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  Gil shouted, and the man stared at me as Gil began to run after me. I waited no longer, but took to my heels.

  I ran for a huge distance. At least six paces. Then I stopped.

  In front of me was the Bear, the man I had seen in the tavern, and whose boot I could still feel on my arse. He smiled at me in the lazy way a snake would smile at its prey. There was no kindness or sympathy in that reptile’s grin. He slowly pulled his cloak aside to display a long ballock knife, setting his hand to it and pulling it free.

  Turning behind, I saw Gil laughing and the man with the black hat approaching. ‘Don’t do anything foolish,’ he called.

  I could understand that. With that man the size of a bear, doing something foolish was likely to be suicidal. So instead I did something remarkably stupid.

  The Bear was only three paces from me, and I had a sudden, clear memory of watching the bear pits in Southwark. So often you would see a huge bear with paws that could crush a cannonball, holding back in the face of mastiffs that sprang and leaped before it. Speed and aggression, when all was said and done, were the way to beat such brutes. Such was the idea in my head as I decided to force the issue. Without giving myself time to reconsider, I picked up some sand and rubbish from the road and sprang forward, flinging it as I went.

  Now, I am not large; I am a man of average build, no more. But the sight of me jumping towards him must have made the Bear fear that I had lost my mind and was about to attack. He retreated half a pace, and that left me space to dart about him. He may have been bigger, but that meant I was faster, and I made full use of my skill in the poltroon’s department of fleeing danger.

  I took the narrower, winding alleys that ran parallel to the river, rather than the roads further to the north. It took me only a short while to make my way to the great bridge, and there I suddenly realized that my life was in danger again, for there on the bridge were many men in the city’s livery or the queen’s. This was no place for a wanted felon.

  It was clear that I could not return to the house in Trig Lane. That was far too dangerous. The only place I could think of where I could be safe was on the other side of the river with Piers, but that involved crossing the river, and there was only the one bridge. Staring at it, I was all the while aware of the men holding their halberds with such apparent competence.

  However, I had no choice. I set off, keeping my head low and hoping to avoid their attention, and, for once, all went as I hoped. The city’s guards were infinitely more concerned with the thought of attack by Wyatt and his rebels than they were with checking everybody leaving the city. I could have stood and declared I was a notorious murderer from the rooftops, and I daresay I’d only have merited a shake of the head and an irritated ‘Tsk’.

  Not that I was going to put it to the test. I hooked my thumbs into my belt and continued over the bridge, past the great houses on either side, past the tower, over the drawbridge at the far side and thence into Southwark.

  I had no desire to be captured, as you can imagine. Although I was outside the city gates, there were plenty of beadles and watchmen who would be happy to arrest me, drag me back and collect the reward that was no doubt offered for my head. It was not a happy thought, but it was a salutary one. I kept to narrower ways and alleys where I felt my face would not be immediately obvious to the casual onlooker.

  Piers was an apple-squire. He’d once been a barber with a good business, but the drink had got to him, and over time he lost his wife, his shop and his livelihood. Now he plied his trade at the brothels down in Southwark because that way the strumpets didn’t have to stray far from their hospitable homes. As the bawds knew, Piers was good with his fists when occasion demanded, and they were prepared to pay him not only in coin but in kind. It was not a post many men who were young and lusty would have turned down.

  He stayed mostly at a house called the Cardinal’s Hat, on Paris Street, and it was to there I repaired. I knew the Hat well enough. No, not as a client, but mainly because it was the cleanest-looking house in the whole of Southwark. As though to reassure clients that the services offered inside were as pure as the driven snow, it was painted in eyeball-aching whitewash. Usually when I came to this ward, I would be heading for the baiting pens, for I could not often afford the cost of a wench and wine. I’ve heard from Piers of men who paid forty shillings for a night with a whore in the Hat, because as soon as the poor fellow was cozened into cups of wine, it would flow faster and faster, and he would have no idea of the cost until he woke the next morning with a sore head and two bully-boys standing over him, looking speculative, while the mistress of the house berated him and demanded her reckoning.

  Finding the Hat, I slipped inside quickly. Two painted harlots were standing at the door, and one took my hand and placed it on her breast while she reached up to kiss me, but I wasn’t so foolish. I took the other’s hand even as she tried to fondle my purse. ‘Where’s Piers?’

  The first, a brazen strumpet with a bold eye and delicious pout to her lips, eyed me. ‘He owe you money?’

  ‘No, he’s a friend.’

  The other cackled. ‘Any friend of his is safe with us, isn’t he, Nan?’ she said. ‘Come, lad, you look half starved. You need some food inside you.’

  ‘Piers – where is he?’ I said again, determined not to be distracted. I know full well that a man entering a trugging house would be given food, but at a price that would make a banker blench. Piers told me that they had pies in the Hat that a man could buy for fourpence along the way, but the bawds would charge eighteen. It ruined my hunger to think of that kind of cost.

  ‘Don’t you like us?’ the one called Nan asked, ducking her chin and looking up at me from soulful blue eyes as though offended. She couldn’t quite conceal her lusty nature, though. Her tongue slipped out and licked her lips.

  ‘Piers,’ I said, although my voice had risen. I walked past them and went to look inside.

  They allowed me to go, with throaty chuckles at my discomfort.

  There was a door at the end of a short passageway, and here I entered and found myself in a chamber with five women: one redhead, a blond, the others brunette. None was wearing much, and what they were wearing wasn’t hiding anything. I swallowed. The redhead and a brunette languidly rose from their seats, and I felt what it was like to be a stag held at bay by hounds. I knew there was no escape.

  ‘Jack, what’re you doing here?’

  ‘Piers, thank the good Lord!’ I said with rather more effusiveness than was strictly necessary.

  He was a short fellow, with a scruffy mass of curling grey hair surrounding a pate as bald as a friar’s. I never knew how old he was. His skin was grey from sleepless nights guarding his charges, and his flesh looked thin and unhealthy. Add to that his watery blue eyes and thin, colourless lips, and you have a vision of a man in his eighties or a thirty-year-old man who’s had a seriously ill-spent youth. I lean towards the latter.

  ‘Leave him, girls. He’s with me,’ Piers said, and led the way through a couple of doors to the rear of the house.

  In a chamber that was almost as bare as my privy, and not a lot larger – and smelling about as fresh – he told me to sit on his little cot and fetched a large costrel of ale from a shelf. He took out the stopper, drank deeply and passed it to me.

  ‘Come on, lad. What’s this all about?’

  I told him all about it: the dead man yesterday and my panicked run from the city today. It took a while, and he had to work at lighting tinder and gradually fiddling with it until he had a flame that could light the stub of a candle. Then he soon had a small fire burning and two other candles lit. The room began to feel a little more homely with the orange-yellow glow and the shadows moving, by the time I got to the thing I thought might be a coded message.

  ‘Show me this parchment,’ he said, and when I had passed it to him, he held it near his eyes, the candle-flame threatening his eyebrows as he stared at the symbols. ‘I don’t know what to do with something like this,’
he admitted. ‘There’s one man could help.’

  He passed the scrap back to me and took a long draught of ale, wiping his mouth and staring at me thoughtfully.

  ‘There’s a man comes in here sometimes. He’s a clever bastard, really sharp, and got a mind like a knife. He thinks in squares and triangles all the time, and you can’t get him to stop. He’s a bit odd – he won’t look you in the eye, and he gets quite … intense when he thinks you’ve given him something interesting to look at.’

  ‘What do you mean, intense?’

  ‘Just don’t try to distract him when he’s thinking about something. He gets irritable.’

  I could cope with a degree of irritation, I thought. All I wanted was some answers to the problems that were surely multiplying all the time I was sitting here with Piers. ‘Where does he live?’

  ‘You’ll have to wait here a while. Until he comes in. He’s usually here on a Tuesday or Wednesday. So, you’d best just settle in here,’ Piers said.

  ‘In here?’

  ‘There are worse places.’

  ELEVEN

  Tuesday 30th January

  His friend appeared early the next evening.

  There are some men I’ve met who have instantly impressed me. Many were for the way that they cut out the light as they stood over me; a few had an impact because they looked so boldly dressed, with silks and velvets; only two ever had that effect on me because of the quality of their brains. One was this friend of Piers, a man called Mark Thomasson.

  He was not impressive for his looks. It is an odd thing that I have come to notice: all too often a man’s ability to dress well is directly opposed to his intelligence. I mean, if I see a man who is clad in the latest fashion, I can usually guarantee that he has very little between his ears, but show me a fellow with tatty clothes and hair all awry, not because he is poor but because he doesn’t care what he looks like, and I’ll watch myself. Those are the men who are dangerous. And Mark fitted that description perfectly.

  Master Mark had a charmingly baffled expression when I met him. He was slim, with fine, aquiline features and a nose that could have been used to chop logs. His lips were thin as a razor, his hair a tawny mass of thick locks, and his eyes hazel in colour. He stood taller than me, but looked shorter because of his habit of sticking his head forward as if short-sighted. His eyes were perfect, I learned, but it was an affectation of his, as was his slow, stumbling speech. He would mutter and mumble with a frown on his brow, and then his eyes would clear and he would give a lucid commentary as though a spark of inspiration had just lanced into his mind. He was, in short, an astonishing fellow.

  ‘Master, I would like you to meet a friend of mine,’ Piers called when he appeared.

  I was sitting chatting to one of the whores, who was less than keen to be talking to me, since I couldn’t afford the price of a drink for her, and saw the lean shape of the man with Piers at the doorway. I rose and bowed as courteously as I might.

  ‘Oh, um. Yes, I see,’ Mark said.

  He did not appear enthralled by my appearance. While Piers murmured a brief explanation, Mark was gazing lasciviously at a redhead who was feigning disinterest at the far end of the room. One of her poonts was protruding in an interesting manner, and Mark was gazing upon it like a knight who has at last found the Holy Grail after a decade’s search.

  ‘Yes, yes, um, fascinating,’ he muttered, and tried to extricate himself.

  ‘It’s here,’ I said, waving the parchment under his nose.

  ‘Eh? Um, oh!’ he said, and frowned at the shred of parchment without enthusiasm. He glanced up at the redhead again and then down at the parchment once more. His head tilted, and his mouth drew down at the corners, like a bow under tension, and he took the parchment from me without appearing to notice that I was still there.

  ‘Can you decipher it?’ I asked.

  ‘Of course.’

  His confidence shook me. I glanced up at Piers, but he shook his head as a sign that I should wait.

  ‘There is no cipher or code invented by man that cannot be read with the requisite information. If there is a mere shifting of letters, transposition of numbers, new lettering designed to baffle the ignorant, each can be swiftly analysed and, given time, even the most abstruse of all forms can be, um, you know …’

  His voice trailed off as he studied the parchment, and then he began to waft it about, as though he was warm and must fan himself. All interest in the woman had dissipated. He gazed at me. ‘Where did you get this?’

  Piers said, ‘He found it in a purse lying on the street, didn’t you, Jack?’

  ‘Yes, that’s right. I was walking along near St Paul’s and saw it in the gutter,’ I said.

  ‘Was there any money in it?’ Mark asked shrewdly.

  I could answer that one easily enough. I held up my own purse. ‘You can feel my purse if you want! No, I found this message stuck in the bottom, under a false base to the purse. It was well concealed, but someone else had taken the money.’

  ‘I see,’ he said. He wafted the parchment some more, frowning. ‘I will need to take this to my office to consider it more deeply. You will meet me there tomorrow after noon.’

  ‘No, I’ll bring it to you,’ I said. It was the only thing I had in the world that could be worth anything, and I wasn’t going to wave it goodbye in the hands of a man I’d only just met.

  ‘Are you really that stupid?’ he said, peering at me like a physician eyeing a glass of discoloured urine. ‘This scrap here could spell death to anyone who holds it, but you want to carry it on your person?’

  ‘I don’t want it; I only want to be able to guard it. I hardly know you.’

  ‘You have Piers’ word that I can be trusted, for else we would not be talking,’ he said.

  There was logic there, I’ll grant.

  Piers pulled at my arm. ‘He’s right, Jack. Leave it to him. He knows what he’s doing.’

  ‘That’s more than I do,’ I muttered. ‘Where do I find you tomorrow?’

  ‘I’ll be at my house in Rose Lane,’ he said. Then his attention returned to the scrap in his hand, and he left us.

  ‘Who is he?’ I demanded as soon as the door had closed behind him.

  ‘Mark is a philosopher. He’s interested in all kinds of things: how to make stronger bronze for guns, how to cast better cannonballs, how to make swords that hold their edge without shattering, how to write in a manner that no one else can understand – anything to do with learning is his sphere.’

  ‘How did you get to meet him?’

  ‘Oh, he’s as interested in the tarts as anyone,’ Piers said. ‘Even the deepest philosopher likes a wench to snuggle up to on a cold evening.’

  Wednesday 31st January

  That night I must have been relieved to have given away the parchment, for when Piers suggested that I should partake of the sweetmeats available, I was anxious to agree. We spent the evening with a brunette and redhead who were happy enough to accommodate us, and thus that Wednesday morning I felt more than a little under the weather as I left the brothel and made my way to the shore, clad in some old hosen and a leather jerkin that had seen better days. Or years. I had kept my shirt. It was good linen, that shirt, and I wasn’t going to see it go to some vagrant.

  I passed by the bear pits and stood at the shore. It was early, my head was sore, my belly felt as though I’d drunk a quart of sour wine, and I wasn’t in the best of moods, but I was keen to see Mark Thomasson.

  I had already decided to make use of a wherry rather than try to cross the bridge. There was likely to be more attention paid to people coming towards the city today, and I wanted little to do with the guards at the drawbridge. Instead, I had borrowed some money from Piers, in the hope that the parchment might be worth coin to someone, and hailed a boat, glad that it wasn’t the man who had bitten his thumb at me on Monday when I was attempting to escape Gil and his friends.

  It was going to be good to talk to Thomasson. I was keen to
learn what this strip of parchment could mean. I had to learn so that I could see whether it was worth any money to me. I was in real need of money now. I swear, I never had any desire to learn more about the dead man and the man who killed him, and certainly nothing about the rebellion. But if my wishes had any value, I wouldn’t have been in such a mess already.

  The river was rough, and it was hard to see how to avoid all the other boats and ships that were making their way, tacking up the river or sweeping more swiftly down towards the coast. I watched as the drawbridge rose to the sky to permit a vessel to pass, and as soon as the ship was past, the bridge was lowered once more, and instantly it was filled with peasants, traders and merchants with their clerks, some heading to London itself, others passing in the opposite direction, a mass of mingled men, horses, donkeys and carts. The noise of the traffic and the shouts of hawkers came to me on the still air. Along with the reek of the city: middens, sewers, leather tanners, and all the other assorted foul stenches that the city held. Life at Whitstable had never seemed so appealing.

  ‘You live in the city?’ my oarsman said.

  ‘Me? Well, most of the time, yes,’ I said.

  ‘What, been to the stews, have you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He spat over the side. ‘And now going back to your wife and children?’

  ‘I don’t have any.’

  ‘You’re lucky. Mine are seventeen, fifteen, fourteen, twelve, ten and eight. All boys. You wouldn’t believe how much they eat. My wife works for a local merchant as cook, not that I see any of her food. It’s always into the boys, and swyve me if there’s a bite left for me by the time I get home. Me? I’m lucky to get a pie of gristle and bone from Mad Eric’s on Fleet Street most days, I am. Sod that! My brother’s no better, poor bastard. He married a shrew with the teeth of a rat. She sank ’em into him the first time they met, and she ain’t let go her hold yet. But the first time he asked for food after a day’s hard graft, she threw a trencher at him, told him to go and get something for hisself, if he was so hungry. Women, eh? Cheaper to buy ’em by the night.’