The Thief Taker (26 page)

Chapter Fifty-Five

Bitey had negotiated an uneasy truce with the handful of inebriated inmates of the Coach and Horses. It had been mostly achieved by his revealing a clutch of hen’s eggs he’d managed to transport ingeniously beneath his battered hat. But the locals were still uncertain. The tension was palpable.

The three men in residence, it transpired, formed what remained of the town’s constabulary and prison guard. A fact which made Charlie nervous.

‘Yon landlord’s the only one who could tell you about the town’s comings and goings,’ confirmed a lanky man with pronounced buckteeth, who claimed to be Wapping’s constable. ‘He is gone for the moment, visiting the better part of town, where his daughter works.’

‘What is the better part of town?’ Charlie had asked Bitey, keeping a careful eye on the gaoler.

‘The guarded part, as I told you before,’ said Bitey, ‘a few streets where rich folk might be safe from the plague. A handful of women are allowed in that part to work as prostitutes, and the landlord’s daughter is one of them.’

‘The landlord will be back within a few hours,’ added the buck-toothed man.

He did not offer an invitation to join them. The three men sat a little apart, at their own table, looking suspiciously at the newcomers. They all smoked pipes, which was unusual, Charlie noticed. Normally tobacco was a luxury reserved for the rich.

He looked around the rest of the tavern.

It was basic enough, with several large barrels of beer from which drinkers helped themselves.

Bitey was already filling his cup.

One of the men raised himself to offer Maria a drink from a bottle of wine kept on the bar.

She nodded, not seeming to notice that he filled her a cup with his eyes riveted to her uncovered hair and fashionable dress.

‘This is Burgundy, and far cheaper than any you might get in London,’ she said, returning to where Charlie stood on the other side of the tavern. ‘It is fine stuff.’

He privately doubted that the wine was genuine Burgundy. It would likely be some cheaper drink. Charlie wondered if the rum Maria had drunk earlier was still having an effect.

Several hours later Maria had made her steady way through several cups of wine.

In the candlelight the sadness had fallen away from her face
and Charlie noticed all the men were staring openly towards
Maria.

Her smile blazed out at him.

‘We should ask them what they know,’ she announced. ‘They cannot be so badly disposed towards us,’ she gestured with the tankard towards the men.

Charlie assessed the buck-toothed constable who seemed to have been getting drunker at the same pace as Maria.

‘Best we wait until the landlord returns,’ he said. Though the gnawing thought of Malvern moving unchecked in Wapping was making his hands twitch.

Bitey nodded in agreement. ‘They are rough men,’ he agreed
uneasily. ‘And it will not take much to have them think us a
threat.’

But Maria had risen uncertainly to her feet. And before Charlie could stop her she approached the three seated men.

‘What do you know of witchcraft in these parts?’ she asked, raising her tankard in salute.

The constable with the buckteeth assessed her with renewed suspicion.

Charlie moved quickly to stand beside her.

‘She has an interest in country affairs,’ he said lamely. ‘And we hear that many witches stood trial in the country.’

‘That they did,’ said the constable, still staring at Maria. ‘Thirty men and women were hanged only this spring for witchcraft.’

‘And what spells did they perform?’ pressed Maria, ‘how did you know they were witches.’

The constable looked to the men next to him and then back
to Maria.

‘I conducted the trials myself,’ he said. ‘They confessed, under torture in Wapping prison. They had called upon Satan’s powers.’

‘But they had not made spells?’ insisted Maria, ‘with ribbons and candles and such?’

‘Why do you want to know?’ the constable’s posture tightened in his chair.

‘She is only curious,’ said Charlie, grabbing Maria by the waist and steering her away. ‘What are you doing?’ he hissed in her ear. ‘We are here by grace and favour and you make us sound as though we have come to town to devil worship!’

‘There is no harm in asking,’ said Maria, turning uncertainly back to the men. They glowered after her. The constable leaned to mutter something in the ear of his closest companion.

‘They think we are husband and wife,’ she added, laughing and looking out into the wider tavern. ‘It would not be so terrible if we were would it Charlie?’

She must be drunker than he’d realised, Charlie decided.

‘You told me not so long ago that I was the last man you would ever consider for such things.’

Maria laughed. ‘Oh come now Charlie. Do not bear grudges for past harms. Women do not mean everything they say out loud. I mean to marry for security, it is not a slight on you.’

She said it with a finality which annoyed him. Charlie frowned, momentarily forgetting about the three men still staring out at them from their corner.

‘That is the talk of old widows, not girls of twenty.’

‘What do you think Charlie? That I should marry for love? That is the way for a life of poverty.’

He looked at her for a moment.

‘I do not think you believe that,’ he said. ‘I think you have taken some hard luck and you hope it has made you hard. But it is a poor act.’

A flicker of pain passed over her face. ‘You may think yourself a fine judge of character Charlie Thief-Taker. But you know nothing of me.’ The words caught in her throat. ‘I am to find out some other company.’

She made to move back to where Bitey was sitting, but in a sudden surge of feeling, Charlie grabbed her by the wrist.

‘I know that you cannot look me in the eye when you talk about your future husband,’ he said. ‘I know you pull at the seams of your dress when you speak of having children. And I know the minute you have a drink inside you, you talk of your poor husband-to-be with nothing but scorn.’

She looked for a moment as though she might hit him. Then she wrenched her arm from his grip and stalked off to sit back
with Bitey.

The three seated men looked on with interest.

A loud bang echoed through the tavern, and Charlie turned his head to see the plank entry had opened. Heaving his way through was the tavern landlord.

Bitey moved to help him in, and Charlie felt a wave of relief. The tension between them and the locals had been palpable. Now they could find the information they needed and get back to tracking Malvern. Before tonight’s moon brought about some unstoppable completion to his plan.

‘Do you know anything of a wagon that has newly arrived in town?’ asked Bitey, as the landlord leaned on his arm and stood upright in the tavern.

But the landlord’s face was twisted in distress.

‘I know only one thing,’ he said, his voice cracking as he spoke. ‘My daughter. My beautiful daughter has gone missing.’

The landlord turned to the buck-toothed constable.

‘You love my Lilieth do you not?’

The constable nodded, dumbstruck.

‘Then you must help me find her.’

The constable was already rising to his feet. He cast a final malevolent glare towards Charlie and Maria.

‘My great fear is that she has taken plague and gone off to die alone,’ said the landlord, his eyes haunted with the notion. ‘I should hate to think of her in agony in some lonely place.’

The constable extended a sympathetic pat on his arm. ‘Your Lilieth keeps herself in good health,’ he assured him. ‘Likely she has met with some travelling customer, or takes a drink with one of the other girls.’

The landlord shook his head. ‘Her green bonnet was found on the street,’ he said. ‘That is what puts me in the most fear. For she loved that bonnet and would not lose it.’

‘We will go to where she worked,’ said the constable. ‘We might find something out there.’

And the landlord and constable slipped back out of the tavern, leaving Charlie, Maria and Bitey alone with the last two men.

They looked at one another uneasily.

Maria sat down heavily.

‘It is hopeless,’ she said. ‘That was the only person who might have helped us. And he knows nothing.’

Bitey shrugged at the sad reality of this.

But Charlie’s face was lined in thought.

The smell of tobacco sat heavy on the air.

Strange that so many of the town can afford tobacco.

His thoughts moved to the cut-price Burgundy wine which Maria had been drinking.

It must be a smuggler’s town, he realised, thinking back to Marc-Anthony’s imports. Tobacco and wine were all popular illegal imports.

Suddenly the facts slotted together.

The full moon. The docks.

Nothing can get out of those docks. But what about getting something in? That is why Malvern travels by the lunar calendar. It is not for reasons of witchcraft. He comes to town when the tide is high
.

Slowly Charlie rose to his feet. His heart was racing.

So Malvern must be smuggling something
, he thought.
Something that could aid an uprising.

He turned to Maria. ‘We need to get to the docks,’ he said.

Chapter Fifty-Six

When the constable and landlord arrived outside Lilieth’s working room there was a terrible stench of acrid smoke on the air.

They exchanged glances.

‘I will go alone,’ said the constable. ‘If there is fire it could be dangerous.’

He had asked Lilieth to marry him several times and so far she had refused. But he always felt confident she would yield in the end. The constable crossed himself, assessing the haze of smoke in the air. He refused to believe anything bad had happened to her.

‘It smells like someone left a spit of meat to char,’ murmured the landlord.

The constable nodded.

‘Likely she has fallen asleep and left some meat to burn.’ But he couldn’t keep the doubt from his voice.

‘Wait here,’ he added. ‘I will shout down from the window if anything is needed inside. It may be faster to have a man on the street and one inside if something has . . . has happened.’

The constable pushed open the thick wooden door which led to three single rooms. On the ground level nothing seemed awry. But smoke was pouring from the second storey.

The constable pulled off his flammable shirt and jerkin.

He made his way up the creaking stairs to find the smoke was clearing. Whatever the fire was must have gone out. Likely it was as they presumed, a joint of meat which had been charred to a cinder and sent out smoke. A terrible waste in plague times. But better than a house fire.

He entered the single room of the second floor, a plainly decorated chamber which he’d seen many times before.

A single chair sat in the middle of the room.

The constable missed his footing and stumbled.

Sat on the chair, with her green dress burned to cinders, drooped the charred husk of a woman.

The fire had been started in her lap, and the remains of her head had slumped forward.

Thick lines of greasy soot ran over the holes where her ears had been. Her nose had melted to two jagged dark caves and the lips were scorched to nothing, setting the mouth in an endless silent scream.

The constable felt ice tunnelling through every vein in his body.

He staggered again, and then he fell to his knees. ‘Oh God,’ he said. ‘Oh God.’ Someone had ripped his heart out and in the empty space thick anguish took hold.

The constable moved towards the corpse like a sleepwalker, willing himself to be wrong. But there was no mistaking her.

Red welts shone on the scalp where her dark hair had been. The large blue eyes that he remembered had boiled in their sockets with the long lashes burned to a crust.

He thought for a moment that strange heaving sounds came from the chair where she sat. Then he realised it was the noise of his own wracking sobs which were shaking him bodily.

The constable was close enough to smell the acrid fumes which still came from the body, and he reached out and touched the charred shoulder.

In the tumult of his mind he thought for the villain who might have done this.

Wrapped around the body were ribbons. White ribbons. But all bloodied and not burned. Some words had been written on the floor in blood, but he could not read them.

A spell, he realised. Some unholy spell had been cast.

Then he remembered the two strangers from the Coach and Horses.

The harlot girl with her hair uncovered and the man she had come with. She had been interested in spells and witches. And he had stopped her asking, as though they had something to hide.

In the madness of his grief the constable felt both fists grip themselves. He would find out this pair, and he would see them stand trial.