The Lost Boys of London

by Mary Lawrence

  Father Wells had got her thinking. She remembered Jane Clewe’s pamphlet printed by Clement Naylor, and thought back to her brief conversation with the man. He had mentioned Robert Barnes, and now she knew that Father Foxcroft had turned the priest over to Bishop Bonner. Could this be the underlying motivation?

  Bianca looked up at the second story and saw that it was also secured. The shop only had two faces. Flanking it on either side were other businesses--also closed and latched for the evening. Bianca spent another minute studying the building, then skirted its perimeter to an alley running behind. The smell in the alley was rank with the stink of refuse and human piss. No one with any sense would linger there any longer than necessary. She crept from shadow to shadow, calculating the location of the back of the shop.

  In the wavering moonlight, Bianca came upon a second, equally formidable lock securing the back door. She ran her fingers over the door’s hinges and pressed the wood where they were driven. Both wood and metal were of solid material, no rust or rot to take advantage of. She stepped back and gazed up at the second story. One of the shutters was askew, while the other lay flush against the sill. There was a gap, large enough to wedge a hand under. The only problem was getting to it.

  As Bianca studied the window, she noticed a metal ring jutting from one of the construction timbers on the exterior wall. A length of rope hung down, probably once used for a laundry line between the opposite building. The rope had frayed, and she wondered if it was rotten from the rain and cold of winter. With both hands, she grabbed onto the ends and tested her weight. The rope went taut, but it supported her. Hitching her hem above her shoes, she placed a foot on an uneven timber. She then leaned back and pulled herself up the rope, hand over hand, placing a second foot on the exterior wall. She paused to balance a moment, her arms straining, then scaled the remaining distance to the timber with a gouge running the length of the building.

  At the metal ring beside the window, Bianca realized how precariously it supported her. With her feet wedged in the divot and one hand grasping the rope, she jammed her free hand under the gap of shutter and wrenched it open. It complained, emitting a creak as the heavy board pulled free of its rusty hinge and clattered to the ground below.

  She quickly swung toward the side of the building, away from the opening, hoping to escape notice--for what little good that would have done her. If someone had heard the shutter and decided to have a look, she would have been difficult to miss.

  To her surprise, no one poked their head out the window, and no light shone upon the sill. Bianca steadied her breath, then leaned toward the opening to peer inside. The room was completely dark. She held still, her muscles aching, and listened.

  A gust of wind blew down the alley, catching the loose fabric of her kirtle so that it flapped about her legs. Below, leaves rustled and swirled against a wall. It was a long way down if she fell.

  The rusty edge of the steel ring cut into the rope. A few fibers had frayed and she wondered-- could the rope withstand one last feat? She would have to hold it with one hand and reach for the opening with the other, pulling herself through the window to gain entry.

  Shifting her weight to one foot, Bianca took a breath and pushed out from the building, swinging toward the opening. She let go of the rope with her right hand, and reached for the windowsill. Having grabbed it, she then pulled herself halfway on its ledge, released the rope, and clung to the sill.

  Her feet scraped the side of the building, seeking a toehold. She cursed her skirt with all of its fabric, and thought how much easier this would have been if she were a man. But she wasn’t, she told herself. She walked her arms forward and managed to swing a leg up, planting a foot on the ledge. With a bit of struggle, she dropped into Clement Naylor’s living quarters, head first, and landed with a whump.

  She cringed at the sound she’d just made and hurriedly crawled under a nearby table.

  Any second someone would come and investigate. She snapped her mouth shut to keep from sounding like a panting dog and the air passed noisily through her nostrils. Though the interior was dark, enough moonlight allowed her to see across the room. If Naylor was home, he was not asleep in the bed opposite.

  Bianca listened to the building settle and the wind ravishing the exterior. No one came to check on the thuds and scrapes, and after a time, she crawled out from under the table and tiptoed across the room. A narrow stairwell led to the ground floor.

  A candle would have been helpful, but alas, she would have to rely on her sense of touch to safely descend the stairs. She tested the first tread, laying a hand against the wall, then carefully applied her weight. It eased quietly underfoot. Bianca steadily descended to the bottom where she stood stock-still, surveying the printing shop in front of her.

  A hearth’s dying embers cast enough light to illuminate the shop, which consisted of a single narrow room. There were no partitions. A printing press dominated the middle—a strange-legged construction with two supporting arms like columns, and a cross member at the top. It reminded Bianca of the scaffolds at Tyburn. Suspended from the center was a heavy cylindrical block with a rod to crank down the weight onto a wooden box beneath. Bianca tiptoed over for a better look. The mechanics of the press intrigued her. She manipulated a hinged frame that bent over on itself, and moved it up and down, marveling at its clever design, when she caught a whiff of something familiar. The smell ran up her nose and she recognized its singular strangeness. It was the same smell she’d noticed on the rag she found beside St. Benet’s.

  She continued sniffing the air, laying her hand on the flat of the press as she did so. Its surface was wet and tacky leaving her fingertips sticky with ink. Rather than wipe them on her apron, she looked around and found a rag tossed on a table with tongs and leather ink balls. The cloth was obviously stained with ink and smelled of the same peculiar odor. Not only that, but she felt its stupefying effect.

  Bianca dropped the cloth and stepped away from it.

  The faces of the victimized boys had been filthy with what she had thought was dirt. Boys living on the streets had no sense of cleanliness and no means by which to remedy the problem. They were notoriously unkempt and no amount of normal scrubbing would have cleaned their grimy faces. But, had the victims’ faces been smeared--not with mud and filth--but with ink?

  She went back to the cloth and picked it up by a corner. Could the cloth she found at St. Benet’s have been from Clement Naylor’s shop?

  Again, she brought the rag to her nose. This time, she inhaled long and deep. An almost instant vertigo came over her. Instinctively, she turned away and gasped for breath, steadying herself against the table until the room stopped tilting.

  Bianca thought back to Hobs in her room of Medicinals and Physickes. She remembered tossing the rag on the chest and the cat had slept on top of it. Had the smell killed him? Had it incapacitated him that first time, then killed him the second?

  She stuffed the cloth in her purse and cinched it tight.

  Now with her eyes adjusted to the dim interior, Bianca noticed a rope strung across the room with large sheets of printing pinned to it, like laundry on a line. Turning the damp paper towards the embers illuminated the printing of the first page of a pamphlet.

  On the freedom of a Christian, she read, by Martin Luther. So, it wasn’t just a remembrance of Robert Barnes that Naylor printed. He actively championed Luther’s reforms. Printing and disseminating such ideas was dangerous, and Clement Naylor appeared to have a steady diet of doing so. Rather than support the king’s ideas, this was an indication that he was furtively kindling a resistance.

  Bianca read the title and first line of the next sheet and the one after. The sheets were copies of Martin Luther’s argument. At the end she came upon a short page different from the rest. She unpinned it and began to read…

  Here hangs the body of a prevaricator and a scoundrel. A man of endless deceit and whose wavering word changes with the hour. Faithfu
l to none, loyal only to one--in and of himself, he would sell his everlasting soul, his God, verily his country, for the fleeting kiss of celebrity granted by one equally unworthy and whose infamy will long outlive his mortal breath. Be in his spectacle this cautionary tale—‘tis not what a man does that exalts him, but what is in his heart.

  Father Wells had called Foxcroft a Judas. That he had turned in a fellow priest to please Bishop Bonner. Here hangs the body…

  Bianca pinned the sheet back on the line. She stared at the ominous message and the treatise hanging on the rope. Here hangs the body…

  It was then that she heard a muffled cry. She froze, her eyes searching the dark, thinking it her imagination. Perhaps the smell on the cloth had made her delusional. She still felt a bit woozy, and being in Naylor’s print shop had spurred her unease. Then, she heard it again.

  The sound came from the back of the shop.

  Bianca cautiously stepped toward the stairwell and stopped. A narrow hallway ran beside the stairs to a back door. The area under the stairs was enclosed with wood paneling. She waited, trying to determine if the noise was Naylor in the alley, working the lock. She was about to bolt up the stairs when she heard a second muted cry and a thump that made her start. Someone was trying to get her attention.

  “How now?” she called softly, stepping into the narrow hall.

  Another thump rattled the paneling.

  Bianca ran her hand along the wood and felt a gap near the edge of the wainscot. She followed the space down to where it ended in a metal hasp and pin. Her heart began thudding in her chest as she tried pushing the pin out. It had been tightly wedged in place and no amount of pushing or pulling was going to remove it.

  She hurried back into the shop and looked over the table of tools near the printing press. Next to several leather ink balls lay a mallet. She grabbed it off the table and went back to the hall.

  The tool was an unwieldy, cumbersome solution—it was too big to effectively knock out the pin, but after several hits, the piece of metal finally budged. After a few more misses, Bianca hit the pin with enough force to free it of the hasp and it clattered against the wood on a length of chain.

  Bianca barely had time to recover her balance before the door swung open with a tortuous screak and out fell a body, landing at her feet.

  Chapter 34

  Borderlands--

  John straightened, considering what to do. The ocean and an eastern port were within sight. With luck he might find a British galleon sailing for home. The exhaustion that had consumed him began to fall away like rain shed from a roof. His thoughts went to Bianca. How he missed sleeping next to her. Those mornings when neither of them wanted to get out of bed to tend to the fire. Her smelly concoctions and burnt meals. He smiled. What would it feel like to lay eyes on his son for the first time? How old would he be by now? Well, no matter, the day would be a happy one, indeed.

  John looked down at the rascal laying on the floor and the smile left his face. Leaving the body in the shack would be a gruesome discovery for anyone happening upon it, and there was nowhere to hide him. If he were waylaid in port and the body was discovered, what sort of trouble would he find himself being a stranger in a foreign town? He could burn the bothy with the body in it, but that would attract attention, and he might be spotted leaving.

  John went to the door and cracked it open. He would have the cover of dark by which to work.

  Taking hold of him under the arms, John dragged the body across the floor and then outside, laying him beside the shack. He blew into his fists to warm them while scouting for a place to dig a grave. But the ground of this wild coast was dotted with boulders and thin soil. John dug his toe into the ground in despair. Even if he had a shovel, he would be scraping and digging until the sun came up. The wind roared in his ears and he covered them with his hands. Nothing would do but to find a depression in the land. He could place the body there, then cover it with a thin layer of moss and peat, mayhap stones.

  John walked the immediate area, and by the light of the moon, began surveying the land. A seeping panic of lost time began gnawing at him. To his mounting dismay, he found no suitable spot where he could put a body that wouldn’t be discovered. The best he could do was an area beyond a knoll, out of sight of the shack.

  He hurried back to the bothy and began dragging the man across the field, up towards the knoll, stopping twice to get a better grip and to catch his breath. The wind kept up its funereal howl, warning and whipping him, punishing his every step. When he finally got there, he pulled out the man’s knife and began cutting the top layer of soil. Stones hindered his progress as his blade kept striking and glancing off them.

  When he’d collected enough sphagnum and moss, John rolled the body to its final rest. He knelt to tuck the arms beside it and arranged the legs. The cold made his hands ache, and he stopped long enough to warm them again, then covered the corpse with strips of earth and bits of heath. The wind kept up its gale, blowing away the scraps of placed dirt. John cursed and cut more to replace them, wondering if this was a futile exercise and nearly laughing at the absurdity of it. Perhaps he’d finally lost his wits.

  Well, it was the fellow’s poor luck to stumble upon the shack with him in it, he reasoned. But it was his poorer luck to have to deal with a dead body. As he reached for a stone near the man’s head, the wind got hold of its matted hair, freeing it from off the bloody face. For the first time, John got a long look at the man’s face as the moon shone bright upon it.

  John rubbed his eyes as if it was a trick of the night.

  He stared, unable to move, refusing to believe. His fellow soldier, knave, archer, pompous Roger, and Cammy Dawny’s lover, lay dead by his hands.

  “Fisk!” Bianca cried.

  The boy had been leaning against the door and landed on his side when it opened. He lay there, motionless, his mouth gagged. His hands and feet were bound and a short length of rope connected them so that he was held in a crouched position with his knees bent. At first, Bianca thought he was dead, but then she saw him struggle against his bindings. She helped him to sit and removed the gag with trembling hands.

  “Whatever happened?” she said, untying the knots. She could make quick of them with her knife and impatiently sliced him free.

  Fisk rubbed his sore wrists and looked at Bianca. His eyes were wide and his face was nearly black with grime—or, thought Bianca, printer’s ink.

  “He promised me an apprenticeship,” said Fisk, disappointed. “He promised me a bed to sleep in and meals to eat. He said he’d pay me three shillings tonight and that I could give it to Mother tomorrow. I had no reason to doubt, he was so kind to me.” Fisk massaged his ankles and added, “Until now.”

  “Why did you not return home to tell them where you were? Anna and your mother have been sick with worry. And so have I.”

  Fisk cast a sheepish look at her. “I did not think anyone cared.”

  Bianca resisted boxing the boy about his ears. “How could you think that? You are loved.”

  “I was scared to go home. I overheard some fellow with a rough beard talking to Mother about how he was going to take me to the west country and make me work in the tin mines there. I knew she could get more money by sending me away with him. I didn’t want to go.”

  “Oh Fisk,” said Bianca. Truth be, there were times growing up, when she felt unloved, as well.

  “I don’t believe she would have ever done that.”

  “She didn’t want to talk to him and she slammed the door in his face. I didn’t have time to run before he saw me hiding, watching him. He grabbed my arm, but I got away. I was afraid to go back. I think he was my father, and not the one fighting in France.” Fisk got to his feet, none the worse for being dosed with ink, and offered Bianca a hand up. “I don’t look like Anna and them. They have yellow hair and blue eyes. This man had black hair and dark eyes like mine.”

  “You figured it right,” said Bianca. �
��Geve Trinion is your natural father.”

  Fisk met her gaze, but before she could read his expression, he glanced around skittishly. “I don’t want to be here when he returns.”

  “You speak of the printer?”

  “He came up behind me while I was eating and tried to suffocate me. He must have only half killed me because I woke up in the dark with a gag in my mouth and my hands and feet tied. I didn’t know where I was. I didn’t know if my eyes were open or closed it was so dark in there. That was you coming down the stairs just now. The dust rained down on me and I realized where I was. I listened, wondering if I should pretend that I was dead in case it was him. But the sound of his steps are heavy and he often clears his throat. Sometimes he doesn’t need to, but he just does.”

  Fisk grew thoughtful as he rubbed his wrists and then something must have occurred to him for his face grew anxious.

  “What is it, Fisk? What troubles you?”

  “There was another boy,” he said. “His name was Matthew. I thought he was another apprentice, like me. One day he was here and the next he was gone.”

  “I believe you have escaped an untimely death,” said Bianca.

  “The printer told me that Matthew went home. That he didn’t want to be an apprentice anymore.” Fisk looked at Bianca with wide eyes as if he had just pieced it together. “It was strange, because we ate a meal together that last night and we went to bed, and in the morning Matthew was just gone.” Fisk turned his face to her. “He never said good-bye.”

  Bianca hesitated, but decided Fisk would find out anyway. “Fisk, you may not be aware, but since you’ve been missing, another boy has been hanged from a parish church here in Castle Baynard Ward. It is possible that Clement Naylor is involved.” Bianca saw the horrified look on Fisk’s face. “I’ll explain later, but we need to leave at once.”