Billy whistled softly. “Wool merchant, my bollocks. My mother always told me a man can’t spring from Delilah’s lap to Abraham’s bosom. I knew there was more to you.”
“Aye, there’s more. And I cannot tell you much. It is true I am going to Exeter town to meet some fellows. Perhaps once I’m there—assuming we make it—I can confide more to you. But not now.”
“Where was you a soldier?”
“In the German lands for many a campaign. Fighting alongside the Danes and the Swedes against the Emperor of Rome. It was a long time ago, Billy.”
“And that ain’t the only place you’ve trailed a pike, is it? I reckon you’ve seen a fair amount of service on these shores, haven’t you?”
I kept looking out at the brightening sky but when I looked over to Billy, his face wore a knowing grin.
“You was a fucking Cavalier. Maybe one of Prince Rupert’s Germans?”
I returned to the vantage of the dirty window. “I told you I was a soldier—like you.”
“Fair enough,” Billy said, certain in his knowledge. “And you seen devils like that dog thing, over there across the sea? And demons and ghosts? He slowly shook his head. “Shit, my creed says that there ain’t no Devil in this world, ain’t no sin either. But I don’t know what I saw last night.”
I did not know whether it was wise to tell him of such things. He might think me a madman.
“I will tell you that I have seen things that I could not believe I was seeing. But I did see them. And the black dog we saw this night was not of this world.”
He didn’t reply. Christ, I had run in the opposite direction to avoid Mazarin’s dark task and had blundered into it nonetheless. Was the Cardinal that clever?
“Will you still join me for Exeter?”
Billy looked up. He was clearly weighing the scales of risk and profit. “Is the money still on the table, sir?”
“It is.”
“Then I choose to stay. Old Shuck be damned. These be hard times, Mister Eff, hard times indeed, and a body needs to earn a crust.”
“I’m glad of it.” And I was. I hardly knew him but it was good to have a companion on the road even if he was a mercenary. “Let’s to the town and find you a mount. We must get on the road again without delay.”
We were being stalked. And the fell beast’s master must not be far behind. Worse still, my enemy now knew where I was. Gideon would come. And Gideon Fludd was involved in something; something far deeper and far blacker than anyone suspected.
Chapter Eight
I WATCHED BILLY as he bit into his pigeon pie, the crust tumbling into his jerkin. We sat on a bench outside the shop, watching the people of Exeter go about their business. It was our second day in the town and we had finally begun to settle in with little sign of danger. The black dog of Brent had not darkened our path again and I had already left word by way of the Mitre Inn. We would meet this evening.
I itched to confide in Billy about my mission, and God knows, he had probably guessed it as much already, but still I held back. If he reasoned the price on my head was worth the candle, he would be sorely tempted to turn me in. But how fair was it to lead him on if I should be discovered by the army? They would arrest him as my accomplice despite his protests.
“So, who’s this cove you’re meeting with today?” he said, wiping a bit of grease from his mouth with his sleeve. “You going to get down to your business then, finally?”
“God willing, yes. We’ll meet at the Mitre, around the corner from where we billet.”
“And what do you want of me in all this?”
“Just keep your eyes open. You’re my bodyguard now.”
Billy grinned at me. “You’re a sly one, Mister Eff, I’ll give you that. Never knew that the wool trade was this damned secretive.” He paused, and then looked at me down his slightly bent nose. “You best not drop me in the privy, sir, if things go awry. I catch on fast I do—and I like the coin—but I don’t fancy going back to gaol.”
“Fair enough,” I said. “I’ll honour that, Billy. And I’ll tell you what I can, when I can.”
He nodded and turned his face to the street. Carts rolled by, followed by stray dogs and the occasional beggar. Exeter was arising for the day’s labours and I was already worried how long I could linger in a place that had a full squadron of dragoons encamped in the castle at the north end of the town. And eating away at me was the worry that Gideon Fludd would follow me. And that he would arrive knowing who I was and what I had done.
I folded my hands, the silver ring almost burning into my finger. “Tell me more about the Fifth Monarchists. What does that name mean, for a start?”
Billy tossed the crust of his pie into the mud where it was set upon by three pigeons. A lesson in that somewhere I was certain.
“There have been four great empires on the Earth, Mister Eff. The first was all that with the great Whore of Babylon what enslaved the Jews. Then there was the Greeks and the Romans. Can’t rightly recall the fourth, the Pope probably, but the fifth—the fifth monarchy, you understand, this fifth monarchy is supposed to be the kingdom of Jesus right here on earth. Leastways that is what these folks believe and pray for.”
“So they are waiting for the Second Coming of Christ?”
Billy chuckled. “Waiting? Hell no, they’re working to make it happen here and now. They reckon that they are the saints appointed to light the fuse, as it were. Half of the Commons is Fifth Monarchists now. They just don’t sit and pray and shake like the others, they mean to change the politics of the land to get ready for Jesus. And I can tell you General Cromwell has his hands full.”
I mumbled an oath. I had been away a long time. The late war had given birth to many monsters and this sect was but one. Was my brother in the right about Cromwell keeping the lid on a pot that was ready to boil over? I wound Fludd’s ring around my finger. “Tell me what you know about these Fifth men and magic. Astrology and such.”
Billy fidgeted with his clasped hands and cast a furtive look up and down the street. “I knew a few of ’em last year gone by. They was always going on about the stars and reading these little books on predictions. I don’t know if it went beyond that—you know, conjuring and such. But they are a mad lot. Wouldn’t be surprised if they were up to their elbows in the black arts. Anything to help get Jesus here in a hurry.”
I was a little taken aback. “You know some of these folk?”
Billy raised his eyebrows and inclined his head. “Aye, well... truth be told, I fell in with a gaggle of them last year. They made a kind of sense to me at the time but after a bit I came to see them for what they are. Bloody tyrants and holier than thou. Scurried back to My One Flesh and my brethren. We make a whole lot more sense than those buggers, my Fellow Creature!”
I smiled. “I think I’m with you on that, Billy Chard. Let’s go back to the inn. I’m feeling a bit exposed to the elements.” Billy grinned again and laid a forefinger aside his nose.
We sidestepped the deepest of the mud and horseshit and worked our way up Fore Street to where it joined the old High Street, the castle and the cathedral hulking over that corner of the city. Our little inn lay not far off the church green. And the Mitre, that Royalist nest of conspiracy, was but a stone’s throw away. I had decided better not to lodge there until I knew who my friends were. Assuming I had any.
We had not gone very far up into the High Street when we found ourselves in the midst of a great and growing crowd of townsfolk, all jostling to get a view of what was going on up front. Craning to see up ahead, I made out two figures upon some scaffold. Billy was already pushing his way through to the front, a steady stream of foul oaths upon his tongue. And like the Red Sea, the waters parted before us.
I pulled up short, my boots squelching in the mud. Half a dozen redcoats took up station at the foot of the stage, which now in plainer view proved to be the town pillory. Billy saw them at the same time and checked his advance, shooting a glance my way.
“I think it’s a bad idea to stay for this entertainment,” I told him as I reached his side, a child punching me in the bollocks as it squeezed past to get a better view. But Billy’s attention was fast locked on the dreadful scene unfolding up on the platform. A constable was reading out the sentence of the accused even as they fastened his arms to the upright of the stocks. He was a youngish man, reasonably dressed if now soiled with the muck of the prison. His long brown hair was in disarray and this, plus his dirt-streaked face, gave him a sadly clownish look. Amid the shouting and murmuring of the crowd I heard the word “blasphemy” carry across the throng as the constable read out the sentence. Once the militiamen had pinioned the poor fellow and tied his head to the post with a leather strap, the executioner came forward, armed with his tongs and a red hot poker.
“He’s one of mine,” said Billy. “I know him.”
The poor creature did his utmost to twist and squirm as the executioner rammed the tongs into his mouth, searching out his tongue. The crowd bellowed and laughed and I sensed Billy was about to start forward.
I reached out and seized him by the arm. “Hold! Leave it be!” He broke my grip and I grabbed hold of his jerkin, yanking him backwards. “It’s no use, you fool,” I said as he turned back to face me. And I felt the rage slip out of him as I held on. He let out an anguished groan and dropped his head.
“He is my one flesh, the poor sod. He is my one flesh.”
“There’s naught we can do for him now. Come.”
The scream carried all the way to where we stood as the brand bored a hole through the Ranter’s tongue.
Billy did not look back. I guided him by his arm as we pushed our way out of the crowd. Once free, he shook me off and kept walking, stamping his left boot with every step and shaking his head as if to drive out the vision. “Goddamn them all. Fucking Presbyterians and radical dogs.”
“Let’s take a drink at the inn. Come, away from here.”
“They’re all bastards, you know.”
I nodded. “And is this what you fought the war for? Threw down the king only to end up with this tyranny instead?”
“It’s damn well not what I fought for. By God, we did expect far better. Far better.”
“We can change it—if we choose our battles with our heads and not just our hearts.”
Billy stopped short and spun around. “Save your sermon, Mister Eff, I’ll listen to no more talk of war. Not from your ilk. Your lot lost and that is that.”
“So, you’ll wait until they come for your tongue?”
Billy waved his arm and grunted as he turned and tromped off towards the cathedral green. “I need a tall can of ale. Now.”
The drink took Billy’s edge off. He did not wish to talk further of his Ranter brother and I did not wish to pursue it either. After a while, his good-natured self returned, but his mind was still on the scene in the square, that I knew. I left him with another full can and went up to our room to lie on the rack for a spell and to get my head cleared for the impending rendezvous with a certain ‘Mister Black’.
When I entered my room my eyes were instantly drawn to the window. There upon the panes were stamped muddy handprints, as if someone had pressed in upon the glass while they peered outside. But I then quickly realised that these stains were on the outside of the glass and we were up two floors in the garret of the house. And it was the size of these hands which truly set my hairs up, prickling the back of my neck. The handprints were small, the size of a tiny child’s, but with long slender fingers. Whatever it was, it had been looking into my room from a great height. After the night in Brent, I needed no one to tell me it had been looking for me.
I heard Billy come into the room behind me, and soon he was standing at my side, his eyes wide at the markings on the glass.
“Billy, can you wield a sword?”
“Aye. I’m no Ajax but I can hold my own in a fight... Tell me you don’t see no fairy handprints on that window, I beg you.”
I moved closer to get a better look. “Possibly a dog-ape, a monkey of sorts. I don’t know.”
“But looking for what? And sweet Jesus, what the hell was holding it up there outside?”
I started stuffing my satchel with my shirts and hose. “We’re moving lodgings. Get your rig.”
Billy swore.
“Here,” I said. I dropped a handful of silver into his palm that I had dug out from my belt pouch. “Get to an ironmonger and buy us two blades—nothing heavy, mind. Hunting hangars will do. Bone grips.”
Billy swore again. “I felt safer in the shitting army.”
“It’s not your army anymore, Billy. Just you and me. Hurry along and then meet me at the Mitre down the street.”
It was clear to me that whatever was tracking us was doing so with sympathetic magic. I had long heard tales of how objects held their ties to their owners, even separated by miles. There was once even a corpse that bled anew when the knife that had slain the man was brought in contact with the body again. I believed now that my Scottish dirk, left next to Israel Fludd’s body, had proved a lodestone pointing straight to me. It was guiding my pursuers just as surely as if I was leaving a bloodstained trail myself.
If Fludd knew his brother’s killer was in Exeter, he could be on me within the day. I could not know for sure, but it was bad enough just knowing that I was facing someone who practised dark arts. Or was this all my own conjuring, disturbed as my mind was with my secretive undertakings? No, in my heart if not my head, I knew what was befalling me. I knew all too well from years ago the peculiar sensation once one is touched by the unnatural, the otherworldly. And it was cold dread. That goddamned black dog was too real. It was as if my own Beast, ever to rise up without warning inside my breast, had been made flesh.
We found another inn and with it another suspicious innkeeper, and this house even closer to the Bishop’s Mitre. It was almost as if I was being hemmed in, cornered before the kill. This time, I took a room on the first floor—off the ground but within leaping distance if Billy and I had to get out quickly. I was keener than ever to meet my contact, if for no other reason than to find a reasonable safe house outside the city. Billy was already at the Mitre when I entered, seated at the rear of the tap room with his back to the wall. The tavern master smiled and bade me greetings (he had remembered me from the previous day) and I ordered a pot of ale at the bar and joined Billy, all the while casting my eyes around the room. No soldiers, just merchants and a few apprentice lads.
Billy said nothing but carefully and slyly drew back the canvas from the bundle perched on the table, revealing two rather stubby hunting swords, their iron shell guards pitted with rust despite the blacking they had been given. “I am sure you’ve had far better in your time, Mister Eff, but as they say, beggars can’t be choosers.”
I half drew one of the hangars out to eye its blade, which at the very least had a keen edge, if one sorely nicked. They were more suited to a butcher’s shop than a fight one’s life depended upon. “They’ll do. But pray we won’t need them.” I covered the swords and took a swig of ale. Another two hours until my rendezvous.
Billy leaned back in his chair. “At what point did you think it would be a good time to tell me what you’re really up to? When my head gets stove in or when I find a knife in my ribs?”
I cupped my tankard with both hands and stared into the dark liquid, looking for some wisdom. It was an honest question deserving of an honest answer. But truth here could kill me. I took a heavy breath. Billy’s face was deeply lined, eyes fallen into his skull, and his red-tinged beard was still unshaven and patchy. I noticed now that he was probably far younger than I had thought, worn out by hard living and war. An honest answer for an honest rogue? Or would I be in the hands of the army by supper?
“You’re right, Billy Chard,” I said. “I suppose if you mean to stand by me you deserve a measure of trust. But that means you accept the hard part of the bargain as well as the good. First, I’ll tell you I have a price on m
y head.”
Billy laughed and wheezed. “Well, what wool merchant doesn’t? No, no, Mister Eff, I reckoned a while ago you was up to no good here. I fancy that you’re a Cavalier looking for a fight—here to meet a few other coves of the same ilk. And you’re about as foreign as my old father.” He took a drink and waved his cup towards me. “So it seems we both have the measure of the other, no? Both of us on the wrong side of the law as it stands. Both trying to stay a few paces ahead of the magistrates—or the army. It’s all understood, Fellow Creature, all understood. And it’s a trust safe by me, sir. Safe indeed.”
“I mean to bring down the generals and the Council and bring back our proper king. Is that too much honesty for you?”
Billy’s thick lips rounded in an O. “That is a heavy task you’ve set yourself, Mister Eff, a considerable task if I might say.”
“And there is to be an uprising here in the West Country—and elsewhere,” I added, my voice still low. “Is that a bit too much intelligence for you?”
“Well, there was bound to be a rising someday, that’s no secret what with folks living under the yoke as they are. But what I’m still vexed about—by your leave—is that great black dog the other night. Is that some new pet of the Parliament men? And what do you figure this little dog-ape of yours who capered up our window is up to now? Seems to me you’re more afeard of them than the army.”
I set my tankard upon the table. We were apart far enough from anyone else that our words would not carry. “I’m certain that I am being pursued by a Roundhead officer of the dragoons who has some knowledge of the black arts. That is the truth of it.”
Billy hunched his shoulders and pushed forward, his cup clacking into mine. “What you mean is he is pursuing us. And I remember that great dog was a real beast, big as a cow, but it didn’t come after us, did it? There’s no such thing as the Devil, or hell for that matter. That’s what my creed says. Everything was put here by the good Lord. There ain’t no bad and there ain’t no sin.”
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