Ex Libris

by Ross King

  'What's your pleasure, sir? Where shall I take you?'

  'Alsatia,' I replied. Then I ducked back inside the canopy and didn't emerge until our bow had scraped against the landing-steps of the coal-wharves beneath the Golden Horn.

  ***

  I took a room at the Half Moon Tavern, which stood in Abbey Court, more or less the centre (as far as I could ever tell) of the labyrinth of courts and bystreets that was Alsatia. My room was on the topmost floor and could be reached only by means of a narrow, twisting staircase, up which I was guided by the proprietress, Mrs. Fawkes, a small, dark-haired woman whose quiet and gentle manner seemed more akin to a nunnery than a tavern in the middle of Alsatia. I had signed her guest-book as 'Silas Cobb', then paid a shilling for two nights in advance, which entitled me, she explained in her soft voice, to breakfast and supper as well as a bed. And should I require anything else for my pleasure-ale, tobacco, the services of a chambermaid-I must not hesitate to let her know immediately. Her sloe-coloured eyes had been modestly lowered as she made the allusion to the young ladies whose faces had peered at us from curtained doorways as I followed her upstairs. I assured her that I anticipated no such needs.

  'In fact…' I was fishing in my pocket for another shilling, which I slipped into her palm. 'It is urgent that I not be disturbed during the course of my stay. Not by anyone, day or night. Do you understand?'

  I suspected from Mrs. Fawkes's reaction that such requests were not unusual among her guests.

  'Of course, Mr. Cobb,' she whispered, smiling at me before shyly dropping her eyes to the chatelaine at her waist, then to the black cat that had followed us up the stairs. 'Not a soul shall disturb you. Not as long as you reside under my roof. You have my word.'

  Once she and the cat had departed I placed my bag on the bed and looked round the room. It was as small and Spartan as a monk's cell, furnished with nothing more than a ladder-back chair, a table and a four-post bed with a fatigued mattress. But it was clean enough and would suit me perfectly well. Through its tiny window I could see the bell-tower of Bridewell Prison and, far beyond it, the north end of London Bridge, a sight that cheered me greatly and seemed to make my exile-as I already thought of it-slightly more bearable. I sat down on the bed, drew a shaky breath and congratulated myself on my choice.

  I had been depressed and utterly baffled when I arrived in Alsatia an hour earlier. I was exhausted after the ordeal of the night and possessed no plan other than to seek refuge, like so many others, in its precincts. I first considered taking a room at the Golden Horn, then at the Saracen's Head, but each time I ruled it out. In either place I might have encountered Dr. Pickvance, and I didn't yet know the nature of his relationship with Henry Monboddo. Besides, the Half Moon Tavern looked slightly more respectable-if that was the word-than either of the other establishments. It had just opened its doors when I arrived, and Mrs. Fawkes was bidding farewell to several richly dressed gentlemen, attended by the black cat that followed her everywhere like a witch's familiar.

  The premises otherwise seemed empty except for the young ladies who peered at us from their curtained-off rooms.

  Yes, I told myself as I lay down on the bed: I would be safe here. All the same, I removed the firelock from my book bag and set it beside the bed.

  ***

  I fell asleep almost immediately and didn't wake until early evening, by which time the first yellow lights were kindling on London Bridge. My fob-watch informed me I had slept for almost ten hours.

  I rolled out of bed and, still befuddled by sleep, withdrew two small vials from my bag: two of the three purchases I had made before renting the room. Inside the first vial was a decoction of bramble leaves bought from an apothecary named Foskett, who informed me how the preparation, created in his own laboratory, was a superb remedy for sores in the mouth or else those on what he winked and called the 'secret parts'. I winked back at him, winced emphatically, and allowed him to believe what he wished.

  After bringing a kettle of water to the boil I poured the decoction of bramble leaves inside, stirred it, then mixed in those of the second vial, three grams of lye purchased in the same shop. I was fully awake now, hands trembling as I replaced the caps. When the mixture had cooled I poured it into the washbasin and used it to drench my hair, my beard and even my eyebrows. Whether he knew it or not, Foskett's preparation did more than heal venereal complaints. The shaving-glass confirmed that both my hair and my beard had turned from a greying brown to jet-black. For good measure I trimmed my beard into a sharp point, in the fashion favoured by Cavaliers.

  I then turned to my last purchase of the morning, a suit of clothes from a haberdasher in Whitefriars Street. I folded and tucked away my sober bookseller costume-my threadbare doublet, my breeches with their seat worn almost through, my laddered stockings-and donned the new suit, piece by piece. First a gold-buttoned purple surcoat; then a pair of beribboned breeches with matching silk stockings; finally a black velvet hat with a dangling purple ribbon and a cocked brim. I would be conspicuous enough, to be sure, but not recognisable by anyone-scarcely even by myself-as Isaac Inchbold. No, I thought as I inspected the image given back by the darkened window: no one would know me as I went about my business tonight.

  Satisfied with these effects, I sent for my supper. A short time later it was delivered to the room by one of the so-called chambermaids, a big-hipped, damask-cheeked girl with a country accent. She placed it on the table, accepted a tuppence and my thanks in return, then made her discreet exit without so much as a glance in my direction. The meal, fried haddock and parsnips, was quite tasty, and I ate with a great appetite. I also consumed with relish a cup of double ale. A few minutes later I was descending the staircase with the pistol tucked into the waistband of my new breeches.

  At this hour the Half Moon was filling with patrons whose harsh laughter, interspersed with the shrieks of a fiddle, drifted up the stairs. The creaking treads attracted the attention of a couple of the residents in the curtained rooms whose disembodied faces, also plump and damask-cheeked, emerged from the folds of the curtains, or whose curtains had been drawn back to reveal candlelit rooms with looking-glasses and vases of bright flowers. Smells of perfume and tobacco smoke wafted towards me, followed by a few muffled chuckles. I ducked my behatted head, but not before catching another snatch of my reflection in one of the looking-glasses: a black-haired bravo with his buttons glinting and his hat tipped at a rakish angle. Only my trusty thorn-stick-which I had been loath to abandon-proclaimed my former identity. Later I would wonder at the concatenation of strange events that had fetched me up here, but for the moment I didn't stop to ponder how it had come to pass that I, a law-abiding citizen, a humble bookseller, should now be descending the steps of a brothel in the middle of Alsatia, at nightfall, in disguise.

  The sky had darkened by the time I emerged into Abbey Court. I looked round for a moment, taking my bearings from a sun-faded signpost on the corner, before walking north towards Fleet Street. On the way I passed Arrowsmith Court and through its narrow opening caught a glimpse of the Turk's grisly visage leering back at me. The windows of the Saracen's Head glowed orange, but those in Dr. Pickvance's rooms were shuttered and dark. I kept walking north, the firelock chafing at my thigh and poking my hip. Across the ditch, in Blackfriars, lines of washing hung between the newly built tenements, pale swallowtails of smocks and shifts, like the bunting from some vanished procession. In Whitefriars Street a fox darted across my path, snout lowered, brush raised. It seemed an omen of some sort, as did the snatch of boldly chalked graffiti I saw, seconds later, on a collapsing hoarding: the same symbol-the horned man-that I had seen twice, also in Alsatia. Except that it wasn't a horned man or the devil, I suddenly realised, but a man in a winged hat. For the mark was not only the alchemical symbol for quicksilver, I knew, but also the astrological symbol for the planet Mercury.

  I almost dismissed the sign and resumed walking. After all, our city was full of charlatans casting horoscopes and scrib
bling prophecies. Indeed, the newssheets were full of accounts of King Charles consulting our most famous astrologer, the great Elias Ashmole, to cast a horoscope to determine the most auspicious date for the sitting of Parliament. But then I recalled that Mercury, the messenger of the gods, the patron of merchants and traders such as myself, was the name given by the Romans to Hermes Trismegistus. And Hermes Trismegistus was the author of the Corpus hermeticum, in which was found, of course, The Labyrinth of the World.

  I stood before the hoarding, staring as if spell-stopped at the brief scrawl. Was this some kind of grotesque hoax? A coincidence? A clue? Like all else I had discovered, it seemed impossible to interpret.

  I turned round and began walking rapidly northwards, the balls of lead clattering in the pocket of my breeches. The breeze had strengthened, and coal-ash dashed in a quick gust across the cobbles, stinging my cheeks. I quickened my pace. A minute later Fleet Street opened before me, and I raised an arm to hail an empty hackney-coach.

  Once again my destination was St. Olave's, through whose gate I stepped, some thirty minutes later, to find the churchyard empty except for a single mourner at the far end, nearest Seething Lane, and a sexton digging a fresh grave by lamplight. The mourner, his back turned, seemed not to notice me; nor did the sexton, the top of whose head was barely visible above the lip of the grave. His spade was rasping in the wet London clay and chiming whenever the metal struck a stone.

  I had no message to leave for Alethea. Earlier, as I ate my supper in the Half Moon, I debated whether or not I should tell her how my shop had twice been invaded by persons unknown and that I had therefore left Nonsuch House in fear of my safety. But in the end I decided not to. Alethea, like Biddulph, entertained quite enough wild fancies without needing further ones added to them. I also decided not to tell her of my residence at the Half Moon.

  Although I had been instructed to check the strongbox each evening, I had yet to receive a letter from Alethea via this means, and so I was surprised and even a little gratified to find a piece of paper inside it. I sprang open its lock, as quietly as possible so as not to alert the mourner, who seemed to be studying Seething Lane, as if waiting for someone to come through its gate and into the churchyard. I angled the paper into the light of the grave-digger's flickering lantern and began reading what proved to be the information that I had been waiting for these past few days. Preparations for my journey, she wrote, were now complete. A coach-and-four would be waiting for me at the Three Pigeons in High Holborn the next morning at seven o'clock. Her name was signed with a flourish at the bottom.

  I locked the strongbox, but instead of destroying the piece of paper I creased it along the folds and slipped it inside my pocket. But I had already decided I would obey its request and make certain I was aboard the coach the next morning. I didn't relish the thought of showing myself abroad during the daytime, but perhaps Huntingdonshire would be safer for me than London.

  Five minutes later I was back in the street, pressing forward through the darkness, pausing briefly at each fork or intersection to peer down narrow, tenement-lined streets in search of an empty hack. None appeared. No one did. So I picked my way through the darkness, through streets as empty as if abandoned after the onset of plague or war.

  Only after another twenty minutes did I reach an opening and enter the broad sweep of the Strand. From there it was just a short walk to Alsatia, which, outcast that I was, I had already begun to think of as home.

  Chapter Two

  The coach's progress through the Chislet Marshes was a slow one. Foxcroft guided the horses through the mud of the coastal road until they reached one of the De Quester posting-inns. There the exhausted Barbs were exchanged and the arduous journey recommenced. White fogs hovered all day in the ditches and over the flooded hopfields, but Foxcroft dared not light a lantern for fear of Lord Stanhope's ruffians. Nor did he light one as dusk arrived. The coach made its way blindly along overgrown cattle droves and paths that slunk through decrepit orchards.

  By this time his unexpected passengers had been reduced to two. The only member of the strange trio who had spoken a word, the larger of the men, had disembarked in Herne Bay. Foxcroft's remaining companions were now huddled under a blanket, crouched low among the sacks of mail. A half-dozen times he had tried unsuccessfully to draw them into conversation. He fed them all the same, cheese and black bread from the inns, along with cups of cider. He even offered them swigs from his own wineskin, which were declined with brief shakes of the head. The woman would sometimes turn her head to peer at the road behind, but the man, a thin little fellow, sat perfectly still. Some sort of bejewelled cabinet the size of a large sugar-loaf was clutched to his breast.

  'What's that, hmm? A treasure chest?'

  Silence from the back. Foxcroft shook the reins and the horses stepped up their pace, tossing their heads and blowing white plumes into the air. In a few minutes they would reach the high road to London, where the dangers increased of Stanhope's ruffians. But if the coach was ambushed the attackers might be appeased, he reckoned, by a prize like the chest. It was for that reason alone that Foxcroft was suffering their presence in his coach. The pair of them might spare him another dented crown.

  'Yours, is it?' He had twisted round in his seat. 'I say, very nice.'

  Still no reply. In the darkness he could barely make out their two heads, only inches apart. The thin little man stared fixedly at his feet. Perhaps they spoke no English? Foxcroft knew as well as anyone that these days London was full of foreigners, Spaniards for the most part, all of them either spies or priests, often both. The infestation was a sign of the times. The Spanish King and his ambassador lorded over old James. First that modern-day Drake, Sir Walter Raleigh, had been sent to the chopping-block for daring to fight the Spaniards on their own ground. Next King James had begun turning priests loose from the gaols and even daring to talk about marrying his son to, of all people, a Spanish princess! And now, worst of all, the old dolt was too niggardly to send an army to help his very own daughter even though her husband's lands in Germany were being invaded by hordes of Spaniards.

  Still, he reassured himself, neither of his passengers looked at all Spanish. The woman, from the little he could glimpse of her, looked uncommonly attractive despite her bedraggled appearance. She was also young, scarcely more than a girl. What on earth was she doing with such a milksop, unless it had something to do with the box the fellow was clutching to his scrawny breast?

  After another hour the smells of the country gave way to those of the city, silence to intermittent noise. The coach-and-six crossed the high road to London in darkness, then swiftly bore riverwards in the direction of Gravesend. Foxcroft intended to cross the river from Gravesend to Tilbury on a horse ferry, then ride into London along the north shore, where Stanhope's bruisers would scarcely expect to find him. If all went well he would reach the Ald Gate by the time it was creaking open, and from there it would be a short jaunt through the streets to the De Quester offices in Cornhill. What he might do with his other cargo, however, his two mysterious passengers, he had no idea.

  He need not have worried himself. When the coach finally reached Gravesend it was obliged to wait almost two hours for the next ferry to Tilbury. He arranged for a new team and then tramped the streets until he found an alehouse that was open, in whose tap room he emptied three pintpots and demolished a pigeon pie, before returning to the posting-inn in time to watch the ferry disgorge its handful of passengers. His own passengers were quite forgotten at this point, and not until he had paid his two shillings and reached the middle of the black waters did he suddenly remember them. When he turned round in the box-seat he was surprised to discover that they had vanished into thin air, along with their glittering cargo.

  ***

  As it happened, Vilém and Emilia were in a boat of their own at that moment, travelling upstream towards London, which lay some twenty miles to the west. The small barge had pushed off from the dock at Gravesend almost an h
our earlier and, after threading its way among the pinks and merchantmen riding at anchor before the custom-house, reached the middle of the swirling current. From there it would be at least three hours to the dock at Billingsgate, the barge-master had informed them, even on a flowing tide. And from Billingsgate it might then take them as much as another hour to reach their final destination.

  Emilia shivered and huddled deeper inside the canvas tilt as the water slapped and gurgled against the hull. Four more hours of cold and fear. But at long last she knew where they were going. They were bound, Vilém told her, for York House, a mansion in the Strand, near Charing Cross, where they would be met by Henry Monboddo. Vilém had been instructed to hand over the casket containing the parchment to Monboddo and no one else. Monboddo was experienced in such dealings, Vilém insisted, as the boat wallowed in the current. He was a friend of Prince Charles, and at present he was furnishing the galleries of York House to the extravagant but discriminating tastes of its new owner, George Villiers, the Earl of Buckingham.

  Emilia watched the lights of Gravesend dim and disappear as the river turned north. The name was a familiar one. Rumours in Prague had set him to work fitting a fleet of men-o'-war to sail into the Mediterranean to attack Spain. But whether the ships had been fitted, whether or not they ever sailed, the attack never took place.

  'So that is who the books are intended for, then? The Earl of Buckingham?'

  Vilém shook his head, then raised his eyes from the casket wedged between his boots and glanced in the direction of the barge-master, who was grunting rhythmically as he leaned on his pole. Bewhiskered, wearing a leather jerkin, he had greeted them suspiciously in the barge-room a short time earlier, squinting at the pair of them-and then even more insistently at the casket-in the weak candle-light. Sir Ambrose had warned Vilém that the boatmen on the Thames were in the pay of the Secretary of State or Count Gondomar, the Spanish Ambassador, so to ensure discretion he paid the fellow an extra two shillings. This act only made the grizzled old rogue even more suspicious; as did the request to travel upriver without a lantern.