The Piccadilly Plot: Chaloner's Seventh Exploit in Restoration London (The Exploits of Thomas Chaloner)

by Susanna Gregory

  ‘Janszoon,’ said Thurloe flatly, standing next to Chaloner with his own gun drawn. ‘And Margareta. Whose remit in this nasty plot is to whip up ill-feeling towards Hollanders in the hope of encouraging a war. Prynne was right to want you stopped.’

  Chaloner stepped inside quickly, but there was no sign of Pratt or Fitzgerald. Margareta smirked, not at all discomfited to find herself at the wrong end of a dag. Chaloner was immediately uneasy, and edged to one side, so as not to come under fire from the peepholes again.

  ‘You are right,’ she said carelessly. ‘But I doubt you know why.’

  ‘Of course we do,’ said Thurloe disdainfully. ‘Your country owns the best shipping routes, but war will disrupt them. And that will be to the Piccadilly Company’s advantage.’

  ‘They are not Hollanders,’ said Chaloner, aware that Margareta had spoken without the merest trace of an accent. ‘I have known it ever since they refused to speak Dutch to me at White Hall last night. Moreover, no learner of English would use complex grammatical structures one moment, and make basic vocabulary mistakes another. Their ridiculous choice of names is another clue to their real identities.’

  The man’s eyes narrowed. ‘There are many Janszoons in Holland. I researched it very carefully.’

  ‘So who are they, Tom?’ asked Thurloe. ‘More greedy merchants? Or pirates, perhaps?’

  Chaloner pointed to the scar on the man’s face. ‘Whose cheek was cut in a public swordfight recently? And who was then given a hasty funeral – not to avoid an expensive send-off as we all assumed, but to explain why his “corpse” was removed from the charnel house within hours of his very public “death”?’

  ‘Cave?’ breathed Thurloe. ‘He is not dead and buried in St Margaret’s churchyard?’

  Chaloner nodded, then turned to the woman. ‘And who was his lover, a manipulative courtesan who is also a member of the Piccadilly Company and sister to the dangerous Harley?’

  ‘Brilliana!’ exclaimed Thurloe in understanding. ‘It all makes sense now.’

  When Brilliana gave a brief, cold smile, the pastes on her face cracked, revealing a glimpse of the beautiful but deadly woman underneath. ‘Well done. Unfortunately for you, your deductions have come too late to make any difference to what has been set in motion.’

  ‘It has failed,’ said Thurloe harshly. ‘Your brother is dead, and the Adventurers are still alive.’

  ‘My brother is not dead, so do not think you can frighten us with lies,’ said Brilliana coldly.

  Chaloner looked around uncomfortably, unable to escape the conviction that something was very wrong. Why were they not more concerned at being exposed?

  ‘We should leave,’ he said in a low voice to Thurloe. ‘I do not like this.’

  ‘We should have guessed days ago,’ said Thurloe, ignoring him to glare at Cave. ‘You either paid or coerced Elliot to start a fight, so you could disappear and become Janszoon. You were good. Your “death” convinced Tom, and he is not easily misled.’

  Guiltily, Chaloner recalled how he had berated Lester for not checking Elliot’s body. Now it seemed he had done the same thing with Cave, but with far graver consequences.

  ‘I confess I was alarmed when he tried to inspect my “wound”,’ admitted Cave. ‘But I stopped him, and then he was kind enough to hire a cart to take me to the charnel house. The original arrangement had been for Elliot to do it, but that changed when I was obliged to stab him.’

  ‘And then another Piccadilly Company member – or, more likely, Brinkes – collected your “body” later the same day,’ surmised Thurloe.

  Cave grimaced. ‘He should have arrived sooner. I had to spend hours in that terrible place, in constant fear that someone would come and inspect me. He used the excuse that he was perfecting his disguise, but I think he did it for malice.’

  ‘Brinkes made himself look like Elliot,’ Thurloe went on. ‘And told Kersey that he lived in Covent Garden – where Elliot had rented rooms.’ He glanced at Brilliana. ‘And you claimed it was Elliot who had encouraged “Jacob” to give Cave a hasty funeral – to make Tom waste time looking for a man who was dead and buried.’

  Chaloner glanced behind him again. Why did Cave and Brilliana seem so relaxed? Because they expected Fitzgerald or their master to rescue them? He looked hard at the spyholes in the panelling, but could detect nothing amiss. Cave smirked at his wariness, making him even more certain that something was about to happen.

  ‘Enough,’ he said softly, tugging on Thurloe’s arm. ‘We should—’

  ‘It worked,’ Brilliana said gloatingly, ignoring Chaloner and addressing the ex-Spymaster. ‘Everyone was so easy to deceive. Chaloner should have drunk the chocolate I provided, though – then we would not be having this discussion.’

  ‘You “die” in operas all the time,’ Thurloe said to Cave, freeing his arm from Chaloner’s hand. ‘I suppose you wore a sack of animal blood under your clothes, which gushed out when it was jabbed. That is how it is managed on stage, I believe. Then you both donned disguises, testing them on cronies at the Piccadilly Company first …’

  ‘They were impressed.’ Brilliana’s smile was smug with satisfaction. ‘And it gave us the confidence to step into that most auspicious of circles – White Hall.’

  Chaloner was barely listening. Every nerve in his body screamed that something was wrong, although he could still hear the distant boom of Brinkes and his henchmen hammering on the Great Parlour doors, so he knew they had not yet managed to break free.

  ‘But why kill Elliot?’ Thurloe was asking. ‘He did what you asked.’

  ‘Barely,’ said Cave coldly. ‘Lester told him he would hang for murder if he “killed” me – an outcome that had not occurred to the fool, because I could see him having second thoughts before my very eyes. I was obliged to goad him to fulfil his end of the bargain by attacking Lester.’

  ‘Who was unarmed,’ said Chaloner, recalling the crowd’s murmur of disapproval. ‘I suppose you were afraid that Elliot would tell the truth about the deception to save himself from the noose.’

  ‘Yes.’ Cave touched a hand to his scarred face. ‘And I was angry because he hurt me. That was certainly never part of the arrangement.’

  ‘What is in this for you?’ Thurloe asked. ‘It means your old life is over for ever – your voice will be recognised if you ever sing in public again. There can be no going back.’

  The besotted expression on Cave’s face as he glanced at Brilliana answered that question, although Chaloner could see just by looking that the devotion was not reciprocated. When he had outlived his usefulness, Cave would be dispatched, like so many others.

  ‘I am sorry, Chaloner,’ he said, and he sounded sincere. ‘I enjoyed singing to your viol when we sailed on Eagle. You have a rare talent, and it is a pity to silence it. But it cannot be helped.’

  Chaloner was about to remark that he had no intention of being silenced when he heard the merest of rustles behind the door. A faint smile tugged the corners of Brilliana’s mouth, and he knew her deliverance was at hand. Reacting instinctively, he hurled himself to the floor, dragging Thurloe with him. And then the room was full of noise as bullets ripped into the oaken panels and smashed the windows.

  Before the gunmen could reload, Chaloner kicked the door closed and struggled to his knees to lock it. Immediately, someone started to batter it from the other side. It began to splinter, not being as robust as the ones in the Great Parlour. Chaloner glanced fearfully at Thurloe, expecting him to be shot, but the ex-Spymaster scrambled to his feet and hurried to Brilliana, who was gazing at the shattered remains of her right arm in shocked disbelief. Cave was dead.

  ‘Open the window,’ hissed Thurloe. ‘We shall escape through that. Hurry!’

  Obediently, Chaloner ran towards it, but could see shadows moving in the fog outside. When one of them fired a musket at him, he whipped around and began prodding the panels instead.

  ‘The plans said Hyde installed a passage in this wall,’ h
e whispered urgently. ‘Help me find it.’

  There were voices in the hallway – Fitzgerald’s piping treble ordering someone to hurry. The pirate sounded deranged, and Chaloner knew he and Thurloe would not live long once they were caught. Whoever was kicking the door intensified his assault, and Chaloner’s hunt for the hidden passage became more frantic, too.

  It was Thurloe who found it – a tiny knob disguised as a carving of a pineapple. Chaloner followed him inside, then pressed the mechanism that closed it. A little light filtered through the holes that had been placed for spying, but it was still difficult to see where they were going.

  ‘Fitzgerald did not care who was shot just then,’ Thurloe whispered, shocked. ‘Indeed, I cannot help but wonder whether he wanted Brilliana and Cave dead anyway.’ His voice was unsteady, stunned by the ruthlessness of the onslaught.

  ‘Probably,’ agreed Chaloner. ‘It is more loose ends tied.’

  ‘Do you accept now that I was right to keep you away from him? And understand why I could never find witnesses to speak against him when I tried to bring him to trial? How could I, when he murders his accomplices?’

  They were passing the last of the peepholes when the door burst open and Fitzgerald flew in. Chaloner stopped to watch. The pirate did not so much as glance at the writhing Brilliana, and instead issued a piercing scream of frustration when he saw his enemies had escaped. His master entered more calmly.

  ‘They seem to have gone,’ said O’Brien softly. ‘Find them, or you will die, too.’

  Chaloner gaped at the man who had been the author of so much carnage, then clenched his fists as rage consumed him. It was O’Brien’s fault that Lester had died saving worthless Adventurers, and in the darkness of Hyde’s secret passage, he vowed the man would pay. Unfortunately, his dive to the floor to avoid the deadly hail of gunfire meant he had dropped his weapons, so the odds of him fulfilling that promise were remote to say the least. But he determined to do his best.

  ‘He was never among my suspects,’ whispered Thurloe. He sounded disgusted and stunned in equal measure. ‘I underestimated him – and his capacity for greed, because he is already rich.’

  ‘Rich enough to have funded the Piccadilly Company all these months,’ replied Chaloner. ‘No wonder he refused to join the Adventurers. I believed him when he said it was because he opposed the slave trade – he was convincing. But it was a lie, a ruse to conceal his real intentions.’

  ‘And what are his real intentions? What can he gain, other than to make yet more money?’

  Chaloner was about to repeat the reply he had given when Rector Thompson had posed the same question the previous week – that money was one of those commodities of which those who owned it never felt they had enough – when O’Brien crouched by the dying Brilliana. She tried to move away but he made a sudden movement and she went limp, head lolling to one side.

  ‘I thought I told you to find our unwanted guests,’ he snarled, when he saw Fitzgerald watching him. The pirate took an involuntary step backwards at the force of the words. ‘Hunt them down and kill them. They have done immeasurable harm with their meddling.’

  ‘I said it was a bad idea to bring the Adventurers to Queenhithe,’ Fitzgerald snapped back. ‘If you had let me blow them up in Woolwich, as we originally planned—’

  ‘How?’ snapped O’Brien. ‘You could not have smuggled gunpowder on board Royal Katherine, and using Jane was a stroke of genius.’

  Fitzgerald scowled. ‘Modestly put. But how did you persuade Leighton to change the time and venue of his party? It cannot have been easy.’

  ‘It was, actually – I told him I would join the Adventurers if he did as I asked. Unfortunately, now our plan is foiled, he will know that I am behind the plot to massacre them all, so I will have to kill him today, too. But not before I have dispatched Thurloe and his helpmeets, to teach them what happens to those who cross me.’

  ‘I did not cross you,’ said Fitzgerald immediately. ‘I was on my way to warn you that we had to set the explosion early, but then I saw you on the quayside, so obviously I did not risk our venture by exposing myself to recognition by approaching you.’

  ‘Obviously,’ said O’Brien flatly, while Chaloner recalled that O’Brien had been one of those whose life had been saved by the timely evacuation. However, he was sure O’Brien was right to be sceptical of Fitzgerald’s intentions.

  Beside him, Thurloe released a soft sound of disgust. ‘If he trusted Fitzgerald not to betray him, then the man is deranged,’ he said softly.

  ‘He is deranged,’ Chaloner whispered back. ‘Look at his face. And what he did to Brilliana …’

  ‘Well, do not just stand there!’ O’Brien was snapping to his accomplice. ‘Our enemies cannot be allowed to escape, so find them and kill them. Now!’

  Fitzgerald was an intelligent man, who knew his quarry could not have left through the window while there were guards outside, so he immediately turned his attention to the panels. He began tapping and poking, and Chaloner knew it was only a matter of time before he found what he was looking for.

  He and Thurloe moved as fast as they could along the passage, but it was difficult in the dark. Thurloe gave him a vigorous shove when Fitzgerald screeched his triumph, sending him stumbling down a flight of steep stairs. When he had finally regained his balance, he saw a flare of light close behind him. Thurloe had a tinderbox and had lit a candle.

  ‘Douse it!’ Chaloner hissed in alarm. He glanced up to see a second gleam at the top of the steps. ‘They are coming!’

  ‘They know we are here,’ Thurloe snapped back. ‘And it is better to see, than to blunder blindly.’

  Chaloner snatched the candle and ran along a corridor that – according to Hyde’s plans – led to the kitchens. He was acutely aware of footsteps behind them. Then he reached a dead end.

  ‘I sincerely hope we have not gone past the exit,’ gulped Thurloe, groping frantically along the wall. Chaloner did likewise, noting that the mortar was still damp.

  Chaloner gasped his relief when he detected a knob. He pulled and twisted, but nothing happened. He did it harder, then gaped in horror when it came off in his hand. Calmly, Thurloe reached past him and pushed the exposed metal. There was a soft sigh, and a stone slid to one side. Aware of Fitzgerald’s lamp coming ever closer, Chaloner crawled out quickly, and when Thurloe had followed, he stood by the hole with a brick in his hand.

  ‘The next person out will lose his brains,’ he said grimly.

  Thurloe cocked his head. ‘Fitzgerald may be in the tunnel, but O’Brien is coming down the stairs. They separated!’

  ‘Then we will fight them,’ said Chaloner with quiet determination. ‘One each.’

  ‘We cannot combat bullets with a stone,’ hissed Thurloe. ‘Run! It is our only chance!’

  He was right, so Chaloner did as he was told, racing through sculleries, laundries and pantries, sure-footed again now he was in familiar territory. Suddenly, the basement began to echo with a metallic, grating sound that echoed eerily. Fitzgerald was humming to himself. Chaloner winced: not all the notes were true.

  ‘Whoever told him he could sing was lying,’ he whispered, wishing it would stop.

  ‘He warbles before making a kill,’ muttered Thurloe. ‘He thinks he has defeated us.’

  Chaloner looked around desperately, but saw nothing that would help them survive. Then his eye lit on the stairs that led to the cellar. It was the last place he wanted to go, but he felt a surge of hope as a plan began to form in his mind.

  ‘The vault,’ he said in a low voice. ‘If we can do to Fitzgerald and O’Brien what we did to Brinkes, we might yet avenge Lester. This way – run!’

  The cellar steps were dark and uninviting, and Chaloner’s chest tightened when he recalled what had happened the last time he had ventured down them. But there was no time for squeamishness. He descended them quickly and made for the strongroom. It was locked, but this time he had Wiseman’s scalpel, which proved to be a much
better instrument for dealing with the mechanism.

  ‘Why do they not release Brinkes and his men to hunt for us?’ he asked as he worked, aware that on the floor above, O’Brien and Fitzgerald were conducting a systematic search. ‘Or summon their other Piccadilly Company cronies? Pratt, for example.’

  ‘Arrogance,’ replied Thurloe shortly. ‘They believe they can best us alone.’

  ‘Then pride will be their downfall,’ muttered Chaloner. ‘Find a lamp and light it. Quickly!’

  Thurloe obliged, and it was not long before he was back. ‘I recommend you hurry,’ he said tensely, ‘because I hear footsteps on the cellar stairs.’

  The words were no sooner out of his mouth when the vault’s lock clicked open. Fighting down his nausea, Chaloner tugged open the door and entered. The chest that had contained the rats was gone, and in its place were two more, both sturdy items with metal bands. There was no time for finesse, so he smashed the locks on one with the brick he had brought from the kitchen.

  ‘Tom!’ pleaded Thurloe nervously. ‘Are you sure we have time for this?’

  Chaloner lifted the lid to reveal a mass of gold and silver ingots, with a good smattering of jewellery and precious stones. Thurloe gasped at the sheer volume of it.

  ‘Is this what came on Jane?’ he breathed.

  Chaloner nodded. ‘And it is time to put it to good use.’

  He grabbed two large gold bars and shoved them into Thurloe’s hands, then took two himself. Leaving the chest open, and the lantern illuminating it, he dived into the room opposite, flinging the ingots away as soon as he and Thurloe were concealed in the shadows. He slipped his hand into his pocket, hunting for Wiseman’s scalpel. He could not find it, but his fingers located something else. It was the packet of Tangier dust George had given him days ago, which he had all but forgotten.

  O’Brien was the first to arrive. He held a gun, and his boyish face was lit by a viciously cruel expression. It showed his true nature as the pitiless villain who had ordered the deaths of Teviot and his garrison, Proby, Lucas, Turner, Congett, Meneses and all the others who had died since he had taken exception to the Adventurers’ monopoly on African trade.