The Changeling Murders (The Thief Taker Series Book 4)

by C. S. Quinn

  ‘Burn everything here,’ he said. ‘Pull the house to tinder sticks. We must pay a visit to Mrs Jenks at the Golden Apple.’

  Chapter 21

  The Shambles was a broad blood-soaked dirt road stretching behind Cow Lane and Smithfield Market. To the south, the ramshackle shops of Milk Street and Bread Street were only just beginning to be rebuilt after the fire. But the Shambles’ thick-armed butchers had quickly re-erected their pole-and-awning abattoirs and resumed slaughtering and gutting.

  Two butchers were dragging a squealing pig by its hind legs. Amongst the covered stalls were ragged flags of the New Model Army. The Shambles was a Puritan stronghold, long after Cromwell’s death.

  Women still wore black and covered over their hair with modest white caps. The single workmanlike tavern bore the sign of a crown, roughly painted over with the leafy head of a Green Man.

  Charlie’s eyes lighted on a butcher’s stall where the carcasses of wild pigs hung, and he drew to a halt. The butcher didn’t look up.

  ‘You supply the palace with meat?’ said Charlie.

  ‘They got their own butcher,’ he said, ‘at the palace. No call for the likes of us.’ He wiped his brow on the bloody sleeve of his shirt, put his knee in the centre of the carcass and snapped the spine with an audible crunch of cartilage.

  Charlie winced. ‘Those wild pigs are from Hyde Park,’ he countered, nodding to the rack of pigs hung behind him. ‘Commoners don’t have licence to hunt on the King’s land in summer.’

  The butcher raised his heavy knife, took aim and drove the blade through bone. ‘If you can prove I broke a law, then come back with a watchman,’ he said.

  ‘I’m trying to find out more about a lord and lady,’ tried Charlie, ‘who went missing during the war.’

  The butcher shook his head. ‘We’re common folk here,’ he said. ‘Don’t know nothing ’bout no nobles.’

  ‘What about fairies?’ asked Charlie. ‘A fairy lord and lady?’

  The butcher looked up fiercely. ‘Who’s asking?’ he demanded.

  ‘I’m Charlie Tuesday,’ replied Charlie. ‘I’ve helped some folk from hereabouts with stolen property . . .’

  ‘Any lord or lady from before the war are long dead. We don’t like questions here in the Shambles. Best you be on your way.’ The butcher drove the blade into the notched chopping board and glared.

  ‘My friend has gone missing,’ said Charlie, choosing his words carefully. ‘Someone very dear to me. I think—’

  ‘Best you be on your way.’ The butcher resumed his chopping with a final, heavy-handed air.

  Charlie hesitated. ‘I can pay,’ he said.

  The butcher’s deep-set eyes flicked up. ‘I’ve never been practised at keeping my temper,’ he said. ‘And I don’t much care if you are Mr Tuesday or Wednesday or Thursday. I’ve turned this blade to harder uses during the civil war. Begone before I take up my old soldiering.’

  Charlie turned reluctantly to leave, but as his bare feet hit the bloody dirt of the main thoroughfare he heard a woman’s voice.

  ‘Shame on you, Samuel Cleaver! We are good Christians here.’

  Charlie turned back to see a chubby woman had emerged from the little shack.

  ‘Mr Tuesday! Wait.’ She turned her round face towards Charlie.

  He returned to the stall, expression hopeful. The woman was a wet-nurse, judging from the overlapping circular stains on her woollen dress and her faintly cheesy aroma.

  ‘I know who you are, and my husband forgets your kind services,’ she said. ‘But we repay our debts here. We are not Dutch.’ She glowered at her husband, who seemed to have shrunk in size since the emergence of his wife.

  ‘Tom Black’s father was his cousin,’ she added apologetically. ‘One of the old King’s generals stuck a pike through him at the Battle of Naseby. He’s never got over it.’

  ‘Tom Black?’ asked Charlie.

  ‘The butcher’s son they talk of,’ said the woman patiently. ‘Kin to the lost lord and lady. That’s who you speak of, is it not? You’re not the first to come looking,’ she added. ‘Though I’m not sure we can help you a great deal.’

  ‘A man named Tom Black was related to the lost lord and lady?’ asked Charlie, his heart racing a little faster.

  ‘You’ll never find Tom Black,’ grunted the butcher. ‘Not if you search a thousand years. He went to work for Cromwell. Dark things. There’s a price on his head.’

  The wet-nurse cast an affectionate look at her husband and Charlie tried unsuccessfully to imagine a sentimental heart beneath the butcher’s bloody apron.

  ‘He’s right,’ she said. ‘Tom Black vanished without a trace after the war. Same time as the Lord and Lady.’

  Chapter 22

  In the butchers’ district a haze of flies was winding lazily from the blood-soaked ground. The sudden screech of a pig being slaughtered rang through the air.

  ‘You think the Lord and Lady were relations of Tom Black?’ pressed Charlie, trying to ignore the sounds of butchering.

  ‘We-ell,’ considered the wet-nurse, ‘it was talked of, wasn’t it, Sam? But we never believed it. Tom wasn’t related to no fine gentleman. You could tell just by looking.’ The wet-nurse nodded, pleased with the revelation.

  ‘Did he have any friends?’ asked Charlie. ‘Any connections or relatives in the city besides the Shambles?’

  ‘He was a strange boy. I think he did a little carpentry for the theatre or something of that nature. I heard one of the playwrights took pity on him. Tom was never going to become a butcher like his father.’ She gave her husband a meaningful glance. ‘Tom was a born villain and liar. Same as his mother.’

  ‘His mother wasn’t from hereabouts?’ asked Charlie.

  ‘No. Daughter of beekeepers on Honey Lane. Married one of ours.’ She lowered her voice. ‘But we knew, didn’t we, Sam? We all knew. There was always talk about Bridey. That was how the rumours about Tom started, wasn’t it, Sam?’

  The butcher grunted non-committally.

  ‘Bridey did acting,’ said the wet-nurse with a knowing wink. ‘Took part in the mystery plays, all kinds of men looking.’ Her mouth was set in tight disapproval. ‘Sam knew her,’ added the wet-nurse, ‘when she were a young maid on Honey Lane.’

  ‘All the young men had a turn on Bridey,’ said Sam, a slow blush creeping up his thick neck.

  ‘She made him do playacting, during the business,’ guffawed the wet-nurse. ‘Him, fifteen and mad with green-lust.’

  ‘Bridey always seemed too young for a woman’s body,’ said Sam, with more sensitivity than Charlie might have credited him.

  ‘What was it she had you do?’ crowed his wife. ‘A fairy lord, wasn’t it?’

  Sam was silent, chopping his meat with more force than necessary. Charlie noticed the blush had reached his cheeks.

  ‘She was set up higher than she should have been, on account of her good looks,’ continued the wet-nurse. ‘The family was devastated when she fell pregnant by a butcher.’ The wet-nurse leaned forward. ‘Bridey certainly thought herself fine. I remember thinking, she’ll never last here. She’ll never make blood puddings like the rest of us. I was right about that. Wasn’t I, Sam?’

  ‘Aye.’ The butcher didn’t take his eyes from the block.

  ‘What happened to her?’ asked Charlie.

  ‘Oh, she turned lunatic after Tom was born.’ The wet-nurse paused, remembering. ‘We all heard a terrible commotion. Just after dawn. Bridey, that’s Tom’s mother, runs out screaming. Hysterical. Shouting fairies have stolen her baby. I went in. And I think she’s turned mad. The babe is right there in the crib, crying its little red head off. I say, “Your babe is here. Can’t you hear him? Why don’t you go to him?”

  ‘She says, “No. That’s not my baby.” I’ll never forget the look in her eyes. “That’s not my baby,” Bridey says. “Can you not see? The fairies have taken him. That’s a changeling child.”

  ‘I peer into the crib. I’m a simple God-fe
aring woman. Tom’s a pretty babe to be sure. But I do think there’s something not right with the child. His eyes seem too old for a baby. Now I’m uneasy. And I think perhaps there is something pixie-like about that little pointed nose.

  ‘“No,” I say, “it’s your babe.” But I cross myself all the same, because it seems the devil is in him, he screams so. Bridey sees the gesture, though, and starts up worse than before.

  ‘“You see it,” she says. “They’ve taken him. The fairies have taken my baby and left me that.”’ The wet-nurse shifted her large bosom around. ‘We don’t hear much of them after that,’ she concluded. ‘All us Shambles women know the truth. It’s guilt, isn’t it? On account of how she got with the baby.

  ‘Whenever mother and babe are out the child’s eyes are pinned open, roving around with that peculiar way he always had. Not quite looking at you. The child doesn’t smile. Doesn’t laugh. Only watches. The talk is, Bridey’s been told changeling tricks. To make the fairies take back their own.’ She nodded with satisfaction.

  ‘What kind of tricks?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said the woman, ‘but there were always strange marks on the boy.’ She squinted at him. ‘Are you quite well, Mr Tuesday?’

  Charlie realised the corners of his mouth were pulled hard down. ‘You say the whole family was killed?’ he asked.

  She nodded. ‘I believe so. The father and brother in the civil war. They fought for Cromwell. Like all of us in the Shambles.’ She glanced proudly at her husband.

  ‘What of the mother?’

  The wet-nurse blinked slowly. ‘Bridey disappeared,’ she said. ‘Fell back to whoring herself, so they say. She’ll be dead of the pox. Aye,’ said the wet-nurse pleasantly. ‘She’ll be burning now for her crimes against that poor babe.’

  And with the sun setting, Charlie realised that his next move needed to be the one he’d been dreading. Ozinda’s would now be open and with it he would have his chance to go and see the last person Maria had spoken to before she disappeared. It was time to pay a visit to Lily Boswell. Charlie had last seen Lily setting sail, without the treasure they’d hoped to find. He had a bad feeling she wouldn’t be pleased to see him.

  Chapter 23

  Tom Black was staring keenly at Maria’s face. She looked back, fighting the instinct to drop her gaze. He lowered the flame, and Maria quickly tried to absorb everything she could of the room again. It was a cheap taper, giving off a smoky glow, barely illuminating beyond her circle of confinement. The light danced tantalisingly.

  At first, she saw the snakes again. Hundreds of them, coiled everywhere. Then her mind seemed to clear, and she made the connection. Ropes. It was ropes she could see. The floor was covered in them. The smell made sense now. Bridewell prostitutes beat hemp for rope.

  ‘I enjoyed it hugely, seeing you act,’ said Tom. ‘You have a subtlety of expression that is fascinating. But we must not forget what the theatre is. It is a doorway. For the fairy folk.’

  Maria said nothing. Her tongue felt thick in her mouth, her heartbeat strangely slow. She tried to think. A rope-makers? It was the only place she could imagine with so many lengths of rope all in one place. But a rope-makers had a long trough to turn the hemp in and neatly stacked coils for sale. She’d only caught a brief glimpse of the floor, but it had seemed chaotic. Ropes heaped in piles all over. And stretching up to hang on the walls as well.

  ‘You’re trying to work out where you are,’ said Tom. ‘I can see that, but it won’t help you.’ He hesitated. ‘You don’t like the dark?’ he asked.

  Maria swallowed and shook her head.

  ‘I am sorry for it. I’m not accustomed to . . . mortal visitors. I myself have no great need for food and light. But I shall be sure you have a candle.’

  Tom raised the taper with a pallid hand. His fingernails were flaking away, Maria noticed, greenish in colour in the half-light. She’d seen the same thing happen to malnourished street children and wondered if her captor existed on the same diet of honey cakes he’d left her.

  ‘Might I have a pail of water?’ asked Maria. ‘For washing?’

  ‘No water.’ His voice was high and strange. ‘It is a way they can get in.’ His fingers began tapping on themselves. ‘I watched you,’ he said. ‘I saw you go to Mother Mitchell’s house. You wouldn’t have noticed me,’ he added. ‘I have a way of making myself’ – he looked up at the ceiling – ‘invisible.’ His blue-green eyes settled back on her face with a sudden intensity. ‘I was watching, waiting, when the old papers were sent to lawyers to be transcribed,’ he said. ‘You understood the Royalist confession was a coded message. How?’

  Maria frowned, trying to keep track of the conversation. Then she realised what Tom meant. The old confession she’d transcribed for Percy.

  ‘I . . . Something about how it was written,’ she said. ‘It didn’t read like other confessions.’

  ‘You realised the condemned man was trying to get a message to his fellow Royalists?’ pressed Tom.

  ‘Not at first. And then . . . some of the meaning became clear.’

  ‘You understood it?’

  Maria nodded. ‘My family is minor gentry,’ she said. ‘Was,’ she corrected herself. ‘Our fortunes changed, after the war. But I was raised to know of kings and their sons. In the country we call the Lord and Lady “The Old Ones”, out of respect to their being related to kings. I realised a condemned man was trying to leave a clue.’

  ‘You knew what they were? The Lord and Lady?’

  Maria nodded.

  ‘And you decided to investigate without telling your lawyer husband?’

  ‘Husband-to-be,’ Maria corrected. ‘It started as a game.’ Her eyes lifted to his. ‘Then I discovered things. And somehow I couldn’t stop.’ She toyed with the hem of her dress. ‘I suppose they had me in their thrall.’ She smiled. Tom didn’t smile back.

  ‘I always suspected the needless confession was some kind of code,’ he said. ‘What I didn’t count on was how long it would take to make public record.’

  ‘Cromwell’s death and the King’s return brought legal work to a standstill,’ said Maria, realising. ‘Court documents take months to be made official record, but with a regime change . . .’

  ‘Eight years,’ said Tom.

  ‘But you didn’t search for them,’ said Maria. ‘Did something happen to you? After you failed Cromwell?’

  Tom nodded tightly. He was running his thumbs along his knuckles. Maria noticed they were covered in thin scars. They were the kind of lacerations that came from shattered glass, she thought, but there were perhaps too many of them for that to be likely.

  ‘You are very strange for a woman,’ Tom decided. ‘Too clever.’

  Maria found herself smiling. There was an innocence about her captor. ‘That’s what Percy says,’ she admitted.

  ‘Your betrothed doesn’t enjoy your intelligence?’

  ‘No. Maybe that’s why I was trying to find the dress,’ she admitted. ‘Investigating the old spy networks was a last little bit of excitement before married life.’

  ‘Or perhaps you were trying to win Charlie Tuesday’s admiration?’

  ‘I try no such thing.’

  ‘You made a detour on your wedding day,’ Tom pointed out. ‘Reckless, which from my observations is unlike you. You’re the kind of person who tells the grocer when they’ve given you a half-pence-worth of extra soap.’

  ‘Charlie is my friend,’ said Maria defensively.

  ‘You’re a liar!’ The shout came suddenly. Tom covered his mouth with his peeling fingernails and closed his eyes. ‘You mustn’t lie,’ he said, his voice calmer. ‘It is how they get in.’ He scanned the room. ‘They love tricks and games. You mustn’t lure them.’ His eyes settled back on her. His fingers played a little dance on his palms. ‘But now is the time. They want to be found. The King’s gaudy lies and depraved court, they call to the Lord and Lady. They will dance all night to fairy bells and drink only wine and dine on sweet cakes.’<
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  Maria had a sudden awful memory of the dead girl. Her changeling. ‘The girl,’ she whispered, swallowing hard. ‘The hanging girl. Was she dead?’

  Tom seemed mildly surprised. ‘I sent her to the other place,’ he explained. ‘The fairy place. She’ll be dancing, even now, as we speak.’

  Maria felt her throat constrict. ‘Why?’ she managed.

  ‘You cannot take people, not without an exchange. That would make them . . . unhappy. He wouldn’t like it. He can be’ – Tom frowned – ‘very cruel.’

  ‘Who is he?’

  ‘The boy,’ said Tom patiently. ‘The boy who was taken.’

  ‘What boy?’

  ‘The changeling,’ said Tom. ‘The one whose place I took.’

  ‘You . . . You see this boy?’ ventured Maria. ‘He visits you?’

  ‘He is behind the mirror,’ said Tom. ‘The first time he came, she was hurting me. I remember fire. Burning. Pain.’ He rubbed at his forearm. ‘I saw him in the copper kettle. The boy.’ Tom paused, remembering. ‘Then he took me inside, with him. There was no pain there, in the fairy place,’ said Tom. ‘Then the boy whispered to me. He said he wanted to come out. There was a ringing of bells and it was cold again. I was lying on the floor. My arm hurt.’

  Maria felt a rush of sympathy for him. ‘Your mother did changeling tricks?’ she asked. ‘Hurt you, to try to make the fairies take you back?’

  Tom frowned. ‘It never worked. The boy stayed in the world of the fairies.’ He glanced up at Maria. ‘It’s changed him,’ he admitted. ‘He’s become cruel, over the years, like them.’ Tom pursed his lips. ‘He used to protect me. Now he torments me. Makes me do his bidding.’

  ‘You’re frightened,’ said Maria, understanding. ‘You have to do what he says.’

  ‘I have no fears he will harm me,’ said Tom. ‘But he might make me do something . . . disorderly. The smell of blood and death disturb me greatly.’

  ‘What do you think he could make you do?’ asked Maria.

  ‘I think he’s taken against you,’ said Tom matter-of-factly. ‘I think he wants you hanged and gutted.’