The Sweet Smell of Decay (9 page)

At the top of Ave Maria Street among the stalls lingered apprentices, scores of them, hanging around in groups of two or three, doing nothing, just standing talking, peering out at the crowds beneath heavy, thick brows, their expressions that curious mixture of aggression and uncertainty that characterises the young and pale. What were they doing here? The apprentices of London were a sorry lot, paid nothing in money, forbidden by their masters to procreate or frequent alehouses or taverns. They vented their frustrations on the rest of the population, doing their best to ensure that none else got to enjoy themselves either. It was unusual to find them gathering in large groups with such brazen disregard. Such congregation usually meant trouble for someone. Last month a band of them had marched out to Moorfields and kicked down the bawdy houses. They cut off one poor woman’s breasts to make an example of her to the rest. I
detested people that could not just let others be what they would be.

I hurried by, discomforted by narrow-eyed curious stares. Why were they looking at me particularly? Toward the gaol they were crawling like flies on a dead dog, a great teeming mass of them, most still wearing their blue aprons. What were they up to now? Individually the apprentices were nothing to be afraid of – gawky, unhealthy and half grown. Working together as a mob they were to be avoided at all cost, clinging to the devout words and morals of their often insincere masters, seeking a sense of importance and achievement. I kept going, conscious that Joyce was in there.

‘Strike!’ A big man, older than the rest, stepped forward and pushed me in the chest with a rounded wooden baton. ‘What business do you have here?’

‘What business do you have asking?’ I felt an urge to punch him in the throat.

To my relief Dowling appeared from nowhere to intervene. A second apprentice stepped forward wearing baggy breeches down to his knees, dirty, torn stockings and a faded, patched purple waistcoat. On top of his straggly blond hair he wore a red square hat. Grinning foolishly, blind drunk, his skin was peeling and one of his eyes was badly infected. He looked over his shoulder to where two of his friends stood, also smiling broadly, also stinking of cheap wine.

‘You don’t go any further without me saying so,’ said the big man.

‘I have business in the gaol with the head gaoler. There’s a man in here what’s accused of treason. They say he is to be hung, so I want to confirm it, see what is required in the way of rope.’ Dowling pushed his way ahead without waiting for
an assessment of his feeble story. I followed, doing my best to look nonchalant, but in truth regretting the fine cut of my clothes. These men made me feel like a fop with their ugly sneers and bad smells.

Inside the evil odour was even worse than last time, some foulness emanating from a small closet that I had not noticed before. Two men stood peering into it, frowns of concentration writ thick upon their swarthy faces. I craned my neck to see what it was they looked at, then withdrew it just as quick. The bodies of two dead men lay there cut into eight pieces, the pieces stacked on top of each other in a higgledy pile, stood in a pool of sticky blackness.

‘They was executed three days ago,’ said one of the men glumly. ‘The family still hasn’t got leave to take away the bits and bury ’em. Meanwhile, it’s stinking out the place. We was thinking about moving ’em downstairs, but wonderin’ which way the air will go, up or down.’

‘Where are the heads?’ My own head swam and I felt dizzy.

‘Upstairs being boiled with cumin seed. Stops the birds peckin’ at ’em once they’s stuck upon the Nonsuch.’ The gaoler closed the door and led the way forward, sneezing violently several times as if to eject the smell of rotting flesh from his nose.

He walked down the dim-lit corridor, not stopping to look either side, seemingly headed for the small door at the end that went to the stone hold. Why was Joyce still down there? We had paid these men good money to have Joyce fetched upstairs.

‘Aye, so you did, and so we brought him up. But then we had to take him back down.’ The gaoler pulled open the small wooden door and took a torch from the wall.

‘Why?’ I demanded, standing in front of him, trying to catch his tired unfocused eyes.

He sighed, emitting a cloud of fetid rank-smelling breath. ‘You gave us money to bring him up and bring him up we did. Then two officers of the Lord Chief Justice came and told us to take him back down, so we took him back down. After you, if you please. You don’t like it, then you tell them yourself.’ He rubbed at his eyes waiting for us to pass.

‘What do you mean, George?’ Dowling asked softly.

George scratched his head, digging his fingers into his oily scalp. ‘They came this morning, asked us where he was, we showed them, then they started shouting at us, cursing us. When they finished we took him back downstairs. They’s still there.’

With sick stomach I turned to the staircase and the pit beyond it before venturing gingerly downwards. The air was clammy and thick. I coughed and spat, disgusted at the thought that I was actually breathing this stuff, wondering nervously how easy it was to contract the typhus – Newgate was famous for typhus. As we turned the last corner of the spiral stair we saw the silhouettes of two men alone in the tiny vault, talking. A single small torch burnt on the wall. Looking round when they heard our steps, they appeared frightened, staring out of the darkness. Finely dressed, better than me, with long black wigs, feathered hats, petticoat breeches and lots of lace. They wore pattens, wooden clogs with iron bottoms and tie straps, to protect their exquisitely embroidered silk-braided shoes.

‘What’s the news?’ I asked quietly.

Neither man spoke.

‘They work for the Lord Chief Justice,’ the gaoler said. ‘I told you before.’

‘Yes,’ the man on the left said, ‘we work for Lord Keeling.’

‘What are you doing here?’

While they looked at each other, uncertain of themselves, Dowling and I stood in patient silence side by side, waiting. There was no way past us.

The gaoler sighed and blinked wearily. ‘They said they came here to search the prisoner.’

‘Why couldn’t you search him upstairs?’ I asked, angry. My skin prickled and I could smell my own sweet perfume.

‘I searched him myself yesterday,’ Dowling said slowly, his voice suspicious, his usual amiability replaced with a quiet wariness. ‘I searched him from head to toe.’

The two men fidgeted unhappily. By the flickering light of the torches I could make out their eyes, alive and shifty. ‘He must stay down here until such time he is called to trial. That’s the order of the Lord Chief Justice. We work for him and take our instruction by him. Now we have to go.’

‘What did you find?’ Dowling demanded.

‘I can’t tell you. We can tell only Lord Keeling what we found, if anything. Those are our instructions.’

‘They say they found a necklace,’ the gaoler piped up indignantly. ‘Told
me
, so they did, so don’t see why they can’t tell you.’ A shapeless forefinger slid up his broad nose and scraped around.

Dowling stepped forwards and they stepped backwards. ‘Show us what you say you found, or else I’ll ask George here to find you cells of your own.’

‘You can’t do that,’ the man snorted, looking at George. George’s face was set, expressionless. Whether it was out of support for Dowling or just resigned boredom, impossible to know. I suspected the latter.

‘We have our own authority,’ the second man said.

‘We have the Mayor’s authority. Show me yours.’ I held out my hand.

‘He knows who we are.’ The second man pointed at the gaoler.

‘Show us what you have,’ I insisted.

They turned to each other once more. The one on the left pursed his lips, his face grim, brow set. The one on the right shrugged unhappily. The man on the left dipped his hand into his pocket and took out a small object wrapped in a dirty stained cloth. I took it and unwrapped it. It was a golden necklace cast in the shape of a cross, with surface rough to the touch. Just as John Giles’s mother had described it.

‘It proves he’s guilty. Now you must give it back.’ The man put out his hand. He wore leather gloves.

It went in my pocket. ‘How do you know it belongs to the girl?’

‘We know,’ the man replied. ‘Now give it!’ Dowling pushed him back, nodding apologetically as he did so.

‘I will keep it.’

‘It doesn’t matter.’ The second man put a hand on his colleague’s shoulder. ‘It has been seen.’

‘Where was it hidden?’ I asked, nodding at Dowling. ‘He has already been searched.’

‘It was well hidden,’ the second man answered. ‘Clearly he wasn’t searched well enough.’

‘You fetched it with you, gentlemen,’ Dowling said quietly. ‘It wasn’t there yesterday.’

‘The Lord Chief Justice seeks with undue haste,’ I ventured.

‘That’s
treasonable
talk,’ the man on the left said quietly, smiling menacingly as he did so, and even Dowling muttered
at me in warning. They waited, sensing my lack of resolve, challenging us to find some excuse to detain them. There was a moment of silence, oppressive and muffled, broken only by the sound of a steady drip. In the absence of any support from Dowling I was wary. I could hardly apprehend agents of the Lord Chief Justice. Shrewsbury would
have
to be involved regardless of his feelings in the matter. Reluctantly I stepped back and gave them room to walk away. They edged past awkwardly and hurried up the stairs out of the stone hold, the clacking of their wooden footsteps echoing loudly as they departed. I cast Dowling a dark stare, unhappy that he had been so useless.

By the light of the gaoler’s torch I could make out Joyce’s thin shadow in his cell, still and unmoving, hear the quiet wheezing of his steady breathing, see the lice crawling slowly across his close-cropped scalp.

‘George,’ I turned, ‘I will give you another five pounds if you get this man upstairs in front of a fire, unchained and proper food inside of him. If the officers of Lord Keeling return, then by all means fetch him back down, but take him up again when they have left. Can you do that?’

‘Not for five pounds.’ George screwed up his face and shook his head. ‘Ten pounds.’

Ten pounds?
Ten pounds was enough to keep Jane going for three months. Ten pounds was a tenth of my entire wealth. And what chance was there that the King would reimburse me – half of London was owed by him. Anyway, I didn’t have ten pounds with me. I looked at Dowling. George was
his
friend.

‘I’ll be wanting that ten pounds today, sir.’ The gaoler tapped me on the shoulder. ‘Though it’s an extravagant way
to use your money. He’ll be hung and quartered before the week’s out.’

‘What makes you so sure?’

‘They say they found the necklace on him. That’s what matters. They said it was the dead girl’s necklace.’

‘Where
did
they find it?’

‘They said they found it on the floor.’ He stuck his thumbs in his belt and waddled away. Then stopped. ‘That reminds me. I was going to tell you. There’s two fellows out there what work for a justice somewhere up north. I forget where exactly, but I recognises them.’

‘Out where, George?’

‘Outside in the street with them apprentices. You can sees them if you look hard enough – them’s the ones with the hair on their faces.’

‘Do you know what they’re doing there?’

‘No idea,’ George gestured with his torch. ‘Told myself to tell you. Now I told you.’

Dowling grunted, but thumped the gaoler on the shoulder gratefully. We made our way back the way we’d come, pushing past the two men that still stood staring hopelessly into the stinking closet. I felt my stomach cramp again, and pushed my way outside. Ten pounds.

‘So you be Lytle.’ The man with the baton waited for us. Now he had two, one in each hand. One he lifted to my chin, the other he used to warn off Dowling. ‘You here with your bears?’

‘Let him be,’ Dowling grumbled from the pit of his stomach.

‘Your eye’s black too, Dowling.’ The man held his arm out straight. Others began to crowd in, pushing forward to see what was going on. I recognised the drunkard, with his square
red hat drooping over one eye, still grinning foolishly.

‘Honey or turd with me, wretch. Stand away.’ Dowling’s arm whipped out and grabbed the baton, twisting it out of the man’s grip. Then he stepped forward and brought it down hard on the arm that reached to my chin, with a cushioned crack. The man doubled over in pain, nursing his broken arm across his chest, and sunk to his knees white-faced.

‘Haste now, Lytle. We have one opportunity,’ Dowling whispered in my ear, pushing me forward roughly into the crowd. We strode forward, fending off the occasional blow with our arms. Dowling cracked another man over the head with the wooden club, and pushed forward with all his considerable strength against the wall of apprentices, always with an eye for the youngest, the most hesitant, the drunkest. Something hit me on the temple, causing me to stumble in dizzy pain. ‘Up!’ Dowling roared, grabbing me by the collar of my shirt and dragging me upright. I felt the stitches tear. Struggling to stay on my feet, I was propelled forward by Dowling’s shovings, stopped from falling by the wall of people against which I was being pushed. I looked up into the purple face of an older apprentice, pockmarked and gleaming, teeth clenched and eyes blazing. Then Dowling’s baton landed on his nose with a heavy crunch and the face disappeared. We were pushed up against the woodwork of a yellow coach that was engulfed by the crowd. I looked aloft, holding up an arm to ward off the blows. Was that the face of Shrewsbury pulling away from the window? Could it be? I clambered up to get a better view, and saw William Hill sat in there too, to my amazement. Neither of them saw me, their efforts focussed on avoiding the eyes of the multitude that swarmed about
them. I was pulled roughly backwards by a pair of mighty hands. Dowling again. He pulled me towards an alley mouth, next to the open door of a bawdy house. The noise abated, and the heavy hot air was replaced with a cold, sharp wind and we were running. As we ran, I wondered to myself about the necklace, tucked safely in my pocket. For if it was indeed planted by these men, where did they get it? It must have been taken from Anne Giles’s body. What did this imply of Keeling’s involvement? And what the boggins was Hill doing with the Earl of Shrewsbury?