Low Treason

by Leonard Tourney

  Mrs. Browne turned out to be a plump little soul, neither young nor old but somewhere in between, comely and well spoken, with a round, ruddy countenance and full red lips. She was dressed in a pretty yellow petticoat and kirtle, a white waistcoat, and a clean cambric ruff about her neck. Her shop was small but neat and seemed well stocked. When she heard Matthew’s business, she invited him into her parlor, which was a small room just beyond the shop proper. It, too, was well furnished with a handsome cupboard, two fine chairs, and a round oak table upon which Matthew was pleased to see a great store of sweets, arranged with care upon a pewter plate. There were sugar, biscuits, comfits, marmalade, marchpane, and other dainties, and Matthew feasted his eyes while Mrs.

  Browne explained that these things she had prepared for two neighbors, who having become indisposed with the catarrh, had failed to come. And having said this she invited Matthew to partake as he pleased, since it was a great shame should such banqueting stuff be thrown away.

  Then she explained that Mary Skelton was no longer in her employ. As it turned out, she had disappeared.

  “Disappeared!” exclaimed Matthew, between mouthfuls of a particularly delicious comfit.

  “Indeed,” said Margaret Browne, filling Matthew’s cup with wine without asking if he wanted any. “Mary slept in a small room in the back of the shop. She had a paltry little bag of things which she kept always about her, and these and she herself were gone one morning. Without a word!”

  “She left no note?”

  “None.”

  “You’ve heard nothing of her since?”

  Mrs. Browne shook her head sadly. “The girl was new to London. She had but one friend, a young man whose name she never mentioned.”

  “Was she satisfied with her employment?” Matthew asked, helping himself to another biscuit and already eying a third.

  “Oh, she was most happy in her work,” Margaret Browne explained. “Why, many was the day I would hear her from the shop, plying her needle and singing in the loveliest voice. It would melt your heart to have heard her, so sweet a voice she had.”

  “Ah, what a world this is,” said Matthew.

  “So I fear that’s all I can tell you,” said Margaret Browne with a note of finality.

  Matthew looked at the table of dainties ruefully. In the matter of sweets he was almost totally without self-restraint. Mustering what little discipline remained after two biscuits, a generous share of marchpane, and the marmalade, he rose, and thanked his hostess for both information and the refreshments. She handed him his hat.

  He followed the mistress of the shop to the shop door, appreciating with another quick glance the orderliness of her stock, table, stools, and counters. The room had a very pleasant smell. He looked again at Mrs. Browne. Yes, he thought somewhat guiltily, she was a very neat little woman, unmarried, he presumed, a widow doubtless, and a more than tolerable confectioner, too.

  She was smiling at him winsomely and bidding him good day when she suddenly exclaimed: “Jesu God, I almost forgot myself.”

  “How so?” inquired Matthew, his hat in hand.

  “She had a sister. Mary mentioned her but once. The sister was older, I believe, and had some employment here in London.”

  “What employment?”

  “Mary never said.”

  “What was the sister’s name?”

  Margaret Browne paused to think. Her eyebrows knitted together in a frown of concentration. She could not remember. Then she could remember.

  “Catherine,” she said. “I do recall it now. It was when Mary first came to work for me. I asked after her family. She said she had a father somewhere in the country, and a sister, Catherine, who lived here.”

  “It is strange that she did not live with her sister,” Matthew remarked.

  “Yes, it is,” Margaret Browne agreed. “I remember thinking that, too, but then she never spoke of her again and I supposed the twain did not get along.”

  “Catherine Skelton,” murmured Matthew, as though invoking the gill’s presence. “I don’t suppose you know where I could find her?”

  Margaret Browne began to shake her head, but then she said, “No, but Philipa may. She’s my other girl. Philipa and Mary were very thick, being of the same age.” Margaret Browne called out and presently a pale young girl with hair the color of straw came into the room carrying a piece of lace in her arms. She looked at Matthew curiously and then at her mistress.

  “Philipa,” Margaret Browne began, using now the more formal tone of the mistress of the house, “here is

  Mr. Matthew Stock, come from Chelmsford, where he is constable, in search of our Mary.”

  Matthew doubted Philipa had heard of Chelmsford, being as it was a good way off, but the word constable certainly took its effect. Upon hearing of Matthew’s office, the girl had begun to quake like a sparrow in a wind and her pale blue eyes went wide with alarm. He would have said some words of comfort to her, had he dared to interrupt her employer, who obviously felt herself sufficiently in command of the situation.

  ‘‘Tell us where he might find her sister Catherine,” Margaret Browne continued.

  ‘‘She lives in London, ma’am,” the girl replied after a moment’s hesitation during which she seemed hard put to find courage to speak at all.

  ‘‘Goose,” replied her mistress impatiently. “We know well she lives in London. Can you not tell us more particularly where she lives—in what street, in what house?”

  The girl paused again, seemed to turn even paler than before, and Matthew wondered if she was concealing something, or if she was merely dull-witted. “Mary told me Catherine her sister keeps ill company,” Philipa said at last.

  “Why, she may keep what company she pleases,” Margaret Browne exclaimed with exasperation. “I would know where she does keep it.”

  Reluctantly, the girl named a lane in Bankside, a neighborhood of ill-repute, full, Matthew had heard, of gaming parlors, leaping houses, and theaters.

  Philipa’s mistress blushed at this revelation and glared at the young girl as though she had said something unseemly. Then Margaret Browne looked appealingly at Matthew.

  “This is the first I have heard of this,” she announced brusquely, clearing herself of association with the unfortunate Catherine Skelton, who, it now appeared, was a fallen woman. “It’s no wonder that Mary would have naught to do with her.”

  She sent the girl back to her work. “Foolish girl,” remarked Margaret Browne with impatience. “As melancholy as a hare. I am most sorry,” she said to Matthew. “Under the circumstances I would be much surprised if Catherine Skelton has her parents’ name. You might with more chance of success go seek ice in hell.”

  Matthew sighed heavily. “Yet I must do what I can. I promised my wife and daughter, and my daughter’s husband,” he said, reciting the litany of his obligations. “I’ll go to the Bankside this evening. It will not hurt to make a few inquiries.”

  The woman looked at Matthew doubtfully. “If you do, you were best home before dark. The neighborhood is a most vile and unsavory place.”

  Matthew thanked the woman for her help and strode out onto the sunny cobblestone pavement. For a few moments he stood surveying the crowded street and collecting his thoughts. The warm, clear day seemed to have brought everyone out of doors. It was a typical London throng, a mingle-mangle of gender and degree, rushing about in a motion, all intense and purposeful. Matthew alone seemed unpreoccupied, stationary. But then his eyes fell upon a fellow watcher. Across the street and beneath a grocer’s sign he observed himself being scrutinized by a young man lounging against the wall.

  The young man was slender and hatless and from this distance Matthew could see that he had dark hair. The coat on his back was ill-fitting; the wings on the shoulders came down halfway to his arm and the skirts an equal distance below the waist. The crowd was moving about him, as though he were part of the structure he leaned against.

  Matthew returned the young man’s stare and for so
me time, then suddenly the fellow turned on his heels and walked away. In a moment he was lost to Matthew’s view.

  Matthew knew he had seen the man before. He recognized that the moment the young man had fled. But where?

  The question dominated his thoughts as he headed back to his lodgings, but he had not walked a quarter of a mile before he remembered.

  The same fellow had been milling around outside the prison that morning. Later, Matthew had seen him again when he emerged from the prison and started out for Ludgate. Now here was this silent watcher, in quite another part of town, haunting Matthew’s steps like an old debt.

  Parr was aware he might have hired a couple of thugs to take care of this insolent, villainous turd-face, this scurvy blackmailer. That idea was in the back of his mind as he walked toward his lodgings in Westminster, and the idea was there yet when he ordered his manservant to fetch him his supper and he ate it alone in his large room with the window overlooking the garden and the river beyond. But that would have been nothing to the purpose. The cheeky rogue had given him nothing but a copy. What Parr wanted, desperately needed, was the original. Worse, he contemplated between mouthfuls of rare-done beef and dry Spanish wine, he needed to know what the blackmailer wanted of him.

  Parr stuffed until he felt heavy and sleepy. It was habitual with him to do so when his mind was at work, and it was working faster now than it had in a month.

  His man Furness, solemn-faced and tiptoeing about the carpeted chamber like a laundry filcher, cleared his table. He brought a lamp and some writing materials and inquired, in a whisper that rankled his employer, if Sir Jeremy would want anything else before bedtime.

  Nothing else. Parr looked up at Fumess, wondering what this decrepit bag of bones knew of his affair with Alice Farnsworth. Fumess had yellow skin, tight to the skull, a palsy in the right hand, a long somber face of a . churchman. Dog piss coursed through the old man’s veins, Parr was sure.

  He dismissed Fumess with a wave of his hand and a low growl in the throat.

  Alice Farnsworth, he thought. Pretty Alice. Round and merry, her lips like cherry, her breasts like what? Like . . . like ... He fumbled for a simile, for a rhyme. But what she had cost him! He had invested three months of his time and he no longer recalled how much silver in pursuit of her. She had dangled her virginity before him like a jewel. And he had paid a jewel for it—a rich emerald, set in gold, had from Mr. Castell’s shop for—he

  couldn’t bring himself to think of the sum. What a fool he had been. Now Alice Farnsworth was nothing to him, nothing. All that flesh, those lily paps, those languid eyes with their moist, heavy lids and subtle promise—all that simpering that had attracted and now repelled—what terrible price was he to pay for his misbegotten pleasures?

  It was not knowing that tormented him.

  At the stroke of seven he changed into a plain black suit with a very modest white collar and a broad-brimmed hat that made a politic concealment of the upper part of his face. Then, making sure that Furness did not observe his leaving, Parr set out for the City.

  Within the hour he had come to the weathered door, the faded cross and scepter sign of come long-failed enterprise, and a back alley whose depressing squalor found no relief in the gathering gloom. He stood for a while before the door, meditating upon his ill luck and listening for noises within, but there was nothing. Finally, heaving a great sigh of wretchedness, he knocked.

  When there was no response he knocked again, looking about him nervously for it was dark in the alley and the solitude which first had pleased him now seemed oppressive and threatening. Then came upon him standing there, a feeling to which he was not accustomed, a cringing, womanish fear. He felt himself trembling and was ashamed for it. His bowels ached and he could feel his hair beneath the hat damp with sweat.

  He had come armed with his rapier and dagger. He stood with his back to the door facing the alley, his hand upon the pommel of his blade, alert to any movement or noise. A sudden shrill whine from a shadowy comer caused his heart to leap into his throat, and in the same instant his blade was out and shaking at the dark.

  But it was only a cat. The body materialized from the shadows, approached and paused, arching its back, then came toward him on silent feet, mewing and almost apologetically rubbing its furry body against Parr’s boot.

  Parr uttered a threatening growl and the cat darted off. Then he replaced the weapon in its hanger, turned to the door, and began knocking more vigorously, wondering if he was on a fool’s errand.

  But no, it was no fool’s errand; he knew that even as he kept up the futile pounding. Someone had taken the trouble to steal his letter, copy it, face him down on the street, his reputation for bad temper and a quick thrust notwithstanding.

  No, it was no jest.

  The door rattled with the increasing violence of his blows. “Hello, hello, in the house,” he called, not caring who might hear him in the neighborhood.

  But no one came. Only when somewhere between disappointment and relief he gave over and began to walk away did he hear behind him the drawing of the bolt, the groan of a rusty hinge, and his name whispered.

  Parr had half expected the scab-faced knave who had accosted him on the Strand and in his present temper molded of fear, shame, and rage he would have welcomed him as a fit object of his wrath. But it was not he. A candle held aloft illuminated this new face, the face of a solidly built man in tradesman’s garb speaking to Parr in a strangely melodious voice with the slight suggestion of the north, perhaps Yorkshire or Durham. Fortune had cleanly shorn his scalp except for the fringe of lank, oily curls that fell to the plain collar and broad shoulders. The eyes were small but intense with concentrated energy and separated by a broad flat nose flaring at the nostrils. The man’s teeth were ragged and shiny with saliva and his complexion had the yellowish hue and coarse texture of old parchment.

  “Come in, Sir Jeremy Parr, ” said the man again when Pan-hesitated, his hand still resting on the pommel of his rapier.

  Inside, Parr found himself in a large dusty storeroom full of crates and barrels. Tvo windows on an opposite wall had been boarded up, and the only light in the room was provided by the candle the stranger held. Parr could detect the odor of malt and something else, stale and deadly like decaying flesh. A brewer’s warehouse, he thought, or perhaps a grocer’s. It was evident that the building had been unused for some time, and certain as well that the man behind him was as much an intruder here as he.

  “I have come for my letter,” said Parr, weakly.

  ‘‘I don’t have it,” the bald man replied, placing the candle on a barrel head and staring at the knight as though Parr’s expectation that he should have it were absurd. ‘‘Presently I will take you to one who does.”

  ‘‘Presently,” snapped Parr, beginning to feel his old self now that he was in the light and face to face with his enemy. He made a gesture of annoyance. ‘‘I was told you would have it.”

  From somewhere behind the stack of barrels Parr heard a rustling noise. He started, was about to draw, fearing a worse sort of trap.

  The bald man laughed softly. ‘‘Rats,” he said. ‘‘We have disturbed their labors. Here, put this on.” He held a large handkerchief in his hand and thrust it toward Parr. ‘‘Turn around, please,”

  Puzzled, Parr glared at the man.

  ‘‘You are to be blindfolded, of course.”

  “Now see here,” Parr protested.

  “You do want the letter, do you not?”

  Coolly, Parr assayed his circumstances. He had the advantage in height and weight, he was armed, and he was not afraid to use his weapon. But he did want the letter, and he believed the villainous knave with the bald pate was speaking the truth when he denied having it about him.

  “Very well,” Parr said reluctantly. Removing his hat, he turned and faced the door. He felt the handkerchief wrapped around his head, felt it cover most of his nose and forehead. He replaced his hat on his head.

  “It isn�
��t too tight?” the man inquired with mock solicitude.

  Parr shook his head. In his mind’s eye he could see the man’s smirking face behind him. Damn his eyes, damn his eyes, thought Parr, struggling to control his anger.

  He felt his sword suddenly drawn from its hanger and exclaimed: “What?”

  “You’ll not need your blade, sir, nor this knife.”

  His dagger was drawn instantly.

  “You devil—to disarm me!” Parr cried out in rage. He was about to rip the blindfold from his eyes and turn to face the man when he felt the other’s arm about his neck in a viselike grip and a pointed blade at his throat. It was his own weapon, he knew that. He stood perfectly still, his heart beating wildly.

  The man said slowly and with chilling deliberation, “You do exactly what I say, sir knight, and you do it when I say it, or they will find your body in the mom floating in the Thames. Do you understand?”

  Before Parr had a chance to reply the man intensified his grip and thrust the blade harder into the flesh. Parr cried out between clenched teeth. He nodded yes, yes, he understood. Blindfolded, disarmed, and within a fingernail’s breadth of extinction, he had little choice.

  The man relaxed his grip and removed the point of the dagger from Parr’s neck. “Now we’ll go. Your knife I’ll keep about my person, just in case you should prove difficult to handle during our journey. Take my arm. Hold fast.”

  Parr heard the door to the storeroom unbolted and felt himself being led out into the night. They seemed to cross over to the opposite side of the alley for he felt his boots sink into the sewage that ran down the middle of the alley and his face burned with anger as he heard at his back his guide’s low derisive chuckle.

  There were several turns; once they seemed to double back. Soon Parr lost all sense of direction. Presently he was brought to a halt, he heard a knocking, a muffled voice, and felt himself pushed forward. He was standing in a lighted room, he knew that much. He could see the light through the handkerchief. There were more whispers.

  Parr felt the blindfold being removed. When he could see again he saw that he was standing in a narrow passage at the far end of which was another closed door. He turned to look at his guide and was startled to find himself in the presence of a new face.