The Butcher of Smithfield (27 page)

‘What news?’ called Brome to the throng, as he, Hodgkinson and Chaloner squeezed on to a bench where there was not really
enough room for them.

‘You are the newsmonger, so you tell us,’ quipped Nott, the Lord Chancellor’s bun-haired bookseller. His companions laughed.

‘And if you have none, Nott will tell you about the vicar of Wollaston,’ said a fat man in an apothecary’s hat.

Brome exchanged an uneasy glance with Hodgkinson. ‘We are carrying that story in tomorrow’s
Newes
, so how do you know it already?’

Nott held up a handwritten newsletter. ‘The vicar’s Book of Common Prayer was so besmeared with tar and grease that he was
obliged to use another one to conduct the divine service. I warrant L’Estrange will blame phanatiques.’

There was more laughter, and Brome looked dismayed. ‘Damn this Wenum and his treachery! I am not a violent man, but I would
like to punch him for what he is doing to us. Will you stop him, Heyden? I know L’Estrange told you not to meddle, but this
cannot go on.’

‘Wenum is dead,’ replied Chaloner. ‘But he may have
had connections to Newburne. And I am obliged to investigate
him
, because the Lord Chancellor ordered me to do so.’

‘Good,’ said Brome. ‘However, I recommend you do not tell L’Estrange. It would be a pity to lose you to his ready sword.’

Hodgkinson pulled a face when he tasted Haye’s beverage. ‘Try a pipe, Heyden. It takes away the taste of coffee, which is
the only reason men smoke. If there was no coffee, there would be no need for tobacco.’

‘I disagree,’ said Brome, tearing his thoughts away from dead men and stolen news. ‘Tobacco has its own virtues, and its popularity
is quite independent of coffee. Joanna likes a pipe on occasion, but she would never touch coffee.’

‘I bought a notice in
The Newes
last month,’ announced the fat apothecary. ‘I lost a bay gelding from near the pump in Chancery Lane, and was hoping an advertisement
might see it home. Tom Wright got his beast back when he bought a notice, and so did Captain Hammond. But I am still waiting
for mine to appear.’

‘You are just unlucky, Reeves,’ said Nott. ‘Not everyone who advertises is fortunate enough to have his property returned.
The thieves must have taken it into the country, away from the influence of the newsbooks. Not everyone reads them once you
get past Islington.’

‘We were talking about the relative virtues of coffee and tobacco, Reeves,’ said Brome, not wanting to discuss business when
he could be relaxing. ‘Which do you prefer?’

‘Tobacco, of course,’ replied Reeves. ‘But
we
were talking about horses, which is far more interesting. Unless you have news to impart? And I do not mean
foreign stuff, either. How is the Queen? The last I heard, she had distemper. My dog had that, and it was not pretty.’

‘You had better call it an “indisposition” next time,’ whispered Hodgkinson to Brome. ‘Reeves is not the first one to question
your use of “distemper”. I know it is what the Court physicians told you, but they obviously do not know how to communicate
with the general public, and you do not want to be responsible for the rumour that the Queen is a hound.’

‘She is a good lady,’ said Chaloner coolly, thinking of the small woman with the dark, unhappy eyes who had asked him to go
to Portugal. ‘You should never write anything disparaging about her.’

‘William Smegergill is murdered,’ said Nott, addressing the room in general. ‘His brains dashed out, and then his head forced
into a puddle until he drowned.’

‘Oddsfish!’ exclaimed Reeves. ‘That is an unpleasant way to go! I heard he had taken to playing strange music of late, and
that Maylord did the same. On one occasion, they bowed a discordant harmony at Court, and the King was obliged to order them
to stop.’

Nott tamped more tobacco into his pipe. ‘What an odd coincidence! L’Estrange has been doing the same thing. My shop is opposite,
as you know, and I often hear him playing. For the last three weeks, he has been practising some very nasty tunes.’

‘Foreign jigs,’ elaborated Reeves darkly. ‘They are probably designed to bewitch us, so Dutchmen can steal our horses while
we listen. Why do you think they have built themselves a navy?’

‘To develop trade routes to Africa, America and the Far East,’ replied Chaloner. He knew a lot about the
Dutch, and their navy was an interesting subject to him. ‘They are expanding their—’

‘Rubbish,’ said Reeves, evidently not of a mind for erudite discussion. ‘They want our horses, and anyone who disagrees with
me does not deserve to own one.’

Thurloe and Temperance had been right when they said no one at Newgate would know Mary Cade, and even the two shillings Chaloner
had earned from L’Estrange did not buy him the information he had hoped for. It was not easy to part with funds that could
have been spent on food, but he reminded himself that a few lean days were a small price to pay for his friend’s welfare.
One warden, more helpful than the others, suggested he try the Fleet Prison, because it held mostly debtors, and the woman
in the picture looked too well fed to be the common kind of criminal. Chaloner supposed it was worth a try, although he was
loath to set foot in another gaol that day. Visiting Newgate had left him nauseous, and he wondered whether he would ever
be able to enter a prison without the uncomfortable sense that he might never come out.

That evening, he played his viol, then sat at the table, studying the music he had taken from Maylord’s chimney. It made no
more sense to him than the rest of his investigation, and when he attempted to play it, his landlord hammered on the wall
to make him stop. He wondered why the old musician had kept such dismal compositions when the best place for them was on the
fire. Chaloner might have put them there, had he been able to afford the fuel to light one.

He was too restless to sleep, mostly because he was hungry and there was nothing to eat. When he saw it
had stopped raining, he went out, not with any specific destination in mind, but just to prowl around the city that was now
his home. He glanced at the lamp-lit windows of the Golden Lion before he left, and was bemused to see Giles Dury there. The
assistant news-monger was gazing absently into the street, and although Chaloner could think of no earthly reason why Dury
should be watching him, he still slipped back inside his house and exited through the back door instead.

He wandered aimlessly, alert to the sounds of the night: the rumble of drunken voices from alehouses, the shriller babble
of an argument in a coffee house, the distant howling of a pack of dogs, and the ever-present roar of water rushing under
London Bridge. He went all the way to Cripplegate without anyone giving him more than a passing glance. When he arrived at
Monkwell Street, he took refuge in the gate to Chyrurgeons’ Hall, standing so still that he was invisible to all but those
with the very sharpest eyes. Leybourn’s house was lit in two places. The attic on the top floor had a lamp, and Chaloner could
see his friend working there, snatching books from the shelves around him with a fierce concentration that said he was deep
in one of his incomprehensible theories.

The second light was at the back, so Chaloner scaled a wall and dropped silently into the garden. He walked stealthily towards
the kitchen and looked through the window. Mary sat by the hearth, and three men were with her, all drinking from Leybourn’s
best silver goblets. Chaloner regarded them thoughtfully. They were the same three who had attacked him and Smegergill, and
then who had chased him at the Rhenish Wine House: Nose, the leader, and his henchmen, the Scot and Fingerless. Mary had obviously
not been boasting when
she claimed to know dangerous people. Yet surely
she
could not have set her cronies after him that night? They had exchanged a few cool words by that point, but nothing to warrant
murder. Or had she already identified Chaloner as a threat to her plans, and had decided to act promptly?

He could not hear what the foursome were saying to each other, and suspected they were keeping their voices low so as not
to be heard upstairs. He looked at the door that led to the hallway and saw a piece of twine emerging from under it. He did
not understand its significance until he heard the faint jangle of a bell. Immediately, the men rose and made for the back
door. As they left, the Scot and Fingerless shoved Leybourn’s goblets in their pockets, although Nose left his on the table.
None of them noticed Chaloner in the shadows. A few moments later, Leybourn appeared, yawning and rubbing his eyes. Mary insinuated
herself into her arms, and he bent to kiss her.

Chaloner turned away and made his way home.

For the first time since Chaloner had returned from Portugal, the sun was shining when he woke. It caught the brown leaves
in the churchyard of St Dunstan-in-the-West, and turned them to a deep, glowing orange that shimmered in the breeze. Yet even
the glories of a bright autumn day did not distract him from his worries.

He was deeply disturbed by what he had witnessed at Leybourn’s house the previous evening, and his inclination was to visit
the Fleet Prison in a concerted effort to see what could be learned about Mary. But Newburne was due to be buried at noon,
and there was a chance that Chaloner might overhear something important as the mourners talked together. He would be no good
to Leybourn if he was obliged to leave London because of a lack of employment, so he decided to dedicate the morning to the
solicitor’s murder.

Newburne had lived on Old Jewry, an affluent thoroughfare that ran between Cheapside and the London Wall, which boasted two
churches and the kind of houses that were owned by the upper mercantile classes. It did not take him long to identify Newburne’s
home. It was one of the
largest, and a lot of money had recently been spent on it. He recalled the tales of Newburne’s wealth, and saw they had been
true – and so they should be, he thought. The man had earned a wage from L’Estrange, had business dealings with Crisp,
and
had been in the Lord Chancellor’s pay.

It was too early for anything to be happening, but Robin’s Coffee House was opposite, and provided a comfortable refuge in
which to watch and wait. He found a seat in the window, and handed over a large leather token worth threepence to the coffee-boy;
his cat had knocked a jar from the mantelpiece that morning, and he had recovered the token from among the shards. It was
enough to buy him three dishes of a thick black sludge that felt as though it was doing harm when he swallowed it, and free
access to a fire and
The Newes
, published that morning. Men came to drink before they started work, all thrusting through the door with the cry, ‘What news?’
Most received the reply that there had been an outrage perpetrated on Mr Cobb. Curious to know what outrage, Chaloner read:

It came to me this day, from a very sure hand, that one Mr Cobb, the Vicar of Wollaston, Northamptonshire, applying himself
according to his duty to God and the lawes of the land to the Reading of the Divine Service, found the Common Prayerbook so
bedaubed with tar and grease upon the services for the day that he was obliged to borrow another. Something I should add to
this, of what I myself know for a certain truth. But first, it is too
early
to mention it; and secondly, it is too
foule
for the Honour of the Nation to be made publique.

It sounded intriguing, and Chaloner wondered whether L’Estrange really did have a ‘foule’ secret to impart to
his readers, or whether it was just a device to make them buy the next issue. He glanced across the road, but Newburne’s house
was still closed, so he read that Rowland Pepin, famous for his Cure of the Rupture and Broken Belly, also made ‘easy truffles
of all kinds’, and that Theophilus Buckworth’s lozenges still worked against coughs, catarrhs and strongness of breath. He
also learned that in Vienna, there was news of the Turks ‘up and down’, which was vague enough to mean nothing at all. His
own piece was there, too, although it had been edited to make it more sensational than it should have been.

Eventually, when he started thinking he should have gone to the Fleet Prison after all, the door to Newburne’s mansion opened,
and people began to arrive to pay their respects. First in was a man in a cloak and a large hat, surrounded by a mob of heavily
armed henchmen. The Butcher of Smithfield was obviously intent on dispatching his obligations early, although Chaloner did
not imagine there would be much of a queue, given Newburne’s unpopularity. He was surprised to see he was wrong: the funeral
was not due to take place for another three hours, but a huge number of folk followed Crisp’s example. Chaloner could only
assume they were making obligatory appearances, so as not to offend one of Newburne’s three powerful and generally nasty masters.
After a while, when the initial rush was over and Crisp and his henchmen had gone, the spy attached himself to a party of
law-clerks and followed them inside.

The front parlour contained Newburne and his coffin, reclaimed from St Bartholomew the Less for the occasion, and Dorcus Newburne.
She was prettier than he
expected, and her face was kind. She sat in a chair at the foot of the casket, clothed in black from head to toe. L’Estrange
was at her side, hand resting solicitously on her shoulder, while Brome and Joanna hovered uncertainly nearby.

Brome looked uncomfortable in his dark mourning gear. The sword he wore was thin and new, and Chaloner was under the impression
that it had never been drawn. Joanna was equally awkward in a boned waistcoat that over-accentuated her skinny figure. She
eschewed the current fashion for wigs, and her brown hair still fell in the ridiculous rabbitear style he had come to associate
with her. She was pale and sad, and her large brown eyes looked bigger than usual that day. When Dorcus began to cry, she
knelt next to her and held her hand. L’Estrange leaned down to murmur something encouraging, and the widow reached up to touch
his cheek. He shot her one of his grins, all flashing teeth, gleaming eyes and glinting earrings, but the smile faded when
he spotted Chaloner. Ignoring Dorcus’s squeal of distress, he abandoned his post and came to grab the spy’s wrist, shunting
him into an antechamber where they could speak privately.