Murder on High Holborn (19 page)

‘Then thou art a villain,’ declared Strange. ‘King Jesus will not approve that sort of thing.’

‘It is you who is the villain,’ snarled Quelch. ‘And while we are on the subject of villains, Chaloner is one, too. I know his uncle was an admirable man, and the tale about being dismissed by Clarendon is true – I checked it myself – but the younger Chaloner’s timely appearance is suspicious. I vote we kill him before he betrays us.’

‘He will not betray us,’ said Atkinson. ‘He seems a decent soul.’

‘Besides, he knows nothing to our detriment,’ said Jones. ‘But treachery is a particularly loathsome vice, and I shall write a pamphlet on it in the Last Millennium.’

‘I should go.’ Strange stood, looming over the others. ‘Art thou sure thou must burden me with thy company, Quelch? I would far rather go alone.’

‘I imagine so,’ growled Quelch. ‘But I trust you even less than Manning and Chaloner.’

When the meeting broke up, Chaloner was faced with a dilemma. Which of the Sanhedrin might be persuaded to confide in him? He doubted the fanatical Jones or Strange would oblige, while Atkinson and Ursula seemed more interested in each other than insurrection and probably knew little of import. He decided to pick whichever of the others set off alone.

Unfortunately, Jones announced that he was going to read aloud from one of his pamphlets, and everyone except Quelch, Strange, Atkinson and Ursula went to listen. Chaloner followed the smaller group, in the hope that Quelch would eventually be on his own – the watchmaker might provide answers if Chaloner threatened to expose his criminal past. Again, the conspirators revealed their lack of professionalism by not looking behind them once to ensure they were not being followed, which allowed Chaloner to come so close that he was almost within touching distance.

They passed Gray’s Inn, and Atkinson stopped outside a shop. The swinging sign above the door said it was his own, the place where he made stockings.

‘Here is a quince cake,’ said Ursula, handing him a parcel with a sweet smile that revealed the depth of her affection for him. ‘For your assistant, Old Ned.’

‘It will be wasted on him,’ declared Quelch, eyeing it greedily. ‘We had better eat it instead. Then you can be assured that it will be used to fuel the Almighty’s work.’

‘For once, he speaketh the truth,’ said Strange. ‘It should not be wasted on the ungodly.’

Ursula glowed at the praise, and all four trooped inside to cut it up. Chaloner went in, too, pulling his hat low as he pretended to admire a display of stockings. No one gave him a second glance, because Old Ned immediately began to wail that he had never been so busy in his life – Lady Day was generating a lot of extra business, and orders were coming in faster than they could be filled. Even as he spoke, more customers arrived, including a wealthy merchant who was irked when told that his twelve pairs of woollen hose were not yet ready.

‘You shall have them tomorrow,’ promised Atkinson. ‘Even if it means me working all night.’

Mollified, the merchant left, at which point Old Ned began to bleat that the task was impossible. He faltered into silence when Ursula shrugged out of her coat.

‘I am as talented with a needle as I am at baking,’ she declared, sitting at the table. ‘Your merchant will be fortunate to have stockings stitched by me. Now hand me some thread.’

‘I suppose we might manage if you help,’ Old Ned conceded. ‘Especially if we send for Snowflake as well.’ He glanced hopefully at Strange and Quelch. ‘Can you two sew?’

‘Not me,’ said Quelch hastily. ‘And I have more important work to do.’

Strange could not reply because his mouth was full of quince cake. So was Quelch’s the moment they were outside, and both were so intent on eating that Chaloner felt he could have trodden on their heels and they would not have noticed. They passed St Giles-in-the-Fields, and his heart sank when he saw where they were heading – to Tyburn, a field west of the city where a permanent gibbet had been erected. The road was busy, and there was an atmosphere of excited anticipation. There was going to be an execution, and Strange and Quelch intended to watch.

Hoping that Quelch might follow the ‘entertainment’ with a session in a tavern, where he could be plied with drink and questions, Chaloner followed the pair through the throng, learning from snippets of overheard conversation that eight unfortunates were to die that day – four thieves, a witch and three traitors. The witch was unusual, and scuffles broke out as people vied for places that would afford them the best view of her death.

Chaloner had never seen Tyburn so busy, the crowds swollen by Lady Day visitors. Vendors were out in force to provide them with anything they might need – cushions to sit on, ale, pies and oranges. There was even a ‘Gentleman of Ease’ – a man with a bucket and a voluminous cloak that acted as a screen when his arms were outstretched – who provided a service for those who did not want the inconvenience of finding a bush.

Pickpockets abounded, although none bothered Chaloner, perhaps because he wore a sword and looked as though he knew how to use it. That did not stop the whores, though, who had arrived in droves, distinctive in their scanty clothing and rouged cheeks. Repelling their advances, he watched Strange and Quelch fight forward until they were at the scaffold itself, although he had no desire to be so close to it and did not follow. A distant cheer told him that the carts bearing the prisoners were approaching.

Soon it was bedlam, with the mob yelling abuse or encouragement and the condemned bellowing back. The thieves were cheerfully defiant, jesting with their hecklers and laughing carelessly. The witch looked frightened, though, and the rebels – identifiable by their finer clothes – were white-faced and sullen.

All were unloaded and forced to climb the steps to where the nooses awaited. A chaplain followed, chanting a psalm, but the hangman, unsettled by the unruly throng that pressed noisily around the platform, began to dispatch the thieves before the priest had finished. The onlookers were outraged, and surged forward as a solid, angry mass. The guards drew cutlasses and started beating them back, but not before two of the dangling burglars had been cut down and spirited away by friends, although whether dead or alive was impossible to say.

The man next to Chaloner chuckled his delight at the spectacle. He was a butcher, identifiable by his thick leather apron and the lingering smell of old blood. ‘I wish this would happen more often! Hangings have been dull since the Restoration.’ He consulted the programme that had been printed for the occasion. ‘The three traitors are next.’

He handed the leaflet to Chaloner, who read that the trio had stolen five hundred pounds from the treasury in Taunton for the purposes of funding a rebellion.

‘Look!’ the butcher crowed. ‘They are going to make speeches. This promises to be fun!’

It was a time-honoured tradition that the condemned should have an opportunity to vent in their last moments, and all three pulled reams of notes from their pockets, clearly aiming to make the most of it. Unfortunately for them, the guards were unnerved by what had happened with the thieves and wanted the rebels dead as soon as possible. The executioner agreed, because two were shoved into oblivion before they could say a word. The pages flew from their hands, and Chaloner saw Strange furiously punching the other spectators away so that Quelch could snatch the fluttering sheets from the air. The third insurgent howled at the top of his voice, contorting himself violently to avoid the noose being placed over his head.

‘The money was for them – for Strange and Quelch! They promised to buy weapons, but they betrayed us, and I will tell you everything if you let me live. I know secrets, such as the cannon—’

The rest of his sentence was lost as Strange began to pray in a mighty bellow that drowned out all else. Disturbed by the word
cannon
, Chaloner shoved his way forward, but the crowd was too dense and all three prisoners were dead by the time he made any headway. Strange was shouldering his way away from the scaffold, Quelch trailing in his wake as he stuffed the speeches in his pockets. Both stopped when they saw Chaloner.

‘What are you doing here?’ demanded Quelch.

‘The same as thou, of course,’ answered Strange, before Chaloner could speak for himself. ‘Watching the death of martyrs to the Cause.’

‘Is it true?’ asked Chaloner. ‘Did they steal money for your rebellion?’

‘You ask too many questions,’ hissed Quelch. ‘Desist, or I will slit your throat.’

‘Ignore him,’ said Strange, when the watchmaker had slouched away. ‘He hath an evil-temper – which will see him in hell, because Jesus will not permit such behaviour in the Glorious Design.’

‘Did that rebel mention cannon?’ asked Chaloner, unsettled enough to be blunt. ‘If so, you should let me see them before Easter Day, or I may not be able to—’

‘All will be revealed in time,’ interrupted Strange serenely. ‘Curb thy impatience.’

Grinning wildly, he began to push his way through the crowd again. Chaloner stared after him for a moment, then turned to follow Quelch, but it was the witch’s turn to die and the crowd strained forward suddenly, trapping him in a tight press of bodies. Alarmed by the surge, the hangman hurried to complete his grisly task, but the witch began to shriek, terrified, piercing howls that cut through the mob’s excited babble. An eerie silence descended.

‘Behold, the black clouds of hell,’ came another voice, so loud and shrill that it startled a flock of crows, which flapped away from their tree in a panicky flurry. Chaloner glanced up to see that heavy rainclouds had drifted in while the executions had been under way. It was coincidence, but the people around him began to whisper about omens and portents of doom.

‘Satan is coming!’ screamed the voice again. ‘I see him in the sky on a black charger.’

There was instant pandemonium. People began to claw and shove as they struggled to escape. Too many tried to climb over the scaffold, which had not been designed to accommodate such weight, and collapsed with a groan. The agonised cries of the injured did nothing to calm matters, and the guards, seeing the situation was beyond their control, abandoned their duties and fled. It was then that Chaloner saw Eliza Hatton.

She was standing on a cartwheel, one of a number of semi-permanent structures that had been erected to ensure those spectators at the back could be guaranteed a decent view. There was an expression on her cold, beautiful face that was difficult to read, and he wondered whether it had been she doing the yelling. He started to make his way towards her, but by the time he had fought his way across the stream of stampeding people she had gone.

He was about to begin battling his way towards the exit when a scrap of white caught his eye. It was a page from one of the speeches, overlooked when Quelch had grabbed the others. It was trampled, muddy and torn, but still legible. He picked it up, and read that the three ‘martyrs’ planned to rise from the dead at the Last Millennium, and would repay their executioners by dispensing some judgements of their own. One sentence made his blood run cold though:

Was that what the High Holborn Plot entailed? Using cannon on the city? Thurloe was wrong to dismiss their scheme as of no consequence – it promised to be one of the most deadly yet!

Feeling the need for company after the unedifying mêlée at Tyburn, Chaloner aimed for the Thames, to the Folly, or Floating Coffee House. This was a timber shed atop a barge, which was moored by the Somerset Stairs. It was usually anchored midstream, obliging patrons to hire a boat to row them there, but it was being repaired that day and so needed to be tied up at a pier. It had once been a fashionable place, but the river had not been kind to it, and peeling paintwork, rising mildew and the reek of seaweed and sewage meant that modish men had taken their custom elsewhere.

This suited its current patrons, who were mostly sea-officers, for whom the steady rock of waves was a joy rather than a reason to dash for the side. It was the favourite haunt of Captain Lester, whom Chaloner had met the previous autumn. Their friendship had been sealed when Lester, master of the ship that had been wrecked en route to Russia, had insisted on accompanying Chaloner to help him complete his mission for the Earl.

Chaloner climbed aboard and opened the door. There was no heating, so it was bitterly cold, but its atmosphere was relaxed and cordial, and he liked it much more than when it had been frequented by the rakes of Court.

‘Tom!’ exclaimed Lester in delight. He turned to his companions. ‘This is the fellow I was telling you about – the Lord Chancellor’s envoy, who risked all to rescue me when I was trapped by falling wreckage on my sinking ship.’

‘Hardly,’ said Chaloner, disliking the immediate attention the introduction earned. Moreover, he wanted that particular tale kept quiet, lest anyone asked whether the Earl’s jewels might not be lying at the bottom of the sea if vital moments had not been spent on saving the captain.

‘You are too modest.’ Lester took Chaloner’s arm and guided him to a place where they could talk undisturbed. ‘Have you come to congratulate me on my good fortune? I have just been given
Swiftsure
. We join the Channel Fleet on Monday – word is that the Dutch are planning an invasion, so we must put to sea as soon as possible.’