The Butcher of Smithfield (7 page)

Chaloner was not entirely sure he was joking. ‘He might be suspicious if you suddenly start producing books and publications
demonstrating its use.’

Leybourn nodded thoughtfully. ‘I would have to modify
it, pass it off as my own. Incidentally, have you visited St Paul’s Cathedral recently? You do not need to be a surveyor to
see it is unsound, and I told the King today that he should close it before it falls down and kills someone. Christopher Wren
submitted some brilliant plans for its rebuilding, but the clerics baulk.’

‘I would baulk, too,’ said Chaloner, making a dash for St Margaret’s porch as the rain came down even harder. ‘Wren’s design
is nasty – like an Italian mausoleum.’

‘Rubbish! It is nothing short of brilliant. In fact, if you had any loyalty to your city, you would break into the old cathedral
and set it afire. That would put an end to the clergy’s procrastination.’

Chaloner raised his eyebrows. ‘First, you encourage me to commit burglary and now arson. Do you want me hanged?’

‘Not unless you leave me some money in your will. Then I can buy myself a Gunter’s Quadrant.’

A verger conducted the visitors to the crypt, where Maylord was not the only dead citizen to have been granted refuge under
its gloomy arches. A total of three bodies lay there, all neatly packed in wooden boxes, their faces decorously covered with
clean white cloths. The verger explained that many houses in Westminster were small, and it was not always possible to have
a corpse at home until a funeral could be arranged. It was all right twenty years ago, he sighed, because then you died one
day and were in the ground the next. But in these enlightened times, ceremonies were grander and required more time to arrange.
A funeral in London was a statement of earthly achievement, and no one wanted to be shoved underground without first showing
off all he had accomplished.

‘Maylord,’ prompted Chaloner.

The verger removed one of the cloths. ‘He used to play the organ here when our regular man was indisposed, and he never charged
us for it. He was a good soul.’

‘Do you know how he died?’ asked Chaloner, gazing at the man who had smiled a lot, even during the dark days of the civil
wars. Laughter lines were scored around Maylord’s eyes and mouth, and Chaloner thought it a terrible pity that the world was
deprived of his gentle humour.

‘Cucumbers,’ replied the verger. ‘Did you not hear? It caused quite a stir.’

‘How do you know it was cucumbers?’

‘They were on a plate in his room, and he was dead on the floor with a piece in his mouth.’ The verger regarded him suspiciously.
‘You said you were a friend, so how come you do not know?’

‘I have been away,’ replied Chaloner truthfully. ‘He wrote two days ago, asking me to visit him.’

‘Then it is a shame you did not come sooner,’ said the verger, rather accusingly. ‘You might have been able to help him. You
know how he was always happy? Well, these last two weeks he was miserable and bad tempered. He snapped at the choirboys for
fidgeting, and he told me to mind my own business when I asked him what was wrong. It was something to do with Court, I imagine.
It is an evil place, and Maylord was the only decent one among the lot of them.’

‘But you do not
know
it was Court business for certain?’ pressed Chaloner. The verger shook his head. ‘Did he have any particular friends he might
have confided in?’

‘He had lots, but the closest was William Smegergill
– a Court musician, like him. Do you know Smegergill? He has a ravaged complexion, because of a pox when he was a child.’

The description was not familiar, but Chaloner made a mental note to track Smegergill down. ‘Did you ever see Maylord with
a solicitor called Newburne?’

The verger was disdainful. ‘Of course not! Maylord had more taste than to associate with the likes of him. Why do you ask?’

‘Because they both died from eating cucumbers.’

‘Coincidence,’ replied the verger, so promptly that Chaloner knew it was an observation that had been made before. ‘I could
cite three other men who have been taken by cucumbers this year alone – namely Valentine Pettis the horse-trader, and a pair
of sedan-chairmen. If people
will
eat cucumbers, then they must bear the consequences.’

‘You think they are that dangerous?’ asked Leybourn.

The verger nodded fervently. ‘Oh, yes! They are green, see, and no good will come of feeding on greenery. Have you finished
here? Only I need to wash the nave floor. Mud gets tracked everywhere this weather, and this is the Parliament church, so
we like to keep it looking nice.’

Chaloner stared at Maylord, and was suddenly seized with the absolute conviction that cucumbers were innocent of causing his
death. Physicians, he knew, considered cucumber poison to be insidious – its vapours collected in the veins, and any ill effects
tended to occur gradually, not the moment the fruit was taken into the mouth.
Ergo
, either Maylord had suffered the kind of seizure that was relatively common in older people, or someone had done him harm.
Moreover, the musician’s recent agitation suggested something was sorely amiss, and it was odd that he should
so suddenly die. Why anyone would want to hurt him was beyond Chaloner, and he made a silent oath to find out exactly what
had happened, and to ensure that whoever was responsible would pay.

He nudged Leybourn, and indicated the door with a nod of his head. He wanted to examine Maylord more closely, but he could
hardly do it with the verger watching. Ordinarily, he would have bribed the man to look the other way, but sixpence was unlikely
to be enough. It took a moment for Leybourn to understand what he wanted, and when he did, he slapped his hand across his
mouth.

‘I am going to be sick,’ he announced.

The verger gazed at him in horror. ‘Not down here!’

‘Escort me upstairs, then. My friend can finish paying his respects, and you can take me to fresh—’ But the verger did not
want a mess, and was already hauling Leybourn away.

Chaloner waited until he could no longer hear their voices, then inspected the musician’s hands, head and neck, looking for
signs that he had been brained, strangled or had fought an attacker. There was nothing. Then he leaned close to Maylord’s
mouth and sniffed, but it was an imprecise way to look for poison, and he was not surprised when it told him nothing. He stood
back, reluctant to move clothes in a hunt for wounds, because he suspected the verger would not be long and he did not want
to be caught doing something sinister. Then he saw an odd discoloration on the face: Maylord’s lips were bruised.

Gently, he opened the mouth. An incisor was broken, and when he touched it with his finger, the edge was sharp, suggesting
it had happened shortly before death.
Further, teeth marks were etched into Maylord’s lower lip. Chaloner had seen such injuries before – when someone had taken
a cushion and pressed it hard against a victim’s face. It was an unpleasant way to kill, because it involved several minutes
of watching a man’s losing battle for life at extremely close range. The fact that the culprit had then planted evidence to
‘prove’ Maylord had died from eating cucumbers suggested a ruthlessness that made Chaloner even more firmly resolved to see
him on the gallows.

It was still raining when they emerged from the church, Leybourn resting a hand on Chaloner’s shoulder to maintain the pretence
of queasiness. Heavy clouds brought an early dusk, and lamps already gleamed in Westminster Hall and the shops around the
old clock tower. They set slanting shafts of light gleaming on the wet cobbles, and everywhere people seemed to be in a hurry,
wanting to be at home on a night that promised cold and miserable weather.

‘Smegergill,’ said Chaloner as they walked. ‘Do you know him?’

Leybourn shook his head. ‘Thurloe might, though.’

Chaloner had wanted to visit Thurloe anyway, to tell him he was home, so he and Leybourn walked up King Street, then along
The Strand towards Chancery Lane and Lincoln’s Inn. Boys with burning torches offered to light their way, and Leybourn hired
one after he skidded and almost fell in some slippery entrails that had been dumped outside a butcher’s shop.

‘Are you sure you should be doing this?’ he asked Chaloner as they went. ‘Visiting Thurloe, I mean. He
was
Spymaster General for Cromwell’s government, and
he is still considered a dangerous enemy of the state, despite having been dismissed from all his posts and living in quiet
retirement. You do work for the Lord Chancellor, after all.’

‘The Earl does not consider Thurloe a threat, and nor does he object to my continued association with him. It would not matter
if he did, anyway. He cannot dictate who my friends should be.’

‘Some would say that puts a question-mark over your loyalty to him. Thurloe hired you and trained you, and you remained under
his command for nigh on ten years.’

‘All of it overseas,’ Chaloner pointed out. ‘Not once did I spy on the King or his retinue – I only ever gathered intelligence
on hostile foreign regimes. And Clarendon knows it.’

Leybourn raised his hands defensively. ‘
I
do not doubt your allegiance to the Royalist government – I am just telling you what others might say.’

Chaloner made no reply, and Leybourn dropped the subject when they arrived at their destination. Lincoln’s Inn, one of four
London establishments that licensed lawyers, comprised a range of buildings around two pleasant courtyards. There was a large
private garden to the north, and Chaloner was astonished when he saw the change in it. When he had left, there had been an
overgrown chaos of elms, beeches and oaks, all shading long-grassed meadows. Now the trees had been pruned or felled, and
everything bespoke order and neatness. There were gravelled paths for the benchers – the Inn’s ruling body – to stroll around,
and little box hedges kept other plants within their allotted spaces. It looked more like an idealised painting than a real
garden.

‘Does Thurloe mind this?’ The ex-Spymaster had
derived much pleasure from his early-morning walks in the wilderness, and Chaloner was not sure the tamed version would be
quite the same.

Leybourn smiled. ‘He loves it, much to his surprise. The paths mean he can keep his feet dry, and you know what he is like
with his health – always fretting about becoming ill.’

They made their way to the smaller and older of the Inn’s yards, known as Dial Court. Back in the spring, Dial Court had boasted
a sundial – a massively ugly affair of curly iron and oddly placed railings, inexplicably placed so it rarely caught the sun.
It had been removed, and in its place was something that looked like a hollow globe.

‘It is a device for tracking the movements of the stars,’ explained Leybourn, seeing Chaloner look curiously at it. ‘The old
sundial rusted in the wet weather, and pieces kept falling off, so I recommended this instead. The benchers are very pleased
with it, and spend hours out here on clear nights.’

Chaloner doubted there would be many of those – even when it was not raining, London’s skies were filled with the smoke from
thousands of fires. He followed Leybourn up the stairs to Chamber XIII, where John Thurloe had a suite of rooms that were
all wooden panels and leather-bound books. They were warm, comfortable and one of few places where Chaloner felt truly safe.

‘Thomas!’ exclaimed Thurloe, standing from his fireside chair when they entered. He was a slightly built man, with large blue
eyes and a sharp lawyer’s mind. ‘I expected you home weeks ago and was beginning to worry. What kept you?’

‘The situation transpired to be more complex than
I thought,’ replied Chaloner vaguely. He did not want to talk about Iberia when he could be soliciting information about Maylord
and Newburne.

‘Well, I am pleased to see you safe,’ said Thurloe, gesturing for his guests to sit near the fire. The room smelled of wood-smoke,
wax polish and something pungent and sweet. It put Chaloner in mind of Isabella, and he realised the scent was that of oranges.
He glanced at the table, and saw some peel, left from the ex-Spymaster’s dinner.

‘Vienna is a very dangerous city,’ said Leybourn, still fishing. ‘The war with the Turks is growing ever more serious, if
you can believe the newsbooks.’

‘
Can
you believe the newsbooks?’ asked Thurloe, deftly diverting the surveyor’s attention. He understood his former spy’s reluctance
to talk about his travels, and would never quiz him about them.

‘Not the ones by L’Estrange,’ said Leybourn. ‘That man would not know the truth if it bit him.’

Chaloner outlined his latest commission from the Earl, while Thurloe listened without interruption. When he had finished,
the ex-Spymaster steepled his fingers and looked thoughtful.

‘Did William confide details of
his
recent quarrel with L’Estrange?’ he asked.

Chaloner regarded Leybourn with a puzzled frown. ‘What quarrel?’

‘I would rather not discuss it,’ replied Leybourn stiffly. ‘It is still a sore subject, and will put me in a sour mood for
the rest of the day.’

‘Thomas knows virtually nothing of London life.’ Thurloe silenced Chaloner’s indignant objection with a flash of his blue
eyes. ‘And your experience mirrors that
of many other booksellers, William, so you must tell him what the Earl’s commission might lead him into. A sour mood is a
small price to pay for providing a friend with information that might keep him safe.’

‘If you put it like that …’ Leybourn turned to Chaloner. ‘I told you L’Estrange fines booksellers for hawking unlicensed tomes.
Well,
I
was one of his victims – to the tune of six pounds.’

It was a lot of money. ‘Did you write something seditious?’

‘Of course not,’ snapped Leybourn angrily. ‘The tome in question is the fourth edition of
Gunter’s Works
, with diligent amendments and enlargements by me. It is an exciting publication, as you will no doubt be aware, but it is
about mathematics and surveying, not politics.’