Blood on the Strand (17 page)

Johnson was poring over the corpse, doing something unspeakable with red wax, tubes and a pair of bellows, so Chaloner tossed
a stone up at one of the windows and waited until the surgeon came out to investigate. While Johnson scratched his head in
puzzlement, the spy darted inside and yanked the sheet away from the cadaver. He was startled when the face that gazed at
him through half-closed eyes was not Fitz-Simons’s, but that of an older man.

The stain on the sheet came from an oddly shaped wound in the chest, which Chaloner recognised as being caused by a rapier
– fluid had leaked from the hole during a recent washing. Pale circles around fat fingers suggested rings had been worn, and
the well-fed body indicated it had been a
man of wealth. Chaloner was almost certain – especially as he could now see the fellow had been dead for weeks rather than
days – that he was looking at Webb. He gazed at the corpse in confusion, and wondered whether Temple knew he was about to
be treated to the dicing up of a Guinea Company colleague.

There was no more to be learned by staring, and the theatre was no place to linger, so he left. Outside, Johnson was gesticulating
at a cracked window, informing Reynell that a bird was responsible. Wryly, the clerk pointed out that it must have been a
singularly heavy one. Chaloner could not leave the barber-surgeons’ grounds the way he had entered, because Lisle was now
standing near the old hall, talking to Wiseman. He decided to leave through the main gate instead, knowing that as long as
he moved confidently, no one was likely to stop him – guards tended to monitor who came in, not who went out. However, he
was out of luck that day, because Johnson spotted him.

‘Hey!’ he bawled. ‘I do not know you. Come here at once, and give an account of yourself.’

Chaloner considered brazening it out, but it would be difficult to explain why he had changed his hat and cloak – and why
he had returned in the first place. Plus there was the fact that the sheet that had covered Webb was now lying on the floor,
and Johnson would want to know what he had been doing. All told, it was better to escape without being obliged to answer questions.
He looked around, quickly reviewing his options. The guard on the gate had been alerted to the presence of an intruder by
Johnson’s yell, so he could not go that way, and Lisle and Wiseman had abandoned their discussion and were moving towards
him – one was sure to grab
him if he tried to run past. So he headed south, to where Chyrurgeons’ Hall abutted on to grounds owned by the Company of
Silversmiths.

Immediately, Johnson broke into a run. He was fast for someone with so large a paunch, and began to gain on his quarry. Chaloner
scrambled over the wall to find himself in a yard full of sheds. An indignant shout told him that the silversmiths’ apprentices,
who were playing dice around a brazier, did not appreciate trespassers on
their
property either. They came to their feet as one when he scaled a second wall, and he heard a furious commotion behind him
when they laid hold of the pursuing Johnson instead. The surgeon’s garbled explanation earned Chaloner vital seconds, allowing
him to vault across a third barrier, which led to yet another garden. The only way out was across a fourth fence, which he
hoped would see him in the churchyard of St Olave’s Silver Street.

But another garden followed, and another partition, and he felt himself begin to tire. Each barrier was becoming more difficult
to climb with his useless arm, and it occurred to him to give up. He changed his mind when he glanced back and saw the expression
on Johnson’s face. The man would not be taking prisoners; he intended to exact justice on the ‘thief ’ with his fists and
boots.

At last, Chaloner reached the graveyard and crawled into a tangle of undergrowth at the back of the church, breathing hard.
Within moments, the first of the apprentices arrived and, as Chaloner had hoped, hared towards the gate that led to the street.
Others followed, and the spy’s gamble that they would expect him either to claim sanctuary in the chapel or head for the nearest
exit
seemed to be paying off. Through the foliage, he saw Johnson heave himself over the wall, but instead of following the boys,
the surgeon trotted to a shed at the bottom of the cemetery and produced a key. He opened the door, peered inside, then locked
it again and waited for the apprentices to return.

‘Is he in the charnel house?’ asked one of the lads, arriving hot and gasping a few minutes later. He stepped past Johnson
and put his shoulder to the door with the obvious intention of breaking it down, but the surgeon shoved him away.

‘No, he is not there. I have just checked.’

‘Who was he?’ asked the youth, hammering on the wood anyway. ‘One of your students?’

‘A burglar,’ said Johnson angrily. ‘I imagine he wanted to steal the Grace Cup.’

‘You mean that big silver bucket with the bells on?’ asked the lad keenly. ‘The one you shake when you want it filled with
wine? It rings, and the servants come rushing to your aid?’

Johnson nodded. ‘We always get it out for the meals we enjoy after our dissections, and there is to be such an event this
afternoon. That rogue must have heard about it, so came to try his luck.’

‘Did you get a look at his face?’

Johnson gestured to his eyes. ‘I do not see well. He had a brown cloak, though. Did
you
see him?’

‘He always kept his back to me. Do you want us to scout around for men with brown cloaks? It will cost you a shilling for
every hour we are out.’

‘Here is sixpence,’ said Johnson. ‘And a crown is available if you bring him to me – quietly, though. I do not want to bother
my colleagues with this.’

The lad tapped his nose, then went to tell his fellows of their good fortune. It was some time before Chaloner felt it was
safe to leave his hiding place – and he turned his coat the right way out before he did so. He emerged carefully, then went
to the shed and picked the lock, closing the door behind him in case anyone came back. The charnel house, used to store bodies
until they were buried, had only one occupant, and Fitz-Simons’s name was written in chalk on a piece of slate at the end
of a crude table. Chaloner pulled off the sheet, and was confronted with a face that was unfamiliar.

He gazed down at the purple features thoughtfully. Fitz-Simons had disguised himself as a beggar, and the dead man in front
of him certainly looked as though
he
had been a vagrant. Could there be two dead men with the same name? Chaloner supposed it was possible. Then he recalled Holles
saying that vergers had been summoned from St Martin’s Church – not St Olave’s – to collect Fitz-Simons’s body. Had
Surgeon
Fitz-Simons been buried already, and Beggar Fitz-Simons was completely unrelated to him? Or had someone taken the opportunity
to exchange corpses? Chaloner stared for some time before accepting that these were questions he could not answer.

The chase had exhausted Chaloner, and he did not feel like walking all the way home, so he visited Leybourn instead. The surveyor
said nothing when he flopped in a chair next to the fire, although his eyes lingered on the grazed hands and the torn, soiled
clothes. He poured himself some wine and went back to his reading, commenting occasionally on a particularly interesting passage.
Frobisher’s descriptions of Guinea made it sound
like paradise, and Chaloner wondered how its people survived being torn from their homes and transported to the plantations.
He found a copy of
Musaeum Tradescantianum
, and learned a lot about edible plants before Leybourn announced he was going to bed. Chaloner took advantage of the spare
room, and did not stir until the clocks chimed six o’clock the next morning.

‘Are you in a better mood today?’ asked Leybourn, looking up from where he was scraping mould from a piece of bread. ‘You
were sullen company last night.’

‘I cannot play my viol, Will,’ said Chaloner in a low voice. The loss of music had been uppermost in his mind when he had
woken up, and meant he would probably be ‘sullen company’ at breakfast, too. ‘I tried yesterday, but it was like using someone
else’s hand.’

Leybourn was sympathetic. ‘Your skills will return once a surgeon removes the … ’ He pointed.

‘It is a new invention that will revolutionise surgery, according to Wiseman. Or a dangerous experiment that will maim its
victims, according to Lisle.’

‘Wiseman is the best surgeon in London, and I doubt either he or Lisle made a mistake over something as basic as a broken
arm. I am sure they both know what they are doing.’

‘They cannot
both
know,’ said Chaloner irritably. ‘Their diagnoses are contradictory.’

Leybourn handed him some ale. It was stronger than the brews Chaloner usually drank first thing in the morning, and would
make him drunk if he had too much of it, which would not be a good way to interview Dillon. He set it aside and ate some of
the mouldy bread instead, then left for Newgate Gaol, hoping Thurloe was right when he claimed the governor would not arrive
until later.

Newgate was one of London’s most notorious prisons. It was a robust structure that exuded a sense of despair and hopelessness,
and even its recent refacing did little to render it less forbidding. It was stone-built with a massive front gate and virtually
no windows, which Chaloner supposed was not surprising for a house of confinement. He hated such places intensely, having
spent time in several when spying missions had not gone according to plan, and did not find it easy to step up to the door
and present Thurloe’s letter to the guard. When the man spent a long time reading it, he considered abandoning the escapade
altogether. Arrest would be inevitable if the document was recognised as a forgery, and the prospect of another spell in a
dark, dripping underground pit brought him out in a cold sweat.

‘All right,’ the soldier said eventually. ‘We are expecting the governor a bit earlier than usual today, so with luck, you
will see him before you leave. I will tell him you are here.’

It was too late for second thoughts, and Chaloner had no choice but to follow him through a series of dank, echoing corridors
that led deep inside the maze of cells. A rank stench enveloped him. It was of sewage, old bedding, inedible food, and unwashed
bodies. He put his sleeve across his face, thinking that even the decaying reek in the Anatomical Theatre was preferable to
a prison’s odour.

Newgate was a noisy place, too. People shouted and moaned as he passed, women as well as men. They clattered chains against
the walls, and there always seemed to be a door slamming. A few prisoners had pewter cups or plates, and they clanged them
against the bars of their windows – if they were lucky enough to occupy a chamber
with real light. Others were crammed into dismal dungeons, their feet squelching in rotten straw as they paced back and forth.

‘The governor is stopping off at Smithfield Market for a bucket of bull’s blood on his way in,’ said Chaloner’s guide conversationally
as they went. ‘His wife makes these puddings, see. I am sure he will not be long, though, and he likes it when friends come
to see him.’

‘Oh,’ said Chaloner weakly, feeling his trepidation mount.

The guide escorted him to an ‘interviewing room’ and told him to wait. It was a nasty chamber, with a dirty lamp hanging from
the ceiling and no furniture but a table and two chairs. The floor had been swept, but there was an ominous stain on one of
the flagstones. Chaloner sat and rested his head in his hands, wondering whether he would be able to learn what he needed
from Dillon and escape before the governor exposed him as an impostor.

‘Now
there
is a pose visitors should be encouraged to avoid,’ came a mocking voice from the doorway. Chaloner leapt to his feet, supposing
the governor had arrived sooner than expected. ‘It is bad for the morale of the inmates.’

‘This is Mr Dillon, sir,’ said the guide, bowing as he backed out of the room. Chaloner shuddered when he heard a key turn
in the door on the other side.

‘Why the gloom?’ asked Dillon. ‘I am supposed to be the one in despair –
you
are free.’

Chaloner only hoped he would remain so. Dillon wore a large hat that shielded the upper half of his face, although it was
more affectation than disguise. He was extraordinarily well dressed, and was wiping greasy
fingers on a clean piece of linen – Chaloner’s arrival had evidently interrupted his morning meal. He looked around the cell
in distaste, flicking the chair with his cloth before deigning to lower his elegantly clad rump on to it. Dillon, it seemed,
was no ordinary prisoner, but one who was afforded a considerable degree of comfort.

Meanwhile, Chaloner tried to push from his mind the fact that it had been Dillon’s refusal to kill an enemy that had brought
about his old colleague Manning’s death, and he half wished Thurloe had not told him. It was difficult to sit in the same
room as a man whose actions had resulted in the execution of a friend. Dillon removed his hat, revealing his face for the
first time.

‘You!’ Chaloner exclaimed in astonishment.

Dillon raised his eyebrows, and spoke in the same laconic drawl Chaloner remembered from Ireland. ‘I might be forgiven for
saying the same. What are you doing here, Garsfield? The guard said you are a friend of the governor, but I doubt you are
anything of the kind.’

‘I did not know your name was Dillon,’ said Chaloner. ‘I thought it was O’Brien, and that you were one of the Dublin rebels
who escaped when we rounded up the culprits.’

Dillon glanced towards the door and lowered his voice. ‘Not everything is as it seems. People called you Thomas Garsfield
in Ireland, but I suspect you are actually Tom Heyden, Thurloe’s man. He said he might send you to see me if he could not
come himself. However, from our brief acquaintance in Dublin, I was under the impression that
you
worked for the Earl of Clarendon.’

‘Not everything is as it seems,’ repeated Chaloner. ‘How do you come to be in this mess?’