The Triple Goddess

by Ashly Graham

  ‘Regina,’ Pardoe portended, looking across the box to a worn-out scrap of a girl with mousy lank hair, a worried expression, and wire-framed glasses with ear springs; ‘an X reference, if you please.’ Happy pronounced Regina’s name so salaciously that Arbella wanted to dash outside and take lungfuls of fresh air; his voice had “something of the night” about it, in the Widdecombean phrase, which conjured images of corporally rateable offences, and messy and indulgent practices involving strange-looking instruments, rubber suits, and handcuffs.

  The fearful and unqueenly Regina consulted a list, and read out a sequence of numbers and letters, wincing when she got to the triple Xs at the end.

  The entering process, which Pardoe performed himself...for when he was not observing those of other people, their comings and goings, and the insertions of A into B, and A into C, and D, and between E and E, he liked to remain stimulated...was a work of art. His lips parted as he pressed hard and evenly, and he blotted each perfect letter and digit before proceeding to the next sinister—he was left-handed—impression. Had he not filled in the squares on his stamp with such care, the reference would not show up well on the many photocopies that would be made of the slip: thus did Happy ensure that there was never any doubt as to the size and authenticity of his line, the date that it was written, its coding, and the reinsurance reference that eliminated seventy per cent of the risk for thirty per cent of the premium.

  Then the job was done, and it seemed from the almost cheerful look on Happy’s face, and the even more miserable look on hers, that Regina was to be rewarded with extra stripes on her back.

  Arbella went on to see many other underwriters amongst the menagerie of characters in the Room, not a few of whom were attracted by the gathering momentum of the slip, and who wrote lines of three-quarters, a half, or a quarter of a per cent. For it is as true in the placement of a risk as it is for a departing aeroplane speeding down a runway, that there comes a point when it is apparent that the slip is a “go”, V-1 critical speed is reached, the captain has no choice but to take off, and the plane is airborne.

  Although the smaller the lines got the longer the time each underwriter took to summon his courage to the sticking-place—there were several of as little as nought point one-two-five per cent—but every bit counted towards the all-important seventy-five, and Arbella accepted them gladly and graciously without begrudging the many hours spent obtaining them on behalf of the Assured, who, so far as anyone knew, had all the time in the world.

  Such was the exotic nature of the Ralegh slip, the aura of intrigue surrounding it, and the lure of hidden treasure working its magic, that a week later, as difficult as it was for Arbella to absorb it as fact, she reached her precise goal of seventy-five per cent point zero zero…whereupon she returned without delay to Bullion Bill Goldsack to collect his contingent twenty-five per cent line.

  ‘Aha,’ gloated Goldsack, without a trace of astonishment or animosity in his voice or manner. And without further ado, banging down a fusillade of stamps and spattering ink from his tenth quill of the day (he got them free from a Norfolk turkey farm), on the last panel of the slip he inscribed a series of lines on behalf of his various anonymous syndicates, for a grand total of twenty-five per cent.

  ‘There,’ said the Bullster, panting and triumphant, ‘is my quarter ton, and the deal is done. In ten minutes my queue’ll be all the way to the Bank of England. Bully for me.’

  ‘I suppose there’s a problem,’ said Carew, as Arbella approached his box towards the end of the day; ‘and I can’t say I’m surprised. It was an impossibly tall order, and I don’t know what possessed me to suggest it. I should have known better than to lay such an unfair task on you, and I can’t apologize enough for wasting your time so.’

  Without a word Arbella laid the slip in front of him. Stunned, Carew stared at it and slowly traced the syndicate stamps with his finger down each panel to the end, his face flushing as he took in each of the names of the subscribers.

  ‘Well I’m jiggered,’ he said at length; ‘I can hardly believe my eyes. Well done, Arbella, many times well done! We must go and see my father so that you can present it to him. Are you by any chance available after work?’

  ‘I’ve nothing on I wouldn’t be thrilled to get out of, and certainly nothing more important.’

  ‘Excellent, I’ll meet you outside the Middle tower at six o’clock. Oh, by the way, here’s a funny thing: the risk I wrote for you that you chucked off the balcony…the fishing fleet?

  ‘What about it?’

  ‘I’m afraid it’s a total loss.’

  ‘Oh no! I’m so awfully sorry!’

  ‘Don’t be. Comes with the territory. That’s what I’m here for.’

  Arbella was still appalled. ‘What happened?’

  ‘There was a minor earthquake, and the Fisherman’s Terminal in Seattle sustained severe damage. Nobody was hurt, fortunately, but all the boats were affected. Luckily it was the end of the fishing season, a successful one, so no one’s livelihood is affected. Many of the business owners will be able to get new boats and equipment.’

  ‘What makes me feel even worse is that I came here not knowing. The claims department doesn’t bother to tell brokers about losses until policies come up for renewal, when we have to update the experience exhibits. I’m sure you’ll be able to increase the rate, should you agree to continue next year, but that’ll hardly be enough to make you whole again any time soon. The client better turn out to be a good one, in it for the long haul, as it were.’

  ‘We Lloyd’s underwriters pay our losses promptly, that’s the most, really the only, important thing. The funds are due to be wired today. I wish I could see the look on Mr William Goldsack’s face when he finds out. What a hoot, eh?’

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  As they crossed Lower Thames Street and began walking down to the main gate, Arbella clutched Carew’s arm.

  ‘The moat!’

  ‘What about it?’

  ‘It’s flooded! Filled in, I mean, with water.’

  ‘That’s why it’s called a moat.’

  ‘What do you mean? It’s been dry since the eighteen thirties.’

  ‘A mistake, in my opinion.’

  ‘I agree, but…’

  Arbella shot Carew an exasperated look, and saw from his set expression that there was no point in pursuing the matter. Instead she devoured the sight, in case it was a mirage and about to disappear. On the moat there were swans, and geese, and ducks; coots and moorhens were nodding in that curious motion they have as they paddled about, poking amongst the reeds and bulrushes.

  A dozen urchins were ranging up and down the bank with long fishing poles, and one of them to his delight had just caught a small pike. A stream of semi-liquid matter, mostly brown, was issuing from a chute in the side of the outer wall into the water.

  As they proceeded, it became clear that the state of the moat was only the beginning of the alteration. The sombre and stately atmosphere of the Tower had changed entirely, and although it was late in the afternoon, it was now abuzz with all the exuberance, activity, and hustle and bustle of a small town.

  Instead of a fortress patrolled by grim-faced warders, Arbella beheld a place filled with the gaiety of a festival. Atop the stone towers and outside the clustered buildings, flags bore various royal and national insignia, and there were standards and banners and pennants and pennons and pennoncells and banderols and gonfalons and guidons and streamers and cognizances flying, and bunting everywhere.

  As in the most thickly populated parts of London, there were shop signs, and taverns with people spilling in and out of them, laughing and chattering. There were itinerant minstrels, mountebanks, street singers, jugglers, antic acrobats, Morris-dancers, mummers striking poses, players on makeshift stages, masquers, buskers, balladeers, hawkers, pedlars, hucksters, and harlots. A jester was capering and fleering amidst the crowd. Laundry was being put out and taken in, by women pulling lines between windows a
cross the narrow streets. Dusters were being flapped, and pails of slops and waste flung, to the annoyance and inconvenience of those below.

  Between the twin Middle towers, the drawbridge across the moat to the Byward tower was down, and both portcullises were raised, to admit pony-drawn wagons and wains loaded with fresh meat, slaughtered game, fish, salted goods, wine-casks and hogsheads of ale, hampers of grocery goods, churns of milk, and wheels of cheese.

  Smart-looking carriages, and merchants’ carts with solid wooden wheels were also rolling over the causeway into the interior, while the rabble pushed and shoved alongside them. On the outside of the carriages at the front were boxes for the coachmen; and at the rear, platforms for a pair of footmen who stood erect with chins held high.

  Through the windows Arbella glimpsed the periwigged heads of the high-born, the white-powdered faces of ladies bedizened with jewels, and the rosy cheeks of maids in lace caps. The men dangled pomanders, and held scented cambric handkerchiefs to their noses, and the women were fanning themselves.

  Instead of the roar of lorries and cars from Tower Hill and the Minories, the air was filled with neighing and the clatter of horses’ hooves on cobblestones, the braying of asses with wickerwork panniers on their flanks, and, issuing from the carts, the sounds of grunting, bleating, gobbling, and clucking. People were shouting for others to move forward or get out of the way, and hailing those they recognized and stopping to gossip, to the hindrance of traffic.

  Red-faced Yeoman Warders in their puffy uniforms were attempting with little result to direct the flow in both directions.

  As Arbella took in these extraordinary tableaux, she noted the brightly coloured liveries of the coachmen and footmen, the drab garb of priests and deacons, and the jerkins and hose of hawkers and tradesmen. There were valets pushing racks of clothes, seamstresses, haberdashers, jewellers, and furriers. There were cooks bearing plucked fowl, grocers, bakers, vintners trundling barrels, butchers with haunches of beef and venison, boars’ heads, and hams on their shoulders, and whole carcasses hanging from horizontal poles supported between pairs of them, and washerwomen in voluminous skirts with forearms like tree limbs.

  There were clerks and bailiffs, scurrying lackeys, gaolers with heavy keys at their belts; and important-looking individuals with beards and scrolled and waxed moustaches on their way to, or returning from, visiting the more important inmates of the Tower. Unlike the lower classes, who kicked through the garbage and animal manure that bestrewed the ground, the privileged picked their way over quantities of straw that had been laid down to keep the wheels moving, in a token effort to make their passage less unpleasant and keep their clothes clean.

  Amongst them, standing out because they were the only aimless persons in the crowd, wandered a number of those prisoners of high degree who were permitted to enjoy the liberty of the Tower. Accompanied by their servants, they doffed feathered hats and nodded to those who acknowledged them.

  A man wearing a leather apron, judging from his bare muscular forearms, was a blacksmith...or headsman...or both.

  High above the din could be heard the ringing of the bells at All Hallows church, and the two chapels within the Tower, and the chiming of many clocks as they struck the quarter hour. Time, however ruptured it may have been, was still of the essence.

  Despite the considerable hazards Carew and Arbella negotiated their way to the Bloody tower without let or hindrance, or attracting any particular attention to themselves, and Carew—who had been manifesting an increasing perturbation—hammered on the cross-grained oak of the nail-studded oak door to Sir Walter’s apartment.

  Owing to the hubbub outside Arbella doubted whether Grammaticus would be able to hear, but just as Carew was redoubling his efforts to the point of bruising his fist, a voice boomed from the small iron grate in the door.

  ‘Bugger off, you lot! If you want tickets, apply to the landlord at The Severed Neck. Though I doubt there are any left. I certainly don’t have any, and if I did I wouldn’t be selling ’em.’

  Carew, nursing his hand, stood up close to the grille and shouted, ‘Grammaticus, let us in!’

  After a short wait there was the sound of bolts being drawn and a key turning, and the door was opened slowly to reveal a very harassed-looking Grammaticus.

  ‘Master Carew and Mistress Arbella,’ said Grammaticus, sticking his head outside and looking to left and right; ‘thank God you’re here. I was terrible worried you wouldn’t be coming.’

  ‘I haven’t missed a visiting day in…well, ever. But there’s also never…’

  ‘I know,’ said Grammaticus, his voice unsteady now that it was lower. ‘Something’s come up.’

  Moving aside and gesturing to admit them, Grammaticus shut the door firmly, and double-locked and bolted it again. It was gloomy in the entry way, but Arbella could make out a chair drawn up close to the entrance; there was a heavy cudgel propped against it, and a Court Circular on the seat, which Grammaticus had evidently been reading.

  ‘What’s going on, Grammaticus?’ said Carew. ‘I’ve never seen the place this busy, except when royalty was coming. I can’t remember the last time you had to batten down the hatches like this. You seem worried.’

  ‘It’s for another beheading, Master Carew. Everyone who is anyone is coming. They’re building huge stands to accommodate people, and there’ll be a roped-off area for the groundlings, as many as can squeeze in. There’s been such a sawing and hammering as you wouldn’t believe, night and day, and I haven’t slept a wink.

  ‘Tickets are selling like hotcakes, at least they were until they were all snapped up, and at some very fancy prices. There are a lot of very rich touts roaming around.’

  ‘A beheading? Surely not. There isn’t anyone left to behead, and besides, last time I checked the times they have a-changed. So what is it, a carnival, a circus act, a play?’

  Grammaticus turned and set off up the stairs. On the landing half way up, he turned and looked Carew in the eye. ‘I’m sorry to be the one to have to tell you, Master Carew, but it’s got to be done before you go in. His Nibs has taken leave of his senses. He’s arranged with the Lieutenant to have it done again.’

  ‘Have what done again?’

  ‘The execution.’

  ‘Execution of what?’

  ‘His head, genius.’ Arbella had not heard Grammaticus be disrespectful to Carew before, but it was clear that he was under a great deal of stress. ‘It’s going to be chopped off, good and proper this time, so he says.’

  ‘Impossible! Why, only the other day he was set on…. What reason can he possibly have for believing that the second time should.... A man who for the longest time has feared the cut of a piece of paper!’

  ’Listen, and I’ll tell you what I know. It started the day before yesterday, the night after your last visit. It was our turn to host his lordship to dinner, and the Earl burst in half an hour earlier than usual. I put it down to the quarter of a bottle of sherry he usually has inside him when he arrives, thought nothing of it, and carried on in the kitchen putting the finishing touches—if you can call them that, finish it off is more like—to the roast.

  ‘I was making a mess of the syllabub when I heard them…erupting, is the only way to describe it, and I went in to find them dancing around and toasting each other with wine.

  ‘Whatever it was they were so excited about could not have been what I was about to serve them, which they necked very fast without complaint, which is uncommon, without a word passing between them—also very unusual, though there was that occasion when…never mind.

  ‘After dinner, Sir Walter told me to leave them to their port and make myself scarce. They shut the door, and in the morning I noticed that they’d stuffed paper in the keyhole. When he came down, very early and with his beard still in its net, he didn’t want any breakfast, not even a cup of coffee. His hands were shaking worse than mine are now,’—Grammaticus held them up—‘and he wanted me to comb and curl his hair and beard because h
e couldn’t do them himself.

  ‘Then he went off to see the Lieutenant of the Tower. On his return he told me all that had been agreed and decided between them, and how it was to occur, and when—everything except the why—and then sent me all over hell’s half-acre settling up his affairs.

  ‘After the Lieutenant had informed the Palace, he called in the Yeoman Warders to give them instructions. Tickets went on sale at a booth at the Middle Tower gate, and all the blue-bloods and aristocrats from the past sent their servants to get in line to book them seats. People have been streaming in for the show, as you’ll have seen on your way in.’

  Carew stared at Grammaticus. ‘But they’re all history, historical figures!’

  ‘Don’t expect me to be able to explain how they got here, or from where. All I know is that everyone’s back, including the King.’

  ‘The King?’

  ‘James the Sixth of Scotland, the First of England. Your father’s nemesis.’ Grammaticus lowered his voice in sympathy. ‘It’s set for tomorrow at noon, Master Carew.’

  ‘Tomorrow…noon…’

  Sir Walter paid a Romany gypsy medium called Madame Petulengro to summon a Jacobean headsman to swing the axe, one who never took more than a single stroke to get the job done. Chop-a-Block Hotch, or Headless Hotchkiss, they call him.’

  Carew clutched his head and then, aware of the awful irony, dropped his arms to his side.

  ‘What your father does not know,’ continued Grammaticus, ‘is that Hotchkiss was King James’s Lord High Executioner for years, with medical benefits and a State pension. I looked him up in the Headsman’s Guild register. Out of concern that James, out of spite, might bribe Hotchkiss to botch the job, I was going to tell your father; but it was too late, he had already had the Earl pay Hotch’s agent the top Guild contract fee, one hundred per cent in advance plus expenses and gratuity, with no guarantee of satisfaction.