The Traitor's Wife

by Kathleen Kent

  “And what kind of aimless fables have you been throwing the boy?” she asked dismissively. “You’re too long in the tooth to have served the king as soldier. More like stable boy or muck-about …” Her voice trailed off as she watched his jaws working together, knotting the skin at his cheeks. There was a slight lowering of the chin, but nothing was said, no gestures made nor distracted shuffling of feet. He merely stood, hatless and calm, and in that moment all other action in the room ceased. And settling over every motionless figure, like gilt over wood, was a lingering, brittle tension.

  CHAPTER 4

  TIERNAN BLOOD STOOD quietly in a small alley off Pudding Lane and watched the night-soil men carting their refuse noisily over the stones. It was only just past midnight, but from the bawdy laughter and the unsteady stopping and starting of the handcart, Blood knew the refuse men were well on their way to being insensible with drink. It was dark, with no moon, and he could hear more than see the watchman in the alley opposite him stir with the noise. He had been waiting for three hours for the watchman to fall asleep, and he cursed, resolving himself to waiting another quarter hour for the man to nod off again.

  He heard what sounded like a woman’s shriek, in anger or in pain, he didn’t know, but it was brief and soon the street emptied into relative quiet again. He thought about where he had dined earlier that evening, a fine tavern in Covent Garden, and smiled thinly to think that he should now be waiting on the main pathway populated with the night-soil men; the midden men, taking the worst of London’s droppings to the barges moored on the Thames. A solid river of shite, he thought, the overarching smell giving proof that even the leavings of privilege stank as highly as any laboring prentice’s.

  Blood’s dinner companion that night, among some ladies of rank, minor nobility, rakes, and assorted whores, was Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester, who had recited to them all a new poem he had composed specially in the Irishman’s honor. “Since loyalty does no man good, let’s steal King and outdo Blood.” The fact that Rochester had already pulled down his breeches in preparation for mounting his dinner companion, a fair-haired whore improbably named Honour, when he was overcome with his muse gave the recitation boundless hilarity. From the time of Blood’s release two years earlier for trying to steal the royal jewels from the Tower of London, and his subsequent pardon from King Charles II, he was the most sought-after rogue in court society. The fact that he had blackmailed the king into a full pardon by threatening to reveal state secrets was known to no one else, except perhaps for Henry Bennet, the Earl of Arlington. If nothing else, Tiernan Blood, the son of an Irish blacksmith, with his nose in every backroom dealing, knew how to keep secrets, if it benefited his person. And he knew many secrets, from chambermaids’ to the highest offices’ in England.

  He felt under his cloak for the cudgel and the hooked latch lift he kept tucked into his waistband and peered cautiously into the street. Gentle snoring sounds came from the watchman, and Blood quickly crossed over to the house opposite in the middle of the lane. It was an old house, one wall leaning against the neighboring house, and the door was made of heavy oak, although the portal was split and spongy from rot. Built in the time of the Great Queen, the house walls, half-timbered with wattle and daub, were dark and spotted from a hundred years of fire, rebellion, and neglect. The great fire of 1666 had begun on Pudding Lane, but somehow this row of houses had escaped the worst of the flames. Pulling the hooked lift from his waistband, he passed the thin piece of metal through the gap between the crumbling wall and the door and deftly raised the latch.

  Blood passed into the house at the moment he heard another cart rumbling down the lane, but it didn’t concern him; he was inside and the watchman had seen nothing. He paused for a moment, listening for any sounds coming from the common room.

  From his stance at the threshold, he imagined the stairs roughly ten or twelve paces from the door. He walked carefully forward until he felt with the toe of his shoe the first riser to the stairs. Placing his feet as close to the wall as he could to prevent the boards from creaking, he lifted his weight from stair to stair. He took his time, allowing his eyes to better focus in the dark, and when his head passed above the second-floor landing, he saw a faint glimmer of candlelight leaking through the gap beneath the large, iron-banded door of the bedchamber. A segment of the lime-washed wall under his fingers crumbled and showered the steps in a brittle cascade. He froze and listened for steps approaching from the other side of the door, but there were no footfalls, and he climbed the last few stairs to the landing.

  He reached for his cudgel and pulled it from his waistband and, with a few gliding steps, positioned himself in front of the chamber door. He lowered his head, placing his ear next to the splits in the wood. He heard nothing; no movement, yet no sounds of deep sleep either. If he hadn’t known better, he would have thought the room completely empty.

  Raising his cudgel, he pulled down on the rope latch and threw his weight against the door, which swung freely open on its hinges. Blood counted on the sudden violence of his forced entry to surprise the man he knew to be in the room, and it was the total astonishment on his target’s face that gave him the greatest satisfaction.

  The man, of course, had no pistol; he never carried a pistol, relying rather on the weapons of those who guarded him. He had been reading by candlelight, and he dropped his book to the floor as he clutched the arms of the chair, awkwardly rising to his feet, his mouth open in alarm. The small sea-coal fire had burned down close to ashes, too weak to illuminate the intruder’s face.

  Blood could have laughed out loud with delight, but instead he said to the man, “I’m here for my ruffian’s pay.”

  A spark of recognition passed over the man’s face, and he fell back into the chair, his terror quickly replaced with anger; and just as rapidly, in a series of winking spasms and tics, a forced calm settled over his face as he bent to pick up his book and place it carefully on the table next to the chair. He said tightly, “These games of yours, Blood, are most tiring.”

  Blood dropped his upraised arm still holding the cudgel, curling his lips unpleasantly. “Did I scare you, Sir Joseph? My apologies. It’s only to drive home the point that I can breach any hindrance you put in my way, find any place you care to hide, should I be played falsely or go unpaid. But more than this, Sir Joseph, I do it for my own amusement.”

  Sir Joseph grunted impatiently. “You realize, of course, that if you’ve murdered the guard, it will come out of your wages.”

  Dragging a small wooden stool closer to the coals, Blood said coarsely, mimicking the lilting accent of London streets, “Sir Joseph, ya know I’d never hurt yer man. I left him sleepin’ th’ sleep of the innocent.” He straddled the stool and, placing the cudgel in his lap, rubbed his hands with exaggerated briskness over the small hearth. It gave him no small pleasure to give Sir Joseph Williamson his backside, and though he could feel the other man’s eyes on his neck, he took his time before speaking again.

  “Your letter intrigued me,” Blood said, finally breaking the silence, all traces of street cant gone. “You intimated you had an offer for me, an offer that would pay quite well. And that it was a venture—how’d you put it?—that would bring to bear all of my multitudinous talents.” He smiled broadly at the older man and then shifted his attention back to the hearth.

  “No,” Sir Joseph said, “I wrote you that it would bring to bear the talents of those you have in your employ. I’m not paying you to do the work. I’m paying you to find the men to do the work. And just so we’re very much of like mind, I’m not paying you to play the shuttlecock.”

  Blood stood and stretched and then dragged the stool closer to Sir Joseph’s chair. He placed the cudgel on the table, setting it carefully over the book, and leaned in close, as though preparing to relate a confidence.

  “I am a shuttlecock, Sir Joseph. A vainglorious shuttlecock of monstrous proportions. But it’s you who’ve made me so. I am, after all, only the creature of your de
signs.” He sighed and, reaching into one of the pockets in his greatcoat, pulled out a handful of singed chestnuts, which he placed on the table. They rattled and rolled together sharply to the lip of the slanted tabletop. Picking up one of the nuts, Blood began to peel back the charred skin and said, “What is it you’d have me do?”

  With his eyes on the cudgel, Sir Joseph distractedly brushed one hand up the length of his yellow silk vest as though searching for something. His fingers found a pocket and he extracted a small scrap of paper and handed it to Blood to read. He watched carefully as Blood first squinted against the darkness to decipher the amount of money written on the paper and then whistled softly. Sir Joseph took back the paper and folded it once more into his vest. “This, as you must have guessed by now from the size of the bounty, comes directly from our Catholic friend the Earl of Arlington.”

  “Ah, yes,” said Blood, rubbing at the bridge of his nose, “our friend with the sinister yet obvious reminder of his service to the Crown. I’ve heard that black plaster bandage hides nothing but warts. It is a goodly amount. But considering the scope and size of the venture, Sir Joseph,…I’m afraid it won’t be enough.”

  The startled look from the older man gave Blood another surge of satisfaction. “How could you possibly know what it is that you are to do?” Sir Joseph asked, a small bubble of spit forming at the corner of his mouth. He quickly wiped it away with the back of his hand, but Blood had seen him do it, and a look of distaste crossed the Irishman’s face.

  Smiling thinly, Blood said, “I know everything, Sir Joseph. It’s what you pay me for. I can tell you how much and from whom you’ve bought this safe house, as well as the name of your tailor. I can even tell you”—and here he paused, resting one hand on the cudgel, fingering the long handle—“how many spies you have on your payroll. I can tell you the names of all of your enemies in the ministry and the names of all of your friends, among whom I’d like to count myself. But, as you well know, you’re not the only one with a pair of ears…and a purse.”

  Even through the dim light, Blood could see the renewed flush of anger on Sir Joseph’s face, and the tic which began fluttering beneath one eye. “You may be a Protestant dog,” Sir Joseph said, spittle forming again on his lips, “but you’re an Irish dog as well, and had I less need for the fleas off your back, I’d have you drowned in the Thames, if only for the pleasure of seeing you float downstream, all the way back to the Irish Sea, where you came from.”

  Blood’s fingers closed tightly around the grip of the cudgel and he brought it quickly up over his head and then down again, crushing the remaining chestnuts and precariously rocking the lone candle on the table. The swift action caused Sir Joseph to flinch, but before he could move to stand, Blood’s hand rested firmly over his arm, pinning him to the chair.

  “Aye, Sir Joseph. I am a dog, but a dog must eat. A dog must have a place to sleep. And a clever dog never puts his muzzle into a fight unless he can feel the breeze of the open back alley at his arse. I know what you want me to do and I know you’ve already failed twice at it. I need the funds to hire the men to do it, as well as the funds to pay for passages, bribes, and, for myself, a retirement from having to pursue the vagaries of a restless marketplace. I know your little schemes. You take more bribes in one year running parcels and packets through your royal postal offices than most lords do off their lands. I’ll find your man. But for that you have to pay.” He pulled out of the same pocket from which he had extracted the chestnuts a piece of parchment and showed it briefly to Sir Joseph, until he was sure the old man understood what Blood expected in payment for his services.

  Blood then stood up and, throwing his scrap of paper into the darkening coals, walked from the room, leaving the cudgel and the withering shells of the chestnuts behind him.

  He stepped rapidly down the stairs and back into the street, hurling a chestnut hard at the sleeping guard’s head as he passed. The guard snorted himself awake and looked upwards, as though the stinging missile had fallen from the sky.

  As he strode down Pudding Lane towards the docks, he mused on the work that was yet to be done. He would need men and armaments, although the men he had in mind for the job could make do with a knife or length of rope to get the business done. He would hire Brudloe and Baker for certain; they were cunning. There were killers enough in London to populate a large town, but most of them were unreliable in their loyalties and, worse, stupid.

  He’d need a big man, as well, with great strength, for the man they were to bring back was rumored to be quite large; although it was so often that the size of a man, like the size of a battle, grew in the retelling. Also, he would require a man who knew the colonies; that was essential, for the colonists were a prickly lot, small-minded and close-fisted when it came to protecting one of their own. The king had attempted the grand folly of sending bustling troops to the Americas twice before, and his prey, the regicides, had gone to ground, hidden by men who wouldn’t be bribed. Perhaps he would bring in Samuel Crouch, a man who had lived for a time in Boston before returning to England.

  It would prove to be a simple thing, he thought, bringing back to England one man; but there was much to do before the ship upon which he would book passage for the bounty men set sail. Five men should be able to overcome one colonial lout. His pace quickened, and he figured, based on the call of the street watchman, that if he could strike a deal with the gun merchant within the hour, he would have time to pay a visit to Fanny Mortland’s whorehouse before she closed her doors at dawn.

  CHAPTER 5

  THE WOLVES RETURNED to Billerica, killing three more of the neighbors’ lambs and savaging a milk cow so that she had to be taken for the butcher. Hard by the barn, Thomas made his wolf pen from woven willow and birch rods staked to the ground, and he scattered cow offal about as a trail to lead the wolves to the hen tied within the cage. If the beasts entered to devour the hen, the men, hiding up in the hayloft, would then pull the trip rope, trapping the beasts inside.

  At dawn, Martha dressed quickly and slipped from the house to inspect the cage. There were no large, hulking forms within, only the hen, which sat ruffled and shivering in the morning cold. She could hear the sound of lax-lipped snoring coming from the open hayloft above, and she shook her head at the thought that the men would catch anything other than a wet lung from sleeping in the open air. The trip rope, snaking its way up the side of the barn, was still taut, and she thought to give it a good pull and startle the men into waking.

  A movement at the far edge of the yard caught her eye. Thomas stood alone, raking the ground over with the heel of his boot. A knot of flies rose and fell with the movement, finally settling back onto a clot of what looked to be blackened entrails. She could smell the rotting bait mixing thickly in the morning breeze and knew that if Patience caught a whiff of it, she would have her face in the bucket all morning.

  Thomas scratched his chin thoughtfully as she approached, and she fought the impulse to cross her arms in front of her chest. She regarded the swarming mess with a disapproving sweep of her hand. “Well, I see we have caught something, and plenty of those. It’s a pity, though, there’s no bounty on flies.” She ejected the last word as though she had said, “Satan, the father of lies.”

  He ducked his head, the brim of his hat hiding his face, and said nothing. But she sensed it was not an attitude of submission, rather more a desire to hide his expression.

  “The wolves did not come,” she said with certainty. “So you must wake John and clean this mess from the yard before Patience can wake to find it…”

  “You’re wrong,” he said suddenly. “They did come in the night.” He motioned for her to look past the bait and she saw the depressions in the mud. At that moment the breeze lifted, carrying with it the odor of stinging musk; a wild, uneasy odor like the pungent smell of a dog in heat.

  There were two sets of tracks, side by side, one smaller than the other. The larger of the tracks was bigger than any dog or fox could have
made. The paired wolves had been standing, perhaps for a long while, regarding what lay in the clearing beyond the forest. The sharp imprint of their nails pointed, like an arrow’s mark, back towards the house. Then the tracks wheeled sharply about, disappearing into the bracken. She saw a soft bit of gray undercoat still clinging to a thorn briar, insubstantial and filmy like the downy top of a puff-away weed. She plucked it from the branch and brought it to her nose. The heavy, musky smell was stronger there, reminding her of her own body at the bleeding time.

  Once, when she was fourteen and living in Andover, her father had trapped and killed a young wolf. The wolf was small enough for her father to carry the carcass home over one shoulder. “Hardly worth the skinnin’,” he had said. But he had skinned it nonetheless, making a fur frill for her cape. The fur, more white than gray, had a warm lair scent about it, as though the pup still carried within his very skin his mother’s milk. It had been a rare kindness from her father, and he was wounded deeply when she gave the fur over to her sister, Mary. It was the smell of it she couldn’t abide—the overwhelming smell of brutalized innocence.

  “These are smart ones,” Thomas said. He had come to stand next to her and she startled at his voice. “I’ve never seen the cunning like. They never even touched the bait.”

  She took a few steps back from him, hiding the bit of fur under her apron. “Well, what are you going to do about it?” she asked impatiently, coloring darkly at her own thoughts.

  “We’ll need a sweeter come-hither,” he answered.