The Thief Taker (30 page)

Chapter Sixty-Six

Charlie watched the wagon roll slowly away, trying to quell the rising panic that Maria could be dead.

He rose slowly from behind the hedge. The vehicle was not yet moving fast. It would take a good few minutes of open road to reach full speed.

The wagon was like a boxed-in shed on wheels, with a padlocked door at the back and a seat for Malvern at the front.

Charlie was sure that the back entrance of the wagon could not be easily seen by the driver.

And breaking into a jog he followed at a safe distance along the waterfront road. The wagon rolled through the unmanned south of the town and out onto the London Road.

On the wide dirt track Malvern gave another flick of the reins. The horses broke into a canter, bouncing the vehicle high on the rutted and unkempt highway.

Charlie dropped back to avoid being seen and then made his decision.

Under the padlocked back door was a thin lip of wood. If he ran and jumped, there might be just enough wood to get a toe-hold.

Then he could try and pick the lock whilst the wagon was in motion. It wouldn’t be easy. But any chance to save Maria was worth the risk.

Charlie broke into a sprint. But the wagon raced ahead. He realised he had underestimated the pace which six horses could build. The wagon was ricocheting over the road at a rapid speed, spitting a slew of pebbles towards him in its wake.

He threw up an arm to keep the sharp missiles from his face and willed himself to run faster.

The padlocked door grew nearer.

Charlie slowed for a moment and then charged at the back of the wagon in a run. He leapt, planting one foot on the narrow ledge and gripping the edges of the wagon with his hands.

The support beneath his feet splintered away completely. His leg crashed painfully through the damaged wood. But he managed to scrabble with the other and gain the slightest of toe-holds. His hands gripped white to the side of the carriage.

The wagon began to slow. And he realised Malvern must have felt the impact and was stopping to inspect his vehicle. Charlie looked back to the road. He had no choice but to jump down and hide. But Malvern would see the damage and know he was being followed.

Charlie closed his eyes. He couldn’t. He couldn’t jump away.

‘Maria,’ he hissed, holding his mouth to the door. ‘Are you there?’

No sound came from inside the wagon. The horses had slowed now to a trot.

‘Please Maria. Please say you are alive.’

Nothing.

The wagon gave a sudden lurch. It was picking up speed again. Charlie held his breath until he was sure of it.

Malvern must have decided against delay and had urged the horses back to a faster pace.

Examining the lock Charlie struggled to pull out his pick whilst holding one-handed to the juddering wagon.

With the motion over the ragged road it was impossible. Lock picking required delicacy of movement and here he had none. He swung a hand to the keyhole and swore as the wire of his lock-picking earring sheered away.

Charlie held his arm steady and aimed again at the lock.

The wagon veered crazily to one side and his foot twisted downwards. Beneath him the last part of the ledge cracked ominously. In desperation he lunged towards the lock, and the wire slipped once more into it. The wagon bounced and jolted, but he thought he could feel the internal lever.

A rut in the road threw him a foot in the air, and he gasped, but managed to keep his arm tight to the lock.

There was only one lever to pick. Charlie twisted the wire to spring the lock.

Then the horses reared and gunned forward sending the wheels behind them careening back and forth.

His foot bore down hard on the remaining sliver of ledge. It split under his weight and twisted away beneath him.

Charlie’s grip scrabbled at the wagon sides for a moment. Then he fell, hitting the dirt track face-first.

Charlie felt the breath knocked out of his body and then
nothing
.

And up ahead the wagon raced on to London without him.

Chapter Sixty-Seven

Mayor Lawrence gave a low exploratory cough. Over the past few days he had personally supervised the removal of six thousand corpses from the streets and homes of his city.

Probably he had been working too hard in the smoke of the many bonfires, he decided.

After the death of his serving maid, Lawrence’s whole family had fallen in quick succession. Now he wondered why he had worked so hard for so long on matters of his own self-importance. He would have dropped every last chain of office in the Thames for one more day with his wife.

With no one to go home to, Lawrence had begun involving himself in things which were previously beneath his notice. At first he had merely been horrified that there were not enough staff to clear the mounting bodies. But with little care for his own life it had not taken long to take to the task in person.

The ragged and desperate men who still cleared bodies found the Mayor’s involvement strange. But Lawrence did not care. The terrible work helped stave off the memory of his awful loss.

Sounds of a baby crying had been reported on Brewer Street,
and Lawrence was making to investigate. He was dreading
what he might find. Taking to the streets in person had been a
revelation
.

The house was of the fine brick sort, and the door was sturdily bolted from the inside. He tapped at a window and peered inside. A well-appointed reception room attested to the wealth of the owners. From what he could see it had been abandoned.

Then he heard it. The unmistakable sound of a baby crying.

Swallowing hard Lawrence returned to the front door. He knocked hard, and then heaved his bulky weight against it without waiting for an answer. On the second attempt the wood splintered and he shouldered his way in.

The crying was louder now, inconsolable. It was coming from the back of the house and Lawrence moved through the first reception room into a second smaller room.

He stopped suddenly.

Inside, stretched out on a chaise lounge, was a dead woman. She wore a fine silk dress which had been pulled down at the front. And wedged against one of her exposed breasts, in the crook of the cold dead arms, was a screaming baby.

Lawrence froze for a long moment. And then swallowed, heading towards the child.

‘There, there,’ he whispered, his fear temporarily bested by his need to comfort the child.

He approached the corpse, tilting his head to see how he might best extract the infant.

Up close he saw the plague tokens covering the breasts of the dead woman.

They served him a sudden haunting flash of how plague had decimated his own small household.

His maidservant Debs had died within hours of discovering the marks on her body. But his wife had taken four long days to die.

He drove the images back and addressed how best to remove the baby.

Moving carefully Lawrence tugged at the child. The rigor mortis of the mother’s arm around it formed a powerful hold, and for a terrible moment he thought he may have to break the bone.

Then the baby slid unexpectedly free from the dead mother and Lawrence found himself with the warm little body in his arms.

He stared at the tiny features. The child could not be more than a few weeks old.

‘There is no need for that noise now,’ he said, clucking and rocking the child. ‘We will take you and find you some food.’

Lawrence mind searched for possibilities. He could think of no way to acquire milk. But he was sure the answer would come to him.

‘I always wanted a child of my own,’ he told the baby, as he carried it through into the hallway. ‘But my wife and I were separated before we had the chance. I will see you are well cared for,’ he added.

The baby wriggled in his arms. It had stopped wailing and was making sucking noises with its mouth. A request for food,
Lawrence
deduced. He put his knuckle in the child’s mouth and was rewarded with an enthusiastic suckling. This delighted him.

‘Perhaps first I will find if there are clean clothes in the house for you,’ he muttered to himself, thinking the baby must be soiled beneath the long christening robe it wore.

He turned aside the garment to see beneath.

His hand went rigid.

The tokens were all over the child’s body.

Something in his movement must have alarmed the baby, because it started up crying again. He realised now these were muted sounds, as though it was running low on strength.

Lawrence sat heavily on the dusty wooden floorboards, the child in his arms.

Within an hour the cries had stilled to ragged dying breaths. And after two, the warm body had begun to grow cold.

Standing with difficulty Lawrence carried the tiny body back into the room he had found it in and tucked it carefully back in the dead arms of its mother. Then he covered it back up with its christening robes.

Two fat tears rolled from Lawrence’s face onto the baby’s head and he wiped them off.

‘You will be better with your mother,’ he whispered. ‘The angels will have joy of you both.’

Then he walked back through the hallway, trying to calm the shaking which had started in his legs.

He closed the door, sat on the steps, put his head in his hands, and sobbed.

It must have been a long moment later when a searcher tapped his arm.

‘There has been another letter,’ said the searcher, looking urgently into Lawrence’s face. ‘Mister Blackstone writes of his progress outside the city. He managed to find a messenger to deliver the missive.’

Lawrence looked up and held his hand out for the paper.

The searcher pushed a single page into his hand, and he glanced at it through tear-filled eyes.

Blackstone had made some unexpected headway on the witch-murders.

Lawrence sat up a little.

Whilst keeping track of King Charles, Blackstone had unexpectedly stumbled upon the symbol to a long disbanded group of men who called themselves the Sealed Knot.

Lawrence stopped reading for a moment, wondering whether he had the energy to care about such trivial matters.

Almost all of London’s officials had fled, and the plague had chewed through his thousand strong staff of searchers, five ti
mes ove
r.

They had dug enormous pits in Stepney and Shoreditch which now overflowed. And food deliveries had dried up.

He let his eyes flick over the last few lines of the report, hardly caring what they said. But the words were enough to surprise him.

The Sealed Knot, Blackstone wrote, consisted of many powerful and important men. Most had died or vanished after the Civil War. But one name very high on the list still worked in the city.

Amesbury had been a member of the Sealed Knot.

Chapter Sixty-Eight

Charlie awoke to a mouth full of dust. He rolled upright trying to work out where he was. The blinding sunlight and the empty dirt track told him nothing. Rubbing his face he tried to remember how he’d got there. Then it came to him.

The wagon.

And Maria. Maria was gone.

Pained from the impact he struggled up and limped along in the direction of the wagon for a few moments before accepting pursuit was useless. Malvern’s vehicle had disappeared far ahead.

Charlie took a moment to assess his situation before deciding it was worse than hopeless. The wagon couldn’t have taken him more than a few miles out of Wapping. And the fastest route to London was the most dangerous. It would take him days to track round to the north and enter that way.

Malvern’s plans were due to be enacted. But far worse was what he might do with Maria.

Charlie stamped his foot helplessly into the dusty road. Then for want of a better plan he set off walking.

The Thames was still nearby, and he veered towards it.

Something like white wings flapped in the distance beyond the roadside foliage.

Ship sails. Some boats were on the river.

Probably these were the private boats of Londoners who had travelled up river to avoid plague. He remembered Marc-Anthony telling him, as they locked up the sedan-chair, that this was a strategy he would adopt if the plague in London reached a height.

Charlie let his eye roll over the sails, imagining his friend on one of the boats. And then the realisation hit.

Marc-Anthony was likely on one of those boats.

As a possibility clarified Charlie broke into a run.

Travelling by river he might yet be able to outrun Malvern. Water was slower than wagon. But the route was more direct. The river cut straight into London with no impediment.

Charlie made a rough calculation.

If he could find Marc-Anthony and persuade him to the cause he had a chance, a small chance, of saving Maria from whatever Malvern had planned for her.

Chapter Sixty-Nine

Charlie stared out onto the Thames. The river was wide near Wapping, and the breadth of water had attracted a large cluster of ships, taking shelter from the plague. They bobbed on
the water like a disparate citadel, at a wary distance from one
another.

Charlie could make out makeshift munitions and rudimentary defences. Some ships had watchmen pointing rifles out to sea.
Others
defended more accessible parts of the hull by painting it in thick tar and pressing in broken bottle ends.

There were at least forty ships, and though Marc-Anthony talked of his smuggling vessel with pride, Charlie had never seen it in reality.

He squinted out into the collection of boats, trying to deduce which might be his friend’s. Certainly, he could rule out all the small skiffs. They weren’t large enough to carry the volume of cargo a smuggler required.

The two very large ships also, he decided, would draw too much attention at customs. That left around twenty tall ships, all of which, so far as he could see, would be adequate for smuggling.

Charlie plumbed his knowledge of seafaring. Like most riverside-dwelling Londoners he took regular ferry boats. But he wasn’t familiar with seafaring.

He tried to think what he knew of Marc-Anthony’s trade.

Marc-Anthony only sails to France. He says the colonies are too great a risk.

Charlie looked back out onto the water and ruled out a couple more ships whose weather-beaten hulls attested to transatlantic journeys.

What else would single out Marc-Anthony’s craft?

His eyes roved the ships anew. They all looked very similar to him. The sails hung limply in the breeze, against slack cobwebs of rigging.

Charlie tried to relax his mind against the throbbing panic of Maria’s kidnap and let his talent for observation get to work.

There!

His gaze seized upon a strangeness in one ship. The two anchor ropes were secured with a slip-knot, halfway down. Charlie thought on this.

A slip-knot meant a quick getaway. In an emergency the ship could simply abandon its anchors rather than pull them in.

He noticed something else about the ship, obvious now he was looking for it. The prow of this particular ship faced into the current, when all others looked downstream.

Charlie knew enough about currents to know this to be a bad practice. Facing the current meant the swell of water hit the blunt back of the boat, jolting the craft uncomfortably.

But he would bet money the slip-knot anchors and current-facing were for the same reason.

Old habits die hard.

Marc-Anthony had not masterminded a smuggling business for fifteen years without a supernatural talent for caution. The smuggler hadn’t been able to help himself from positioning his ship for a fast escape.

That is Marc-Anthony’s ship. I am sure of it.

And without further hesitation, Charlie dove into the water.

Marc-Anthony’s ship was not one of those staffed by armed guards. But as Charlie neared the vessel, crew members leapt into action, shouting and threatening.

‘Get Marc-Anthony!’ called Charlie, reaching the first anchor rope. ‘He’s a friend.’

But instead of calling the captain, the sailor nearest to Charlie stuck a knife between his teeth and began shaking the rope.

‘Call for Marc-Anthony!’ shouted Charlie desperately. ‘He knows me well! I help carry his sedan-chair.’ He fought to keep his slippery hold on the rope as it swung, forcing him to clutch it with both arms.

Having failed to dislodge the intruder, the sailor dropped himself down towards the rope like a monkey, the knife clenched between his bared teeth.

‘I mean no harm!’ shouted Charlie, as the filthy Thames water splashed his face. ‘Only to get to the City.’

‘Let go!’ The sailor had removed the knife from his mouth to issue the warning. It was a practised gesture and his lithe feet held him simian-style and single-handed. ‘Get off the anchor!’

‘Please! If Marc-Anthony is aboard call for him.’

The sailor replaced the blade between his calloused lips and began to move down the rope.

‘Wait!’ called Charlie. ‘Hold!’ But it looked as though his choice was to abandon ship or lose his fingers.

He tried for one last plea. ‘I know he must be on this ship! He told me this is where he would wait out the plague!’

The expression on his assailant’s face said it all. He wanted Charlie off the hull at any cost.

‘Wait!’ a familiar voice sounded from the deck above, and the sailor turned his head up in confusion.

‘Let him aboard!’ said the voice. ‘I know him. He is a friend.’

The sailor’s eyes narrowed. He seemed unwilling to take the new instructions with an interloper still hanging on the anchor.

A curly mop of hair appeared over the side of the ship.

To his great joy Charlie saw the familiar face of Marc-Anthony.

‘Hello Charlie!’ shouted Marc-Anthony. ‘He will let you up presently. Let him up Davie! All is well.’ And to Charlie’s great relief the sailor began to retreat back up the rope.

When Charlie had finished explaining the events leading to Maria’s capture Marc-Anthony looked at him solemnly. ‘There are no officials who stay still in London,’ he said. ‘Even if you find this villain out you cannot enact his arrest. Parts are deserted entirely.’

‘But I was in the City less than a week ago,’ said Charlie, ‘and there was plenty of life in the west. Sure that cannot have changed so sudden in that short time.’

‘We may only dock in the east Charlie. The King deserted the city. And when he did all law was forgotten. Only a few brave gravediggers and aldermen remain.’

‘I must find her Marcus. I must get back into London.’ Charlie looked at his friend. ‘If you can persuade your crew to sail back towards the City I might outrun him still. It is a small chance but it is possible.’

‘What mean you to do in the City?’

‘I will go to the Alders Gate. That is where wagons would come in from the east. I will ask there after Malvern. If I have got back to the City faster than he then I have some hope of following where he goes and finding Maria.’

Marc-Anthony was shaking his head. ‘There will be no one on the gatehouse,’ he said patiently. ‘I tell you I have seen it, and there is nothing left in the East. In that part of the City all are dead or fled. All.’

‘I must find her! Do you not see? He has her. He has taken her for
God knows what reason. I do not have time to wait and discover what he wants with her. If I can get to the gatehouse maybe there will be some tracks. Or . . . or something else . . . some other way to find him.’

‘You love this girl don’t you?’

‘I . . . I need to get back to London, that is all.’

‘You value her enough to risk your life in any case.’ Marc-Anthony rolled his eyes to Heaven. ‘I always said it, that the most foolish acts in the world are done for love. But where should we be without them Charlie?’

‘Please Marcus. I am begging you. Can you get me into the City?’

‘We can get you as west as the Tower,’ said Marc-Anthony. ‘I could not risk the men onboard to go further than that. But the tide is slow. We are not likely to outrun him. And what is your plan if he has already arrived? You have no idea where this Malvern is headed.’

It was true, Charlie realised, with a sinking heart. If the tides were too slow to outrun the wagon then he had no chance. Malvern would disappear into the city with Maria and might never be found.

The thought brought a fresh wave of despair.

‘Charlie Tuesday!’ said a sudden voice behind him, ‘I owe you my life.’

Charlie swung around to see a vaguely familiar face. Recognition set in. It was the old fisherman he’d sold a certificate to, in the Bucket of Blood.

‘Your certificate got me and my daughter both safe to the docks,’ continued the man. ‘I am in your debt.’

Charlie smiled vaguely, knowing the fisherman’s promise was worthless to him now.

‘I am glad you left London, but I must go back there,’ replied Charlie distractedly.

‘You must not!’ replied the man, aghast. ‘All is death.’

‘I seek a man,’ explained Charlie. ‘Malvern. He has made a kidnap on . . . On a person I hold dear.’

Something strange flickered in the fisherman’s features. It was gone in a flash, but Charlie’s thief taker experience seized on it instantly. He could spot recognition, in even the best poker-face.

‘You have heard the name?’ he asked, ‘Malvern?’

The fisherman’s face had blanched. He shook his head slowly.

Charlie grabbed his shoulders.

‘This is life or death,’ he urged, ‘if you know something, please. You must tell me.’

The man seemed to be fighting some internal battle.

‘I gave you my word,’ he said finally, ‘that I’d repay your kindness and now, by God’s grace, my time has come. I only pray I don’t do wrong.’

Charlie blinked at him, wondering what on earth the man had in mind. Certainly a fisherman from Billingsgate had no obvious powers to find Maria.

‘My daughter,’ continued the man. ‘My daughter was near caught by your Malvern. But she got free and hid on this boat. I’ve told none since that she hides here. But I tell you true Charlie
Tuesday
. Because I gave you my word.’

Marc-Anthony looked as though he might have something to say about the bad luck of a woman aboard during plague times. But he caught Charlie’s face and thought better of it.

‘Take us to her then,’ he said.

The man’s daughter was blonde, and pretty. Despite having been stowed beneath a hessian sack for the last few days. In contrast to her accent the clothes she wore were expensive, suggesting she sold her body, at least some of the time.

‘Go on Jenny,’ said her father. ‘Tell them what you know of Malvern.’

Jenny looked at Charlie uncertainly.

‘He is an evil man,’ she said, with a terrified stare. Clearly her status as stowaway was making her reluctant.

Her father nodded encouragingly. ‘Go on.’

‘I . . . I know not much else about him,’ Jenny admitted. ‘Only he looked familiar, like someone I have seen before.’

‘But you do not know who?’ urged Charlie.

She looked to her father. He nodded she should continue, and she shook her head sadly.

‘Tell the Thief Taker everything you know,’ pressed her father. ‘We both owe him a debt. For it was his certificate which got us safe to the docks.’

‘I know Malvern gambles,’ said Jenny uncertainly, looking from Charlie to her father.

‘Know you where?’ asked Charlie, trying to drill down to a possible location as fast as he could.

Jenny nodded. ‘In Smith and Widdles. On Botolph Lane. I saw him sign his name in the gambling books. He placed a very large bet,’ she added, ‘that plague would spread to the west of the City. Where the rich people are.’

‘Plague has not yet passed badly that way,’ said Marc-Anthony uncertainly. ‘So he looks to lose if that is what he gambles on.’

Charlie let this fact settle uncomfortably in his mind. Perhaps Malvern was planning on winning a great deal of money to finance an uprising. But if that was the case he would have to somehow control the spread of plague. Such a thing couldn’t be done.