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Authors: Susanna Gregory

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Chapter 1

Saturday 18 June 1664

St James’s Park was a pleasant place to be on a hot day. It stood upwind of the steaming, stinking, crowded metropolis that
was London, and smelled of scythed grass and summer flowers. High walls kept the general populace out, which allowed the King
and his Court to lounge in indolent splendour, and to swim in the newly created stretch of water known as ‘the Canal’. They
were enjoying its cool waters that morning, laughing and shrieking as they frolicked.

A short distance away, in the shade of some elms, sat the Earl of Clarendon. He was England’s Lord Chancellor, a short, fat,
fussy man who favoured expensively frothy clothes and large wigs, neither of which were suitable for heatwaves – and London
was currently enduring some of the driest, most sultry weather anyone could remember. His chubby face was shiny with sweat,
and he was acutely uncomfortable. It was also clear, from his black scowl, that he was in a very bad mood.

He had accumulated many enemies during his four
years in office, so he and his staff – a secretary, four soldiers and a gentleman usher – had positioned themselves well away
from the rest of the company. Not only did he feel safer when he was not among folk who itched to see him dead or disgraced,
but the Court preferred it that way, too – the King’s lively debauchees did not want their fun spoiled by his critical glares.

‘The Lady emits some very uncivilised guffaws,’ he remarked waspishly. So intense was his dislike of the King’s mistress that
he could never bring himself to say her name: the Countess of Castlemaine was always just ‘the Lady’. ‘I imagine they can
hear her uncouth hooting in Chelsey.’

His staff exchanged wary glances behind his back, but held their silence. He had not wanted to join the royal party that day,
and was itching to vent his spleen on someone for having been forced to do so. He had planned to spend the time writing letters
to avert a war with the Dutch Republic. Unfortunately, most Englishmen thought that a fight with Holland was a very good idea,
and his efforts to prevent one were regarded with irritation. The King, perhaps in a subversive attempt to keep him from such
work, had informed him that a morning in the sunshine would do him good, and when the Earl had demurred, the invitation had
become an order.

‘It is too hot to loll about here,’ Clarendon snapped, swabbing his forehead with a piece of lace. ‘It is an omen, you know.’

‘An omen, sir?’ asked Secretary Bulteel nervously, when no one else spoke.

The Earl glowered at him. John Bulteel was a small, unattractive man with bad teeth and gauche manners. Clarendon treated
him abominably, despite the fact that
his loyalty, devotion and talent for administration made him almost indispensable.

‘Yes!’ the Earl snarled. ‘The weather is an omen for evil to come – probably this damned war everyone seems so determined
to have. Where is Chaloner? I have a question for him.’

Thomas Chaloner stepped forward. He had been a gentleman usher for exactly two weeks – the post had been the Earl’s wedding
gift to him. The promotion had not entailed a change in his duties, though. He was still an intelligencer, with a remit to
protect his master from harmful plots and to investigate any matter Clarendon deemed worthy of attention.

He was in his thirties, of medium height and build, with brown hair and grey eyes. The sword at his side was more functional
than ornamental, but there was nothing else remarkable about him. This was a deliberate ploy on his part – he had not survived
more than twelve years in espionage by standing out from the crowd.

‘Your question, sir?’ he asked politely.

‘Is it as hot as this in the States-General?’ demanded Clarendon, using the popular name for the seven provinces that had
united to form the Dutch Republic.

He scowled dangerously, suggesting there would be trouble no matter how the question was answered. Chaloner had been in his
service for eighteen months, but was still not fully trusted. Perhaps it was because espionage was considered a distasteful
occupation for gentlemen, or perhaps it was because Chaloner had been employed as a spy by the Parliamentarian government
before he had come to the Earl. Regardless, his master always gave the impression that he did not like him, and employed him
only because he needed to stay one step ahead of his enemies.

The antipathy was wholly reciprocated: Chaloner heartily wished he was hired by someone else. Unfortunately, opportunities
for ex-Commonwealth intelligencers in Restoration London were few and far between, so he had no choice but to continue working
for Clarendon.

‘Well?’ the Earl barked, when he thought Chaloner was taking too long to respond.

‘It varies from year to year, sir,’ replied Chaloner warily, not sure quite what his master was expecting to hear.

Clarendon sighed peevishly. ‘I do not care about the time you spent there spying for Cromwell. I want to know what the weather
was like when you visited the place for
me
. You have been skulking there since February, after all, and only deigned to return two weeks ago.’

Chaloner regarded him askance. The remark suggested that it had been
his
idea to linger in Amsterdam, when the reality was that he had written several times to say that Lord Bristol – the enemy
he had been ordered to hunt down – was not there. It was only at the beginning of June that the Earl had finally accepted
that his quarry must be elsewhere, and Chaloner had been given permission to come home.

‘You told me it was much cooler, Tom,’ said Bulteel helpfully, seeing his friend struggle for a polite response.

Clarendon nodded his satisfaction. ‘I thought so! The omen is intended for England only. The Dutch will win if we go to war,
and we shall look foolish for taking them on in the first place.’

Avoiding conflict with the United Provinces was one of few things upon which he and Chaloner agreed – both knew it was a fight
Britain was unlikely to win.

‘Is it true that the whole of the States-General is
ravaged by plague?’ asked the Earl, kicking off his fashionably tight shoes and waggling his fat little toes in relief.

‘No, sir,’ replied Chaloner. ‘Just Amsterdam.’

The Earl regarded him uneasily. ‘
You
were in Amsterdam. Did you see evidence of the disease?’

Chaloner nodded, but did not elaborate because the subject was a painful one for him. When he had first been sent to spy on
Holland, some twelve years before, he had married a Dutch lady, but had lost her and their child to plague. It had not been
easy to see the same sickness at work in the same place, and he had been unsettled by the intensity of the memories it had
stirred.

‘But you stayed away from sufferers?’ Pointedly, Clarendon held the piece of lace over his nose.

‘Of course.’

The Earl regarded him coolly. ‘You are taciturn today, even by your standards. What is wrong? Are you concerned that you have
made no headway on the cases I ordered you to investigate – these White Hall thefts and that missing Dutch diplomat? Or is
married life not to your liking?’

‘I have identified the thieves, sir, while married life is …’ Chaloner trailed off. Two weeks was hardly long enough to tell,
although it had occurred to him that he had made a mistake – spies made for poor spouses, and Hannah had already started two
quarrels about the unsociable hours he kept.

‘You have the culprits?’ pounced the Earl eagerly. ‘Why did you not say so? They stole my wig, you know. I set it down on
a bench next to me, and when I turned around, it had gone.’

‘Unfortunately, the evidence is circumstantial as yet,’
replied Chaloner. ‘The only way to ensure a conviction will be to catch them in the act of stealing, and—’

‘Then why are you not watching them?’ the Earl demanded. ‘Now? At this very minute?’

‘Because you ordered him to accompany you here, sir,’ explained Bulteel, when Chaloner hesitated, not sure how to respond
without sounding insolent. ‘You wanted him to brief you on his investigation into that vanished Dutchman – Willem Hanse.’

‘Oh, yes.’ The Earl mopped his face with the lace again. ‘Well, he has finished telling me about his lack of progress there,
so there is no need for him to linger. Go and catch the thieves, Chaloner. At once. How dare they lay sticky fingers on
my
property!’

Chaloner regarded him unhappily, sorry he should consider a wig more important than a man’s safety, and sorrier still that
tracking thieves would take time away from his search for Hanse. He had not told the Earl – or anyone else, for that matter
– but his first marriage meant he and Hanse were kinsmen. And Chaloner was extremely worried about him.

He took his leave of Clarendon, but did not go far, because the two men he suspected of committing the White Hall thefts –
a pair of courtier-stewards in the service of a diplomat named Sir George Downing – had just arrived and attached themselves
to the royal party. He would far rather have resumed the hunt for Hanse, but he knew he would have no peace from the Earl
until the thieves were under lock and key. With a sigh, he forced himself to concentrate on them.

The case had not been difficult to solve; interviews with victims and the application of basic logic had quickly
pointed to them as the culprits. Moreover, discussions with their previous employers – Downing had only hired them recently
– told him that they had not been honest in the past, either, and had probably forged the testimonials that claimed them to
be men of good character. Unfortunately, he needed more than that to confront them. They were reputed to be cunning, and would
wriggle out of any accusations made without hard evidence.

He crouched behind a bush, and watched. Abraham Kicke was a tall, handsome fellow with luxurious blue-black hair and a confident
swagger. His accomplice, John Nisbett, was shorter and bulkier, with lank ginger locks and bulbous blue eyes. Both were said
to be skilled swordsmen, although Chaloner had no intention of finding out whether that was true – while perfectly able to
hold his own in a skirmish, he saw no point in taking unnecessary risks.

He winced when a particularly loud shriek rent the air. The Earl was right: Lady Castlemaine
did
have a piercing voice. He glanced towards her, and could not help but notice that she was by far the most scantily clad of
the cavorting crowd – her dress was made of some thin, filmy stuff that turned transparent in water. She had borne three children,
but her clothing showed she had retained her perfect figure. No one was quite sure how, and there were rumours that the Devil
was involved.

Meanwhile, shy, lonely Queen Katherine watched her with haunted eyes. Two years of marriage had not provided
her
with a baby, despite fervent prayers and visits to spas. Her inability to conceive meant she was shunned by the Court, and
Chaloner’s heart went out to her when he saw her ladies-in-waiting had abandoned her and she
sat alone. Then one appeared, and distracted her with a barrage of merry chatter. He smiled when he saw the kindly Samaritan
was Hannah.

Dragging his attention back to his duties, Chaloner watched Kicke and Nisbett pause by the edge of the Canal, ostensibly to
marvel at His Majesty’s new parterres. He braced himself, sure they were about to indulge their penchant for other people’s
property.

Suddenly, there was a roar of manly appreciation: the Lady had left the water to perform a series of exercises. They had the
immediate effect of drawing every eye towards her, the men to ogle the display, and the women to regard it rather more critically.
Chaloner glanced at the Earl, and saw that even he was transfixed, although he at least had the decency to pretend to be reading.

While people were distracted, Kicke and Nisbett aimed for the nearest bundle of clothes. A brief rummage saw them emerge with
a copper-coloured wig that would have cost its owner a fortune. It was distinctive, and Chaloner recognised it as belonging
to a courtier named Charles Bates. Kicke shoved it down the front of his shirt. In the next pile, Nisbett found a purse, which
he slipped into his pocket. And so they continued.

‘Hey!’ Chaloner yelled, when he felt they had stolen enough to condemn themselves. ‘Thieves!’

Kicke and Nisbett froze in horror, and in the Canal, heads whipped around towards them. Lady Castlemaine stopped her gyrations
with a glare: she hated not being the centre of attention.

‘Thieves!’ Chaloner yelled again, pointing to Kicke and Nisbett.

Kicke held a necklace in his hand, and an expression of panicky guilt crossed his face as he dropped it. Nisbett
spun around quickly, but thought better of making a bid for escape when he saw his way barred by the Earl’s soldiers. Several
younger, fitter members of Court, led by the Duke of Buckingham, splashed out of the water and trotted towards the commotion;
some even had the sense to collect swords en route. But Kicke was jabbing his thumb at Chaloner.

‘We are not the felons here,’ he declared, injecting indignation in his every word. ‘
He
is.’

Accusations of criminal behaviour were not uncommon in White Hall, and most courtiers lost interest once they had assured
themselves that their own belongings were safe. One by one, they drifted back to the water. Part of the reason for their departure
was because the Earl was waddling towards them – they often expressed their dislike by refusing to be in his company – but
also because the Lady had resumed her exercises. Buckingham was among the few who remained, and so was Bates, a sad-faced
gentleman who was old and ugly without his auburn wig.

‘Well, Chaloner?’ demanded the Duke, a tall, elegant fellow whose good looks were being eroded by high living; his eyes were
yellowish, and his skin was sallow. He was one of the Earl’s most bitter enemies, and gleeful malice gleamed in his eyes when
he heard the accusation levelled against a member of his rival’s household. ‘What do you say?’

‘Thomas is not a thief.’ Chaloner turned to see Hannah. For reasons beyond his ken, she and the Duke were friends, and Buckingham
often listened to what she had to say. Unfortunately, she often listened to what Buckingham had to say in return, and what
emerged
from the dissipated nobleman’s mouth was not always sensible. ‘I would not have married him if he were.’

BOOK: The Body in the Thames
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