Chords and Discords (10 page)

“Mr Heron has been very generous to me.”

She said with some scepticism, “Indeed?”

We parted the other side of St Nicholas’s church with some reserve. I fancied she was not pleased I had spoken in Claudius Heron’s favour and I in turn was distressed that she seemed
to dislike the man. I would have preferred my benefactors to be on good terms with each other.

The day was well advanced by this time, and I was feeling extraordinarily hungry; I looked about for a tavern so far removed from decent morals as to serve drink on a Sunday. Something was
nagging at me, some inconsistency in what I had been told but I couldn’t quite place what it was. Then I recalled Mrs Bairstowe saying that her brother-in-law, Edward Bairstowe, had jumped
from the bridge. Had not the spirit in the alley said he was killed
on
the bridge?

It was a small point but would make a large difference, at least to Edward Bairstowe’s spirit. If he had jumped from the bridge, his spirit would be lost in the pull of the tides, washed
here and there in a truly dreadful fate. If he had died on the bridge itself, however, his spirit would still be there. But the alley spirit was hardly reliable; Mrs Bairstowe was surely far more
likely to know what had happened to her husband’s brother.

What struck me particularly was the way Mrs Bairstowe had leapt in so quickly to explain the matter, the way her glance had suggested Holloway had said too much. Was there something odd about
the death of Bairstowe’s brother that she did not wish me to know? And could that something throw any light on the threats against William?

I was in the Iron Market by this time, looking for one of the taverns that butchers frequent. As I passed a narrow chare, a girl burst from it into my path.

I smelt her before I saw her for she stank of fish. A girl of perhaps twenty, in a raging fury. She gripped an old shawl around a dress that was ragged at the hem; the hands that held the shawl
were reddened and swollen. She glared at me from behind heavy brows and dark tangled hair.

“You’re Patterson.” She was a local girl, clearly, from her accent, born and bred along the Tyne.

I knew at once who she must be. “You’re Tom Eade’s girl.”

“We were betrothed,” she said fiercely.

I took care to think over my reply. I had no wish to get scratched for my pains, and she looked capable of it. A couple of colliers, drunk already despite the early hour and the holy day,
sneered at us as they reeled past. We stood in the chill shade and I was shivering but she seemed too angry to care.

“Some say he was courting the Bairstowes’ maid.”

“They’re fools,” she spat.

“Then what was Tom doing in the Bairstowes’s yard?”

She hesitated. There was clearly something she didn’t want to tell me. That piqued my curiosity and suggested a solution of the mystery to me. Strolger had described Eade’s writing
as neat but well-formed. Well, there is nothing so easy for a good writer to imitate a childish scrawl; Eade could have written the threatening notes to William Bairstowe, left them under his door
and courted the maid on the sly to gain access to the house. But why?

“Tom didn’t like William Bairstowe?”

The girl laughed harshly. “Who does?” She flung her tangled hair back from her face. “ To the devil with William Bairstowe! I want the ones who killed Tom.”

“The wind killed him.”

She looked me up and down contemptuously. “You’re no better than the rest of them!”

“I need facts,” I said irritably. “Why should anyone want to kill Eade?”

She stared at me for a long time, biting her lip. But she had already taken the decision to trust me or she would not have approached me.

“We were going to be married,” she said. “We were going to set up a stall selling gruel. We were saving for it. And once we’d got that, we’d have saved every penny
for a coffee house. We were going to make our mark in the world.” She was as tightly coiled as a jack-in-the-box, as tight and as powerless.

I was reminded of Tom’s alleged miserliness; had it merely been prudence after all? Saving for his own future, and for his lover’s? But why should that cause his death?

“Find them,” she said, fiercely.

And she whisked herself back into the chare and was gone.

I went on, mulling over the small amount of information the fisher girl had given me and cursing her for not being more informative. The Bairstowes’ maid had believed Tom
Eade was courting her, but the fisher girl had denied that. So what had Eade been doing? Had he merely been philandering? Perhaps. The fisher girl seemed to imply that money had been involved. How?
One thing was for certain; I was becoming increasingly sure Eade had not died accidentally.

I had reached the end of the Iron Market when a spirit stopped me. It clung, a dim sheen, on a lantern above a house door. There was a rough edge to the spirit’s voice that suggested the
living man had been from Devon or those parts. A seaman, undoubtedly.

“You Charlie Patterson?” he said.

“
Charles
Patterson.”

“Aye, that’s the one. Yer wanted.”

“How flattering,” I said.

“The gent in the shop.”

“John Holloway?”

“The gent that sells leather.”

Where the devil was the spirit? He had gone from the lamp. He startled me by laughing close by, in a deep shadow cast by an outjutting stone. I was forced to remind myself of the advisability of
keeping on the good side of spirits; they can spread a discreditable rumour from one end of the town to the other in the time it takes a living man to walk two or three steps.

“Tell Mr Holloway,” I said with extreme politeness, “that I will wait on him tonight.”

“It’ll be too late. He says it’ll happen this afternoon, during Evensong.”

I was unsure the exact time they said the late service began at All Hallows but it could not be far off. An hour perhaps – it was generally in mid-afternoon.

“What will happen?”

“Just a messenger,” the spirit said, with pleasurable malice. “That’s me. No one tells me anything worth knowing, no more than they did in life. He said to get there at
once, sir. To the shop. On the Side.” And the spirit was off, leaving only a blank wall patched with sunshine.

The Side was not far from the Iron Market; if I cut through two or three alleys, I could reach Holloway’s shop relatively quickly. Why in heaven’s name did he want to see me? Had
there been another threat? I turned into the first alley, a long narrow passage between grimy walls. No sun here – just a chill damp. Into a second alley at right angles to the first.

I became aware of a great silence.

I stopped.

I was deep in the maze of alleys, all of them the same: grimy, befouled, narrow. Doors were closed firmly against the world. Windows were broken; some were patched with paper, others open
blankly to pitch-dark rooms. Empty rooms, uninhabited.

Silence.

I could hear my own breathing, uneven, too quick.

The alleys were unspirited. That was all. Nothing to be afraid of. Merely an absence of both life and death. Nothing and no one but me.

My footfalls echoed. I was walking slowly now, trailing my hand against the filthy wall. I felt slime on my fingers, snatched them back. I quickened my pace.

An unspirited street? How could a whole street be unspirited? Particularly a street like this where the poor had lived for generations? No spirits at all? My heart was beating more quickly; I
forced myself to keep calm. What danger could there be in an unspirited street?

A whisper. Somewhere above me. High on a wall, under the eaves. A spirit. A spirit after all.

So why was I so scared that I suddenly started to run? The words, the words I had heard whispered. That was it. Words.

“That’s him!”

And then the blow.

The force of the blow knocked me to hands and knees. Hard cobbles came up to hit me. Pain jarred my elbows and shoulders. I tried to twist, to come to my feet. My right knee
buckled.

Another blow. In the small of my back, pushing me down again. I scrabbled to crawl out of the way. A punch to the side of my head. The world exploded in pain. I gasped, tried to yell. No breath.
More blows. To my back, my shoulders, my neck, my skull. I curled up, found myself against a hard wall.

And still the blows kept coming.

I had shut my eyes in protective reflex. I squeezed them open, trying to look at my assailant.

All I saw was a sparkle, a great shimmer of light.

A punch landed in my stomach, winding me. A woman’s voice shrieked in excitement. And all the time, the light, the brightness of it hurting my eyes...

In God’s name!

And suddenly...

Nothing.

I lay against the wall, eyes closed again, gasping for breath, aching, trying to hold my breath against pain that stabbed through my ribs. My right knee was on fire.

No footsteps. I had heard no retreating footsteps. They must all still be there, looking down at me, grinning at me, waiting for me to get my breath back, to be fit for another pummelling. I was
shaking with fear and rage. All that was left to me was pride; I lifted my head, opened my eyes and saw...

No one.

No living man, at least.

I set my head back and stared at the wall an arm’s breadth away, across the alley. It gleamed and shimmered and sparkled like a country river on a summer’s day. Diamond-bright points
of light quivered and shook; paler gleams were like visible echoes. Across the bricks of the wall, the crumbling lime mortar, the rotten window frames, the fragmented glass. Across the cobbles to
within an inch of my feet.

Spirits.

Spirits had beaten me?

“He’s scared,” said a female spirit mockingly.

“Afraid of a few dead men,” said a man, in malicious pleasure.

“Anyone would think we could hurt him.”

They all laughed, laughed and shimmered and taunted, and skimmed up and down the wall like a river on fire. I took a breath – a stinking charnel breath. My voice shook as I tried to speak;
I caught and steadied it. “Having fun?”

There was a silence. A man said: “Dinna tempt us.” He had been a ruffian in life by the sound of him. “We might have a second try at ye.”

A howl of laughter.

“If you’d told me you didn’t like strangers,” I said, with savage fear and anger, “I’d have gone the long way round.” I was damned if I’d humour
this rabble. Spirits attacking the living? Mothers keep naughty children in bed at night with frightening stories (
t
here’s an old old spirit that eats children
) but no one past the age
’s name, how had they done it!

“Tell us you’re sorry, dear,” the woman said. “We might spare ye yet.”

I swore at them. “Why did you attack me?”

They roared, a cackling of laughter like the burning of dry hay. It made my head ache. And there was that dreadful stench, like hair singed by fire.

“Why not?” said a man.

I remembered the whisper I’d heard, just before the first blow. “That’s him.” They’d been waiting for me. For
me
. Why? And how the devil could they know I
was coming that way?

The spirit in the Iron Market had been involved, I realised, the one who told me John Holloway waited to see me. I’d wager Holloway had sent no such message. It had been a trap. From the
Iron Market, I was almost certain to come this way to get to the Side. And if I didn’t? Well, nothing was lost. They could try again later. But why?

“Why attack me?” I demanded.

“Why not?” said the woman again. “Got to have our fun, ain’t we? What else is to do when you’re dead?”

Their laughter folded around me, ringing in my ears, aching in my knee. They were yelling at each other in strange triumph; I heard rough voices, a Scotchman or three, even an Irish voice. I
gritted my teeth – I must conquer this fear.

“I know who you are,” I said, interrupting them. “You were killed in the press gang riots in Queen Anne’s time.”

“You’re clever,” said one of the Scotchmen. He made the words sound like an insult. “Know how many o’ us got killed that day?”

“Thirty-one, dear,” said the woman. “And they blamed
us
for it.” A mutter of anger from the other spirits. “If we hadn’t tried to hide the menfolk from
the pressmen, they said, there’d not have been a stampede and no one’d got trampled.”

“Nah,” said a new male voice. “We’d all have gone to sea in Her Majesty’s navy instead and got ourselves killed the proper way, fighting the Frenchies or the Dutch.
Much more respectable way to die.”

“So, dear,” said the woman. “What are we going to do with you?”

The great shine on the wall shifted. Every part of it was a single spirit, darting here and there, drifting from top to bottom of the wall and back again, the brightness of them all piercing my
aching head.

“You could just go away,” I said, then started to laugh. There was an edge of hysteria in the laughter but it made me feel better. They were dead, confined to this one small street;
I could get up and walk away. “No,” I said. “
I’ll
go away.”

I took hold of a rotting window frame just above my head and pulled myself to my feet. The wood splintered under my fingers and came free with a scurry of wood lice, and centipedes and
cockroaches. I couldn’t get myself quite upright; the pain in my ribs bent me over, my right knee barely held when I put my weight on it. Would they let me go, or would they attack me
again?

“Go safely, dear,” the woman said, and the laughter of the spirits followed me all the way as I limped down to the safety of the Side. I felt sore to the bones. Shaking and bruised.
Still afraid. And angry, angry beyond all reason.

I must have looked drunk, reeling along the Sunday-quiet streets, muttering and cursing, holding my ribs as if I felt sick, limping like the most melodramatic of beggars. I knew I could not get
all the way to my own lodging – Hugh’s rooms on Westgate were much closer. I would go there.