The Thief Taker (2 page)

Chapter One

‘Are you the Thief Taker?’ The man’s voice was parched and a good deal too urgent.

The Bucket of Blood alehouse was lively with afternoon trade, and to Charlie’s practised ear the whispered voice spelled trouble. His fingers sought out the key around his neck, tracing the shape at its head – a crown above three loops of knots.

As a boy, Charlie had been found clutching the key. He regarded it as a lucky charm of sorts.

‘I have not taken a case for months,’ replied Charlie. ‘Plague times are not good for thief takers.’

The man’s face registered confusion. He wore clumsily-stitched trousers held up by a string belt – the uniform of London’s multitude of struggling commoners. And Charlie assumed he was in search of a lost wife or daughter.

‘I haven’t the heart, to take on all the missing person’s cases,’ Charlie clarified. ‘Hundreds have vanished into plague graves. Often they cannot be found.’

‘I don’t seek you to find a relative. Nor catch a thief,’ answered the man. He took a step closer, turning his head this way and that, assuring himself they weren’t overheard.

In the high babble of the alehouse, this was unlikely. The only table was crowded round, and the more dedicated drinkers had made a jostling huddle next to the Bucket of Blood’s single barrel.

A set of card players were sat on their haunches in the far corner, where the diamond-pane window illuminated their game in dusty shafts of sunlight. And between the laughing adults squeezed skinny barefoot boys, selling Hyde Park hazelnuts by the handful.

A jar of plague water was the only sign that disease was growing in parts of the City. Here in Covent Garden the summer heat had mingled with the march of death, to bring a strangely carnival atmosphere.

Charlie’s head still rang with the bruised ache of last night’s drinking, and the noisy regulars were louder than he would have liked.

The man’s voice was low. ‘I heard that you have certificates.’

Charlie’s frown lifted. In lieu of thief-taking, the plague certificates were proving a popular sale. Something which should probably disturb him more than it did. Since plague had tightened its grip, rich Londoners had insisted that only those with Health
Certificates
were allowed in the wealthy streets in the west. And forged copies were a valuable commodity.

His hand slipped nonchalantly inside his coat. The naval-style garment fitted close at the torso with a line of tiny buttons, flaring over his skinny thighs and looping in large cuffs at his finely-muscled forearms. Though it lacked the gold stitching of a naval officer’s uniform, it did everything a fashionable top-layer should and was only just beginning to fray at the edges, after years of daily wear.

The thick brown fabric housed Charlie’s money, weaponry, eating apparatus, snacks and various found objects, with admirable discretion. And the long coat also did a passable job of hiding his grubby linen shirt and cheap woollen hose, which hung in many-mended seams to his knees.

Charlie’s bare feet he could do nothing to disguise. After a lifetime of feeling the London mud beneath his toes, he couldn’t get along with shoes.

The man watched, hypnotised, as Charlie’s hand turned with a pick-pocket’s assurance and produced a roll of certificates from the dark depths of his coat.

‘Two shillings,’ said Charlie, his lips barely moving.

The man swallowed. His eyes swept the uppermost certificate.

‘This will assure them at Westminster I do not have plague?’ he asked. His voice was trembling. Charlie gave the slightest of nods.

‘It will carry you anywhere in the City,’ he said. ‘These copies bear the City seal. They are the best you will find.’

‘What of beyond the City?’ pressed the man. ‘We hear it now, that some towns are not letting Londoners travel out, without a certificate.’

Charlie nodded again. He unrolled the paper a fraction.

‘See you there?’ Charlie gestured with his little finger to a
little circle of dark-red wax. ‘That is the official stamp. Made at
City Ha
ll.’

The man nodded. ‘They told me you know people. High-up people.’

Charlie held back a grin. ‘Let’s just say, I know a girl in
Guildhall
.’

The man was chewing his lip now, and Charlie’s heart sank, waiting for the inevitable.

‘I do not have two shillings,’ the man admitted.

The roll of paper vanished.

‘My daughter,’ said the man, his voice choking. ‘My daughter works in Westminster. She is a servant in a fine house. There is plague there. I must see her before . . . .’

His voice tightened, and trailed off. ‘Please,’ he managed.

Charlie sighed. His rent was due a week ago, and two shillings would only cover half of it. This was his last certificate, and he’d been hoping its sale would buy more time from his landlord.

‘How much do you have?’ he asked.

‘Tuppence.’

Charlie shook his head in exasperation. ‘Londoners are queued ten thick, along four streets to get these certificates. And you think to buy one, for less than the cost of a mutton chop?’

The man looked at the dusty floorboards and then back up again, pleadingly.

Charlie rubbed his forehead, wishing his thief-taking work hadn’t become so problematic. A single case could have paid off his rent threefold.

‘You live in Billingsgate?’ Charlie asked, after a moment’s pause.

‘How did you know that?’

‘Your trousers are made of wharf sacking, and your finger has a fish-gutting callous.’

The man’s eyes widened, and Charlie mentally admonished himself. He still sometimes forgot that his talent for observing details unnerved people.

‘Take a good look at my face,’ said Charlie. ‘I want you to remember it.’

The man nodded uncertainly, staring back.

Charlie’s youthful face and round brown eyes gave him an air of innocence which though not strictly accurate, inspired trust. Now in his late twenties, the golden curls of his childhood had settled to a less angelic dark blonde. And a bucking horse had added a sliver of pearly scar on his lip and a slight kink to his nose.

The overall effect was of the kind of man who, when he wasn’t selling things illegally, wrote the odd poem. It was a look which came in handy in the delicate web of favours and debts, which was the second currency of poorer Londoners.

‘Remember it well,’ said Charlie. ‘I will count this as a favour owed.’

The certificate magically reappeared and insinuated itself into the man’s unresisting hand. He clutched it immediately, but his face showed he didn’t yet believe his good fortune.

‘There might come a time, when I need information from
Billingsgate
,’ continued Charlie. ‘If that time comes, I will trust you to tell me true.’

Suddenly comprehending, the man began nodding furiously. He beamed in wide gratitude.

‘Even if it is your friend I ask of,’ cautioned Charlie. ‘You will tell me honestly?’

‘You have my promise.’ The man’s words were garbled in his unexpected relief.

He fumbled with his hanging pocket and clumsily pressed two battered pennies into Charlie’s hand.

‘Thank you, thank you,’ he stammered. ‘You are an angel, truly. My daughter . . . I thank you, with all my heart.’

‘Do not tell anyone you got it from me for that price.’

The man shook his head violently. ‘I will take it to the grave.’

Charlie gave him a tight nod and sidestepped neatly into the crowd.

‘I will remember my debt to you,’ the man called after him, as Charlie slid effortlessly through the muddle of drinkers. He still had the problem of his rent to solve, and he doubted this
particular
favour would ever be repaid. Charlie admired the man’s family
loyalty
. But those soft-hearted enough to stay and nurse relatives, stood no chance at all.

There were rumours that turnpikes and barricades were soon to be set up, preventing any from leaving London, and Thames Street had already been sealed off as a ghetto of disease. Reports were
drifting
in that parts of the east were now almost abandoned.

As the summer heat closed the plague had begun flexing its muscles, snatching up district after district and shaking them free of life.

Chapter Two

The Bucket of Blood landlord took one look at Charlie’s face and reached for his special barrel.

‘The strong beer?’

Charlie nodded, waving his newly-earned two pennies at the landlord. The certificate had at least bought him enough to pay off some of his drink tab.

The landlord’s long dark wig swayed, as he heaved a small barrel onto the battered bar.

‘What of that spinster last night, Charlie?’ he inquired conversationally. ‘I’m told she stayed until the small hours, hoping for your favour.’

‘The one with the squint?’

The landlord’s brow furrowed, and he straightened his moth-eaten lace absentmindedly. Since the King’s return, he dressed in tribute. A habit which had earned him the nickname Merrie, after the Merry Monarch.

‘She is rich Charlie. Five goats and her own cauldron,’ pressed Merrie. ‘You would be set up for life.’

‘I am not of a mind to marry for money.’

Merrie was shaking his head, and his wig shifted up to reveal a neat row of flea bites. ‘So many fine girls who’d have you,’ he said, ‘and you always choose the difficult ones.’

‘The difficult ones are more fun.’

The landlord gave the expansive shrug of a man who didn’t care enough to question an obvious idiocy further. He’d been running the Bucket for long enough to choose his debates.

Charlie took three deep swigs of beer, emptying his cup, and refilled it for a second time. The ale was helping ease his hangover, but he still had the issue of his rent. His mind flicked over the problem.

‘Where’s Bitey?’ he asked, thinking the old man might take his mind off things.

‘Poor ole Bitey,’ said the landlord, nodding over to a huddled shape at the back of the alehouse.

‘He fell asleep on that table last night,’ continued Merrie, ‘A little after you left. When he awoke he found they had impounded his pig because of the plague. He feels the loss most heartily.’

Bitey’s pig had become a regular fixture in the Bucket of Blood. He had kept it inside his cloak from a piglet, feeding it sips of beer. As a larger animal it had been allowed to lie under the table, where it snuffled happily as its owner scratched its back with a stick.

‘Bitey woke a few hours ago asking for beer,’ added Merrie.

Charlie picked up one of the battered wooden cups scattered around the bar. ‘Chalk this one up to me,’ he said, drawing another cup of strong ale.

He approached the morose Bitey with caution. The old man was named on account of his homemade wooden teeth. Bitey’s oak dentures were hinged with a rusty wire and hopelessly ineffective. When he smiled it was the grin of a man who had swallowed a length of timber.

Today his mouth was closed and downturned. Charlie tended a sympathetic pat on the shoulder, proffering the beer.

The old man’s raddled hand closed gratefully on the handle, and he took a long draft.

‘Only a few more weeks it would have been,’ said Bitey, looking up at him through red eyes. ‘I would ’a made a penny per leg and had a brawn soup for weeks from the head. There would have been three buckets of blood for black pudding besides . . . .’ He sniffed loudly and pushed the wooden teeth further back into
his mouth
.

Bitey was a squat square of a man whose louse-ridden outer layers hinted at a dense core impenetrable to cold, discomfort, or possibly even sharp weaponry. His tattered coat had been waxed into stiff tendrils and he sported an ancient Cavalier hat, the smallest slice of face sandwiched between chaotic beard and filthy
headgear
.

‘I’d already closed with a butcher at Smithfield,’ Bitey added. ‘He was to do the job for a side of ribs. An’ then there was the chops and trotters . . . .’ His voice drifted off in anguish.

‘How did it happen?’ asked Charlie.

‘I only let him out to truffle around the muck on Covent
Garden
.’ Bitey’s face implored Charlie to take his part. ‘I was not but a few streets away. When I came they told me the dog-catcher had been. Taking up all the strays from the streets on account of the plague. Says the piggy was a health problem, so they took him off and had him a’killed. But I tell you Charlie,’ Bitey’s expression darkened. ‘He was a cleaner animal than many men that is in here.’

The old man took a long swig of beer. ‘Things will turn against the King if this kind of business continues,’ he said. ‘Plague or no, you cannot take a man’s pig and expect him to stay a lover of
royalty
.’

Charlie’s eye slid over to where Merrie was pouring drinks. The landlord had been known to forcibly eject drinkers, for speaking ill of the monarchy.

‘Our Merry Monarch has made a Palace full of whores,’ added Bitey. ‘And now plague has fallen on us, like a terrible judgement.’

‘Royalty is no easy business,’ suggested Charlie, noticing Merrie was headed in their direction.

‘What is difficult to understand?’ challenged Bitey. ‘We had a bad King, and we cut off his head. Then we had Cromwell’s
Republic
for a time. But we did not like the strict religion of it. So now we bring back the bad King’s son from exile. But many think it unwise.’

‘Not that I be one ’a them,’ Bitey added quickly, noticing that the landlord was now upon them, his face thunderous.

‘You forget the Civil War in between times,’ said Merrie, who’d caught the last of the conversation. ‘All the death and horror of it.’

‘No one has forgotten,’ said Bitey darkly. ‘Least of all those who lost. And to what purpose His Majesty’s fine parades and clothes? Now the streets are blocked from Covent Garden to the Tower.’ Bitey shrugged expansively. ‘And who is to repair the streets after the wagons have made ruts of the mud and broken the cobbles? The parishes can no longer afford it. All the money they have is gone on taking away plague bodies and wood for bonfires to clear the 
foul ai
r.’

Charlie felt the familiar pang in his stomach twist tighter. Only a few weeks ago the dead bell counted out the departed twice a day. Now it rang so frequently they no longer noticed it.

When the plague had first been reported in May it had seemed far away. Imperceptibly it had crept closer, until June saw nameless corpses become locals and July made the locals into acquaintances. How soon before it was friends and relatives being rung out in the unending toll?

Bitey continued his tirade. ‘The plague is now so high that there is no escaping it. The astrologers. They all say the same. This is God wrath. God’s wrath on account of the King and his ways. And the sinful ways of Londoners. There was a blazing star this year and they all agree this is a very bad sign.’

‘I mean to go to Wapping, first chance I get,’ he continued, barely pausing for breath. ‘Reckon I can hole up there right enough. You should look to get out of the city yourself.’

Charlie nodded, his mind elsewhere. He was used to such portents of doom from Bitey and his hand slipped towards the key at his neck again, warding away the illness.

‘Still got your lucky charm, Charlie?’ said Bitey, changing tack in a bid to keep his listener engaged. ‘I bought me a similar thing myself,’ and he drew out a balding rabbit foot with his old fingers. ‘Lost a claw, but it still works right enough, so the gypsies tell me.’

‘Did you not hear the story of how Charlie still has his key?’ asked Merrie. ‘Last month the gaming house on Peace Street burned down, and young Charlie here ran back into the flames to get that memento. We thought he had seen some person or money inside. For you know how he plays hero. How we laughed when he came out with nothing but a keepsake from his long-lost mother. A key that fits no lock.’

‘Do you still think your key will find her, Charlie?’ asked Bitey.

Charlie closed the key into his fingers defensively.

‘No,’ he admitted. ‘It is sentiment, that is all. This key is all I had, when the nuns found me and my brother. I should not like to lose it.’

‘Hi!’ Merrie had spotted a hazelnut boy helping himself from the beer barrel. He sprinted across the bar, leaving Bitey and Charlie alone together.

The old man’s eyes were settled on Charlie’s closed fingers.

‘Strange shape at the head of it,’ he muttered. ‘A crown over knots. I still think it must be something from before the Civil War. From the time of the old King.’ Bitey’s eyes misted.

‘Who would have thought it Charlie?’ he added. ‘You the finest thief taker London has ever known. Yet you carry the only mystery you cannot solve.’

Charlie took a long sip of beer in answer. And Bitey, exhibiting rare tact, didn’t pursue the topic.

A loud whistle piped up behind then and Charlie turned to see a rare sight in the Bucket of Blood. An attractive woman. As a den of bare-knuckle fighting the ale-house tended to repel rather than invite females who weren’t on the make. ‘Rough old boot’ was one of the kinder descriptions.

He watched the girl approach the bartender. She was a good height. Tall enough to suggest she’d been well-fed growing up. Charlie was not a short man by any means, but he frequently maintained that were it not for a childhood of thin soup he would be tall as King Charles himself.

He let his eyes slide the length of her figure. From her posture he judged her to be no more than twenty-five. She wore a simple, yet well-made dress in green. Not rich but not poor either. Perhaps something approaching the Yeoman classes. And she’d made her own creative additions, banding white sleeves with black ribbon in a loose imitation of the aristocratic fashions.

His gaze moved downwards. The shoes matched the green of her dress and were embroidered with white flowers, turning to a delicate point with a little heel. It was footwear of cloth rather than silk, but even as a replica they were a costly item.

And despite a few mud-spots they were by far the cleanest shoes on the Bucket of Blood’s dusty floorboards.

‘Not employed in any of the hard trades either,’ he said to no one in particular. In contrast to the laundresses and orange-sellers who frequented the Bucket there was a youthful symmetry to this girl’s limbs. He could see where the creamy skin of her neck and back joined with the blonde hair.

This, he judged, was one of the most attractive things about her. She wore it falling free and curled in the courtly fashion, partly gathered in a knot at the crown of the head. It was a stylish choice considering most common women clung to their Puritan linen caps. Even more daringly the flowing locks had been rinsed in a berry wash to heighten the yellow colour.

‘Charlie?’ He turned to see the landlord had arrived at his side and had lowered his mouth to his ear.

‘Do you know that girl Charlie?’ The landlord inclined his head towards the tantalising newcomer.

Charlie shook his head slowly. ‘Never seen her before. Why?’

‘Because she is asking for you.’