The Counterfeit Crank (24 page)

‘I thought that you went off to see Michael.’

‘And so I did. By the time I’d delivered him and Doctor Zander to a magistrate, it was far too late to call back here. And today has kept me fettered to the Queen’s Head.’

Hoode blinked. ‘What’s this about a magistrate?’

Nicholas gave him an abbreviated account of what had taken place in Cornhill. Hoode was extremely angry at Doctor Zander but, in spite of what had been done to him, managed a vestigial sympathy for Michael Grammaticus.

‘Ambition is a cruel master,’ he said. ‘It drove Michael much farther than he was able to go. I’ve been at the mercy of that ambition myself. I know the overwhelming urge to see your play performed upon a stage. It’s like a madness.’

‘Michael will pay dearly for it,’ said Nicholas. ‘But we must away, Edmund.’

‘Dressed in those rags? Will you beg in the streets?’

‘We’ll not allow that,’ said Quilter sternly, taking Nicholas by the arm.

Hoode laughed. ‘You’d make a good officer, Frank. But
do not treat my friend Tom Rooke too harshly. I need him for one of my plays. And when he’s Nick Bracewell again,’ he went on, grinning happily, ‘I need him for
all
my plays.’

Nicholas slipped his arm back into the sling and replaced the eye patch. After giving the playwright a wave, he twisted his body into a grotesque shape and limped away between the two officers. Hoode went back inside and met Adele on the stairs.

‘No,’ he told her. ‘He was no friend of mine. I’ve never set eyes on that mangy creature before.’

Lawrence Firethorn did not know what sort of reception he would get at home. On the ride back to Shoreditch, he was not certain whether his wife had mellowed or if a night apart from her husband had merely hardened her heart. When he reached the house in Old Street, therefore, he tethered his horse to the gatepost in case he needed to make a swift departure. Finding that the front door was no longer locked, he took it as a good omen and stepped inside.

‘Margery!’ he cooed. ‘Where are you, my sweetness?’

‘In the kitchen,’ she announced in a rasping voice.

‘I’m back early today, as you will see.’

He went into the kitchen where his wife had been talking to her brother-in-law as she mixed some dough in a bowl. Jarrold could see that Margery was throbbing with displeasure. Not wishing to come between the couple at such a delicate moment, he gave a nervous smile and tried to steal away, but Firethorn flung his arms around the man to embrace him.

‘Thank God you came to stay with us, Jonathan!’ he declared. ‘You’ve been our salvation. Westfield’s Men owe you so much.’

‘They owe me nothing, Lawrence,’ said the other man, quailing before the frank display of emotion. ‘If anything is owed, it’s my apology. I hoped to get to the Queen’s Head this afternoon to watch the play, but I was detained by a bookseller with whom I was doing some business. Will you forgive me?’

‘After what you did, I’d forgive you anything.’

‘What are you talking about?’ asked Margery, suspiciously. ‘You’ve hardly had a word to say to Jonathan since he’s been here, yet now you greet him as if he’s the best friend you have in the world.’

‘I do so on behalf of the whole company,’ said Firethorn. ‘Has your brother-in-law not told you what help he rendered us, Margery?’

‘No, Lawrence.’

‘How could I tell what I did not even know about?’ said Jarrold.

‘Have you ever heard such modesty?’ cried Firethorn, taking him by the cheeks to plant a kiss on his forehead. ‘But for you, Jonathan Jarrold, all would have been lost. But for you, Edmund would have languished in his bed forever. But for you, that wicked doctor would have gone on poisoning him while Michael Grammaticus reaped the benefit of his absence. You exposed their villainy.’

The bookseller was baffled. ‘Did I? When was this?’

Firethorn explained how Doctor Mordrake had been
called in, and how Zander and Grammaticus had been arrested for their crime. Jarrold was shocked to hear that his former customer had been involved in such gross deception, but glad that the information he supplied about Stephen Wragby had been crucial. For her part, Margery was torn between joy and remorse.

‘Edmund recovered?’ she cried with delight. ‘Back with us again?’

‘He will be very soon,’ said Firethorn.

‘And this is where you were last night? Helping to catch those two villains?’

‘Yes,’ lied her husband, seeing a way to get off the marital hook. ‘They fought hard, Margery. By the time that Nick and I hauled them off to a magistrate, the city gates had been closed. I know that I promised to be back early, but I had to look into the truth of what Jonathan told me about Michael Grammaticus.’

‘I only spoke of him to Nicholas Bracewell,’ said Jarrold.

‘Nick and I have no secrets.’

‘What will happen to
The Siege of Troy
? Michael claimed to have written it.’

‘We’ll perform it as a play by Stephen Wragby.’

Jarrold was about to ask another question but he was elbowed gently in the ribs by Margery. Realising that he was now in the way, he mumbled an excuse and backed out of the kitchen. She gazed up lovingly at her husband.

‘It appears that I mistook you, Lawrence.’

‘I bear no grudge, my love.’

‘But I locked you out of your own house.’

‘You felt that you had good cause.’

‘Why did you not explain it all to me this morning?’

‘Because I had to get to the Queen’s Head early and did not wish to disturb you. As you’ve heard, my love, I’ve had much on my mind these past few days.’

‘And all that I did was to add to your woes.’

‘You were not to know, Margery.’

‘I feel so mean and unjust,’ she said. ‘You’ve every right to despise me.’

He laughed artlessly. ‘Why on earth should I do that?’ He spread his arms. ‘Come to me, Margery, and we’ll say no more about it.’

She hurled herself into his embrace and surrendered willingly to his kiss, leaving the imprints of her flour-covered hands on the back of his doublet. After a moment, she pushed him away and wrinkled her nose.

‘I can smell horse dung,’ she said.

Dorothea Tate took some time to find her bearings. Having crossed London Bridge on her own, she searched for the place by the river where she and Hywel Rees had spent their nights when they first came to the city. It brought back some happy memories and she stayed to enjoy them until she was driven away by other vagrants who had claimed the refuge as their own. Dorothea wandered aimlessly, sorry that she had let everyone down by fleeing without explanation, but driven by the fear that she had been an unfair burden. She felt that it was wrong of her to impose on compassionate people like Anne Hendrik and
Nicholas Bracewell. Now that they had helped her over the death of her friend, it was time for her to stand on her own feet again.

When she grew hungry, she begged some stale bread off an old woman in the market and drank water from a pump. It tasted brackish. Dorothea spat it out. Recalling the meals she had been served in Bankside, she was full of regrets but she did not even think of returning. Since she had run away, she believed, they would not have her back again. Theirs was one world, hers another. She trudged on until her feet brought her to a building she recognised with a tremor of fear. The façade of Bridewell towered over her and seemed to crush her spirit. It was then that she realised why she had come. An unseen hand had guided her to the workhouse. This was where she could get revenge.

Deep in her pocket, her hand gripped the large stone that she had picked up from beside the river. Dorothea had grabbed it as a means of defence, but it could also be used in attack. She felt the rough contours with her fingers. They would never anticipate an assault from her. If she could somehow get close enough to Joseph Beechroft – or, better still, to Ralph Olgrave – she could dash out his brains with her weapon. Finding a place in the shadows, she sat down to watch and wait.

Dorothea was still keeping Bridewell under surveillance when two officers dragged a beggar into view. The man was lame and had his arm in a sling but that earned him no sympathy. The officers pulled him to the gatehouse then pushed him to the ground. Knowing what lay ahead
for the beggar, Dorothea wanted to reach out and comfort him. One more anonymous victim was about to suffer an ordeal.

Nicholas Bracewell cowered before the gatekeeper’s searching gaze. One of the officers hauled him to his feet while the other handed over a writ.

‘What’s his name?’ asked the gatekeeper.

‘Tom Rooke,’ replied Frank Quilter, ‘but it might as well be Tom o’Bedlam for he talks nothing but nonsense. He’s been whipped at the cart’s-arse so we’ve no more use for him. Lock him up and throw away the key.’

‘We’ll want work out of him,’ said the gatekeeper. ‘One arm may be useless but we’ll find labour for the other. Leave him to me, friends. I’ll take care of Tom Rooke.’

Quilter and Ingram nodded a farewell and set off again. After checking the writ that committed the prisoner to Bridewell, the gatekeeper wrote details of the newcomer in his ledger. He then summoned another man, who promptly punched the beggar to make him move. Nicholas scrambled forward through the main gate.

‘What’s your name?’ said the keeper.

‘Tom Rooke, sir,’ croaked Nicholas.

‘You’ll be plain Tom in here. Remember that.’

‘I will, sir.’

‘What’s wrong with your arm?’

‘I cut it badly, sir.’

‘Every beggar pretends to have a bad arm or leg or foot,’ sneered the keeper, tugging the limb free of the sling and
producing a yelp of pain. ‘It’s an old trick to get out of doing heavy work.’

He examined the arm. Nicholas had bound it with filthy strips of linen that had been soaked in pig’s blood beforehand. His fair beard was grimed and he had rubbed dirt all over his face. Leonard had given him some sour milk from the kitchen at the Queen’s Head and he had poured it all over his ragged clothes. The keeper reacted to the stench.

‘You stink of foul vomit,’ he complained. ‘We ought to toss you into the Thames to clean you off, you leprous scab! Put that arm back in the sling and follow me.’

Nicholas did as he was told and went across the first courtyard, taking careful note of its design and dimensions and seeing that Dorothea Tate’s description of the place had not erred too much. When they went through into the next courtyard, he saw young boys helping to unload boxes of food from a cart. The keeper turned on him.

‘That’s not for the likes of you,’ he said, ‘so you can look away.’

They went through a door and climbed a winding staircase. Nicholas was led along a passageway to a large oaken door that the keeper had to unlock. Both of them entered a long, narrow room with a number of soiled mattresses along one wall. There was little in the way of furniture beyond a small table and a single stool. The keeper pointed to the mattresses.

‘You’ll sleep in here,’ he told Nicholas. ‘Choose someone else’s mattress and they’ll soon let you know it with their fists. Tomorrow, we’ll put you to work.’

‘How many of us are in here?’

‘Enough.’

‘Will I be fed today?’

‘No,’ said the man, gruffly. ‘Only those who work can eat in Bridewell.’

The keeper went out and locked the door behind him. Nicholas was able to straighten up and lift his eye patch so that he could inspect the room in more detail. It was not difficult to identify the mattresses that were in use. Meagre belongings lay beside each of them. Since the mattress at the far end of the line was the dirtiest and most shredded, he knew that it would be his. Light flooded in. The three windows all overlooked the courtyard where the boys were still unloading produce from the cart.

According to the sketch that was drawn from Dorothea’s memory, Nicholas was in the same room where Hywel Rees had been kept. It was from one of the windows that he must have seen the girl being taken reluctantly to the feast in the hall. If that was the case, Nicholas wondered how the Welshman had been able to get out in order to go to the girl’s rescue. The window was too high from the ground for him to drop down with any safety, and the door far too solid to force.

Nicholas remained at a window to watch. There was no sign of either Joseph Beechcroft or Ralph Olgrave, but a number of other people came into view. Some were obviously inmates, forced to do whatever chores were necessary, and there were several keepers on duty as well. But he also noticed a few men who came and
went from doors on the opposite side of the courtyard. They moved around with complete freedom and, judging from their attire, they could hardly be described as paupers. Nicholas asked himself what function they had in Bridewell.

When the cart had been unloaded, one of the boys was clipped around the head by the keeper and sent through an archway to do another task. The keeper then took the second boy towards the door through which Nicholas had come. Leaving the window, Nicholas went to the last mattress and dragged it away from the others, then he put his arm back in the sling and arranged the patch over his eye. He crouched on his mattress and waited. After a while, the door was unlocked and a weary young boy came in, only to have the door locked immediately behind him. Seeing Nicholas, the boy stopped.

‘Who are you?’ he asked, warily.

‘My name is Tom Rooke,’ said Nicholas, in the cracked voice he had practised earlier. ‘I’m convicted of vagrancy and sent here. What do I call you, lad?’

‘Ned. Ned Griddle.’ He approached slowly. ‘What’s wrong with your arm?’

‘I was stabbed in a brawl, and lost a lot of blood.’

‘They’ll want you to work in here.’

Nicholas held up a hand. ‘Stay back, Ned. I do not smell too sweet.’

‘Have you been in Bridewell before?’

‘Never,’ said Nicholas, adjusting his sling, ‘but I had a friend who was sent here recently. I hope to see him again.’

‘Who is he?’

‘A young Welshman by the name of Hywel Rees. Do you know him?’

‘I did,’ said the boy, sadly. ‘I liked him. Hywel was discharged.’

‘So soon? Why was that, Ned?’