly. I cannot imagine they were pleased to have spies dogging their every move.’

‘That assumes they knew they were being watched, but Simon was excellent at covert surveillance. No target would have known
he was there.’

‘Then perhaps someone told them – or they found out another way,’ said Evett. ‘I am certain someone invades the Earl’s offices
at night. I try hiding there, to see if I can catch someone in the act, but I never do. I am just not very good at that sort
of thing – they must know I am there.’

Chaloner was angry. ‘Clarendon has an unfortunate habit of leaving confidential papers strewn across his desk.
I
saw Lane’s reports, and so could anyone else who happened to look.’

‘Quite. Do you still think me disloyal for expressing my doubts about his competence to you? Or are you just grateful to have
been forewarned?’ Evett’s expression was cool.

‘Christ!’ muttered Chaloner. A post under the Earl was sounding increasingly unappealing. ‘Was Clarke ordered to shadow these
men, too? I thought he was investigating a theft.’

‘He was looking into the King’s missing table knives. Clarendon thinks servants made off with them, but I suspect Buckingham
– I think he pays a silversmith to melt them down.’

‘Was Buckingham one of the people these agents were told to watch?’

‘No – Clarendon is wary of tackling men who are too powerful, although it is obvious that
they
are where the real threat lies. But I do not want to discuss this any more, Heyden. I told you about the risk, because we
are
supposed to be helping each other, but I dislike being interrogated.’

Chaloner did not care what he disliked. ‘Who were they following, if not Buckingham?’

Evett looked annoyed, but answered anyway. ‘Kelyng, because fanatical loyalty is just as dangerous as fanatical opposition
and he needs to be monitored. And Cerberus … I mean Downing, because he is a turncoat.’

Something clicked in Chaloner’s mind. Lane’s report had said:
C talked all through church with Jo
. It had been about Downing, and Lane had used a codename for him known only to the Earl – or would have been, if the Earl
had not been so free with it.

‘Who is Jo?’ he asked.

Evett shrugged, startled by the abrupt question. ‘It is short for Joseph, I suppose. Why?’

‘Or it could be an abbreviation of John,’ mused Chaloner, running ahead with his analysis without stopping to explain. He
thought about the way Thurloe signed his name –
Jo: Thurloe
. Or perhaps it referred to another member of the Brotherhood: John Dalton, John Barkstead, John Hewson or John Robinson.
Or perhaps even John Clarke. ‘Of course, there is always the possibility that it might mean nothing – that Simon sent the
report just to show he was doing some work.’

‘Simon’s missives were never very helpful actually,’ said Evett, trying to conceal his confusion. ‘He told us things we already
knew – such as that Downing and Thurloe meet. Well, of course they do: one has been asked to provide summaries of foreign
policy and the other was a diplomat.’

Was that the answer? Lane was astute, and may have known the Earl was a poor master, so had sent reports
that contained nothing contentious – although it had not saved his life.

‘You must feel uneasy,’ said Chaloner to Evett. ‘Downing is a leading member of your Brotherhood, and your Earl was hiring
spies to follow him – spies who are now dead.’

‘That is coincidence.’ Evett hesitated uncomfortably. ‘Well, perhaps Downing did object to being followed, but he could not
have dispatched
five
men without being caught. Kelyng might, though.’

Chaloner did not think so, given the ineptitude he had witnessed so far. ‘Who watches them now?’

‘No one – we do not
have
anyone. The Earl has given you other duties, because he knows he needs to be more careful with you than he was with your
predecessors – Thurloe’s letter of recommendation went on at some length about how fond he is of you.’

‘I do not understand why you have told me all this. You do not know me – I could go to the Earl and repeat everything you
have said.’

‘Well, please do not,’ said Evett coolly. ‘I am tired of sly murders, and I am tired of attending hasty funerals in St Martin-in-the-Fields.
You seem a decent man – an old soldier, like me. Besides, Simon Lane was my cousin, and I miss him sorely.’

‘Tell me more about Barkstead’s hoard,’ said Chaloner, as he and Evett left the Dolphin and made their way towards the Tower.

‘I have already told you everything. We dug on four separate occasions, but found nothing. When it became clear the gold was
not there, Wade tried to locate Mother Pinchon, but failed. Meanwhile, I interviewed Samuel Pepys – the Earl of Sandwich’s
clerk. I was suspicious of him, because when we were digging by the old Coldharbour Gate, I had to leave for an hour – between
you and me, it was when I learned about poor Simon – and it occurred to me that Pepys might have found the cache and spirited
it away. But Wade would not have agreed to that, and there would have been too many firkins for Pepys to carry alone. Besides,
Robinson’s men would have seen him.’

Chaloner slowed as the grim façade of the fortress loomed ahead. It was a formidable mass, with clusters of grey towers and
chimneys, all enclosed within curtain walls and an encircling ditch, the latter of which was a vile, grey-brown lake of liquid
sewage, entrails, dead
animals and kitchen slops. In the summer, when the water evaporated, the remaining sludge stank so badly that people had
been known to pass out. Access to the Tower was via a barbican, which led to the causeway that snaked across the moat. As
they passed under the first of a series of portcullises, there was a sudden whooping screech. Chaloner looked at Evett in
alarm, hand dropping automatically to his sword.

‘The royal menagerie,’ explained Evett. ‘Where the King keeps his wild animals, and I am not referring to Buckingham. I mean
real ones – tigers, apes and other nasty creatures. I
hate
them.’

Chaloner regarded him in surprise. ‘Why?’

‘Foul, stinking things, all fleas and claws.’ He jumped when something roared. ‘Have you never been? Many Londoners visit
it on Saturdays, for something to do.’

Chaloner hoped Metje would not ask to be taken. He disliked places that were difficult to get out of, and the Tower’s gates,
drawbridges and walls made him distinctly uncomfortable.

‘Wade works here,’ said Evett, pausing in a way that suggested he was not happy about entering it, either. ‘I do not know
how I can show you around without
him
guessing what we are up to.’

‘Tell him I am a surveyor,’ said Chaloner, who had anticipated such an eventuality. ‘I borrowed some instruments from my landlord
and know enough about the subject to fool most people.’

‘No,’ said Evett. ‘That is boring. We will say you are looking for mushrooms.’

Chaloner gaped at him. ‘In December? But if you think surveying is dull, then hopefully other people will, too – and they
will leave us alone. The point is to be
unobtrusive, and that will not be the case if folk think we are on a fungus foray at this time of year.’

Evett took a deep breath, as if to fortify himself, then shot through the building known as the Lion Tower, running harder
still when his pounding footsteps elicited a cacophony of grunts, snorts and growls from its furred occupants. The drawbridge
in the Middle Tower led to the causeway that crossed the moat, where three dead cats and a sheep floated in the poisonous
waters below. Then came the Byward Tower, a gatehouse set into the massive curtain walls.

‘No weapons are allowed from here on,’ said Evett. He beamed at the soldier who came to disarm them. ‘Good morning, Sergeant
Picard. We have come to look for fungus.’

Chaloner shot the captain a withering glance, but the guard just grinned. ‘You have come to the right place then, sir. There
is a lot that is rotten around here.’

Evett was meticulous, and showed Chaloner all the areas he had dug with Wade and Pepys. At first, people were interested to
know what sort of fungus they expected to find, keen to be told whether it represented any danger, but drifted away when Chaloner
began a ponderous series of measurements that involved standing still a long time, then writing a figure in a notebook. When
the last had left, he listened again to the description of the treasure’s hiding place, and agreed that there was only one
serious possibility: a cellar in one of the smaller towers near the main gate. It was the only one that contained a ‘central
grey stone arch with a single red brick in its middle’.

Although Evett had refilled the trenches he had excavated, his workings were still visible. He told Chaloner
his pits had been waist deep, and the agent was forced to acknowledge that the treasure was unlikely to have been buried
there – Barkstead had been in a hurry in his last night of office, and would not have had time to scrape out more than a foot
or two, especially since the earth was hard packed and difficult to move. Chaloner stood in the undercroft and studied his
surroundings carefully, while Evett sat on the stairs with Sergeant Picard, discussing the latest Court masque.

The cellar was low and dark, with cobwebs falling like curtains and a floor so ancient that centuries of filth had raised
it by several feet. Chaloner’s head brushed the ceiling in places, while in others, he was obliged to drop to hands and knees.
He crawled for some distance, and when he glanced back, he could see no light from the door, only a vast expanse of blackness.
The air smelled foul, and at one point, he discovered a skeletal hand. He scratched a shallow hole with his dagger and reburied
it, not liking to think of the poor soul who had died in such a place.

As he explored, he thought about his uncle’s treasure. The Banqueting House was a far more sensible hiding place than the
vaults of the Tower, because coins under a flagstone were a lot easier to retrieve than butter barrels buried in London’s
most inaccessible fortress. He recalled a story Temperance had recently told him about a Royalist who had put a hoard in his
dead wife’s coffin – the fellow had been delighted when he had exhumed her to find it still there.

Water dripped, sending mournful echoes rolling through the arches, and rats lurked in the darker recesses. The cellar was
otherwise as silent as the grave. He could hear nothing from outside – no traffic, horses or bells –
and he realised he could no longer hear Evett and Picard, either. Then the lamp went out.

Cursing, he started back to where he thought the stairs were, but after several minutes, there was still nothing but darkness.
He tried to stand, but the ceiling was so low that he could not even kneel without cracking his head, and he began to wonder
whether he had been going in circles. Then he felt a breeze on his face, which encouraged him because it suggested he was
near the exit. He crept along until his fingers touched something soft. At first he thought it was a rat and jerked away in
revulsion, but it did not move, so he probed it more closely. It felt like hair, and he supposed someone had lost a periwig
after the recent excavations. He shoved it in his pocket, and resumed crawling.

His leg was beginning to ache from the unaccustomed posture, and it protested even more when something sharp dug into his
knee. Becoming annoyed, he called out to Evett, but all he could hear was his own muffled voice. He made a right-angled turn,
in the hope of locating a wall, and was relieved when he bumped against one, considering a bruised skull a small price to
pay for orientation. He yelled again for Evett and was astonished that what had seemed a normally sized vault when he had
had a lamp had assumed monstrous proportions in the dark.

The walls were cold and slick under his hands, and the entire cellar had an ancient, disused feel to it. It occurred to him
that he could be locked in it for years, and no one would ever know. Perhaps Evett had taken against him for his questions
about the Brotherhood, and had decided to prevent him from asking more. Guards could be bribed to overlook the fact that the
aide had
arrived with a guest but had left without one, and the Tower had a history of stealthy murder. Chaloner began to feel uneasy.

He clambered to his feet and stumbled on, nose assailed by the rank, sickening smell of decaying flesh. The rats were growing
bolder, and he could hear their claws on the earthen floor. He comforted himself with the knowledge that if they could get
in, then he could get out, but his optimism was abruptly shattered when he trod on something soft, and his questing fingers
encountered furry bodies – it was the reek of dead rodents that filled this part of the cellar and made him want to retch.
He started moving again, gagging when he encountered something that squelched, then swore when he reached a dead end.

By now, he was genuinely alarmed. He called a third time for Evett, but there was no sound other than his own ragged breathing
and the soft, sinister scrabbling of claws. And then he felt something that rose at an angle. The stairs! He began to climb,
one hand on the wall for balance. Then he reached the door and saw a rectangle of light around it. It was closed, and he wondered
whether anyone would hear when he hammered – and if they would help him if they did. He fumbled for the latch, anticipating
that it would be barred from the outside. Consequently, he was startled when it opened. Light flooded into the cellar, leaving
him blinking stupidly.

Evett looked up from where he was sitting on the steps that led to the yard. He was playing dice with Sergeant Picard, and
was relaxed and cheerful. ‘I hope you did not mind us abandoning you, Heyden, but we were cold. I hollered to let you know,
but you did not answer.’

‘I did not hear you,’ said Chaloner, somewhat accusingly.

Evett’s expression was hopeful. ‘You took longer than I expected. Did you find it?’

‘The lamp burned out.’

Evett’s jaw dropped. ‘Lord! Did it? We closed the door, because it kept banging in the wind, and that would have made it pitch
black down there. Why did you not shout for a candle?’

‘I did,’ said Chaloner tartly.

Picard started to laugh, thinking it a fine joke. ‘Barkstead used to shut his prisoners in that cellar when he was Lieutenant
of the Tower – he would lock them in at dusk, and by dawn they would be mad or dead.’

‘That would not happen after a single night,’ said Chaloner. The man was trying to unnerve him.

‘It would,’ argued Picard. ‘You were all right, because you knew you were going to get out. But imagine what it would be like
if you thought you were going to
die
down there, alone and forgotten.’

‘Believe me, I did,’ said Chaloner. ‘But I doubt Barkstead would have done such a thing.’

‘You are wrong,’ insisted Picard, becoming sullen. ‘He said it saved money, because he did not have to pay for their food.’

‘I think you may be right, sergeant,’ said Evett thoughtfully. ‘When we were digging last month, we kept unearthing fragments
of bone, and I am sure some were human.’

‘The cellar is hundreds of years old,’ Chaloner pointed out. ‘I am sure people
have
died down there, but that does not mean they were Barkstead’s victims.’

‘What are you, a Roundhead or something?’ demanded Picard. ‘You take his side very readily.’

‘He is just sceptical of ghost stories,’ said Evett soothingly. ‘Politics have nothing to do with it.’

The sergeant sniffed, then pointed to the hair that tumbled from Chaloner’s pocket. ‘What is that?’

‘Someone dropped a wig,’ said Chaloner, removing it to show him. Although matted and muddy, the curls remained a fine chestnut
colour, and the piece appeared to be made of real hair. He was surprised someone had not missed such an expensive object,
and taken steps to recover it.

‘I did! It is mine,’ said Picard, snatching it. ‘I had a—’ He faltered, then let it drop to the ground. ‘That is no wig!’

Evett made a choking sound, revolted. ‘Jesus God, Heyden! You brought out a piece of someone’s scalp. What were you thinking
of ?’

Chaloner was sheepish. ‘It felt like a wig in the dark.’

‘Why did it not rot away, like the rest of the corpse?’ asked Picard ghoulishly.

‘It must have dried,’ explained Chaloner. ‘There was a breeze where I found it, so it must have desiccated, rather than decomposed.
Hair and skin can last a long time under the right conditions.’

Evett was horrified. ‘How do you know such terrible things?’ he cried.

Intelligence agents collected all manner of bizarre facts during their assignments and, combined with the fact that the work
was dangerous and people died, Chaloner knew a good deal about corpses and their various stages of decomposition. He considered
regaling Evett with some of his experiences in the arid hills of Spain, but thought better of it when he saw the revulsion
in the man’s eyes. There was no point in alienating someone who was helping him.

Picard was less squeamish. He picked up the hair,
using the ruff on his sleeve so he would not have to touch it with his fingers. ‘It is very
young
hair – brown with reddish glints, like my grandson’s. How long has it been down there? A hundred years?’

‘Not that long,’ replied Chaloner.

‘One of Barkstead’s victims then,’ concluded Picard, rather defiantly. ‘We can get ten shillings for this, once we clean it
up. That Dutch wigmaker near the Strand pays a fortune for hair, and never asks questions – then one of you could demand
another
ten shillings for keeping quiet about the fact that it came from a corpse.’

‘He is French,’ said Chaloner, not wanting Jervas’s windows smashed for the wrong reasons.

Picard sighed at his irrelevance. ‘Do you want in on this, or not?’

‘Bury it,’ ordered Evett. ‘Get the Tower chaplain to say a prayer, for decency’s sake. Do not stand gawking, sergeant. Do
it!’

Picard slouched away, studying the find as he went, and Chaloner thought that if Evett believed it would ever see a graveyard,
then he was a fool.

‘Before you started to dig under that arch, did it look as though the ground had been disturbed within the last three years?’
Chaloner asked, turning his thoughts back to the treasure.

Evett shook his head. ‘We checked for recent upheavals, but it was all uniform beaten earth. We found a few bones that we
tossed into a corner, but … Oh, Lord!’ His hand flew to his mouth as something occurred to him. ‘The bones were not all
in one place – they were scattered in a way that suggested they had been chopped about.’