Where does he lodge?
At court, usually, with his pretty young wife. Sometimes he will stretch the hours by staying aboard ship at Gravesend when he journeys there. When he is here at Deptford he spends much time in meetings with my lord Admiral Howard who, you must know, has a house here on the Green. But if you ask me how we can protect Drake, I would say only this: get him to sea as quickly as possible.
Chapter 9
On the first floor of a broad Tenement House in Cow Lane near Smith Field, Gilbert Cogg was sweating profusely, which had less to do with the heat from the fire and more to do with his three-hundredweight girth and his exertions with a girl named Starling Day.
She had come to the door of his workshop asking for employment in his bawdy house. He told her he would not employ her without sampling what she had to offer, and said she could have sixpence and a tankard of ale. She asked a shilling. After a brief bout of bargaining, they had agreed upon ten pence. She had earned her money well, half-crushed to death beneath his prodigious weight. As he pounded greedily into her hungry body, his enormous bed threatened to break its boards and joists and collapse through to the ground floor.
But it survived, as did Starling Day. Now they lay together on the dirt-gray sheet. Cogg was panting as if he would soon breathe his last. His belly and chest heaved and sank like a ducking stool. Starling rolled over and slid out of the bed. Her body was thin from lack of nourishment, having walked from Nottingham to escape a marriage in which she had been beaten one time too many. Though the ribs in her chest looked like a washboard, her bruises had faded and she was still womanly. She would have been pretty had she had the opportunity to take more care of her hair. She dressed quickly, watching Cogg as his breathing eased. At last she held out her hand to him.
What would that be then, my pretty bird? Sixpence I do believe?
Ten pence, Mr. Cogg. You did agree ten pence.
Did I now? Did I so?
You did, sir, Mr. Cogg.
With difficulty he shifted himself upright off the bed. Standing naked in front of her, his member now flaccid and barely visible beneath a belly that hung down low like a sack of turnips, he pushed his stomach forward with evident satisfaction and grinned as he gave it a hearty slap. You don’t get a belly like that without some hard eating and drinking, my girl.
No, Mr. Cogg.
It’s living so near the shambles, little Starling, that’s what does it. The slaughtermen and butchers bring me offal and offcuts and in return I helps them with little things. Money for the rentman, pretty favors from friends like you. You name it, Cogg provides it. I provides fine favors for gentlemen, too, so those as works for me never knows who they might meet. You want fine sotweed? Cogg can get it. You want a prime view of a hanging, drawing, and quartering? Cogg provides.
I had heard you were a generous man, Mr. Cogg. I was told you might be able to give me work.
Well, we’ll see, won’t we? You’re new to Romeville, my girl, but you’ve already got some nice Boleynish tricks there. I reckon you could do with some feeding up, though. So I tell you what, I’ll give you a whole shilling this time so you can buy yourself some pies and perhaps you’ll come to see me again on the morrow and we’ll see what we can do.
I’d like that, Mr. Cogg. Thank you, sir.
He handed her a coin and squeezed her breasts, then clasped her face to his in a fetid kiss. Starling knew better than to pull away.
And do you have a lodging, my pretty bird?
She shook her head. There was a time when she would have cried in her misery, but those days were long past. Nights in the open or huddled beside the other poor and dispossessed in barns and byres had hardened her.
Well, get yourself to the vaulting house right by the Bel Savage, my girl, and tell them Cogg sent you. Talk to Parsimony Field. She’s my best girl. She’ll look after you and find you a comb to pretty yourself up a little. A cot, too. He slapped her behind as she left, knowing that the shilling was a fine investment that would pay him many times over.
Cogg was still naked when Miles Herrick arrived soon after the girl had gone. Swiving gave him a strong appetite and he had just sat down to devour the remains of a fat and fresh turkey cock that a farmer’s son from Suffolk had given him in exchange for a night with Parsimony. Most customers banged on his workshop door, but Herrick appeared in the chamber while Cogg was licking his fingers and chewing on some crisp, fatty skin from the wishbone.
The man stood there watching him, a dark shadow in black clothes. Cogg recoiled in shock, then jumped up from his three-legged stool, knocking it backwards into the hearth.
Who are you? he demanded, trying to gain his composure as he scrabbled for his breeches and shirt.
I was given your name.
So you just walk into a man’s chamber when he’s at his repast?
Herrick smiled. I think I just watched your repast leave by the front door. A fine but skinny wench, Mr. Cogg. It is Mr. Cogg… isn’t it?
It is, sir, yes, but who, pray, are you? Cogg was half-dressed now and trying to impose his authority on the situation.
I bring you gold, Mr. Cogg. And I believe you can supply a certain item in return.
Cogg pulled the stool from the fire. That depends on just who I am talking to.
My name is Herrick. Miles Herrick.
As if a taper had been lit behind them, Cogg’s eyes brightened. Ah, yes, Mr. Herrick. I had been expecting you. Suddenly all was clear. Cogg’s manner changed; here was the prospect of good money. He had been thinking of how to squeeze this orange ever since the commission had been agreed. Let us go down to my workshop, if it please you. It is more of a place to strike deals.
He led the way through the doorway, his bulk barely managing to negotiate the narrow frame, then down a flight of thirteen wooden and ominously creaking steps to a large shoplike area that took up the front half of the ground floor of the wide-fronted building. He opened a door to the rear and showed Herrick through.
The back room was a cluttered heap of boxes and barrels. A layer of dust covered many of the trunks and crates. The ceiling and corners of the room were clothed in cobwebs. Whatever you want, Mr. Herrick, I’ll guarantee you’ll find it here.
Herrick’s eyes flicked around the dimly lit room. He looked at Cogg, who was panting like a dog in summer.
I tell you, Mr. Herrick, Cogg continued. As a boy I used to dig marl. From the age of eight until I was twenty, day after day after day, I dug the same thick white-gray clay in the depths of a dark pit in the shire of Northampton. Backbreaking work that left me strong as a bull. The farmer treated his swine better than he treated me. But one day I just upped sticks and walked to London, where I got work slitting pigs’ throats in the shambles. I had my eyes on a better life, though, so I’d get things for people, like the foreman, who had a taste for chewing Moorish hemp. I’d go down to the docks and buy things from the mariners and sell them on: strange foods and odd carvings, knives taken from Indians and Mussulmans, medicines from the ends of the earth to cure the ague, wenches of every hue, not all of them Christian, wild beasts such as you’d never find even at the Tower menagerie. I can find you liquids that flame to burn down a house and perfumes that will poison with a sweet smell. Whatever a man could desire, Mr. Herrick, Cogg gets it for him.
You know what I want, Mr. Cogg. Herrick’s voice was cold. The question is: do you have it?
Cogg waddled ducklike among the crates and barrels. Oh yes, Mr. Herrick, you had a very special request, as I recall. Not one of Cogg’s easier undertakings. A long-muzzled gun with a barrel exactly two feet eight inches, using a strange firing mechanism: a snaphaunce lock, I think… Is that a Hollandish word, sir? You do sound a little Hollandish, if I might say so. I believe there is a bit of common or garden flint in the gun’s cock, which sounds strange to me, but if that’s what you want. Most clients want wheel-lock pistols, sir, gold-damascened and small as you like to proudly display at the waist
… or to
conceal up a sleeve.
So you have it?
Cogg doesn’t fail, sir. You said you wanted the barrel rifled, fine rifled. And provision of a fine powder, using good willow coals, the best I could discover in all of England. There were to be twenty-four balls so crafted that they would be a perfect fit for the barrel. Would that be the sum of your requirements, Mr. Herrick?
Let me see it.
Cogg raised a hand, a bulbous white thing with five protuberances like outsized maggots. Mr. Herrick. I have, indeed, had the gun made. By a gentleman called Mr. Opel, a Germanic living here in England. He told me he had never made such a fine weapon. Reckoned it could kill at a hundred and fifty yards. Said he had never heard of a gun that could find its target at more than fifty yards. So this gun, Mr. Herrick, what would it be for killing? A deer? A man? It is a very curious shape, to be sure, and sadly lacking in ornamentation.
Herrick’s eyes pierced Cogg’s. His voice lowered but did not soften. I was told you didn’t ask questions.
Cogg raised his hand again, this time defensively. My apologies, Mr. Herrick. I meant no offense. The use of the gun is entirely your concern. But it is such a remarkable piece, sir, that I would like to know about it. Maybe there is a market for such articles? Would gentlemen want such a weapon for hunting? Tarry, Mr. Herrick, sir. Take some Spanish wine so we can talk a while and drink to the Spanish King’s death.
In a movement of elegance and speed, Herrick went forward and his hand was at Cogg’s fat neck, crushing his windpipe. Cogg writhed but the grip was like an iron vise. Then, as suddenly as the assault began, Herrick released Cogg.
I do not want your wine, I do not want to talk with you. Bring me the gun, for which a price has been agreed.
Cogg sat down heavily on a low crate and fought to regain his breath. For a moment he had thought he would die, so powerful was the hand that held him. Gilbert Cogg retained much of the strength he had as a young man, but this stranger’s power was of a different order. His common sense told him that Herrick could kill him with casual ease and that he would do well to hand over the gun at the price agreed. But his instinct told him never to pass up an opportunity to make ready money. And now in this game of cards with Herrick, he held the kings, because he had the gun still, and Herrick would be pressed to find it without him.
Remind me, Mr. Herrick, he said, his voice rasping from the assault on his throat. What was the agreed price?
Nine marks, Cogg, as well you know.
In gold?
In gold. Four sovereign coins.
Cogg knew he should stop now, take the money offered. There was a good profit in it already: three marks for him, six for Opel. And yet he could not stop. He knew this weapon was worth far more to Herrick than nine marks. It was one of a kind.
Mr. Herrick, this weapon has cost me far more than anticipated. My man Opel has worked long hours to a standard never before seen in the gunmaker’s art, using new methods to meet your requirements. I have had to pay him more than double the fee we did agree.
Herrick smiled then. How much, Cogg? How much will it take for you to be silent and for me to walk out of this room with no more cheapening?
Cogg’s mouth wrinkled, his shoulders wobbled. At last he spoke, in his most reasonable voice. Can we say thirty marks, sir?
And that is your last demand?
Cogg rubbed his pudgy hands together. My very last.
Without another word, Herrick took the purse from his belt and counted out thirteen gold sovereigns and two crowns. Cogg took the coins. The gold glinted at him from his white palm. He looked up at Herrick. And now, if you will excuse me, sir, I require privacy while I retrieve your piece for you. I’m sure you understand.
Herrick shook his head. No. Get it now.
Cogg hesitated a moment too long. Herrick’s hand shot forward and slammed the fat man’s head down hard onto the top of a large cask, then, with his right hand clasped on the nape of his neck, he pulled Cogg’s left arm up by the wrist. Where is it?
Cogg grunted as if he were trying to speak. But the words, if there were any, were too indistinct for Herrick to make out. In a single motion, Herrick snapped back Cogg’s wrist. There was an audible crack as the bone shattered. Cogg screamed.
Herrick pulled his head off the cask and rammed his gloved fist into the screaming mouth to silence it. Blood spattered from Cogg’s loosened teeth down his unkempt beard. Herrick had his dagger out now, clasped in his left hand. Blood from Cogg’s mouth dripped over its black bone handle. The dagger was thin with a point like a needle. He held it to Cogg’s right eye, the tip touching the black center. Another sound, except for the words I want to hear, and I will prick out this eye, Mr. Cogg.
Cogg knew now that he was going to die, but the thought of his eye being pricked and the fluids therein bursting forth was too much to bear. I’ll get it, right away, Mr. Herrick.
Herrick released him. Cogg’s hand hung loose from his arm, the bone protruding through the skin and flesh at the wrist at an unspeakable angle. Like a bullock at the slaughter, he stumbled through the boxes and barrels, falling over them in his haste.
The weapon was concealed beneath floorboards near the back of the house by a door that gave out onto a small courtyard where chickens clucked and pecked. With his one working hand and a jimmy, Cogg prized up the loose boards and brought the weapon out. It was in two parts, a plain thing, wrapped in jute sackcloth that did no credit to its fine craftsmanship. His fingers trembled as he lifted the gun. It was heavy and difficult to balance with just one hand. He turned. Herrick stood infront of him, the thin dagger loose in his right hand. He slid it into its sheath and gently took the gun from Cogg. The sacking was tied at both ends with coarse string, which he quickly slipped off.
The gun did not look much like a gun. One part was a bare wooden stock, triangular but curved on the shortest of the three sides. The stock had two joiners’ hooks to attach it to the front of the weapon, a dark metal barrel, and the snaphaunce mechanism. Herrick clicked the two pieces together, then examined it closely, turning it this way and that, peering down the muzzle, testing the lock and pan cover, cocking the hammer and letting it fall against the frizzen. The action was smooth. At last he looked up. Where are the balls and powder?
Cogg saw his last chance. I kept them separate, Mr. Herrick. They are at the front in an old cabinet where I keep smaller things.
Remember your eyes. Nor will I stop with the pricking out of your eyes. I will slice off your pizzle and stones and you will go to your death a girl if you make just one little error.
Cogg shuddered, but there was one thing he had to try. Herrick dismantled the gun and replaced it in its sacking. He followed Cogg through to the front room. It had a ware-bench, like a shop, and behind it a tall wooden dresser with cupboard doors at the top and little drawers below. The pain in Cogg’s broken left wrist was almost beyond enduring. As he pulled open one of the cabinet doors with his good hand, the packages were revealed on a shelf: the black powder wrapped in a large purse of leather, the balls in a bag of jute cloth. As he picked up the balls and powder he turned and threw them into Herrick’s face, then launched himself at him in a last desperate effort to survive, as hopeless as a chicken running from the farmwife’s blade.
Starling Day stopped halfway down Cow Lane. She knew now that Cogg would take her on as one of his whores, so why did she have to wait another night to hear it? Why couldn’t she do a deal with him today and start work immediately? She needed the money badly, for she wanted clothes and food. She also had debts, for which she would suffer if she did not repay them by the week’s end. She had learned about Cogg from her cousin Alice, who was already whoring at his bawdy house by the Bel Savage.
At first Alice had not been pleased to see Starling; she was less than a year older and they had played together as children, swimming in the stream in the summer and stealing coal from the slack tip when winter froze the land. Perhaps Alice was ashamed of what she had become. But when
she realized that Starling intended to enter the same line of work, she warmed to her. I never understood what you saw in that pig Edward, she said when Starling told her about her husband’s viciousness. I’d rather die of the French pox in London town than live as a beaten goodwife with a drunken coal hewer for a husbandman in Strelley. Over drinks in the Bel Savage, she had told Starling where to find Cogg.
This is the way things are with him, Starling, so listen well. He’s as fat as six men stuck together, but never laugh at him or shy away from him. He likes Paris tricks, so use your tongue like this. Alice rolled and curled her tongue to show just what Cogg wanted. His terms are half and half, but you’ll have to pay him for food and lodging, too. It doesn’t sound the best bargain this side of Cheapside, but Cogg always gets us a good price. Keeps us free of the pox, mostly, which is what the men want. You’ll learn how to look at them, see if they’re diseased-and tell them to piss off if they are. Cogg’s got ointments of herbs from the apothecary to keep us free of it. Told me he paid for them with the eyes and tongue of a hanged woman. But remember this: if you do get the pox, you’re out, and then it’s the lowest stews in Southwark or back to Strelley.
Retracing her steps, Starling was about to knock at Cogg’s front door when she heard a noise from inside. Voices. It seemed as if he had another visitor-but this was a man’s voice, not another girl. She turned the door handle and found it was open, the lock sheared away from the wood. Whoever was in there with Cogg had done this; she was sure the lock had been secure when she left. Starling slipped into the front room. She heard footfalls at the top of the steps and quickly hid herself, crouching behind a workbench and boxes.
The man she saw with Cogg was tall, dressed darkly, cleanshaven. She felt a chill of unease and wished she had not entered this house again. As she watched him follow Cogg through to the back room and heard the whump of violence and Cogg’s shrill scream, she trembled in fear.
She knew the smell of violence too well. It stank of the sleeping room at the cottage she once called home. Each night, when her husband returned from the coal mine, his face and hands and clothes black, he would eat whatever food she had scavenged or grown, drink strong ale, then hit her. Every night. Every night of the year, without fail. Some nights he would make her lie flat on the straw, her wrists tied to the rough-hewn bed leg with his leather belt as he beat her with the broken haft of an old hayfork. And then, inevitably, he would occupy her, brutally but briefly, as if only her pain could bring him pleasure. Every daybreak when he went off to be wound down the well into the pit of the earth with his little tallow lamp and coal pick, she would pray for the walls to cave in and bury him. And when that didn’t happen, she stopped believing in God and took the road for London.
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