by C. S. Quinn
He scratched his head, philosophical on this point, and took another swig of wine.
‘I will go no more,’ he continued, ‘for I hear dread things. A thousand corpses turned up overnight in Fen Church graveyard. No one knows from where. The locals are in terror, for the devil must have a hand in it.’
‘The locals exaggerate,’ said Amesbury with a dismissive wave of his wine. ‘Plague makes them as giddy as women.’
‘I saw it myself,’ glowered the bawdy-house owner, ‘a great pauper’s grave. Empty one day. Filled to the brim the next.’
‘Such a thing is not possible,’ Blackstone reassured him. ‘Even if half the city had died overnight . . .’
‘I tell you I saw it!’ shouted the man, wine sloshing from his cup. ‘And a great beaked monster visits the church at night. That is what the people say. The devil himself is filling London’s graves.’
Amesbury glanced at Blackstone.
‘Perhaps something worth investigating,’ he said finally.
Blackstone nodded. ‘I shall visit the graveyard on my return.’
The bawdy house owner appeared to be wrestling with this information.
After a moment he nodded at the women, evidently deciding the conversation to be concluded. They sat up a little in their seats.
‘Do not be fooled that she looks a little older,’ the bawdy-house owner said conversationally, gesturing at the face with the mouse-brows. ‘She will do anything you ask. Anything.’
He turned to Blackstone. ‘You seem a proper sort,’ he assessed. ‘She will do for you. Very good proportions you will find on her. I know them personally.’
A barking sound which could have been a laugh came from the owner’s mouth.
‘We have come looking for a different girl,’ said Amesbury carefully. ‘Someone who I was told worked here.’
‘A man does not come into my house, drink my wine and ask for a different girl,’ said the bawdy-house owner. His anger was rising again.
‘A girl named Jenny,’ said Amesbury.
The owner’s face tightened, and the name brought a jolt of recognition from the woman with the mouse eyebrows.
‘You want to know about Jenny you ask one of the whores,’ said the owner. He snatched up the bottle again and filled Amesbury’s already full tankard to the brim.
‘Two guineas for the wine,’ he added, thrusting out his palm, ‘unless you want to add a bloody nose to your bill.’
Amesbury dug in his purse, and Blackstone was relieved to see it heavy with coins.
‘One guinea,’ said Amesbury evenly, dropping a coin into the man’s grubby palm.
The brothel owner gave a grunt of acceptance. The coin was enough to buy several cases of the wine he served, Blackstone judged.
‘You want to ask them something you have to pay for their company,’ the owner said, glowering.
Amesbury turned to the women. They looked frightened.
His eyes rested on the mouse-brows.
‘Her then,’ he said.
‘And you?’ the brothel-keeper turned on Blackstone.
‘I will keep them both company.’
‘Very well,’ the owner’s face made some complicated expressions. ‘As I said, she will do anything you ask of her. But you must pay a tax for heavy usage.’
Amesbury dug in his purse and dropped more coins on the table.
The women’s eyes grew large. Hurriedly, the owner swept the money into his hand.
‘Leave your swords,’ he added.
Blackstone shook his head, with a little smile.
‘It will be safe,’ said the owner. ‘There are no thieves here.’
‘We have drunk your wine,’ said Blackstone. ‘We will not leave our swords. We are not young sailors of sixteen.’
Amesbury smiled approvingly. He had suspected there was something steelier in Blackstone than was obvious as the chubby Mayor’s overworked aide. The man had a soldier’s fearlessness beneath his black robes of office. Amesbury could always see courage in a man.
The owner twisted his mouth in annoyance, but seemed to accept this. It was common practice to steal swords, guns and anything of value left downstairs in a bawdy house.
‘In there.’ He pointed to a door leading to the back.
The woman rose from her chair, spitting on her hand and rubbing between her legs. Then she ambled ahead of the men keeping her skirt held high above her naked bottom half.
They followed behind. Blackstone’s gaze dropped to her naked buttocks, which bore a deep red impression from where she’d been sitting.
She led them into a room with two sagging hemp sacks filled with straw and an open box of pig-bladder condoms. Several still held the contents of previous visitors.
The woman fished around in the box for the cleanest and laid it over her forearm.
‘Front or back I do not mind. I charge the same for both,’ she said, addressing Amesbury. ‘You may put your mouth where you like. But I cannot have you in mine, for I have an ulcer.’ She dragged down her lip at the side to show them both an open sore at the side of her cheek.
Having finished the explanation she settled herself with her legs apart on the crackling hemp sacks.
‘We are looking for a girl named Jenny,’ said Amesbury.
‘You do not want business first? He will not like it if you do not,’ she added, jabbing a finger towards the front of the house.
Amesbury shook his head. ‘She ran away from a gaming house where she worked,’ he explained.
The mouse brows drew together.
‘She owed no money,’ added Amesbury. ‘But the man she was last seen with, we are trying to know a little more about him.’
The woman huffed out a long breath, and Amesbury tossed a handful of coins onto the sacking.
The woman regarded them, but didn’t scoop them up.
‘We mean her no harm. Truly. We are to catch a murderer,’ said Blackstone. The woman stared at him for a moment, as if assessing his sincerity.
‘What kind of murderer?’ she asked.
‘A murderer of innocent girls,’ said Amesbury. ‘A butcher.’
The woman’s eyes flicked back and forth, between the men.
‘She was here,’ she said finally, ‘for a little time. That man she met at the gaming house. He greatly frightened her. She said he meant to kill her.’
‘Did she say anything else?’ asked Blackstone.
‘She said he took her to a church filled with rotting food.’
‘Did she say which church?’
London had over fifty churches of all sizes.
The woman shook her head slowly.
‘Where is she now?’ asked Amesbury.
‘She’s gone,’ said the woman. ‘The plague is coming to these parts. She went where she might stay safe.’
‘Where?’ Amesbury pressed.
‘She boarded one of those ships,’ said the woman. ‘The ones that float out on the Thames and wait for the plague to pass.’
Blackstone felt the hope of finding Jenny vanish. Tens of boats had taken to the water and all fiercely deterred boarders. Finding her aboard would be impossible.
‘You will give her a message if you see her?’ the woman was saying.
‘I will if I can,’ said Amesbury.
‘Tell her to stay safe and away from those dangerous clubs in west London,’ said the woman. ‘I am her mother, you see,’ she added.
‘Then that man is your husband?’ asked Amesbury, gesturing out beyond the room, towards the thickset man who had harassed him to drink the house wine.
‘My third,’ said the woman. ‘He is not Jenny’s father. But I am fortunate for he takes good care of me. Before he came and we were married I was beaten black and blue. Sailors you see,’ she added with an explanatory shrug at the docks beyond the house. ‘After months at sea they have more enthusiasm than they do money. And they do not take kindly to a refusal.’
She gave them both a plaintive look.
&
nbsp; ‘I hope you catch this man,’ she said. ‘I thank God daily my Jenny escaped. It breaks my heart to think some other mother might not have my fortune.’
Chapter Forty-Three
Charlie and Maria wove deeper into the marshland, with the terrified horses sinking and splashing at almost every step.
Aside from their movements the marsh was silent. Eerie. The occasional squawking cry of a bird and the buzzing hum of insects were the only sound.
In London Charlie had thought to be free from the constant bell tolling and dead-carts, the splatters of red crosses, choking bonfire smoke and cries of mountebanks would be a relief.
But he would rather the din of the ailing city to the ghostly whispers of the marsh.
The rotting ground beneath them belched up a bog stench, and Charlie wondered how many bodies had been sunk forever here, during the Civil War.
The grasses formed a passage of sorts through the marsh. But there were still swathes of land where they had to risk passing over water-logged areas of indeterminate depth.
They came to the end of a grassed section and stopped to look out at the festering pond-land ahead.
‘Over there,’ said Charlie, uncertainly. ‘I think I can see the bottom, and it is not so deep.’
He shielded his gaze from the sun.
‘It is only this last stretch of water Maria. I can see the road from here.’
Maria nodded, her face slicked with sweat. It was hard work trudging through the boggy ground and she made each laboured step in pale silence.
Charlie put a tentative foot into the stinking water. It sank up to his thigh, and he staggered and almost fell into the cloying mud.
Twisting backwards he grabbed hold of the tall grasses and wrenched himself back onto firmer ground.
His heart was pounding.
‘You have hurt yourself.’
Maria was kneeling at his side. Charlie realised that blood was running from his mud-slathered leg.
He looked down in surprise. It was straight slash, like a sword or a knife wound.
‘Perhaps there is some sharp stick sunk deep in there,’ he said, shrugging. The wound was not bad, and he held a hand to it for a moment, testing it.
‘Better hope this mud does not infect it,’ murmured Maria. Then her eyes settled on something further out in the water.
‘That is what wounded your leg,’ she said, pointing. ‘Look. You must have dislodged it when you stepped in, and now it rises to the top.’
Floating face down in the marsh was the tattered dun-coloured remains of a corpse.
It held a rusting sword which now pointed straight up through the water. But the body was badly decomposed, and only a few ragged pieces of fabric still clung to what was mostly skeleton.
‘It must be an old Civil War soldier,’ said Charlie. ‘Perhaps he meant to escape out here and drowned.’
But Maria was shaking her head, looking at the water. ‘I think there was a battle near here,’ she said.
The first rising body had set off a chain reaction, and one by one, body after body rumbled up from the stinking depths. An entire troop bubbled slowly to the surface.
Charlie swallowed.
‘We must think at which point we should turn back,’ he said.
‘Turn back?’ Maria looked at him in disbelief.
‘This is swampland Maria. I know little about horses and how far they may travel through it, but if they drown we must go on foot. And with no provision to eat or drink that would be very hard. We could die on the road, of starvation or worse, and people would not come to our aid,’ he added.
‘You may go back whenever you wish,’ said Maria. ‘I mean to carry out what I started.’ She choked out an involuntary cough and looked annoyed with herself. ‘My family might not be so wealthy now, but we deserve justice as well as when we were a rich sort. It will not be forgotten, her death.’ She glared ahead at the corpse-filled pool.
‘Those that are in poverty they allow themselves to be crushed by it. They lie down and accept the law will not defend them. But I will not accept it. Do you hear? I need only three men. One man to read the rites, another to tie the noose and a third to loose the trapdoor. And I will see justice done.’ She was glaring furiously at him.
Charlie looked at Maria for a moment. He had made her a promise. His hand slid to the key around his neck.
‘I think they would take our weight,’ he said, finally, pointing to the floating remains of the dead soldiers.
Maria said nothing, but her eyes registered silent assent.
Charlie stuck out a foot and kicked the nearest body. It moved only a little. He stepped on to it, waving wildly off balance for a moment, and then finding his footing. He felt some delicate bones crack beneath his bare feet. But the body held firm.
‘They will hold us,’ he said. ‘But I am not so sure about the horses.’
‘Let me worry about the horses,’ said Maria, and she led them behind her, clicking her tongue.
Charlie put out his hand and helped Maria stumble onto the first floating body. She fell forwards into his arms, and for a moment he could smell the perfume of her hair and skin. Then she righted herself.
‘They are firm enough,’ she agreed. ‘I think the horses can make it.’
They stumbled forward, a few feet at a time, into the wide pool. Beneath them the bodies shifted and twisted in the water. But they formed a firm enough structure to walk on.
The terrified horses plunged and whinnied, but Maria managed to calm them sufficiently to follow behind.
Charlie pointed to a fresh water stream leading into the pool they were wading through.
‘The bodies must have floated in from there,’ he said. ‘Likely there is a river where the bodies were dumped.’
He shook his head. ‘So many dreadful deaths in the name of war. God knows how these poor men died.’
As he spoke he saw a dark shape, near the mouth of the stream.
It was another dead man. But unlike the others, this had a trail of bright red drifting out accusingly from where the body had washed up.
‘Look,’ said Charlie. ‘That is not an old corpse. The blood is fresh.’
Maria stared. ‘Do you think it is another vigilante murder?’
Charlie shook his head. ‘Look at how he is dressed. He is a turnpike.’
They looked at one another.
‘The men talked of Malvern having murdered a turnpike,’ said Maria.
Charlie nodded. He began wading over to where the body had washed up.
‘Be careful,’ called Maria, staying where she was. ‘The ground looks more boggy where you step.’
Charlie approached the dead man.
The turnpike’s white face was twisted in surprise. Most of him was sunk deep below the surface. But his clenched fist was peeking out of the water. Charlie moved a little closer. He caught a flash of silver in between the fingers.
‘There is something in his hand,’ muttered Charlie. ‘It looks as though it could be a coin.’
He peered closer.
‘I am sure of it. He has money still clutched in his grip,’ he called to Maria.
Stooping carefully Charlie inched apart the cold dead hand.
‘What are you doing?’ called Maria in horror, as he extracted the coin. ‘Surely you do not take money from a dead man?’
‘All London coins are made in token houses,’ said Charlie, straightening up and bouncing the coin in his palm. ‘Each token house makes its own mark.’
‘What good does that do us?’ asked Maria. ‘There are over a hundred places in the city that make coins.’
‘And I know them all,’ said Charlie. ‘I am a thief taker Maria.’
He splashed back over to where she was standing.
‘And where were these coins made?’ she asked.
‘Not around these parts,’ said Charlie. ‘I think these must have been Thomas Malvern’s last payment to that poor turnpike.’
He held up a shill
ing. ‘But they are not made in a London coin house either.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘These coins are forgeries.’
He thought for a moment. ‘A man high up in the city, but poor enough to be paying in forged coins,’ he said. ‘Something doesn’t feel right.’
There was a sudden splash of water, and Maria’s horse gave a blood-curdling scream.
Its hindquarters sunk fast into the bog.
Charlie and Maria lunged for the rein simultaneously. But the horse was already up to its belly in the mud.
‘Come forward!’ shouted Maria, dragging at the reins with all her strength. ‘Kick yourself free!’
They both pulled, but the terrified horse twisted its head and fought against the reins.
It sunk another foot.
‘Get the other horse!’ shouted Maria. ‘It will panic and run itself into mud too!’
Charlie grabbed at the reins of his horse and attempted a soothing pat on its neck.
Maria was struggling with the sinking horse, shouting and pleading with it. But inch by inch the animal was disappearing into the marsh.
She turned to Charlie, tears streaming down her face.
‘We can’t leave her to drown,’ she sobbed. ‘She will sink piece by piece and all the time in terror.’
‘Is there any way to get her out?’ asked Charlie, scanning his memory for what little he knew of horses.
Maria shook her head. ‘No. Not even if we had a wagon and other horses to drag her. We are too far into the marsh.’
Maria stopped pulling at the reins and knelt by the frightened, drowning horse. She rested her cheek on its nose.
The horse stopped tossing its head and stared at her through sad eyes.
‘She knows,’ whispered Maria. ‘She knows she is going to die.’
Charlie swallowed. He took a few steps closer, with one hand still holding his own horse.
‘What about the gun Maria?’
She turned to look at him through tear-filled eyes. After a moment she nodded and fumbled in her dress for the heavy pistol the wise woman had given them.
‘Here,’ she held it out to him.
Charlie was about to protest, and then he saw the helpless look on her face.
