The Thief Taker (28 page)

Chapter Sixty

Another light blazed in the cell, and Charlie saw the woman was holding a little stub of candle. The flame fluttered and then grew to a warm orb.

‘Little Charlie Oakley,’ she repeated in Dutch. ‘After all these years.’

Charlie stood in the semi-dark, shocked into silence.

‘I was frightened when they brought you in,’ explained the woman. ‘No one is supposed to come in this room. It is mine alone. So I hid.’

The blonde hair had turned partially white and the large blue eyes were a little duller with age. But he remembered the lovely face so well.

‘It is you,’ Charlie breathed, speaking in Dutch.

Some faint details were coming back, that this woman had taught him and his brother Dutch. She was the mistress of a great house, where his mother had worked.

He fought for more memories, but there were none.

‘Then I became braver and I looked and saw it was you,’ continued the woman. ‘And I recognised you from all those
years ago.’

Charlie clung to this sudden revelation. His mother had worked in a large house. That was something.

And now he had a name. Charlie Oakley. He tried to feel something for the surname, but there was nothing.

This lady, he remembered, had lived in the cellar.

She raised the candle to consider his face.

‘So Sally Oakley put you safe as she said she would,’ she said, wonderingly.

His mind was churning at the strange familiarity of it all.
Hearing
the name was an electric shock of recognition. Sally
Oakley
.
That must be his mother’s name.

‘Where is my mother now?’ said Charlie, unable to keep his orphan abandonment from rising to the fore.

‘Why she took you to put you safe,’ said the woman. The musical voice brought with it a feeling rather than a memory. That as a boy he had sometimes been frightened of her.

‘But where did she go?’

‘My husband sent her away Charlie,’ she shook her head. ‘I did not want him to for it was a fine thing having a lady’s maid.’

‘Where? Where did she go?’

‘I do not know.’

Charlie’s mind was reeling, trying to think through what
it meant.

‘Why?’ he insisted, unable to keep the desperation from his voice. ‘Why did he send her away?’

‘Your mother found his secrets and hid them,’ she said. ‘Secrets about my husband and the King. That no one can know.’

Charlie remembered the key. What if his mother had hid
den these special papers away and given him the means to
find them?

His gaze settled back on the woman. Teresa. Her name announced itself in his head from a long buried remembrance.

‘How did you get here?’ asked Charlie, his thoughts turning to escape and the returning guard and constable.

‘My husband brought me here,’ she said, ‘I do not like to be near men I have not met before. So he keeps me here safe and alone.’

‘But how did you get past the guards? Is he known to them?’

‘My husband helped build this prison,’ she said. ‘They dug a secret way in. Only he knows of it now.’

Hopes for news of his mother kept forking into Charlie’s thoughts and he drove them down with effort.

The guard and the constable must be planning to return soon. He needed to escape.

If there was a secret tunnel out he could hide in it and rescue Maria when she was put in the cell.

‘Can you show me?’ he asked, ‘show me the way out?’

Teresa shook her head. But there was something disingenuous about the gesture. As though she was frightened of being left alone.

‘Only my husband knows it,’ she said. Charlie caught the tiniest flicker. Her eyes had moved just slightly to the wall behind him.

‘Perhaps we could find it together,’ he said carefully, watching her face and moving to the back wall.

Her features tightened. And he realised she didn’t want him to get out.

Charlie considered Teresa carefully. She was tall and heavily made. But he could overpower her if necessary.

Perhaps she only wanted his company, he reasoned, trapped all alone in here, in the dark. He tried to remember what else he knew of her. A few Dutch words came.

The-lady-in-the-hidden-room.

He and Rowan still spoke of her. But she had faded to conversational currency, the origins of which were no longer solid.

Faced with the reality Charlie’s memory of a lonely enchanted thing was superseded by something darker.

He tried to push the rising tumult of fractured memories away and concentrate on the necessity of escape. Maria. He had to sa
ve Maria.

Charlie let his eyes scan the wall. The heavy stones looked similar, and if there was a door he guessed the hinges must be hidden away in the dark mortar.

With only a small torch it was impossible to see where a door might start and end. It would take him too long to scan each section of stone inch by laborious inch.

The realisation brought with it a plan. He moved to the barrel of plague water in the corner of the cell and tilted it carefully into the light.

Plague water was made with iron filings.

A plan was forming. A plan of escape.

‘What is it you do?’ asked Teresa. There was a hint of fear in her voice.

Charlie lifted the barrel.

Iron filings. Iron was magnetic. It would stick to other iron.

If there were iron hinges or a handle hidden in the stone wall, the filings would find it out far quicker than the naked eye.

Taking careful aim he sloshed an arc of water towards a portion of the far wall.

Then taking the torch he swept it over the heavy stone.

At first he thought there was nothing. Then the flame glittered on a few fragments of iron, which clung to the dark iron embedded in the stone.

Scooping a denser hand of iron filings from the bottom
of the barrel, Charlie spread them near where the first few had
remained.

The shape of a hinge. He traced it down, spreading more filings, until the second was revealed. The hinges were only a few feet apart. A small door then, large enough to crawl through.

Taking the final part of the plague water, Charlie flung it towards where he hoped the opening might be. And there it was suddenly, framed by glittering iron filings. A tiny dark hole that had been indiscernible moments before.

An opening.

Taking one of the unburned sticks from the fire, Charlie prised it into where the door began. It resisted at first and then began to swing open in a dusty shower of mortar.

‘Wait!’ called Teresa. ‘You must not open it!’

She caught his arm.

Charlie turned, pulling himself free and sent her staggering back a few steps.

His eye was drawn to a sudden flash of white at her chest. Something tumbled out of her dress.

At first Charlie thought it must be a handkerchief or little posy. Then his gaze settled on what had fallen. A flash of white and red. It was a little clutch of blood-stained ribbons.

White ribbons.

Charlie stared, his thoughts moving into place. The bloodied ribbons were wrapped around a doll made of sackcloth.

For a long moment they both stood staring. Then Teresa snatched them back and stuffed them deep into her clothing. But not before Charlie realised what he had seen.

White ribbons. Blood. A witch’s spell.

Charlie remembered what the wise woman had said. That whoever performed the spell on Maria’s sister would carry part of t
he magi
c.

The woman carried ribbons, like those found on the corpses.

A tangle of thoughts balled themselves into one.

‘It was you,’ he whispered.

Teresa stared back at him. A single hand self-consciously tried to push the blood-stained fabrics deeper.

‘It was you who cast the spells,’ said Charlie.

Chapter Sixty-One

Thomas usually had little call to enter the prison, and it was a practice he aimed studiously to avoid.

He hated the dungeons. They reminded him of his time in the Clink prison. Not to mention that plague cases had now been reported. He thought of his wife safely housed in her secret separate cell. Soon he would collect her and they could return to London.

But first he had cause to visit the lower dungeon. The gaoler had informed him that a woman had been imprisoned. A young girl named Maria.

Thomas enjoyed his ready access to any females imprisoned in Wapping. Usually he toyed with them inside the cell. But with plague rife he would rather take this girl back to London for longer entertainment.

Since the Civil War his tastes had changed, and pain had become inextricably linked with pleasure. He was careful only to indulge with Protestant girls. And it still surprised him how much some women would bear, for a few more coins.

Others were less willing, but he was not averse to capturing by force. The girls never told their tales. Not once they knew who he was. And what he could do.

Teresa.

He had a sudden vision of his wife, manoeuvring bloody remains. Lighting candles. Saying words.

Beneath his hot mask Thomas squeezed his eyes tight shut.

He hadn’t been able to refuse his wife. Not after he’d failed her the first time. What else could he do, but give her the victims she craved for her witchcraft?

In the past he had delivered her animals. But when Teresa discovered his infidelities, her bloodlust had turned to punish him. She wanted his women as penance. The dirty Protestant girls who had tainted her husband.

Thomas, carrying a lifetime of guilt, married to a half-dead thing, searched his soul and found nothing left there to refuse her.

He never saw the spells and did not believe in their power. But he left her a trail of ready girls on which to work her horrors. And under the plague costume, charged with the prospect of casting her unholy works, Teresa was brave enough to leave their dark cellar and visit in person.

His beaked mask nodded in comforting protection from the foul air.

Then he saw something to take his mind off infection entirely. A flash of blonde hair.

He had arrived at his destination. And he moved forward to peer further into the cell. To his amazement the attractive face looked familiar. Who was it the girl reminded him of? Then memory of the meeting rushed back in.

Thomas had been deep amongst the throngs of Catholics petitioning for their lands to be returned when he saw her. Eva had worn her dress low enough to make it clear what was for sale but her face was haughty with her own self worth. She met his gaze with a challenging stare of her own, and when he approached her she turned and walked away. Though not fast enough that he might not follow.

He pursued her through the backstreets until she had stopped suddenly and turned.

‘You needn’t think I am for business,’ she said, eyeing him in a manner which suggested the complete opposite. ‘Here,’ she leaned forward and pushed a scrap of paper into his hand. ‘You might find me here, in the evenings, if your intentions are of a better kind than desire for a prostitute.’

She’d slipped away then leaving Thomas alone. The paper in his hand had been inked with the name of a tavern, suggesting the girl could read and write. And though in his heart he knew that the look in her eyes was acted, Thomas felt some feeling stir.

He’d found her out later that day. Eva was one of the many who arrived in London imagining their beauty to be a ticket out of poverty. Her family now languished in a cheap rented house in Holbourne. A situation she made clear she had no intention of remaining in.

‘For gentlemen can be kind to poor girls,’ she said, looking carefully up at him through long lashes, ‘and I pray that some man might buy me up as a mistress so that I might live fine in the City.’

Thomas had let his eyes roam shamelessly over her as she talked. There was no doubt she was right for his purpose.

Thomas felt his stomach rumble beneath the heavy canvas. It was not Eva. He could see that clearly now. But in the dank dungeon the girl had much of Eva’s attraction – she looked like an angel. He found his breathing becoming heavy and strained in the heat of the air.

Thomas signalled to the gaoler.

‘Open the door.’

Chapter Sixty-Two

The angelic calm in Teresa’s face evaporated. She shuffled back with a snarl, her hands clasped protectively towards the bloody ribbons now hidden in her dress.

‘I know it was you,’ said Charlie, ‘those ribbons you carry are part of your spell. No one but the witch would own them.’

Teresa’s eyes darted back and forth as if searching for a way to deny the accusation. Then she replied.

‘Yes,’ she hissed. All the music had gone from her voice. ‘I decided to avenge myself.’

‘But what revenge could you want?’ whispered Charlie.

Teresa’s face twisted. ‘Those girls. For what they did with my husband.’ She stared at Charlie for a moment as if daring him to answer. ‘Thomas does my bidding, for he knows what sin he did. He has dishonoured me and must make amends.’

Charlie’s brain was whirring, working it all out.

‘Thomas brings you girls, so you might perform your spells?’ he decided.

Teresa nodded, seeming pleased by his interest.

‘Since the war Thomas has indulged his taste for Protestant girls,’ she said. ‘Why should he deny me the same?’

Charlie was silent with horror.

‘The first,’ she said. ‘Such a greedy girl. She told her family she had plague, so Thomas might visit her more easily.’ She moved a hand to her mouth, stifling a giggle.

‘How people shrank from me, in Thomas’s plague-doctor costume!’ she gloated. ‘Since the soldiers came I have been afraid of stepping outside. But cloaked and masked I grew bolder. And I roughened my voice with syrup of hellebore, so none knew me for a woman.’

Teresa’s eyes glittered.

‘Her neck was still warm, when I had the knife at her throat,’ she crooned. ‘Then all the blood flowed out. And I had all the time I wanted to cast my spell.’

Teresa seemed to be enjoying the revelations of her cleverness.

‘I was sold like cattle for my dowry,’ she added bitterly, ‘and after the soldiers got to me my husband would not come to my bed. Yet those girls sought to make money from my misfortune.’

‘So you made your spells against your husband?’ Charlie had half his mind on the escape route and the other on keeping her distracted by talking.

Teresa gave an arch smile. ‘Not against my husband. Against his return to
them
. The Sealed Knot. Those whose sign you wear.’

She pointed at the key looped around Charlie’s neck.

‘They were the men who sold me and spent my dowry. And now they rise again.’

Teresa closed her eyes, and her voice lowered, like a chant.

‘I wrapped the ribbons. And I burned the candle to make the
words. ‘He Returns’, to hinder his return to the Sealed Knot. I
know my powers are true,’ she added, ‘for after I made the spell
their traitor King was driven out of London. Blood magic is
powerful.’

Her eyes flicked quickly to his neck and back again.

‘You seek out your mother,’ she murmured. Something of the musical quality had returned to her voice. ‘I could call her to us.’ Her eyes travelled over his face and then paused.

‘We could summon Sally Oakley,’ she said. ‘With the blood in your veins it could be easily done.’

The tiniest spark of hope flashed in Charlie’s mind.

What if her powers were real?
He pushed it back, but it grew.

‘I will make a plate of water,’ she was saying. ‘Just a few drops of blood and a candle. The right words. She will be revealed to us.’

Charlie knew he shouldn’t be curious to see the spell done. But he found himself leaning forwards, hypnotised, to see what Teresa meant to do.

She was tugging free some bundle of artefacts from the corner of the cell.

Seeing the direction of his gaze the woman drew the bundle closer, hiding it against her body. Then she began shuffling back towards where he stood, eyeing him hungrily.

The movement called to mind something Mother Mitchell had told him when he first came to her house.

Do not be a fool man and imagine a beautiful woman must be harmless
, she had said.
In this city a woman might hide a weapon as well as a man.

His reaction came just in time. Teresa lunged at him, a long knife flashing in her hand. He deflected it just as the blade nicked his neck.

The rest of her bundle clattered to the floor. A blood-stained cup and a bell rolled in the dirt.

Charlie grabbed both her wrists but she was strong, and the blood which now showed on his neck had driven her into a kind of mania. Her blue eyes were slitted with intent, her words a babbling monologue.

‘Blood,’ she was saying, ‘powerful blood.’

He raised them both upright still clinging to her wrists. The knife in her hand was pointed towards his jugular. Madness gave her an unnatural strength.

Desperately, Charlie kicked out with his foot, dislodging the heavy metal plate that had lain over the flames.

Sparks and hot tinder flew, and Teresa shrieked, shielding her face from the spray. Taking his chance, Charlie pushed her away and dived for the opening in the wall.

His shoulders grazed both sides and he landed on the other side of the cell in total darkness.