The Thief Taker (17 page)

Chapter Thirty-Five

Charlie and Maria’s spurt of speed was short-lived. As soon as they met the open road they hit the throngs of frightened refugees fleeing London.

The way was thick with riders, walkers and carts weighed down with possessions. Some carried enormous packs containing all their worldly belongings, whilst others had little hand-carts and still more rode horses.

The crowd were skittish and their eyes roamed the fields for attackers.

In the far dusk-distance torches were being lit. Charlie peered for a moment, wondering if it was some archaic country tradition.

‘Why do they light torches?’ he asked Maria, presuming she would know about country traditions.

‘I do not know.’ She was frowning at the horizon.

Then Charlie realised.

Across the countryside vigilantes were setting out from their villages.

A chill of fear shot through him.

Maria, sharp as ever, had also made the connection.

‘They are at least ten miles away,’ she said. There was a little shudder of terror in her voice.

‘Best we try and get on as far as we can then,’ said Charlie. ‘And hope they head in some other direction.’

Some others in the crowd had noticed the torches too, and a swell of unease rippled through the travellers.

They were all trapped, they knew. This road was the safest track. But being part of the multitude made them a target.

Charlie stared at the unfamiliar landscape. Leaving the path meant they could easily be picked off.

To the side of the highway stood the occasional ramshackle hut with a few chickens pecking in the yard outside. The rickety dwellings had weeds growing through the rush roofs and the occasional goat grazing atop. Each had a neat beehive of hay stacked outside the front. Some had dug makeshift toilets for passing travellers to deposit their sewage as fertiliser.

For the most part the householders couldn’t be seen, but occasionally some woman sat outside spinning, glaring at the passing crowds.

He didn’t imagine any shelter would be forthcoming from the locals.

Charlie snuck a glance at Maria. She had a faraway expression, her broad mouth set level and blue eyes making starker relief of the strong nose. Her long body bobbed effortlessly along to the rhythm of the horse. It reminded him of a taut-strung longbow. Charlie saw her suddenly as a warrior queen, riding into battle.

She looked nothing like the other frightened women riders.

‘We can outpace Malvern and soon you will have your revenge,’ he said.

She looked at him curiously. ‘It is not revenge I seek,’ she said. ‘It is justice.’

‘Is there a difference?’ Charlie was confused.

‘Yes,’ she said with certainty. ‘Yes there is. For I have seen people poison their lives with revenge. And I should not wish to follow
that pat
h.’

But she did not elaborate further and Charlie was left to puzzle over what justice was if it wasn’t revenge for crimes done to others.

Certainly, he thought, if someone murdered his brother it would be revenge he wanted.

Charlie looked out into the middle distance. The vigilante torches looked closer now. Maria was evidently thinking the same. She scanned the route ahead, looking for openings through the crowd.

Seeing none she turned her clear blue eyes towards him.

‘Are you married Mr Thief-Taker?’

‘I was,’ he said. The question took him by surprise.

‘She is dead then? Your wife.’

‘No,’ he answered.

Maria’s voice raised an octave. ‘You made a divorce?’

Charlie gave a hard laugh. ‘That is for rich kings. We agreed to forget the marriage ever happened. Now she can discover a rich man and not have a husband to stop her.’

‘But that was a pact before God,’ said Maria.

Charlie shrugged. ‘Tell Lynette. I do not intend to take another wife. My promise is true. What she does is the business of her o
wn soul
.’

‘Does she work a trade?’

‘She is an actress.’

Maria assessed this for a moment, weighing whether he meant ‘prostitute’.

‘Does she take Lynette as her stage name? After the famous lady?’

‘She is the famous lady.’

‘The actress Lynette?
She
is your wife?’

‘
Was
my wife.’

‘But she is known all over the city.’

‘We met when theatres were still banned under Cromwell.’

‘And none of her wealth goes to you as her husband?’

‘Are you always this curious?’

‘I only seek to talk of other things than those torches,’ she said, nodding into the distance. ‘For it is best not to take fright too early. And I look to know a little more of the man I am to be travelling with for two days,’ she added.

There was a shout in the distance. Charlie and Maria looked at one another. The throngs of people burst into a chatter of animated fear.

‘They are still far away,’ said Maria, but she didn’t sound so sure.

Charlie had never been out of the comforting confines of
London
, and he was disconcertingly rudderless in the wide open country. In the City he could always get a meal or a place to hide. Here he had far fewer resources.

His eyes roamed the horizon again for the vigilante torches. They were undeniably closer. But they seemed to have stopped moving.

‘Do you remember anything about your mother?’ asked Maria.

‘No.’ Charlie realised he sounded abrupt and adjusted. ‘Not much in any case. A face, maybe. But it is hard to be certain it is her.’ He frowned.

‘Faces fade,’ agreed Maria. ‘I am sometimes surprised at
how fast.
’

She stopped suddenly, as though she had said too much.

‘It is not that,’ said Charlie. ‘There was a lady. My brother found her, hidden away in a room. Very beautiful. I sometimes think I am confusing my mother’s face with hers.’

‘Hidden away?’

‘I do not really remember. Only that she was sad and lonely, in a secret dark room. I think she played with us.’

Maria considered this. ‘It sounds very mysterious,’ she said finally. Her face suggested she was thinking deeply on it.

‘Do you remember anything else about her?’ she added.

‘I wish I did.’

‘Are you angry that you were left orphaned?’ asked Maria. She was looking at his key now.

‘Why should I be?’ He pushed the key inside his shirt.

‘That you were left in the Foundling Hospital,’ said Maria. ‘I have been only once to give some alms, and it looked a dreadful sort of place with children of skin and bone. I felt great pity for them.’

Charlie bristled.

‘The Foundling Hospital is well enough,’ he said.

Maria hissed in annoyance as her horse was forced to a
slow trot, hemmed in by the trudging Londoners. The fear of attack had panicked some and mobilised others, and the shifting crowd had begun to move forward and back on itself in a rising
gridlock
.

Maria sat up high on her horse, looking impatiently out into the distance.

‘The crowds will slow us,’ she said. ‘But this Malvern must travel under the same restraints. And once we get onto the back roads it will make us even faster again, for they will have no such burden of travellers.’ Her hand slid to her stomach suddenly, her face twisting in pain.

‘I think there was something bad in that plague water the ostler gave us,’ she said, catching Charlie’s expression. ‘My belly complains of it.’

Already the sun was beginning to set. And the sides of the road had begun to fill up with makeshift tents as people drifted from the path and set up camp for the night.

Most seemed to have decided to brazen it out for the night and hope for the best.

Charlie raised his arm to point, slipped and quickly gra
bbed the
reins again. He looked over to Maria to see if she had noticed the indignity of the manoeuvre. But she was looking to the edge of t
he hig
hway, at the travellers setting up camp.

‘They do not know country ways,’ she observed. ‘They hope that if they set up camp and are not found travelling the road, they will be safe from the men who come for them.’

‘Country ways are not so different from city ways,’ said Charlie, darkly. ‘Once the mob sets up they must have some violence.’

Chapter Thirty-Six

‘We should go on in the dark for a few miles,’ said Charlie. ‘If vigilantes come we will be sitting ducks amongst these fires.’

He glanced at Maria. Her mouth was clamped tight as though in pain. She still sat upright, but given that she wore a bodice stitched with reed he suspected she had little choice in the matter.

‘It is nothing,’ she said, noticing him looking at her. ‘I have a headache from the hard riding in the sun.’

She had begun to look increasingly ill as the day wore on.
Charlie
had tried to pretend to himself it was just the heat. But in his deeper self, he knew. Something was wrong. Her face was so pale it had turned almost blue.

‘Perhaps we should stop now and take some rest,’ said Charlie uncertainly, but as he spoke Maria tumbled lengthways from her horse.

‘Maria!’ He dismounted, half falling from his horse, and ran to where she lay.

Maria was curled into a close ball of agony. The smell hit him immediately and he recognised it from some dark forgotten place of his childhood. It was the unmistakable stench of dysentery sweat. Even in the dusky half light of nightfall her face had a ghostly-blue pallor.

The bloody flux wiped out entire slums in London. And
Charlie
, having survived the illness, was immune to the infection, but not the horror of it.

He looked at the various camps. Round their individual firesides the little parties of families and travellers looked almost cheerful. One man was playing a pipe whilst his daughter cooked sausages over a fire. Other groups passed flagons of ale back and forth.

Each encampment sat firmly divided from the other. And Charlie knew no one would help a sick girl in plague time. He could hardly blame them.

But Maria would die if she was left exposed out here.

Charlie’s mouth turned down in a tight, frightened line.

She would not survive the infection unless she were got somewhere warm and properly nursed.

He remembered the bog-water smell of the Venice Treacle from the stables. If that had been the source she must have taken the bad air deep inside.

Stumbling he pulled her upright.

Maria scrabbled with her feet, trying to help him. Then she heaved and vomited onto the roadside. ‘I am sorry,’ she whispered. ‘Leave me here. If vigilantes find you with a sick girl they will
kill yo
u.’

‘I will get you somewhere warm and you can sweat it out,’ said Charlie, trying to sound convincing. None he knew had survived dysentery without immediate access to a bed and a fire. They were miles from anywhere in the exposed countryside.

Maria was weak and fainting as he led her to the horses. Not knowing what else to do he slung her bodily over the first animal and grabbed the reins of the second.

With his thoughts a mad buzz of terror, Charlie began to walk with the horses back out on the track.

He contemplated mounting, but he knew he wasn’t a good enough rider to hold the other horse.

From her position laid over the saddle Maria’s prone form lay disconcertingly motionless. Charlie had no idea of where he was going or what he was going to do.

‘A warm bed could save her life,’ he reasoned out loud, trying to make himself believe it.

Maria stirred a little, causing the counterweight of her legs to shift and sending her slipping down the side of the horse. He grabbed at her, finding himself torn in two directions as the second animal took the chance to veer away.

‘Walthamstow,’ said Maria, as he held her desperately by the top of her dress. ‘It is only a few miles from here. There is a wise woman there. She can help.’ And then she drifted back into
unconsciousness
.

Charlie managed to haul her back over the horse. Her long torso flopped easily across the animal.

He replayed her words. Wise woman.
A witch
. Then he remembered. The witch who had been released from Wapping prison. Maria had said the woman was from her village. He shuddered. No Christian visited witches.

In the dark he tried to quell his rising panic. Vigilantes were on every horizon, and he was travelling with a sick girl. Whatever he decided it must be fast.

He called the map to mind. Walthamstow was the nearest town. Strange that she hadn’t mentioned where she was from when they were passing so close.

He did not expect that the locals would let him and a sick girl into their village during plague times. But he hardly had a wealth of other options.

Charlie took the reins and tugged at the horses. Then he set off as fast as he could with the animals reined in behind him.

As he made towards the witch vigilante torches winked closer on every horizon.

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Mayor Lawrence pushed opened the door to his half-timbered house on Fen Church Street. The summer day had drooped to night, and he thought he was not too late.

Sounds from inside confirmed his hopes. His maid-servant was home. He felt his body react before he had seen her.

In his dining room was an expensive table which had come with his wife’s dowry and six cheaper chairs of his own.

Lawrence ran his tongue over his lower lip. His wife was out, visiting her sister.

Behind the table Debs was on her knees, cleaning the fire grate by candlelight. He watched the swaying of her hips as the brush moved over the hearth tiles.

Even the way she worked was provocative.

When Lawrence had hired the fourteen-year-old maid his wife had insisted the girl dressed more modestly. But everything Debs wore hinted at the tantalising figure beneath.

The bulge of her brown hair beneath the pink cotton cap. A border of white lace framing the exquisite youth of her skin. Linen cloth draped to cover the tops of her breasts, but managing somehow only to highlight them further.

He crept into the room and knelt silently behind her, lifting her skirt and running a hand up her thigh.

Debs jerked around, her hand catching his in reflex.

Then she saw Lawrence and her shocked expression changed to something smiling and shrewd.

The sight of her face brought another electric shock of lust. Her large green eyes dropped a little at the corners, giving Debs a permanently smouldering expression.

She had neat brown eyebrows and a tiny straight nose, like an artist’s pencil marks. Her neck could be considered thick. Chubby even. But to Lawrence it was voluptuous. A gateway to the hidden paradise below.

Debs had once shown him her breasts and the image was burned in his brain.

His hand was still trapped under hers, halfway up the silky skin of her thigh.

Lawrence pushed a little upwards.

Her hold on his fingers tightened.

Desire for her gripped him. Every sense in his body screamed to wrench aside the skirts, before she could push him away.

But Lawrence knew Debs well enough. She would never let him have her like this, on the floor.

He pushed his hand up again, using more force. The tip of his finger slid further up between her legs.

She squealed and twisted away, turning backwards to face him as she lounged on the wooden floorboards.

The linen cloth covering her chest had come apart in the
middle
, just a fraction. Beneath it the line where her breasts met moved in time to her breathing.

Lawrence made another move to get under her skirts, but she was too fast for him, scrabbling away and raising a finger to her lips.

‘Mayor Lawrence,’ she whispered in the sultry tones he often replayed in his fantasies. ‘What if your wife were to come?’

She stood up, dusting herself down.

Lawrence raised himself from the floor.

‘Please Debs,’ he said, ‘I cannot bear it.’

The memory of where his hand had been moments before was torturing him.

‘Then you must find a place where we might enjoy each other’s company.’

She folded her arms.

‘It is not easy Debs, when you are so high up in the city as I am. People recognise me. And I am so busy with the King’s missions besides,’ he added, seizing the chance to try and impress her.

Deb’s eyes registered interest.

‘Do you still seek the witch-murderer?’

‘We know it to be this thief taker,’ said Lawrence. ‘But I have been asked to investigate another man. Someone who calls himself Thomas Malvern. They think he might be involved.’

Lawrence gave a heavy shrug to denote the foolishness of
majesty
.

‘They have me visiting gambling clubs and following bets this man has made. And all of it has come to nothing of course,’ he continued.

Lawrence took out a little ruby ring.

‘I have a gift for you,’ he said.

The expression of delight on her face was worth the torment of the last few hours waiting to see her.

‘You must not wear it when my wife is home,’ he added.

Debs nodded, and Lawrence seated himself on the nearest chair.

‘Come sit on my lap and I will put it on you.’

She hesitated and then seated herself. He wondered if she could feel the heat rising up from his thighs in waves.

‘What does this man bet on?’ asked Debs as she settled herself on his legs.

‘Malvern bets large sums on the plague and where it might spread,’ said Lawrence, shifting so she tilted back further towards his groin. ‘All perfectly innocent.’

‘Where does he think it will spread?’ Debs shuffled a little
forward
.

Lawrence shrugged. ‘To the rich parts of town. It is not a bet he is likely to win. The rich can afford to protect themselves with guards in the west.’

Debs nodded, gratifyingly interested in his business.

‘Surely the gambling house must refuse to pay his bet if
he wins?’

Lawrence grunted. ‘A lawless place such as that? They will pay out bets, under any circumstance. It is a kind of honour amongst thieves I suppose,’ he added, begrudgingly.

‘Perhaps this Malvern knows something more about plague than most,’ she observed.

Lawrence gave a hard laugh. ‘He is a fool Debs. Talk at the club is Malvern boasts of spreading some infection himself. He will get himself hanged in due course, whether he is guilty of murder
or not
.’

The Mayor shook his head. ‘We are better to forget Malvern and find out this thief taker.’

‘You might ask my father for help,’ suggested Debs, tilting her pretty head. ‘All kinds of men visit an astrologer. Perhaps he could tell you something.’

Lawrence smiled. Debs’s loyalty to her family was admirable. She was no ordinary common girl. Her father was William Lilly, who had once been astrologer to the old King.

It was a shame, thought Lawrence, that such a beautiful daughter did not have a better dowry to raise her above maid’s work.

Though it suited him well enough. Just a few more weeks, and Lawrence felt certain he would enjoy every part of Debs Lilly on his own terms.

‘Put out your hand,’ he instructed.

She proffered her fingers and Lawrence found himself marvelling at the youth of her white skin and the perfect pink scallops of her fingernails.

He dug a hand up under her skirts. She flinched, but did not object.

‘Let me see a little further,’ he whispered hoarsely, his mouth flat against her ear. ‘Let me see more than I have done.’ He held the ring out in his other hand, like bait.

Debs smiled and inched up her skirts over her knee.

Lawrence hardly dared breathe. She pulled them up higher.

The ring in his outstretched hand began to tremble.

She gave another final flash. More than he would have ever hoped to see. Lawrence stared, trying to brand the sight in his mind for later use.

Then he noticed something besides the dizzying allure of her nakedness.

‘Are you bruised?’ he asked in sudden confusion. ‘You have a mark there.’

Debs frowned, rearranged her skirts in confusion.

‘There is no bruise,’ she started to say. And then she saw the purple mark, feathering down from her groin in a network of raised veins.

It was a plague token.

As her skirts fell back down she was already screaming.