The Thief Taker (8 page)

Air. Charlie’s mind raced over what might be needed for such a ritual.

Feathers. Birds.

‘I will go to the bird market,’ decided Charlie. ‘I know people there. Someone might tell me something. Perhaps they even sold feathers for spells, before it became too dangerous.’

‘Your Health Certificate is not good enough to get you into that part of London,’ said Marc-Anthony. ‘If you try a forgery in Regent’s Park you’ll be arrested.’

‘Perhaps the checks are not so strict everywhere,’ said Charlie, sounding more confident than he felt.

‘But how will you get back into the west?’ asked Marc-Anthony. ‘Every gate will be guarded now. You’ll be arrested the moment you step across London Wall.’

Charlie gave Marcus a hopeful smile. ‘I need to borrow
your boat
.’

Chapter Thirteen

Charlie rowed the boat carefully away from Blackfriars slums.

The slum was the only part of London where even mercenaries would not venture. Squalor and desperation was such that residents would slit a throat for a halfpenny. Blackfriars operated as its own lawless hell, and no sane man ventured beyond the outlying filthy refuse which delineated its borders.

Keeping a careful eye on the bank Charlie rowed on, past the public boat-docking steps at the Strand and Charing Cross.

Slum-dwellers sometimes swum out and stole boats from solo rowers, and he couldn’t risk Marc-Anthony’s craft.

The Thames was London’s lifeblood, and every citizen depended on river water to drink, cook and wash with. But for slum dwellers it was also their trade.

He docked at Horseferry, handing a penny to the waterman to guard the row-boat. Then he set off north.

The bird market was unusually subdued as Charlie approached. Around
half the stalls were absent, and those who still traded held only a few birds.

He passed a wooden cage, which held a handful of twittering starlings. The birds were caught in Hyde Park, and when he and Lynette had first fallen in love Charlie had bought her a starling, so they might free it together.

Lynette had wanted to keep the creature. He should have known then.

Halfway along the dirt-track market was a wooden desk with an officious-looking clerk behind it and two heavy-set guards.

Charlie swallowed. The clerk was scrutinising each Health
Certificate
, comparing each stamp carefully.

To get to the rest of the bird sellers he needed to pass through.

Charlie’s hand slid to his coat. Here the checks were far more thorough than in the East. The name on his certificate was false. He had to hope his description hadn’t been circulated to the guards.

‘Psst!’

A sudden noise drew his attention. He cast around in confusion and then he saw the source.

At a nearby stall Charlie spotted someone he recognised, a fellow ex-foundling. Changing direction he made for the familiar face.

‘Oliver!’ He began to raise his hand in salutation, but his old friend shook his head.

Confused, Charlie drew closer.

‘What are you doing here Charlie?’ hissed Oliver in a whisper. ‘Do you not know you are a wanted man?’

‘What?’

‘It is all over London,’ said Oliver. His stall held a few pitiful cages, and he settled himself down onto his haunches in the dust, gesturing Charlie did the same.

‘The Mayor himself has got funds from the King to bring you in,’ Oliver explained.

Charlie felt his stomach plummet in fear.

‘They say you are connected to a witch-murder,’ continued
Oliver
. ‘And they are careful to put down such things quickly, for you remember how things were with Cromwell.’

‘I am innocent,’ said Charlie. ‘You do know I am innocent?’

‘Of course.’ Oliver rested a hand briefly on his forearm. ‘But your description has been put about at every checkpoint in the city.’ He shook his head. ‘It is a shame you are so good at your thief-taking Charlie. Many know your face. And with the fear of witches and plague in the city they will not hesitate to turn you in.’

Oliver glanced about nervously. ‘This part of town is worst of all for dark rumours,’ he said. ‘The physicians are here, and they are all in fear. They say something is happening with the bodies.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Bodies are not being buried where they should be. And some of the physicians say there are more bodies than dead people. They think something dark has come to London,’ he added.

‘Oliver,’ said Charlie, keeping his voice in a low whisper. ‘I am trying to clear my name. So I am come for information.’ He
hesitated
, thinking of the easiest way to phrase his question.

‘Would a witch buy feathers for a spell?’ he asked finally, opting for the most straight-forward question.

Oliver frowned.

‘Some silly girls did come for dove feathers and the like,’ he said. ‘But that was long ago. No woman should risk her neck for a love spell.’

‘What of . . . A different spell?’ pressed Charlie. ‘A dark magic?’

Oliver visibly shuddered.

‘Think you such a thing takes place in the City?’

‘Perhaps,’ admitted Charlie.

‘Then they would not use feathers from the bird market,’ replied Oliver with certainty. ‘They would use an evil bird. A rook or a raven. We do not sell such things’

Charlie felt disappointment run through him.

‘People used to buy ravens to clip their wings and leave them at the Tower of London,’ continued Oliver. ‘But no one bird seller will keep ravens since the plague. They are a bad omen. And unless you are allowed in the Tower,’ he added, ‘You cannot keep a raven in the city.’

‘Why not?’ Charlie couldn’t imagine why the bird couldn’t stay hidden.

‘They are not like a starling or a nightingale Charlie. Ravens make a horrendous noise. When you cage them, they are loud enough to raise the dead. And you must know they are terrible luck. A neighbour would hear and make some complaint if you kept one.’

Charlie considered this.

‘You must beware, if it is dark magic you track,’ warned Oliver. ‘There is all talk from the astrologers that some evil thing has arisen,’ said Oliver. ‘Signs and portents have been seen. Comets. Things of that kind.’

He squinted up into the summer sunshine.

‘London is an ancient city,’ he added. ‘She holds bound in her belly the bones of giants and her soul is of old magic. Some wicked thing is abroad with this plague Charlie, all of us feel it. Perhaps something terrible has arisen with the King’s return. A long-
sleeping
demon awoken and now stalking among us.’

Charlie considered this. Many peasants and poorer sorts turned to witchcraft for treatment. Particularly now plague made them desperate.

He thought of Maria and her country family and their dislike of doctors. Perhaps they were backwards enough to visit a witch.

Beside him he felt Oliver tense suddenly.

‘There are two vigilantes at the checkpoint,’ he hissed. ‘And one is looking straight at you.’

Charlie looked up. His gaze met with a notorious hired thug. And as their eyes locked he knew they were here for him.

His heart sank.

Jack Tanner was the most brutal and determined tracker in the city. In an instant the many hiding places usually available to him evaporated. Jack would know them all.

There was only one place in the City too dangerous for the men to follow him. Crossing himself Charlie leapt to his feet and set off at a run for Blackfriars slum.

Chapter Fourteen

The knock sounded, and Antoinette trooped obediently downstairs to meet Thomas. For five years he had paid for her modest room in a good part of the city. In return she was available when he wanted to indulge his strange sexual demands.

She caught sight of her reflection in the glass near the door. The once beautiful face had aged rapidly on its daily diet of London living, but she still commanded enough of her youthful looks to be attractive.

Antoinette was a London cliché. She had been a country girl, come to the city to find maid’s work and fallen for the wiles of one of the many London madams who lay in wait for the stage-coaches arriving from the provinces.

Now she was getting older and having failed to snare an aristocrat as a protector had settled for Thomas – a man of adequate if not illustrious means.

Her dress was new, in the style of the King’s court favourites. Thomas didn’t visit often, so she felt she owed him a different outfit for each occasion. The red material made a reasonable show of being silk. It fanned out in a style which she knew Thomas liked to lift up and over her head during ‘The Act’ as she’d come to term it.

She opened the door.

To her dismay he had come in his plague-doctor disguise. It was a habit he’d grown a taste for recently. And there was something else. He carried a squawking bird in a cage. A raven.

She felt a shudder, wondering what he had planned.

Pushing the distaste away from her face, she gave what she hoped was a seductive smile, keeping her lips together to disguise her mottled teeth.

‘Come up.’ She took up her dress with one hand and, holding the candle in the other, made up the stairs. Behind her she heard him follow. She held her skirt up a little higher, so he could see flashes of the naked skin underneath as she ascended.

Antoinette was no fool. She knew that to keep a man prepared to pay her rent required work. Particularly with one obliging enough to make rare visits. Some of her friends in the city were kept by young men who visited several times a day. For double the money they made she had her time mostly to herself.

Besides Thomas’s occasional brutality it was an acceptable arrangement. But she didn’t want it to last forever.

Without his knowledge she had taken on extra work at a gambling
club. It was strictly against the rules of their arrangement. But in his line
of work Thomas would never mix with the aristocratic high-rollers at Adders. She felt confident she would find another protector at the club.

Only a few more months of deceit and she would be free.

‘I have poured you a cup of your favourite wine,’ she said, leading him into her single bedchamber where candles had been lit.

Thomas grunted in reply. He placed the cage with the raven onto a table. Antoinette swallowed. Clearly he was eager to get down to things.

It was easy to forget, in the weeks between visits, what happened when they came around again. And recently Thomas had started to frighten her more and more.

Antoinette made herself a sudden promise, that this would be the last time she submitted herself to the ordeal. She would take a new protector, even if he paid less and visited more.

She paused to take a much-needed swig of wine and then moved to the four-poster bed, spreading herself out obligingly on the sheets.

Thomas approached, his ugly beaked hood looming over her, his blue eyes winking behind the crystal goggles.

Antoinette swallowed and forced a smile. There was something different in the expression behind the hood. Did he know she was working at the club? Impossible, she decided.

‘I have missed you,’ Antoinette lied as he moved closer.

She noticed a flash of metal. He was wearing a sword.

‘Why did you bring that?’ In her fear the words came out louder than she had intended. Thomas was much too real in his play-acting. She would not be able to explain away cuts so well as she could bruises.

In answer Thomas turned to the birdcage.

Chapter Fifteen

Charlie fled along the muddy banks of The Strand past knife-
grinders
, coopers and cork-cutters making their noisy trade.

Then the squalid tangle of the Blackfriars slum was before him.

Behind him he heard the two men stop as they realised where he was headed.

‘Let him be murdered in there then,’ he heard Jack Tanner say, spitting onto the floor. ‘I’ll not be beaten to death by slum rats for a shilling reward.’

As the thick of wood-and-cloth makeshift homes closed in around him Charlie made a few feints right and left before sprinting quickly into the depths.

A feeling of unease tightened in his stomach. Though a few slum residents were known to him, there were too many desperate people squatting here to make the journey alone. In the rest of London Charlie was considered poor. But in this lawless half-mile the clothes on his back were valuable enough to murder him for.

His plan was to head dead through the centre and come out by St Paul’s Cathedral. Forced to take the winding route around the outskirts there would be no way Jack Tanner and his friend could get there before him.

Then he would head north to Moor Fields where his brother might be able to help him access his usual sources. He was betting that someone, somewhere, had seen a plague doctor with a raven.

Towards the edge of the slums lived the newest of residents. They slept in rickety tents of sacking and hemp.

But as Charlie headed further inwards the homes became more established. Temporary camps gave way to stranger permanent shelters fashioned from London’s leavings. Broken cartwheels and stolen shop-signs made walls, reeds from the river improvised thatch, and sticks impaling found objects staked out muddy little gardens.

Trees in the slum had long since been pillaged for fuel, so burning horse manure and damp straw fed fires. The sweet fumes hung in the air.

Outside their homes the starving slum dwellers stared at him silently, marking him out as a non-resident.

He tensed, seeing a sudden faster movement. But it was only a slum boy heading south to the tanneries. The ulcers burned into his legs showed him to be an apprentice.

There but for the grace of God
, thought Charlie. At the Foundling Hospital all the children were given away in apprenticeships at age thirteen. Ever the nun’s favourite, his brother Rowan had been given choice work as a grocer’s boy, but had soon been laid off.

Not wanting to risk a second apprentice fee with his younger brother, the nuns had promised Charlie to the leather tanneries in Bermondsey – the cheapest of all the placements. Apprentices to this trade worked in a waist-deep solution of corrosive lime and urine, flesh dissolving from their bones as they laboured. The work he’d done for Mother Mitchell had taught him some basic carpentry and domestic work, but not enough to earn a living. With no choice other than beg, Charlie had fearfully awaited his first day in the tanning pits.

To his great amazement Mother Mitchell had arrived at the Foundling Hospital the day before he was due in Bermondsey. The nuns watched open-mouthed as she swooped in like a great exotic bird, face loudly painted and silk dress spanning six foot wide. Her eyes were slitted from the unaccustomed daylight but she still managed to pack them with disdain as she considered the dour nuns.

The boy,
she had said,
will not be put to work in stinking piss pits. Whatever the apprentice fee is I will pay it. He has some writing and a little music and is well enough in intellect besides, to have a better place.

The foundling children had huddled in, transfixed by the unfolding drama. Sister Agnes, the reigning terror of the Hospital, pursed her lips so tight they disappeared into two bleached lines of outrage. Her reply came as a low hiss.

We do not take money which has been earned by sin.

If you are too holy to attend to the future of your charge I will see to him.
Mother Mitchell had said.
The boy can come with me as my apprentice.

It is not so simply done
, Sister Agnes countered.
You are not recognised by a guild to take a foundling as an apprentice.

Mother Mitchell had dropped a purse of coins on the table. It rattled.

If that is not enough
, she had said with the smallest of smiles.
Send your creditors to my house in Mayfair. We have ample girls to entertain them.

And sweeping Charlie into the great bright folds of her arm she led him away from the Foundling Hospital. One of the smaller orphans had begun to applaud. Sister Agnes slapped the clapping hand back down, spat into the dust and hastily crossed herself.

Charlie had worked in Mother Mitchell’s bawdy house for three years and learned everything about how to get on in the tumultuous, heartless, thriving City of London.

And now, without looking, Charlie’s hard-learned sense for danger alerted him to the fact he was being followed. It was a slum dweller, a teenage boy, barely clothed in stinking rags and bearing a scar which ran from his groin to under his chin. He was a distance away, but his intention was unmistakable. The boy was marking him.

Charlie varied his pace, to check the boy was matching his speed. There was no mistaking it.

The boy was scrawny and no match for Charlie. But there would be others, working with him.

As Charlie considered his best plan of action a high-pitched sound came from the boy’s throat. And suddenly he was flanked on the far left and right by two other slum boys.

The first wore nothing but a grimy flour sack which skirted his filthy thighs. The hair on his head grew sparsely, in clumps, with angry bald ringworm circles covering the rest. The second had only one eye and was bare-chested, but wore a pair of trousers which had once belonged to a far larger man.

At first they tracked behind, and then the boys divided. For a moment two of them were out of sight. And then Charlie caught a glimpse of them blocking the path ahead. One held a squat length of wood, and the other wielded part of a cart wheel.

Behind him another two boys had joined with the first, like wolves closing in as a pack.

Charlie slowed, silently running through his options. Five. If it came to it he knew he could fight off three.

One of the boys peeled off seamlessly, and vanished into the slum. Presumably, the tactic was to station himself further ahead and block the route.

Mentally, Charlie assessed the pack’s movements, searching for a weak spot. He scanned ahead. The rickety slum dwellings were low and crumbling. Nothing to afford much of a hiding place for a slum boy to jump him. And then he saw how the path passed by two close houses, with enough space between for a boy to hide.

It was hardly a military-grade ambush. But Charlie caught a flash of movement and knew he’d guessed right. This would be the place where they would surround him.

Charlie slowed, and then sprinted suddenly. The boys flanking him took a moment to realise what had happened, and then they were running flat out over the uneven slum ground.

But Charlie was too fast. He sped past the back of the close-together buildings and grabbed hold of the boy wedged in between them.

The slum attacker had just enough time to shout in high alarm, before Charlie dragged him out into the open by his neck.

‘I have your friend,’ he called, in a calm voice, as the other would-be attackers filtered into view. ‘I want to see all four of you retreat to beyond the broken wheel in the far distance.’

He indicated with his head, as the slum boy in his grip writhed and bucked.

The nearest boy had the emotionless expression of someone with nothing to lose.

‘And what if we do not?’ he countered.

‘If you do not, I will snap his neck,’ said Charlie. He twisted his elbow to show he was serious, and the boy let out a squeal of surprised pain.

‘Kill him then,’ said the first boy, in a bored sort of way. ‘There is more money for the rest of us when we rob you.’

Charlie retained his grip on the boy and tried for a different tactic. ‘I have only a few coins,’ he said. ‘But you may take it as a fair toll for passing through.’

The other boys had gained confidence now and were beginning to move towards him as one. The first bared brown teeth in an evil grin.

‘We do not want to tax you,’ he said. ‘You might easily return with friends for your revenge. We mean to kill you.’