Dark Stars (The Thief Taker Book 3)

by C. S. Quinn

  ‘Four cherubim,’ he added. ‘Four rings.’

  He called to mind the symbols marked on the rings.

  ‘Leo could be the lion,’ he said. ‘Aquarius the man. That leaves a bull and a bird.’

  ‘Taurus for the bull,’ said Lily. ‘I don’t know for the bird.’

  They both thought for a moment.

  Charlie had a sudden idea. ‘Do you have your almanac? Perhaps it could tell us something we’re missing.’

  Lily reached inside her waistband and drew out the almanac. It was a large booklet of twenty or so sewn pages. The front cover bore the title The Starry Messenger and was illustrated with moons and suns.

  Lily flipped open the pamphlet and began leafing through. She turned a page, and both of them froze. The forecast was titled ‘All Hallows’ Eve, 1666’. Beneath was a triangular star chart, peppered with symbols. The picture accompanying the symbolic prediction was of a familiar four angels.

  ‘It’s the same,’ breathed Lily. ‘Angels with animal heads.’

  ‘No wonder Ishmael Boney was accused,’ said Charlie.

  ‘The picture is about a specific lunar event,’ said Lily, reading the writing. ‘The impending eclipse on All Hallows’ Eve.’

  ‘Two days from now,’ said Charlie. ‘What else does it say?’

  ‘Saturn will overcome Jupiter,’ said Lily. ‘The moon will be turned to blood. A great power will be revealed and herald the end of time.’

  They looked at one another.

  ‘Saturn is bad,’ said Lily uncertainly. ‘Jupiter is good. But angels are in the Bible. What has that to do with astrology?’

  And my mother? thought Charlie privately. He had only fragmented memories of Sally Oakley before she’d been murdered keeping him and his brother safe. He’d only later discovered his father, Tobias Oakley, had died at sea.

  ‘We need to find Ishmael Boney,’ said Charlie.

  He unhooked the sampler, rolled it and put it thoughtfully in his coat. The fabric was light and took up surprisingly little space.

  ‘But Ishmael has vanished,’ said Lily. ‘Gone into hiding.’

  ‘I’m a thief taker,’ said Charlie. ‘I have a talent for finding hidden people. And if you want to track a man in London, the first thing you should consider is who might be paying him.’ Charlie tapped the front of Lily’s almanac, where the name of a printing house was prominently displayed.

  ‘We’re going to visit Ishmael’s publisher.’

  Chapter 13

  King Charles steered Frances carefully over the cobbled pavements of Deptford Dockyard. It was cold, but a double intoxication of wine and women was keeping him comfortably warm. Frances Stewart was divested of her scanty toga and wearing a yellow silk dress fitted to her youthful frame. With pearls dangling from her ears and ornamenting her shining brown hair, she looked like she was playing dress up in an older woman’s clothes.

  Charles and Frances had made successive toasts in the carriage, and his heart sang with love for her. Several yellow ribbons in her brown hair had come loose, and her dress hung slightly unlaced at the back.

  Charles squinted. Where were all the ships?

  The enormous dockyards were virtually empty. The large mast pond and long rope-walk employed only a handful of men. Then he spied Amesbury’s pet monkey, a lucky plunder from his seafaring days, cannoning back and forth on the cobbles. The general had ridden ahead to summon Judge Walters and arrange a royal welcome.

  ‘Your Majesty.’ Amesbury wore only a grey cloak to ward off the autumn chill.

  His monkey bounded back to its master and slipped a sly hand into his hanging pocket. It freed a few grapes before Amesbury batted it away.

  Frances smiled hazily and managed a curtsy. Her eyes were warily fixed on the monkey, decimating the grapes with sharp teeth a few feet away.

  ‘Where are our grand ships?’ asked Charles.

  ‘We’ve been forced to mothball most of the navy,’ said Amesbury. ‘It’s upriver at Chatham. After the fire we haven’t the funds to sail it.’

  Amesbury stepped forward to offer the King and Frances wine. Frances stared at the contents before taking a tight sip.

  She’s going to throw up, thought Amesbury, thinking Frances’s youth exacerbated the King’s ageing appearance.

  ‘What of the dock workers?’ pressed Charles, sipping wine. ‘The shipbuilders?’

  ‘Many are too afraid to work, Your Majesty.’ Amesbury held out a large hand in explanation. ‘The murders at Dead Man’s Curve. They fear ghosts and spirits. Seafarers are superstitious, and the shipbuilders are already on reduced pay. And with All Hallows’ Eve approaching . . .’

  ‘The eclipse,’ said Charles, nodding.

  The King glanced at Frances. She was swaying slightly as she stood and appeared not to have noticed the sad state of the Royal Docks. Charles held her protectively.

  Frances mumbled something unintelligible.

  ‘Of course,’ said Charles. ‘Frances requires the pot,’ he announced to the assembled men.

  Amesbury quickly assessed who seemed the dock worker least likely to molest the drunken Frances and summoned him with a click of his calloused fingers.

  ‘Take this lady to the naval offices,’ he said. ‘There’s a fire there and a chamber pot she can use.’

  ‘You see how good-natured she is?’ said the King, sighing as she left. ‘I would do anything for her, Amesbury.’

  Amesbury said nothing. Charles’s capacity for love was one of his most endearing qualities, but also the most incompatible with kingship.

  Another man stepped forward. Charles narrowed his eyes, trying to keep focus. Inappropriately, the man’s dockside nickname reared up through the haze of Madeira wine.

  The Bloody Judge.

  Judge Walters stood poised like a carrion crow in his judicial robes. His former life as a naval officer had divested him of an eye and several fingers. But he’d supplemented the loss with a leather eyepatch studded with a pearl cross, and a merciless zeal for penal law. His hatred of pirates earned him his nickname.

  ‘Your Majesty.’ The Judge gave the briefest of bows.

  He wore black from neck to toe, with the exception of a round white collar that reminded the King uncomfortably of Cromwell. Charles was rather afraid of Walters. The pearly cross seemed to watch you even when the man himself wasn’t.

  ‘You summoned me?’ asked the Judge.

  Charles nodded. Amesbury stepped forward.

  ‘My naval intelligence informs me you came by a ruby ring,’ he said.

  The Judge looked surprised. ‘I did come by such a ring,’ he said. ‘I cut it from the hand of a pirate. He captured it during a sea raid and was convinced it led to some great treasure. But he couldn’t divulge the location. Even under my strongest means.’

  Something unpleasant glimmered in the Judge’s face at this last revelation.

  ‘The only thing I could get from him,’ he added, ‘was that he thought the ring had once belonged to royalty, because it was marked with the sign of Leo. And there was some kind of prophecy. A treasure would be revealed this year. On All Hallows’ Eve.’

  ‘Where is the ring now?’ demanded Amesbury.

  The Judge’s face drew rigid in fury. ‘It was stolen from me,’ he said tightly, ‘by a gypsy girl. I am taking steps to have it returned and the thief punished. Am I right in thinking,’ continued the Judge, his good eye trained on the King, ‘that there were four ring bearers? The astrologer Ishmael Boney could perhaps tell us more.’

  There was a false note of concern to his voice.

  ‘Ishmael is under royal protection,’ said the King. He had grown noticeably pale.

  ‘What do you mean by it, man?’ interjected Amesbury, his booming battlefield voice ringing around the docks. ‘Think you this your courtroom and His Majesty a witness?’

  The Judge gave one of his imperceptible bows. He pulled his black robes tighter against the chill and righted his white collar.

  �
��Forgive me, I mean no impertinence,’ he said formally, his eyepatch twitching. ‘Only that if this crime is frightening the dockers’ – his single eye flickered to the King, then to the near-empty dockyard – ‘I am moved to help solve it.’

  ‘If you want to end the fearfulness of Deptford folk,’ added Amesbury, addressing the Judge, ‘you might try not drowning pirates on their doorstep.’ He waved his hand in a tired kind of way. ‘We have more pressing matters. If the Dutch search for the Eye, they could be planning a sea invasion.’

  ‘Your new penal policies have become quite the spectacle, so I’m told.’ King Charles was speaking to Judge Walters. For the first time his love-struck flush had been replaced by something more steely.

  ‘Terror is the only language a pirate understands,’ said the Judge. ‘We chain miscreants to the dock whilst the tide rises. After a spell dangling from a short noose,’ he added with a malevolent grin. ‘Large crowds frequent the bankside inns to see the pirate’s last dance. The next drowning is this afternoon. If Your Majesty should like—’

  ‘Mercy,’ interrupted the King, ‘is a noble thing.’ His eyes veered automatically to a swinging gibbet further downriver. Even from this distance he could see the slumped corpse inside, the dead mouth gaping in remembered pain. ‘Perhaps you should pay more mind to more conventional executions. This next drowning will be the last.’

  The Judge made the King a short bow. ‘As Your Majesty wishes,’ he said silkily. ‘I shall make it my priority to discover the gypsy villain who stole my ring,’ he concluded, ‘and bring her to justice.’

  Chapter 14

  Charlie and Lily stared up at the printing house, sticking up like a single brick tooth on the razed remains of Fleet Street. Fire had blazed up the road, burning down the older wooden-jettied buildings. Black caverns were etched deep into the ground where cellars had fallen in. A stench of smoke still hung on the air.

  ‘Fleet Street still smokes,’ said Lily sadly, ‘weeks after the fire is out.’

  She was looking at the men working to shovel deep ash and throw water on any remaining smoulder. Elsewhere people who’d once owned taverns and shops on the street were trying to mark out their old territories. A table had been erected with a solicitor appointed to resolve disputes of land, and angry voices flared around it.

  ‘Old Macock is the oldest printer in London,’ said Charlie. ‘He makes most of his money from astrological almanacs and has been printing them for over thirty years.’

  ‘He must be a clever businessman,’ said Lily, assessing the expensive brick building.

  Charlie nodded. ‘Sharp as a whip and rich enough to build a brick print house with its own fire engine.’

  They knocked on the smart wooden door, inscribed ‘Macock and Son, Esteemed Printers est. 1630’. The sound of a pounding print press echoed from within. A heady smell of linseed and resin greeted them as they moved through the doorway.

  Inside was light and airy, with several large wooden print presses illuminated by hexagonal glass windows. A handful of men turned presses, mixed ink, chiselled at print plates and papers. There were piles of completed manuscripts stacked all around.

  ‘Mostly almanacs by different astrologers,’ said Lily, moving uninvited towards the piles and scanning the titles. ‘“Christian Astrology in 1666”,’ she read. ‘“Will She Marry? – A Maid’s Astrological Wedding Predictions”, “Musings on the Latest Terrible Eclipse”.’

  A thick-armed man with his linen shirtsleeves rolled up made towards them.

  ‘What’s your business?’ he asked, eyeing Lily suspiciously.

  Lily lifted the jangle of charms at her neck. ‘Gypsy curses,’ she said.

  ‘We’re here to see the owner,’ interjected Charlie quickly as the man drew back, crossing himself. ‘John Macock.’

  The man pointed an arm towards a large printing press but continued to back away. ‘John!’ he bellowed, keeping his eyes on Lily. ‘People here for you!’

  A young man emerged from behind a clattering printing press, wiping ink-stained fingertips on a small handkerchief. His elaborate black curls spoke of nightly curling papers and painstaking application of bear grease.

  ‘John Macock,’ he announced loudly, ‘at your service.’

  He was wearing a flamboyant scarlet jerkin, a collar of gold Venetian lace and his leather shoes had been polished to within an inch of their lives.

  The man threw out a hand, from which a brash garnet ring twinkled. ‘Have you some print business?’ he asked, taking in Charlie and then Lily. ‘Some legal documents?’ he hazarded, sizing them both up.

  ‘You’re John Macock?’ said Charlie, confused, shaking the proffered hand.

  ‘The younger,’ confirmed the man, pumping his arm enthusiastically. ‘The elder died last year. Plague. Lucky he did. The Great Fire would have broken his heart. But have no fear’ – Macock surveyed his print shop – ‘I’m to make some changes,’ he said proudly. ‘Out with the old. We’re to fit the latest presses from Germany. That’s if any of us survive the eclipse,’ he added with a laugh that sounded a little loud to be genuine.

  ‘I’m a thief taker,’ said Charlie, retrieving his crushed fingers. ‘My name is Charlie Tuesday.’

  Macock’s glossy-curled head tilted, assessing. ‘Charlie Tuesday,’ he ruminated. ‘I’ve heard all about you. “The People’s Thief Taker”,’ he added, fanning his hands in an imaginary book title. ‘The man who solves crimes for rich and poor. Wealthy ladies would love to read about you,’ he added with a wink. ‘They’d beat a path to your bed. Is this your wife?’ he added, realising Lily’s presence might call for greater tact.

  ‘She’s—’ began Charlie.

  ‘An associate,’ said Lily firmly. ‘We have business together.’

  ‘I would have said a friend,’ muttered Charlie.

  Lily only shrugged her little shoulders.

  ‘A good business associate is always a friend,’ said Macock, beaming broadly at Lily. ‘And a pretty friend the best kind of all.’

  Lily gave him the siren smile she reserved for men she wanted something from.

  ‘Charlie Tuesday,’ repeated Macock. ‘Tell me you’re here to commit your stories to print. I could give you very good distribution. Make you a lot of money.’

  ‘Reading and writing isn’t my strong point,’ admitted Charlie.

  ‘Something to consider in any case,’ said Macock, thumping his shoulder. ‘If you do, you must come to me.’ His youthful face darkened. ‘Don’t go to that crook William Taylor. He stole Milton from under my nose.’

  ‘If I ever come to publish,’ promised Charlie, ‘I’ll come to you. But for now I need your help.’

  ‘In which case,’ said Macock delightedly, ‘what can I do for you?’

  ‘You print Ishmael Boney’s almanacs?’ asked Charlie.

  ‘We did,’ said Macock easily. ‘We print all the astrological almanacs. No longer Ishmael’s, of course. Not since such high-feeling flares. Not good for our reputation.’

  ‘Do you think Ishmael was wrongly accused of the Deptford murders?’ asked Charlie, noting Macock’s choice of words.

  Macock thought for a moment. ‘I couldn’t say,’ he admitted. ‘I only met Ishmael once. Mainly he did business with my father.’

  ‘You don’t know where he is now?’

  ‘I don’t,’ said Macock. ‘My father likely knew his address, but that died with him. And I will not search too deeply. We owe Ishmael substantial royalties,’ he said, winking. ‘Though I’m sad things turned out as they did,’ he concluded with feeling. ‘Ishmael made us a lot of money.’

  ‘How did he strike you as a person when you met him?’ asked Charlie.

  ‘As I say, I only met him once.’ Macock frowned. ‘I’d expected him to look more exotic,’ he added sadly. ‘Ishmael’s skin is not so dark as his Moorish kinsmen’s, and he dresses as an Englishman. If not for his frizzled hair, you might mistake him for a Spaniard.’ Macock seemed very sad at this, as th
ough Ishmael had shirked his astrologer’s duty to appear foreign and magical.

  ‘What did he speak of?’ prompted Charlie.

  ‘I’m afraid I don’t recollect much of what Ishmael said,’ replied Macock. ‘I’d been out the previous night, celebrating our recent sea victory against the Dutch,’ he added. ‘Too much ale.’

  ‘So this would have been less than a month ago,’ said Charlie, logging the occasion. ‘October the first?’

  ‘I suppose it would,’ agreed Macock.

  ‘What about Ishmael’s manner?’ asked Charlie. ‘Anything notable there?’

  ‘Now that I do remember,’ said Macock, ‘Ishmael was excitable. Frightened even. He kept looking at the door as though he expected someone to break it down.’

  ‘But Ishmael gave you his latest almanac to publish,’ confirmed Charlie.

  ‘He did.’ Macock toyed with a luxuriant curl. ‘We took some ale. I believe I asked about his predictions for our printing house, but he wasn’t forthcoming.’ His forehead crinkled in memory. ‘I do remember Ishmael said this latest almanac was the most important he’d published. That it would guide a worthy man to his destiny. Or perhaps it was his birthright. I forget.’

  ‘Did you not think that an unusual remark?’ asked Charlie.

  ‘Not at all,’ said Macock. ‘Most of our authors are rather strange. Particularly astrologers. You should meet Isaac Newton.’

  Charlie drew out the ruby ring, taking a chance that a man like Macock would have an eye for jewellery.

  ‘What about this?’ he asked, flashing the gem. ‘Have you seen the like before? Perhaps Ishmael was wearing something like it.’

  Macock hesitated, staring at the ring. ‘No,’ he said finally. ‘I’ve never seen a ring like that before.’

  Charlie thought for a moment. His mind turned to the mountain of astrological almanacs ready for distribution.

  ‘Did Ishmael leave any other unpublished material?’ suggested Charlie. ‘Anything you’ve not been able to print because of the recent’ – he searched for the word – ‘unrest?’

  Macock thought for a moment. ‘No, not exactly,’ he said. ‘I think he did leave us some papers. Many authors use us in that way, to hold their letters and such.’