Death Comes Hot

by Michael Jecks

  He leaned closer until I could barely breathe with the reek from his mouth. It was suffocating. ‘You made me look foolish, and I don’t like that. You made an officer of the law look ridiculous in front of the crowds, and the city officials won’t be happy with that either. The family paid for the powder, too, and they won’t be pleased you made the priest suffer.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I managed in a rather high-pitched, strangulated voice.

  ‘Not enough.’

  There was little I could say to that. I mumbled something about how truly sorry I was, and while that blade was at my throat, I was indeed, but there was a gleam in his eye. I didn’t like the look of it.

  ‘Not sorry enough, I’ll warrant,’ he said. ‘I want money!’

  That was, at least, some relief. He didn’t intend merely to cut off various parts of me; he was hoping to make a profitable exchange.

  ‘Of course, if you’re sure, I’ll be happy to reimburse your money. I’m just very sorry that the powder didn’t work for you. I’ll go and fetch the money right a—’

  ‘Wait ’ere!’ he said, and pushed with his blade until my skull cracked against the wall behind me. ‘I’ll ’ave my money, but I wan’ more than that. I’ll need your ’elp with a little matter.’

  ‘What sort of little matter?’ I asked suspiciously. I had been caught before.

  ‘I’ve ’eard you have contacts in the city,’ he said, and there was a strange, new tone in his voice. It sounded plaintive. Yes, I know, it’s hard to think of a headsman trying to make an appeal, but as he spoke, I felt the blade withdraw slightly, and he almost seemed to smile ingratiatingly. I preferred his glower.

  ‘I may have some,’ I said warily. ‘What sort of contacts?’

  ‘Men who can make enquiries.’

  ‘About what?’ I said.

  He took the sword away, and scuffed his boots in the dirt for a moment or two. ‘I ’ave a son. But his mother, the bitch, took ’im away from me, and I don’t know where they are.’

  ‘You want me to find them?’

  ‘Not ’er! No, I don’t want to see her again, unless she’s laid on top of my faggots for witchcraft! But I’d like to see my boy again. He must be close to eight years now. It’s time ’e knew his father.’

  ‘So he can be prenticed to you?’

  The sword whipped up and rested on my throat again. I tried to apologize, but only a wheezing squeak came from my throat. It felt like my eyeballs must pop from their moorings, they opened so wide.

  ‘Don’t joke about my job! It’s not one just anyone could do, and I wouldn’t ’ave my boy set on my path, damn your soul, I wouldn’t! But I would’ – and the sword dropped again – ‘I would see him again. Try to set ’im on ’is own road. Maybe apprentice him to an innkeeper or …’

  He rambled on a bit about coachmen and grooms, but all I could think of was that the old sot wanted a son who would be in a position to fill him with a gallon of ale of an evening.

  I was not keen to remain long in his company, and it was a relief when, a short while later, the owner of the yard arrived in his doorway bearing a stout cudgel and made it clear that he had two hungry hounds who would look on us as prime breakfast material for trespassing.

  It was a persuasive little speech, and Hal and I departed for the more accommodating environment of a hostelry which was keen to serve ale by the pint, and present us with a burned offering of blackened bacon and an egg that had suffered a worse immolation than Hal’s priest the day before. On the way, Hal waved to a man who walked towards us from my house. He was square-shouldered, with that stance that tells you he knows how to handle himself in a fight. Hal walked to him and spoke briefly – I guessed he was the man who knocked at my front door while Hal waited in the yard for me – and I gained the impression of a pair of glittering eyes. I didn’t like the look of him and was glad when Hal left him and returned to me.

  Hal was still worrying at the shame he had suffered at the death of the priest like a toothless hound mumbling a marrowbone. ‘He insulted me, in front of all the people crowded round! Me! There were no need for that! And then ’e jerked, like ’e was tryin’ to shake his fist at me, or something, and the platform collapsed, and ’e fell down in among the faggots, and that made all those watchin’ start shoutin’ more an’ more, an’, I told ’em, they could kiss my arse, I couldn’t give a fart for any of them, and ’e was bawling about the fire and the powder, and then the blasted pole itself came loose, God’s hounds, and fell over ’is neck and broke it, and that was ’im done. He couldn’t complain then. But then the bag of powder fizzed up and some sparked, and made an ungodly smell, like the devil’s own had arrived to snatch his soul, as they must, for he was an unreligious ’eretic, so they say, but the people, I swear, I thought they would come and pull me limb from limb. I ’ad to get the soldiers to guard me.’

  He stared morosely at the bacon on his plate. Looking at it, I was reminded of burned bodies I had seen during Wyatt’s rebellion, and pushed my own plate aside. I hadn’t touched my egg. It didn’t look as if it would appreciate being chewed. I suspected that it would return in my gullet to take its revenge.

  ‘Why do you need me to find your boy?’ I said.

  ‘You ’ave contacts. People you know, what can find ’er and ’im.’

  ‘Don’t you?’

  He looked up at me. ‘My kind o’ job don’t lead to long-term friendship.’

  That was probably true. A man would be unlikely to want to spend time with a fellow who had that morning put to death a trio of thieves, cut-purses or murderers. It tended to put a blight on a man’s appetite even for beer, when the hand that shook yours had earlier been inside another fellow’s breast to pull out his still-beating heart. I found I was wiping my hand on my jack and quickly stopped. ‘I don’t know whether I can find him,’ I said. ‘What can you tell me about him? If I’m to seek him, I will need to know what I am looking for.’

  ‘Aye. Well.’ He threw me a hunted look. ‘He was about so ’igh,’ he said, holding his palm some three feet from the ground. ‘And ’e ’ad dark ’air like mine, and brown eyes.’

  ‘So he’s only a yard tall? And with—’

  ‘I daresay ’e’s grown since. That were some years ago.’

  ‘How long?’

  ‘Well, ’e were four summers then.’

  ‘And now?’

  He gave a rueful grimace. ‘That were three, four year ago – ’e’ll have grown.’

  I stared at him open-mouthed. ‘You mean you haven’t seen him in three or four years? How will you recognize him if I find him?’

  ‘Find ’is mother, the poxed whore. She’ll bring ’im to you. Probably sell ’im to you for the cost of a pint of ale or old sack. She were never a good mother to him. She were a bawd. Always were.’

  I tried to reason with him. ‘Look, even if I do find the boy, there is no saying he’ll want to know you. He is only young, and if he hasn’t seen you in five years, he probably won’t even remember you.’

  ‘No, ’e’ll know me – ’e were my boy then, and ’e still is now. Blood will out.’

  An unfortunate phrase for an executioner, I thought, but I downed my ale and considered as he kept talking. The boy could possibly be found. His mother’s name was, apparently, Molly, but she had been known to go by a series of different names. When he called her a whore, it was little more than the truth, as far as he was concerned. He was convinced that she was hawking her body about the stews. If so, I wondered how well the boy would have fared for himself.

  ‘Oh, ’e’ll be fine. Strong, good lad, my boy.’

  ‘Why did she leave you?’

  He looked at me, but his eyes slid away in shame. ‘I’m a good man, me. I work hard for my money. But she grew to think there was somethin’ shameful in me … doin’ my work. She di’n’t like it. I said to her, “What else can I do?” But she di’n’t want to listen. And then one day, it was after I had three men on the tree in one dance, I came home th
at night and she was gone. Just taken everything and my boy, the bitch!’

  ‘You think I can find him, but I am unlikely to have any more luck than you. I don’t think …’

  He fixed a glower on me. ‘The family o’ that priest, they were right angry their man di’n’t die right. They wanted to know why the powder didn’t go off as it should.’

  He need say no more. I could quite understand his hint. If I were to help him, he would keep my name secret. Fail, and the priest’s family would learn who had supplied the defective powder. It was not an ideal arrangement, but better to do a little work hunting down the boy in the hope that I could present him to the executioner.

  I had no choice. I persuaded him to describe his wife and their boy in more detail, downed my ale, and left him glumly staring deep into the depths of his own. He gave the distinct impression of a man who was determined to remain in his seat until they swept him out with the rest of the trash into the gutter.

  His wife was a woman of some four-and-twenty, with a large bust, red-gold hair, and a thin, pinched, shrewish face. But that could have been the ale and his hurt feelings speaking. A woman who went by the name of Moll or Molly Cripplegate. Hal was fairly sure that she would not be using his name. His boy was a lad named Ben, but he would not say whether Ben had any distinguishing marks.

  He was just a boy, apparently.

  I rubbed my throat as I walked home. There was a fine thread of blood about my neck where his blasted sword had parted my skin, and I felt like a man who had been all but hanged, reprieved at the last moment by a kindly pardon. But as far as I was concerned, this injury was unnecessary and unjustified.

  ‘Raphe, where are you, you bull’s pizzle!’ I shouted as I entered my house. After all, the fellow should have risen and barred the door, or stood there to hold any miscreant from entering. All my bellow received by way of acknowledgement was a sudden barking from his benighted hound.

  ‘Raphe? What are you doing? Are you still abed?’

  I stalked out to the kitchen and peered up the steps that led to the little bedchamber snug behind the warm chimney, but he was not there. His brute was, sitting, expectantly staring at me, while his tail swept a clear fan in the dust and reeds of the floor.

  Feeling irritable, I took a plate and sliced some ham and cheese and bread, before filling a pot with ale and taking them through to my parlour. I spent some time lighting the fire and soon had a flame from my tinder. I placed fresh twigs and kindling over it and waited until they too had caught, before I set some split logs about them, and some light pieces resting on them, and thicker limbs on top where they would catch all the heat.

  I was about to sit and eat when I frowned to myself. That powder should not have been so uncooperative. I have never known black powder to be reluctant to misbehave at the drop of a hat. Thoughtfully, I took up my flask and tipped a little into the palm of my hand. I threw it on to the fire, and it sizzled and sparked as I had expected. Yet the executioner was utterly convincing. And I had heard from Matt and Picksniff that the powder had done nothing until the poor priest was already removed from this world, so his words must have been true.

  For a moment or two I wondered what he had preached about to so enrage the Church’s officials, but in this present confused time, with two religious groups vying for authority, and the Queen having set her heart on the most stringent demands of the old Catholic Church, rather than her father’s newer English Church, it could have been any one of a number of points. There were regular demands for cartloads of faggots to remove argumentative religious clerks and others. Even men like Latimer and Ridley, who had burned the previous year, who had been well-respected men of the cloth. If they were not safe, nobody was.

  I looked at my hand, then at the flask. It was from the same barrel as the one from which I had taken the powder to give to Hal Westmecott. On a whim, I went down to my cellar and lifted the lid on my powder store. It felt dry enough. I took a handful, replaced the lid and went back up. Throwing it on the fire, there was a sudden flash and gout of smoke that roiled about the mantel before slowly slipping back inside the chimney breast and up into the flue. There was nothing wrong with my powder. It may not be safe in my pistol, but in a large bag it should have gone off without problem. The fool must have stored it in a damp place, and that was what prevented the ecclesiastical termination.

  Satisfied, I sat back in my chair and brought the plate to my lap. And that was when I realized that there was no ham and no cheese, and Raphe’s monster was looking at me all slantindicular with an occasional lick of his lips.

  After aiming a satisfying kick at the dog, who scampered away full of remorse for his theft, I cut another slice of ham and chewed on that as I left the house. Where was Raphe? If he went shopping, he usually took the ruffian, whom he had named Hector, supposedly for his courage, with him. It was rare that he would leave the rascal in the house alone, for the obvious reason that, as a street dog, he would steal any spare food left lying about. The damned monster would have to start to earn his keep. He was no good as a guard, letting all in who wished to enter, and only barking at those who knocked at the door. Which was rather pointless.

  I put him out of my mind. Just now I wanted to make sure that I was seen to be helping Westmecott. I had my usual garb on and walked out into the lane, glancing up at my neighbour’s window, remembering the sight of her in her bed. It was a happy thought, and I held on to it as I made my way to Rose Street. I stopped at a small-fronted building that stood a little back from the lane. There was a deep gutter which ran with noisome water, and a slab of rock served as a bridge.

  Two years before I had made the acquaintance of a fellow, the intellectual friend of Piers, a man called Mark Thomasson.

  Some men can impress by sheer force of personality. They enter a room, and all others immediately submit, not that the great men condescend to notice. Others can impress by their volubility. They overwhelm lesser spirits by the words they spew like arrows flying from a bow. A man who knows that number of words, someone might assume, must have a brain the size of an ocean. And yet there are others, men to whom a passer-by would not give a second glance, men who might stand in the middle of a street and stare at the sky as if puzzled by the rain, men who would examine with close attention the mark made by a walking stick on a painted post, or who would watch avidly while a dog sniffed about a courtyard in search of a treat; such men would be watched with amusement, or a man might tap his temple meaningfully while jerking his head at the poor fool.

  They would be wrong, because the poor dolt may actually be considering an abstruse mathematical concept in his head, or persuading himself that a man with a stick of a certain dimension had caused the paint’s dent, and that same stick had been used in a murder, or watching the dog to see whether there was a piece of a corpse lying beneath the mud.

  A man like that, a man with a brain like a steel trap, was a hard man to get to know, and harder to keep as a friend, because, on personal experience, the damned genius had the common sense of a sparrow, and less engaging manners. That was Mark Thomasson.

  Mark Thomasson was a man with a permanently baffled expression. He found everything confusing because, unlike other men, he never accepted what was presented to him without questioning it. When I had met him, he was a slim man, with aquiline features and a nose that could have split logs. His mouth was a mere gash, his hair a mass of tawny locks. While he was moderately tall (taller than I), he always carried his head at a slight stoop, as if he hoped always to see something before anyone else. He had a habit of mumbling to himself with a frown, and then, every so often, a beam of brilliance would enliven his features, and he would speak with clarity and precision. But then he would return to his mumbling and frowning.

  His house was an utter mess. The first time I had visited him, the presence of tables was a matter of faith. The sheer volume of books, coats, scrolls and papers had to be resting on something, and I assumed there must be tables. But I had no proo
f of this, because the legs were themselves concealed behind towering ledgers, piles of paper or assorted mechanical devices and sections of armour. Since my last visit, his house had become used more by a scavenger who patrolled the streets at night gathering every piece of metalwork and deposited them in Mark’s parlour – or so it seemed. At my last visit, I had remarked upon a helm with a great dint in it, next to a breastplate with two large holes. Now there were three other cuirasses and a second helmet, which sat upon a wooden bust. A crossbow bolt projected from it, and there was a second hole beneath the bolt that spoke of a sudden death for any man occupying that metal hat.

  There was one thing that always unnerved me about the house. It was Peterkin, Mark’s ‘little’ hound.

  Peterkin was the sort of brute that would make an elephant think twice about charging. He was the size of a donkey, a vast hound with amber eyes and deep grey coat. As I walked in, Peterkin rose, stretched like a cat and padded towards me. I am not scared of hounds, and did not want to be, so I made a fuss of him for a while, all the time speaking to Mark about my conundrum.

  ‘You say that this affair could affect a lady and her reputation?’ I was not going to tell him who exactly the lady in question was. After all, Mark was also a servant of Elizabeth. I didn’t want him to go blabbing the story to anyone. ‘Well, in that case something must be done. We cannot have a lady of good birth suffering the slings and arrows of mean-spirited gossip.’

  ‘What should I do?’

  ‘Tell me again.’

  So I did. I told him of the executioner’s story and emphasized that I must somehow find the man’s wife and child. As I spoke, Mark’s servant, a grim-faced, weaselly fellow, appeared every so often, refilling my wine goblet whenever it looked in danger of becoming empty. The wine warmed me to my toes, and I began to lose my reticence and spoke more openly.