The Thief Taker (7 page)

But Blackstone had other things on his mind. As Mayor
Lawrence’s
aide he had learned to keep silent. But in his silences he had become a great observer. And he had seen what Lawrence had missed.

The symbol of the crown and the looping knots.

He had seen something in His Majesty’s face, when they’d shown him the symbol. King Charles had known what it meant.

Chapter Twelve

From inside the velvet-lined walls of the sedan-chair Charlie breathed a sigh of relief and leaned forwards towards the viewing hole.

The guards were just now coming through Alders Gate and could not see him concealed inside the sedan-chair. But it wouldn’t be long before they started asking questions and someone pointed out where he was hiding.

‘Can you take us to the bear pits Marcus? And make sure we are not followed?’

The carrier’s amber eyes widened.

‘The bear pits?’

‘I cannot risk we are overheard.’

‘You must pay me back if I am shaken down by bandits.’

The chair lifted and set off at speed. And they made a series of dizzyingly expert turns and feints along the maze of backstreets.

The chair pulled up at a bear-baiting pit and Charlie ducked gratefully out and into the jostling pack of men shouting their bets.

Moments later the chair carrier slid in next to him.

His working clothes could not disguise that he lacked the scabbed legs and wasted arms of other sedan hustlers.

Marc-Anthony, known to his friends as Marcus, ran an ingenious trade smuggling goods through London in sedan-chairs, which unlike larger wagons were never searched. His shining brown curls, glowing skin and sturdy limbs attested to his earning many hundred times more than most chair carriers.

‘Trouble Charlie?’

Charlie nodded, keeping his eyes on the ragged-looking bear chained to a wooden post. The keepers were bringing the dogs into the scruffy dirt arena and they began to snarl at the chained bear. A couple of shouts went up from the excited crowd.

‘Did the guards find you with the forgeries?’

Charlie had forgotten he had been selling Marc-Anthony’s forged Health Certificates less than an hour ago.

Ordinarily the smuggler brought in tobacco, wine, lace and silk to avoid paying duty at Tower Bridge. But ever the entrepreneur he had deftly shifted his business to black-market Health Certificates as demand soared.

Charlie shook his head. ‘It is nothing to do with the certificates. I am wanted Marcus, for some murder I know nothing of.’

Marc-Anthony’s amber eyes widened. ‘You are wanted for
murder
?’

Charlie nodded quickly, outlining the morning’s events.

Marc-Anthony gave an obliging whistle.

‘You of all people,’ he said after a moment. ‘You do not even believe in witchcraft.’

‘The Newgate guards know my face,’ continued Charlie, acknowledging Marc-Anthony’s observation with a wry smile. ‘And the girl has money. She’s probably paid every grubbing vigilante in the City to chase me down.’

‘Any bets! Any bets! Any bets!’

The pit-keeper held out his hand for their penny bet to stay and watch the action.

Charlie raised his hand and gave over two pennies. ‘For the bear,’ he said.

Marc-Anthony raised an eyebrow. ‘I do not want to draw attention to myself by winning,’ explained Charlie.

The bookie palmed the money with practised ease and raised a hand, signifying to the keepers that the dogs could be released.

‘So what will you do now?’ asked Marc-Anthony, raising his voice against the shouts of the crowd. ‘You cannot go any further east. The plague is bad here, but deeper in is horror. The streets are deserted, and the only sounds are the shrieks and the moans of the dying. I mean to sail up the river as soon as I get a chance,’ he added. ‘I mean to wait out the plague on my tall-ship anchored on the Thames.’

Marc-Anthony seemed so urban in nature that Charlie frequently forgot he had a cottage in the little hamlet of Greenwich. He commuted once a week into the City by rowboat through the marshlands at Deptford Creek.

Charlie shook his head. ‘I have to clear my name Marcus. I have no wish to be jumping at my shadow for the rest of my days, fearing being gutted at Tyburn.’

A low growling started up. Four dogs had been released from their chains and were circling the bear, teeth bared.

‘Is it possible, to prove your innocence?’

Charlie nodded. ‘Yes. If I find the murderer. To do that I must find out the blacksmith. A brand marked the corpse. Only a skilled blacksmith might have made it. When I find that man I think I might readily find facts which will lead me to the killer.’

Marc-Anthony was shaking his head. ‘You cannot get to the blacksmiths Charlie. Have you not heard? They have all left town.’

Charlie’s heart sank. ‘Every one of the blacksmiths has left?’

‘All Thames Street has been sealed off,’ said Marc-Anthony. ‘Plague has made it a ghetto. None are allowed in or out, and the blacksmiths are long gone.’

Charlie frowned, unwilling to give up.

‘It is a witch killing,’ he said, thinking aloud. ‘Everything about the murder looked to be a sacrifice.’

‘A witch was recently released from Wapping prison,’ said Marc-Anthony thoughtfully. ‘There is much talk of it in the town. Perhaps there is your murderer.’

‘Perhaps. I think the murder is something to do with this.’ Charlie’s hand closed around the key at his neck. ‘The mark on the murdered girl. The brand. It was made in this shape.’

‘Sure but this could be good news for you. It might be a chance to discover where your key came from.’

Charlie laughed a little too loudly.

‘That is the stuff of orphan’s dreams,’ he said.

‘Yet that key must open something,’ said Marc-Anthony.

Charlie looked away. As a boy he had thought his mother might have left him the key to find him again. Women left all manner of strange objects in the hope of retrieving their babes once they had the means. Little pieces of fabric, paper scraps, sketches, marked coins, playing cards, charms, shoe buckles and clothes pegs were all part of the medley.

But it was equally possible he had found the key somewhere between being orphaned as a small boy and left with the nuns. After all, Rowan had nothing. It made no sense for a mother to give one child a memento and not the other.

Growing up, Charlie had made his own investigations. The key was some odd shape it transpired – double-sided and not like an English key at all. Rather than having one blade it fanned out like a pair of wings and looked suspiciously foreign to most
Londoners
.

Nor did it seem the right shape to fit any known lock. Too big for a chest and too small for a door. Even what the key might open was not apparent.

In his more honest moments Charlie acknowledged he kept a secret faith alive that working as a thief taker could one day lead him to some window of his past. A fact which Marc-Anthony was one of the few to discern.

‘I can ask Rowan,’ Charlie decided. His brother tended to know too much of London’s dark doings.

Marc-Anthony snorted. ‘Your brother? When has he ever helped you Charlie?’ he shook his head. ‘One brother catches thieves and the other gets away with murder. Is that not how it is?’

The bear howled as the first dog leapt, bit sharply into its chest and dropped back down to avoid the swinging paws. Rising on its haunches the bear launched forward, but the chain caught sharply. A second dog attacked from the side, drawing blood from the th
ick neck.

Charlie thought for a moment, trying to manoeuvre the facts. It was a theft of sorts, he reasoned. The girl’s life had been stolen.

He replayed the scene in his mind.

The coin eyes flashed at him. They had not been made by a coin house he recognised which was odd. He turned the fact over and logged it for later consideration.

Hawthorn on the body. The shrub grew in hedgerows all over London. It thrived mostly in Kings Cross. But hawthorn could have come from any part of the city.

The brand. That had been his greatest clue. If only the blacksmiths were still in London.

The crowd were baying for blood now, shouting for the bear
and dogs alike. And the bear dropped back to all fours, eyeing
the dogs warily. The snarling pack huddled together, then one pounced.

Like lightning the bear’s claw shot out. And suddenly the dog’s intestines lay outside the ring. In a flash a second dog lay disembowelled at the bear’s feet.

A great roar went up from the crowd. The canine bodies lolled glassy eyed, but only their owners showed any concern. Everyone else was waving and shouting.

‘I hear your Lynette made a visit to the Bucket of Blood,’ said Marc-Anthony, watching his face carefully. ‘You could ask her for help. She could shelter you, at least.’

‘She is not my Lynette.’

Marc-Anthony nodded tactfully. ‘You have both decided on it then? To say that your marriage never happened?’

Charlie nodded.

‘And she agreed to it?’

The two remaining dogs seemed to have lost their motivation for attack. Almost half-heartedly the first jumped to its death, eyes spinning in shock as the heavy paw thudded it back to the ground. The bear leaned down to rip out the throat of the stunned animal and then raised its bloody maw to issue a chilling growl. The last living dog whimpered and retreated. The crowd cheered.

‘We did once love each other, despite everything,’ said Charlie, ‘But I have come to the end of my patience with her.’

Charlie had a sudden image of his estranged wife, her eyes glittering, standing in the whirling centre of a storm of fights and bitter words.

He took in the expression on Marc-Anthony’s face and clarified slightly.

‘Of course I still have feelings for her,’ he said. ‘But she needs much money for her happiness.’

‘Do you still plan to open a gaming house?’

Charlie smiled. Marcus knew him well enough to take his ambition seriously. Most other people thought it a pipe-dream.

‘Plague times have set me back,’ admitted Charlie. ‘Perhaps, in two years, I shall have funds enough.’

‘It would be better to strike soon,’ observed Marc-Anthony. ‘Or others will discover the same cheap land as you and press their advantage.’

‘Plague slows all business the same,’ shrugged Charlie. Though he had been thinking the same thing himself. ‘Perhaps I shall come into a fortune.’

The key seemed warm against his skin suddenly.

‘You always were the very devil for good luck,’ agreed Marc-Anthony.

The bear-handler moved in, both arms raised aloft in triumph. Hands began to shoot up in the crowd, from those who had betted on the bear. The bookie strode amongst them, matching the memorised faces to the winnings owed.

‘You collect the winnings,’ said Charlie. ‘I do not wish to attract any more attention today.’

‘What do you mean to do?’

Charlie thought of what scant clues he had left.

In his experience, the best way to catch a man was not to go where he had been. It was to predict his next move and arrive there before him.

‘What do you know of witches and their spells?’ he asked
Marcus
.

‘Not much.’

‘They call the corners,’ do they not? Charlie urged forth a childhood memory. ‘Hail to the spirits of the north. Spirits of mother and earth,’ is that not how it goes?

Marc-Anthony was looking at him strangely.

‘It was a play chant, was it not?’ asked Charlie. ‘The kind of thing children sang.’

‘I know not what songs were sung at the Foundling Hospital,’ said Marc-Anthony. ‘But I never sang that as a child.’

‘Before the Foundling Hospital, I think we sang it,’ said
Charlie
.
‘Witches call each corner. North, East, South and West. Such are spells made.’

Marc-Anthony frowned. ‘This is the power ritual of witches,’ he said. ‘But it would be strange to hear on a child’s lips.’ He gave a little laugh. ‘Are you sure you were not secretly raised to the dark arts? It would explain how you find villains so easily.’

The look on Charlie’s face told him instantly it had been a joke too far.

‘But you would need four witches,’ Marc-Anthony added quickly. ‘One to hold each corner.’

Unless
. . .

‘Witches use death magic, do they not?’ asked Charlie. ‘They believe it is all powerful.’

Marcus nodded. ‘They are greatly feared for it.’

Charlie pictured the dead girl.

The hawthorn. It was suddenly taking on a new meaning.
Hawthorn
grew in the ground. In the earth.

He brought Maria’s house to mind. Her front door faced away from the river. Towards the north.

Something else was urging forward too. He suddenly knew what had been missing from the murder scene.

The other elements.

Charlie had seen witch spells before. Before Cromwell began hanging witches in earnest, it was common to see a ritual scratched in the dirt, to protect a home or reverse a fever.

But pagan spells always represented all four elements.

The killer had only used one.

‘I think the killer calls the corners,’ said Charlie slowly. ‘But one by one. North for earth.’

‘What do you mean Charlie?’

‘I mean, I think the murderer makes a master spell. But he uses death, to mark the corners.’

The facts were ordering themselves now. And Charlie had a feeling. The same he always got, when a case was starting to open itself to investigation.

‘Why do you think so?’ asked Marc-Anthony.

‘Maria’s Holbourne house was north for earth,’ said Charlie. ‘Her sister had been bound in hawthorn, to represent the element.’

Marc-Anthony shrugged. ‘It seems a leap.’

Charlie’s eyes flashed. ‘Call it a thief taker’s intuition.’ He paused for a moment. ‘And besides,’ he admitted, ‘it is the best theory I have. I can hardly go back to the scene and gather more information.’

Charlie’s face was grim. ‘If I am right, then he must make the other corners,’ he said. ‘He would need four deaths, to complete his spell. Though what he hopes to conjure, I know not.’

White ribbons. Candlewax. He returns.

He turned to Marc-Anthony.

‘What comes after north for earth? It is east, is it not?’

Marc-Anthony nodded. ‘East for air.’