by David Field
The man holding onto Polly by the arm gave her a mighty shove, sending her crashing into the side wall with a shriek. She bounced off the wall, then ran past Ted Hollins in the doorway, calling him a ‘rotten bastard’ on her way through to the safety of the main room. Ted tactfully withdrew behind her, leaving the three recent arrivals squaring up to Giles and Tom in the narrow passageway. The current skittles game had been hastily abandoned as those in the skittle alley pressed themselves against the back wall, and looked on fearfully as the five men stepped slowly and cautiously towards each other.
The man with the sword advanced menacingly towards Giles, who stood his ground with his staff at waist height, while Tom remained a few feet behind Giles, awaiting his opportunity whichever way matters went. Giles smiled as he saw the first muscle movement from his opponent that betrayed his intention, and was ready when he lunged towards him, raising his weapon with a view to slicing Giles’s head from his shoulders. This was by no means the first time that Giles had faced an armed idiot, and as the sword arm swung in a wild ‘haymaker’ arc towards him he jumped deftly sideways and brought his staff down hard on the man’s forearm. There was a sickening crack of bone, followed by an agonised scream, and the sword fell to the rushes as the swordsman collapsed in a screaming heap and Tom stepped forward, picked up the sword and advanced on the other two assailants, who fled as if pursued by all the demons of Hell.
‘Get up!’ Giles ordered the man with the injured arm, and when he continued to kneel, whimpering loudly and nursing his arm Giles grabbed him by the hair and hauled him to his feet. ‘Not so brave now, are we?’ Giles gloated, then made a serious mistake by remaining too close to his prisoner, who lashed out with his booted foot and kicked Giles in the groin, then staggered back through the main room and out into the street, followed by Tom, who halted in the doorway, uncertain which way to go.
‘They went up towards Chapel Bar!’ Polly yelled from where she was standing with a shocked expression in the centre of the room. Tom cursed under his breath, then announced his intention of going back to see how Giles was faring.
‘Is he hurt?’ Polly wailed, and Tom grinned. ‘Yeah, but I’ll leave you to find out where exactly.’
He moved back towards the narrow passageway that led to the skittle alley, and as he did so there was a sudden furtive movement from the foot of the stairs that led to the upstairs rooms, and Tom turned quickly as a middle aged man ran behind him, heading for the door. Just as he reached it Polly stuck out a foot, and the man fell over it and landed in a sprawling heap in the doorway. Tom turned quickly and hastened to pinion the man to the floor, while Polly advised him that ‘This is the feller you was looking for – the one what were playing skittles with Ed Franklin the night he got killed. I’ll go and see to Giles.’
Just then Giles appeared from the passageway, white in the face and hobbling awkwardly. ‘You alright, Giles?’ Polly enquired hoarsely, and he grimaced. ‘I’m still alive, sweetheart, but I don’t think I’ll be back when you close.’
‘Too right you won’t,’ Tom advised him as he hauled the man to his feet. ‘You and me is going upstairs to see what this feller’s been hiding in his room that were so important that he needed three ruffians to guard him.’
Chapter Three
Tom held the man firmly by his tunic collar, even though he displayed no sign of attempting further escape, and Giles followed behind as they mounted the rickety staircase to the first floor. Down in the public room, Polly and Ted Hollins were clearing away empty pots after they’d decided to close for the night, since most customers had scuttled out once the fighting had finished.
‘The big room at the back – that’s what Polly said,’ Tom reminded Giles with a backward glance as he reached for the door handle and pushed hard. The door rattled in its frame, but didn’t open, so Tom commanded Giles to search through the man’s pockets.
‘I’m surprised a place as rough as this has keys to their rooms,’ Giles observed with a smile as he extracted a massive key from the concealed pocket in the man’s tunic and unlocked the door. Tom shoved the man inside roughly, and instructed Giles to block the doorway exit. Then he looked around with an experienced sweep of his eyes.
There were several large bags in various locations around the room, and Tom opened each one in turn while Giles studied the face of their captive carefully as he did so. The bags all yielded nothing but bales of cloth, which Tom tipped out onto the bare boards with mounting frustration.
‘Satisfied?’ the man enquired sarcastically, and Tom glared back at him.
‘I might have been, if you hadn’t tried to make a run for it, my friend. What are you hiding?’
‘Nowt’, the man replied stubbornly as his eyes flickered involuntarily towards the pallet in the corner piled high with bedding. Giles smiled to himself as he advised Tom that ‘Our friend here seems quite interested in all that bed linen and stuff on the floor over there – maybe you should take a look inside it.’
Tom walked to the side of the room where the pallet lay under the mullioned single window, took the sword that he’d acquired during the earlier fight, and which he’d attached to his belt, then began turning over the tangled bedding with the point of its blade. His search soon revealed another bag, a heavy one that jingled merrily when he prodded it with his sword.
‘Finally we’re getting somewhere,’ he growled as he bent forward and pulled at the drawstring. When it failed to open he looked more carefully and gave a sigh of satisfaction. ‘This must be mighty precious to you,’ he observed with a backward smile at the man who’d been hiding it in his bed linen. Then he transferred the smile to Giles. ‘Any good at picking locks?’ he enquired, and Giles nodded. ‘I learned a lot from fellers I used to collar in my days down in the lower town. There’s not a lock you can’t get round if you’ve got the right tool. You take over guard duties on the door, and leave it to me.’
‘Try not to bust it completely,’ Tom chuckled, ‘since once you’ve opened it you can show me how it’s done.’
After a couple of experienced twists inside the crude heavy lock with a piece of thin metal that had been concealed within his tunic, Giles gave a triumphant chuckle, and the lock fell into the bedding. He pocketed it, then turned his attention back to the bag, whose drawstring he pulled open with one single action borne of practice with girls’ bodices. He peered into the bag, then gave a cry of surprise.
‘Give Ted Hollins the good news that this feller won’t have any bother paying his reckoning,’ he advised Tom, then reached inside and withdrew his overloaded hand, from which fell several silver coins. ‘There’s hundreds of them just like that inside this here bag,’ he gloated, and Tom gave their prisoner a sick smile.
‘Let me guess,’ he said with heavy sarcasm, ‘you was on your way home after selling a cow at the Saturday market.’
‘It’s not mine, honest!’ the man insisted, and Tom noted an unfamiliar accent. ‘I’d already come to that conclusion,’ Giles advised him, ‘since there’s enough coins in there for half the cows in England. So where did you get it from?’
‘Some feller in London,’ the man advised them, and Tom laughed. ‘Does he know it’s missing yet?’ he enquired with further sarcasm, and the man looked even more bewildered. ‘I didn’t steal it, honest! I were given it to bring to Nottingham.’
‘Then your mission is accomplished, is it not?’ Tom enquired, thoroughly enjoying the exchange. ‘But was it really necessary to have Edward Franklin murdered?’
‘I haven’t done no murder!’ the man protested, on the verge of tears, and Giles nodded. ‘I’m inclined to believe you, friend, but what about your three travelling companions? The ones what was all set to murder us downstairs?’
‘I don’t know nowt about what they’ve been up to!’ the man wailed. ‘I don’t even know their names. Not their full names, anyway.’
‘Well, let’s have their first names, shall we?’ Tom requested, and the man nodded nervously. ‘The f
eller with the scar calls himself Thomas, his brother’s called George, and the one with all the pimples is Gerald. But that’s all I knows about them, honest!’
There was a heavy knock on the room door, and the surly face of Ted Hollins appeared from round it. ‘If you’re taking this feller down to the Guildhall charged with the murder of Ed Franklin, I wants my money. He’s due me twelve shillings in all.’
‘Pay the man,’ Tom instructed Giles with a smile, and Giles reached into the bag and withdrew a single coin, which he threw onto the floor at Hollins’s feet. ‘There you go, a fine silver sovereign – keep the change, and put it to my credit over the counter the next time I’m in here. Either that, or pay someone to get rid of these bed bugs.’
‘Where d’you get that?’ Hollins enquired in amazement as he picked up the coin, bit it, spat on it, then rubbed it back to a shine with the sleeve of his shirt.
‘Ask your customer here,’ Tom muttered as he stepped forward and took a firm hold of the man’s tunic collar. ‘Except you can’t, because he’s coming with us.’
‘There were another girl attacked while you was swilling ale in The Bell,’ Lizzie complained as she cut the top crust off the fresh loaf. ‘Mary Draycott told me when we was at the baker’s stall up the road there. Maybe you should make your enquiries in The White Boar, because that’s where the lassie were dragged out from, they reckons. That’s two this week – the place is obviously getting dangerous for lassies.’
‘It’s already dangerous for anyone what drinks their ale,’ Tom muttered as he smeared a generous helping of lard across the crust that Lizzie had just handed to him. ‘But I can’t be in two places at once.’
‘Well, if you hadn’t dragged Giles Bradbury down there with you, maybe he could have done something,’ Lizzie suggested, and Tom sighed.
‘You’re getting like the rest of the people in this town. When will you all accept that we can’t stand at every street corner, or up at the counter in every alehouse, just in case something happens while we’re there? And if we’re there, then of course it won’t happen. Even if Giles hadn’t been with me last night, there’s nothing he could have done to prevent another lassie being set upon. We can only follow up on what’s reported to us, and no doubt when I go down the Guildhall this morning the matter will be awaiting our attention.’
‘Well we can only hope that it gets it,’ Lizzie conceded grumpily. ‘And you should probably leave it to Giles anyway, since the poor lass what has to tell all the horrible things what was done to her will feel a lot more comfortable telling them to a handsome feller like Giles. Why did you need him last night, anyway?’
‘Because we’re both looking into the murder of Edward Franklin, that’s why.’
‘I heard as how he’d hung himself,’ Lizzie objected, and Tom smiled. ‘Good. If you heard that, given all the old gossips you hang around with when you go out to the markets, then our plan must be working. We’ve put it about officially that he hung himself, and that’s what we wants folks to believe, but for my money he were done in by two, maybe three, fellers what wanted it to look like suicide.’
‘Why would anyone want to do that?’ Lizzie demanded, and Tom put down the bread and cleared his mouth before replying in a tone that suggested that his patience was wearing thin.
‘Clearly to cover up the fact that somebody wanted him dead. What I’ve got to work out is “why” – and then, of course, who. But you’ve just got me thinking. If it’s still general tittle-tattle round the streets that Franklin hung himself, how come the landlord of The Bell knew that someone had done him in?’
‘That’s something else you’ll have to work out, if you ever gets off your arse,’ Lizzie chided him as she removed the remainder of the loaf. ‘That’s all the breakfast you’re getting, if you wants any dinner later on, so go and earn your keep down at the Guildhall. And prove to me that a live girl what’s still having to come to terms with what were done to her is more important that a dead miller.’
Giles was already sitting behind his desk as Tom walked into their shared room in the Guildhall and enquired how Giles was feeling.
‘Still a bit sore in the gentleman’s chambers, thank you for asking. There were another girl ravished while we was arresting that wet pudding last night. At the back o’ The White Boar this time, but she’d been in there the whole evening, or so I been told. That makes two this week.’ Tom raised an arm to silence him.
‘Give over, I’m sick of hearing it from Lizzie, who thinks we should be investigating that first, rather than Ed Franklin’s murder.’
‘And should we?’
‘What’s your opinion?’
‘Does it matter?’
‘Of course it matters. I’m quickly coming to learn that you seem to be close with every lass in town what likes to flaunt herself in public. Should we let these attacks continue, as a warning against that way of living, or will these girls complain if we start putting in a presence where they’d rather be free to ply their trade?’
Giles looked genuinely shocked. ‘You’re not seriously classing all these girls the same, are you? Are you saying that every girl what wants to go out of an evening and enjoy a drink, and some convivial company, is a whore?’
‘No, course not. But some of them is, and I’m not prepared to waste valuable time chasing after fellers what’s naturally attracted to doxies but doesn’t want to pay their outrageous prices.’
‘How do you know how much a doxy charges?’ Giles demanded with a grin, and Tom shook his head. ‘I doesn’t, obviously, but you gets my point.’
‘I’m not sure I does,’ Giles countered, ‘but we can’t just ignore two brutal rapes connected with the same alehouse in the same week.’
‘Then the sooner we get this Franklin murder out of the way, the better,’ Tom nodded by way of ending that particular line of conversation. ‘Has the Coroner been advised?’
‘Yeah,’ Giles confirmed, ‘and the body’s down in the cellar, awaiting his permission for a burial.’
‘That’ll be St Mary’s again,’ Tom muttered, ‘and no doubt another burial on the north side, unless we can produce a bishop what can testify that poor old Ed got the last rites while he was being done to death. That there minister’s far too High Church for my tastes.’
‘Let’s fight them battles we can win,’ Giles suggested. ‘Starting with that grovelling feller down in the cells.’
‘What did you do with all that money?’ Tom enquired, to which Giles replied with a cheery ‘Spent it all on doxies. They charge too much these days, didn’t you know?’ Then he saw the look on Tom’s face, and added ‘Sorry – it’s locked away in the Town Clerk’s vaults.’
‘Right, let’s go and talk to the man whose name we don’t even know yet. At least, I assume not, unless he were that obliging when he were being booked in?’
‘He calls himself “Thomas Browne”, with an “e” on the end,’ Giles advised Tom as he looked down at the note on his desk. ‘He was most particular about that.’
‘Is your name really Thomas Browne?’ Tom enquired sharply as the two of them confronted the crumpled individual cowering in the corner of the tiny cell.
‘Yeah, honest!’ Browne insisted. ‘So what does Thomas Browne do for a living – apart, that is, from murdering Nottingham millers?’ Tom demanded sternly
‘I didn’t murder no-one, honest I didn’t!’ Browne wailed, close to tears, and Tom considered that his man had been weakened enough to get some more useful information out of him.
‘Tell us about the money,’ he demanded. Browne nodded eagerly, and began his tale.
‘I’m a draper by trade, with a nice line of business based in Shrewsbury, from which I travels all over the Midland counties, like Warwickshire and Leicestershire. I don’t come to Nottingham all that often, but if you wants the truth I’m telling you about being a draper, you can ask Ralph Meadows up in Goose Gate, because once or twice I’ve been able to put him in the way of some fine damask bolts impo
rted from Spain. A lot of my stock is imported from foreign countries, and that’s why I were in London – a week or so ago it must be now.’
‘Where you were given all those silver coins?’ Giles enquired in a cynical tone, and Browne nodded. ‘It sounds hard to believe, I know, but I were down in the wharves at Rotherhithe, buying up some silk what I already had an order for, when this rich gentlemen called me over to one side and asked if I were interested in doing business with royalty. Naturally I said yes, and he told me that he were connected to the likes of the Earl of Leicester – her what the Queen’s said to be mighty fond of – as well as the Duke of Norfolk, the Earl of Essex and lots more beside. But first I had to prove that I could be trusted with money. Lots of money.’
‘Do you believe all this shit?’ Giles enquired as he turned to Tom with a mocking smile. Tom shook his head. ‘Not yet, anyway. Keep talking, friend.’
‘Well anyway,’ Browne continued as if his life depended upon it, which in his mind it probably did, ‘the next thing I know we’re in this alehouse across the river – on the north side, near the Tower, and I’m being introduced to them fellers what was with me in The Bell last night. In fact, they’ve been with me every step of the way since I left London, and to be perfectly honest with you good gentlemen, I’m mighty relieved to be rid of them.’
‘And why’s that? Tom prompted him, and Browne grimaced.
‘Well, I was told that they was there to guard me and that money what I were travelling with. If anyone was to ask, I were to pretend to be plying my normal trade around the country, while carrying this here bag of coins what I was meant to deliver to someone here in Nottingham.’
‘Who?’ Giles demanded sharply, but Browne shook his head. ‘I weren’t told – just that the man would contact me, and that I were to stay at The Bell, and speak to nobody on my travels about the money what I were carrying.’
‘When did you leave London?’ Tom enquired, and Browne thought for a moment before enquiring ‘What day’s today?’
