The Cheapside Corpse

by Susanna GREGORY

  Chaloner began a systematic search of the room. It was unpleasant, but his diligence paid off with the discovery of a bundle of papers cunningly concealed inside the seat of a chair. There were seventeen in all, and each comprised a single sentence. He read a few randomly: ten the sun in wood, eagle in bear twelve, three swan in bread, none of which meant anything to him whatsoever. All were signed your Father in Cheepsyde.

  He stared at them. Were they evidence that DuPont was a spy? He supposed they must be, although instinct and experience told him that the missives were too short to contain any useful intelligence. He gazed at them for a long time, but no answers came and eventually he gave up. Perhaps someone in Bearbinder Lane would know.

  It was not a particularly long walk from Long Acre to Cheapside, but Chaloner felt lethargic, and wished he could afford a hackney carriage. The fresh air had done nothing to sharpen his wits, and his sore throat was not helped by the fact that the sooty air made him cough. He had also left home with nothing to eat. He bought a meat pastry from a street vendor, but it was soggy, salty and dripping with fat. He swallowed as much as he could bear, then tossed the remainder away, where a stray dog took one sniff and shot him a reproachful look.

  He reached Fleet Street, and was trudging wearily along it when a familiar aroma assailed his nostrils, one powerful enough to be detected even with a cold. It came from the Rainbow Coffee House. He brightened. Perhaps a dish of coffee would serve to rouse him.

  The Rainbow had the distinction of being one of London’s oldest coffee houses – its owner James Farr claimed it was second only to Bowman’s in Cornhill. It stood at the point where Fleet Street narrowed to accommodate the inconvenient Temple Bar, a gate that had probably once been effective at excluding undesirables from the city, but that was now a nuisance to traffic and pedestrians alike. There was always pushing and shoving to get through it, and Farr did well out of those who needed a reviving draught after the experience.

  Chaloner opened the door and entered. He did not know why he liked the Rainbow. It reeked of burned beans and cheap tobacco, its patrons were opinionated bigots, and its coffee was terrible, although it did have the distinction of being considerably stronger than anything that could be bought elsewhere. He declined to sweeten it with sugar – as a silent and meaningless protest against a trade he felt was immoral – which rendered Farr’s brews virtually undrinkable.

  As was their habit, the regulars had gathered at a table by the window. Besides Farr, who was mean-spirited and parochial, there was Fabian Stedman, a young printer who seemed to spend most of his working hours in the Rainbow, and who held such radically Royalist convictions that Chaloner sometimes wondered if he was a government spy, hired to entrap anyone who disagreed with him. Then there was Sam Speed, a bookseller who only sold texts that were seditious, obscene or controversial, along with medicines to help the reader recover from the shock afterwards.

  As usual, they were bickering about the contents of the government’s latest newsbook, specifically a report about the declaration of war that had been read out recently in Bristol. Apparently, the city worthies had been too busy to do it sooner, and had been reprimanded by the Privy Council for their tardiness. To make amends, they had put on a splendid display with a whole chorus of trumpets and a show of drawn swords.

  ‘But everyone there knew we were at war anyway,’ Farr was saying. ‘It is a port, and such places will be invaded first when the Dutch attack, so they have been preparing for months.’

  ‘That is not the point,’ argued Stedman. ‘His Majesty took the time to write that proclamation, so the least Bristol’s mayor could do was have it read out.’

  ‘The King did not write it,’ averred Speed scornfully. ‘One of his clerks did. He would never be sufficiently sober for such a task. Or he would spot a woman that he would rather—’

  ‘That is treason!’ cried Stedman outraged. ‘How dare you malign His Majesty!’

  ‘Did you hear about that coffin-shaped cloud over Hampstead?’ interrupted Farr conversationally. ‘It was said to glow purple before exploding into a thousand pieces. It means that a great disaster will soon befall our city.’

  It was as if Chaloner had never been away – these were the exact same matters that were being aired back in February. Perhaps it was the Rainbow’s constancy that attracted him to its smuggy interior, given that stability was a feature sadly lacking from the rest of his life. Speed would always denigrate the current regime, Stedman would leap to defend it, and Farr would change the subject as and when he pleased. And it was never long before someone reported a celestial omen that was held to be a portent of doom.

  ‘What news?’ asked Farr, voicing the traditional coffee-house greeting as he turned to see Chaloner standing behind him. ‘And where have you been? You disappeared without a word, and we all thought you must have died.’

  ‘Of the plague,’ elaborated Speed darkly. ‘Sent by the Dutch to demoralise us and make sure they win the war. There have now been twenty cases in the St Giles rookery.’

  ‘And two near Cheapside,’ added Stedman. As usual, they were more interested in talking than listening, which suited Chaloner perfectly. ‘I have taken up smoking, which is the only way to combat the miasmas that carry pestilential diseases.’

  To underline his point, he puffed a prodigious amount of it into the already thick air.

  ‘I have better remedies than that,’ said Speed, reaching for a bag at his side. ‘First, there is Red Snake Electuary at three and six a pint.’ He slapped a bottle on the table. ‘Then there are Bayhurst’s Lozenges and—’

  ‘You should not use too much tobacco, Stedman,’ said Farr, interrupting what promised to be a lengthy list. ‘It is toxic. Did you not hear about the experiment conducted by the gentlemen of the Royal Society? They acquired some tobacco oil from Florence, and it killed a cat and a hen.’

  ‘The Royal Society is always dispatching some hapless creature in the name of science,’ said Speed disapprovingly. ‘I cannot say I like it.’

  Nor did Chaloner, who had always been partial to cats and birds.

  ‘Have you heard that the Dutch landed troops in northern Scotland last night?’ asked Farr, dropping his voice to a fearful whisper. ‘Word is that they will be in London later today.’

  ‘That cannot be true,’ stated Chaloner, surprised that anyone should believe such an outlandish claim. ‘No army can march that fast. And no messenger either.’

  ‘I am only repeating what I was told,’ said Farr huffily, and Chaloner recalled that the coffee-house owner’s sense of geography had never been good.

  ‘I hope you have all bought The Court & Kitchin,’ said Speed affably. ‘If not, I have plenty for sale. It is well worth a browse, although I recommend a dose of Goddard’s Drops before you start. Some of Mrs Cromwell’s recipes are deeply disturbing.’

  Chaloner still had Thurloe’s copy in his pocket, so he pulled it out and leafed through it. ‘Stewed collops of beef, almond tart, cheese-cake, barley broth,’ he read aloud. ‘These are not disturbing at all. My mother used to make them.’

  Too late, it occurred to him that this might be taken as an admission of a Parliamentarian past, and he wished he had not spoken. Fortunately, Farr came to his rescue.

  ‘So did mine, and they were very nice. No medicinal draughts are needed for those, Speed.’

  The bookseller snatched the pamphlet from Chaloner’s hand, and found the page he wanted. ‘Then what about this section, telling people to pickle cucumbers?’ he demanded, stabbing at the words with an indignant forefinger. ‘We all know that cucumbers are poisonous. And then there is marrow pudding’ – he made it sound distinctly sinister by lowering his voice and speaking in a hiss – ‘which she had for her breakfast every day. And still does.’

  Chaloner could not help himself. ‘Actually, she has a little bread and a lightly poached egg.’

  ‘How do you know?’ demanded Stedman, eyes narrowing.

  ‘I heard it in a c
offee house,’ lied Chaloner.

  ‘Then it must be true,’ asserted Farr. ‘Although I am sorry to learn that you took your custom elsewhere. Have we done something to offend you?’

  ‘He is tired of Speed trying to sell him remedies every time he appears,’ said Stedman sulkily, sparing Chaloner the need to invent an excuse.

  ‘Have you heard about the new comet?’ asked Farr, off on a tangent again.

  ‘It is the same one that we saw in November,’ scoffed Stedman. ‘A bright, white thing with a long tail. It must have gone all round the Earth, and come back for a second look.’

  ‘I doubt they are sentient,’ said Speed coolly. ‘And it is not the same anyway. The recent one is not as bright.’

  ‘Then there was the purple mist with the leprous spots,’ Farr went on, cutting across whatever Stedman started to say. ‘All are signs that the plague is coming. As Speed says, the Dutch have sent it over deliberately.’

  ‘There was another omen, too,’ said Speed soberly. ‘Taylor the banker saw a three-headed serpent in the sky, and claims that each face represented a different financial disaster: the war, the Colburn Crisis and the plague.’

  ‘How can the plague be a financial disaster?’ asked Stedman.

  ‘Is it not obvious?’ said the bookseller. ‘Labourers will die, so there will be no one to supply us with food and fuel, which means industry will grind to a halt. The wealthy will flee for their lives, so no one will buy what few goods are available. And we shall not be able to export cloth, leather and glassware, so there will be no money coming into the country.’

  ‘We cannot export them anyway,’ shrugged Farr. ‘Because of the Dutch, who sink or seize any ships that belong to our merchants.’

  ‘Speaking of the Dutch, did you hear what they did in Guinea?’ asked Stedman. ‘They invaded one of our ports, took fifteen hundred people – men, women and children – tied them back to back and tossed them into the sea.’

  Chaloner started to say that no African outpost had that many settlers, so the tale was almost certainly apocryphal, but Stedman was getting into his stride, and Chaloner did not have the energy to argue. He shoved Randal’s pamphlet back in his pocket, finished his coffee and left, aware that the others were so engrossed in their debate that they did not notice.

  The coffee had done nothing to dispel Chaloner’s lethargy, and he was still thick-headed as he threaded through the maze of alleys surrounding St Paul’s Cathedral to emerge on Cheapside. Thus when someone flew out of the porch of St Michael’s church and raced towards him, he was slow in dropping his hand to the hilt of his sword. If it had been a person with evil intent, rather than Neve, he might have been in trouble.

  ‘I have been looking everywhere for you,’ the upholder snapped irritably. ‘Where have you been? The Earl told me that you would be on Cheapside today, but I thought you would have arrived a lot sooner than this.’

  Chaloner was not in the mood to be scolded, especially by an interior designer. ‘Do you have a message for me?’ he asked coolly, biting back a more acerbic response.

  Neve regarded him suspiciously. ‘Do you have a sickness? Your voice sounds very odd.’

  ‘Yes, I do,’ said Chaloner sourly. ‘A cold.’

  Neve covered his face with his sleeve, so his next words were difficult to understand. ‘The Earl sent me to say that he wants his last curtains urgently. The other seven pairs look very nice now they are up, so getting the rest is more important than whatever else you are doing. He is worried that an outbreak of plague will prevent them from being made, and he hates the thought of waiting for months. He wants you to approach Baron today.’

  ‘His compassion is duly noted,’ muttered Chaloner.

  ‘What?’ Neve cocked his head, but made no attempt to move closer. ‘Speak up.’

  ‘Tell him I will do it at once.’

  ‘Good, because he said you cannot have any more of your salary until they are delivered. I tried to tell him it was unfair, but he would not listen. You know how he is.’

  Chaloner did. ‘Was there anything else?’

  ‘Yes. He is very concerned about the fact that the Frenchman – DuPont – died of plague and wants you to find out exactly when and where he caught it.’

  Chaloner regarded him sharply. The Earl’s orders had been to stay away from such areas, and he was sure he had not changed his mind about protecting Clarendon House – which meant that Neve was lying. And Chaloner knew why.

  ‘It is you who is eager to know, because you are the “mutual acquaintance” who introduced DuPont to the Earl,’ he surmised. ‘The person who told him that DuPont had information to sell. Bearbinder Lane is not far from the Feathers, where you would have gone to deal with Baron about the drapery.’

  ‘No!’ gulped Neve, although his furtive eyes told the truth. ‘I did treat with Baron in the Feathers, as it is where he conducts all his business, but…’ He tailed off when he saw Chaloner’s scepticism, and sagged. ‘Damn!’

  ‘Why the secrecy? Putting the Earl in touch with a potentially useful source of intelligence is not a crime.’

  ‘No,’ acknowledged Neve. ‘But it is distasteful, and I am an upholder, not a spy. However, when DuPont told me that he had important news to hawk, I thought I had better do something about it. If you had been here, I would have put the matter in your hands, but you were in Hull, so I was forced to go directly to the Earl.’

  ‘What kind of “news”?’

  ‘He had intercepted reports from Dutch agents in London, but he died before he could pass any of them on. He and the Earl had agreed a price, and he was going to bring them to Clarendon House, but he never came. The Earl asked me to find out why, and I learned in the Feathers that he was dead – although no one said it was the plague. I assumed enemy spies had killed him.’

  Chaloner thought about the messages in his pocket. Could they be what DuPont had intended to peddle? They were not in Dutch – or even French – and Chaloner had already decided that they were too short to contain anything important. Perhaps DuPont’s death had prevented the Earl from wasting his money.

  ‘Did you know he was a felon?’ he asked.

  Neve shook his head. ‘But it does not surprise me. He was an unsavoury fellow, which is why I was loath to become involved in the first place. Yet the war is balanced on a knife-edge, and I am not qualified to judge who will be useful and who will not. The only thing…’

  ‘Yes?’ asked Chaloner, when the upholder hesitated.

  ‘It is probably nothing, but when he was first trying to convince me that he was worth taking seriously, he said something about Onions at the Well.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  Neve shrugged. ‘He nodded and winked, but I did not like to express my ignorance by telling him that I had no idea what he was talking about. So I nodded and winked back.’

  ‘Did he mention a friend called Everard?’

  ‘Not to me, but we never spoke for long. To be frank, I found his company repellent.’

  All of a sudden, he grabbed Chaloner’s arm and dragged him into a nearby alehouse, an insalubrious place that reeked of unwashed bodies and spilled drink. Chaloner could have resisted, but the upholder looked frightened, so he allowed himself to be bundled out of sight. Neve peered nervously out of the window.

  ‘Those three men,’ the upholder whispered. ‘They are Taylor’s villains.’

  Chaloner glanced into the street, and saw the same trio who had terrorised Hannah. One was limping, presumably as a result of being stabbed during the subsequent skirmish. ‘You owe Taylor money, too?’

  Neve nodded. ‘I had to borrow from Vyner to start my business, but he sold the debt to Taylor, and I do not want to be accosted in the street by those louts. Did you hear what happened to Sir George Carteret?’

  Chaloner shook his head. ‘Who is he?’

  ‘The Treasurer of the Navy. They cornered him on the Strand and cut off all his jewelled buttons with a knife. They were pretty baubles,
too – thirty of them, each with a diamond and rubies set in gold, valued at forty shillings each.’

  ‘His buttons were worth sixty pounds?’ asked Chaloner, stunned.

  ‘Yes, and they looked lovely on his coat. But I had better go. Some new paintings are arriving at Clarendon House today, and I should be on hand to receive them.’

  Chaloner headed for the Feathers, supposing he had better do as he was told and enquire after the Earl’s curtains – and while he was there, he would ask about DuPont – but he was barely past the Little Conduit when he ran into trouble. Evan appeared next to him. He tried to move away, but liveried henchmen materialised on his other side and hemmed him in. He cursed the cold that numbed his wits, because he would not have been caught in such a position had he been himself.

  ‘I am glad we met,’ said Evan softly. ‘Father has decided that it is time you paid off some of the money you owe, and he wants to discuss it. I would have given you longer, personally, but he is in charge, so you had better come. Now, if you would not mind.’

  Chaloner did mind, but suspected resistance would be used as an excuse for violence, and he did not feel up to a brawl. He nodded obligingly and began to walk at Evan’s side, alert for a chance to escape. Unfortunately, the guards were used to people objecting to where they were being taken, and were careful to ensure that no opportunity arose.

  ‘The tale of my father’s three-headed snake is all over the city today,’ said Evan smugly, as they went. ‘No one will believe you now if you say he was mistaken. Indeed, others claim to have seen it, too. It has become a fact, not a story.’

  Chaloner could only suppose that either the ‘witnesses’ aimed to curry favour by pretending to have seen what had not been there, or Evan had paid them to lie, to protect his father’s credibility. He understood why: no one would want a man who suffered from delusions to be in charge of the city’s fiscal well-being.

  They arrived at Goldsmiths’ Row, where Chaloner was escorted straight up the stairs to Taylor’s office. The banker had his rosewood box on his knees, and appeared to be crooning to it. The henchmen took up station by the door – not so close that they would be able to hear the discussion between banker and client, but certainly near enough to act should there be trouble. Joan was there, too, her ferret face proud and haughty above a new dress that was adorned with six diamond and ruby buttons. Chaloner wondered what had happened to the other twenty-four.