The Midwife and the Assassin Page 14

  “Let’s have King Charles,” says John,

  “Nay, let’s have his son,” says Hugh,

  “Let England have none,” says Jabbering Joan,

  “We’ll all be kings,” says Prue.

  This proved too much for one woman in the crowd, and an egg flew past the chapman’s head before splattering against the wall behind him.

  “What, you want to lay all this at our feet?” she cried. “Which of the so-called judges that sentenced the King was named Joan? Which Parliament man is named Prudence? All I see are Richards and Williams. It is you men who have brought us to this point, not us women.”

  By the time she’d finished her speech—and reached into her basket for another egg—the chapman had fled.

  “The King was never so popular until he found himself in prison.” I nearly leaped from my boots at the sound of Katherine’s voice. She had slipped in behind us and now joined our little circle. “Before Charles was captured, those who hated him, hated him worse than the devil. And those who loved him, loved him not so well as their supper. But now that he is neutered, the people have forgotten his sins and long only for the order he promised but never provided.”

  “And what about you?” Martha asked. “Do you hate him worse than the devil?”

  “I hate tyranny, whether it is the King’s or Cromwell’s. And I will oppose it at every turn.”

  “But now it seems that one tyrant will send another to the scaffold,” I said. “How do you reconcile that?”

  Katherine smiled broadly. “We have put ourselves in a difficult place, haven’t we? In this matter, I find I must side with the King. This rump of a Parliament had no more right to judge Charles than the three of us would. I cannot complain that the law mistreats the poor and then acquiesce to its mistreatment of the rich. So, yes, last year I wanted the King brought down, and now I oppose his execution.” She laughed at the contradiction.

  By now the crowd had begun to disperse and Katherine began walking toward the Nag’s Head. I realized that this could be a good time to speak to Jeremiah Goodkey about Daniel’s death. In all the excitement about the King’s conviction and condemnation, he might make a small mistake, and that could be enough. I told Katherine of my plan and her face grew pale.

  “You really think Jeremiah might have killed Daniel?”

  “If he discovered Daniel was working on behalf of Cromwell…,” I said.

  Katherine breathed deeply and nodded. “I hate to think of such a thing. Jeremiah is a good friend, and I hope he is innocent of this. But he is of a choleric humor, and if he thought that Daniel had betrayed the Leveller cause, he might have resorted to violence. Do not let my wants and desires stand in the way of your search.”

  We arrived at the Nag’s Head to find it full to overflowing. All the talk was of the King’s fate, of course, and many an argument had already become heated. Katherine disappeared into the crowd while Martha and I edged toward Jeremiah Goodkey, hoping to catch him unawares. We found him behind the bar, arguing with a small, rat-faced man.

  “So long as the King lives, there can be no freedom.” Goodkey pounded the bar with so much force that the glasses rattled. “I’ll not defend this Parliament, but for now, the price of freedom is the blood of kings.”

  The rat-faced man said something I could not hear, but his words so enraged Goodkey that he lost all semblance of control. His hand shot out and seized the man by the front of his shirt. With no apparent effort, Goodkey pulled his opponent halfway across the bar and shouted into his face, “You’ll not say such things in my tavern.”

  The rat-faced man tried to speak, but he could not catch his breath.

  “Perhaps we should return another time,” Martha murmured. “He does not seem to be in the mood to answer questions.”

  “Aye,” I said. “But where shall we go?”

  “We could find Charles Owen,” she said. “On this of all days, the Royalists will be more restrained in their passions.”

  “Let us hope,” I said.

  * * *

  As Martha and I made our way to Charles Owen’s tavern—it was aptly named the Crown—we discussed the best way to approach him, and the challenge before us quickly became clear.

  “Jeremiah Goodkey at least knows our faces,” I said. “But Owen is a stranger. He will not take kindly to a pair of women wandering in and questioning him about a murder.”

  “Let us leave the questions for tomorrow,” Martha said. “Today, we can just listen. Once we have the measure of his character we will better know how to approach him when the time comes.”

  I nodded in agreement. While such a quiet approach would slow our search for Daniel’s killer, I could not argue with her thinking. “There is one other problem,” I said. “What do we do if Charles Owen proves to be the murderer?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “We only know of Owen through Mr. Marlowe. How would we explain our discovery to Katherine?”

  “There was no CO among Daniel’s notes, was there?”

  “No,” I said. “And no meeting place signified by the letter C.”

  “So he never met Charles Owen—or anyone else—at the Crown.”

  “Or the meetings were secret enough that he burned the notes immediately,” I said.

  We walked in silence, puzzling over the riddle before us, but found no solution.

  “We will have to untie that knot when we come to it,” Martha said.

  I nodded. “But we should take this as a warning that if we are not careful, we will be caught in our own lies,” I said. “We saw this trap, but there must be others.”

  We found the Crown with no trouble—Tom had provided a map to help us—and Martha and I stepped out of the winter wind. As we shed our cloaks I looked about the room, wondering which of the men was Charles Owen.

  On the surface, the Crown had much in common with the Nag’s Head; it too had rough-hewn furniture that had seen much use. A chaotic mixture of chairs and benches was scattered around tables both large and small. On this day, however, the crowd could not have been more different. While the men and women at the Nag’s Head had held forth long and loud over whether the King’s execution was just, the Crown’s patrons had no such disagreements. At the Crown, the execution was nothing short of murder.

  A few of the men who saw us enter stared at us with open suspicion. I tried to imagine Daniel slipping in here on some piece of business, and wondered if such a visit might have begun the chain of events that led to his death. Might Martha and I have begun a similar chain by our entrance?

  I pointed to a large table—one that would invite company—and Martha and I crossed to it. “This place has the feel of a wake,” Martha murmured as we sat.

  “Aye,” I said. “For them it is the prelude to one. It will be a dark day when the King is beheaded.”

  Martha went to the bar and returned with two pots of ale, and we sat back to wait and listen. After a time the warmth of the fire and the strength of the ale pulled me into a dull-witted state. Had I been more alert, I might not have been caught unawares by the man who slid onto the bench next to me and put his arm around my waist.

  I turned in shock at such familiarity, and had to fight back a scream when I discovered Lorenzo Bacca sitting beside me. I tried to speak but could not, a malady that afflicted Martha as well.

  “Words fail me, Lady Hodgson,” Bacca purred. His accent raised the hair on my neck. “I have so many questions for you, I cannot think where to begin.”

  * * *

  It had been nearly half a decade since I had last seen Lorenzo Bacca, but in no way could I have forgotten him. In the course of trying to prove that Esther Wallington had not murdered her husband, I had come to suspect that Bacca had done so. Not only was he an assassin in the King’s employ, but he had promised to kill me if I persisted in my search for the murderer. I counted my refusal to be quailed by such threats as one of my first acts of true courage.

  While Bacca had proven to be inn
ocent of that particular crime, there could be no question that he was as dangerous a man as I’d ever met. There was a striking congruity between Bacca’s visage and his character, as his ruthless nature was matched with sharp features and the smile of a wolf. In the years since he’d fled York his hair had thinned a bit and there were a few more lines around his eyes, but time had treated him well.

  “You simply must tell what brought you to … this.” He plucked at my wool skirts as if I might be verminous with lice. As was his habit in York, Bacca wore the most colorful and expensive combination of silks and wools imaginable. Even among the King’s men, who favored such clothes, he stood out like a swan among ducks.

  “And once you have explained your common dress,” he continued, “I hope you will tell me why you are here in the Crown, on this of all days. I cannot guess at the answer to either question, so it is with great anticipation that I look forward to your explanation.” Bacca raised an eyebrow and waited.

  My mind raced to find answers that would satisfy him. None presented themselves, and I briefly considered leaping to my feet and running for the street. Bacca must have sensed this, for his hand remained snug on my hip.

  “We should ask the same thing of you,” I said at last. “In York you were up to your ears in King Charles’s business, and such work is much more dangerous now that he is down.”

  “The King is dead—or soon will be,” Bacca replied with a knowing smile. “In which case, long live the King.”

  “You are serving the Prince of Wales?” I asked. “You admit that so freely?”

  Bacca’s laugh was not unkind, but his smile remained vulpine. “Half the men in this tavern are in the Prince’s service, and the rest will be when the ax falls on his father. But that is enough about me. Now, why don’t you tell my why you are dressed like a common housewife?”

  I looked at Martha, hoping that she had thought of a lie that Bacca might find credible, but the desperation in her eyes mirrored my own. After a few moments, each of which seemed like an eternity, Bacca continued speaking. Like so many men of his nation, he could not keep himself quiet.

  “You will not answer?” Bacca asked with a laugh. At that moment, I realized that whatever his suspicions, he was genuinely pleased to see me. “Very well, let me guess. I do not know what brought you to London, but to be dressed like this you have either fallen into poverty or you are in disguise. I know you are not so improvident for it to be the former, so you must be here as a spy of sorts. And since the Crown is favored by Royalists, you are not serving the King or the Prince. Therefore, you must be Cromwell’s creature. I cannot imagine why you would join with such a bad man, but you are a clever woman and you must have your reasons.”

  I felt sick at the speed with which Bacca had arrived at the truth, and prayed that he could not tell how close he’d come to the mark.

  “The only question that remains,” he continued, “indeed the only question that matters, is why you are here and whether your business and mine will collide. That would be regrettable indeed.”

  “Why don’t you tell us your business? Martha suggested brightly. “And we can tell you whether we will come into conflict.”

  Bacca laughed. “That is the problem, of course. Since I am with His Majesty, and you are with the traitor Old ’Nol, we can only lie to each other. What ever shall we do to escape this impasse?”

  “We could go our separate ways,” Martha suggested. “With neither of us troubling the other.”

  “I think it is too late for that,” Bacca replied. “The troubling is already well under way, isn’t it? You must tell me your business, or I shall have to announce who you are to all these men. I should think that they would be very pleased to get their hands on two of Cromwell’s spies, especially on a day such as this.”

  I took a breath and released it slowly. I knew that only the most carefully crafted lie would fool Bacca. I resolved to measure out the truth drop by drop and dilute it with as many lies as I thought he would swallow. I began by mixing our search for Daniel’s murderer with a mystery that Martha and I had solved some years before.

  “You are right about the disguise, but wrong about the reason,” I said. “We are not in Cromwell’s employ. Rather, we are in search of a murderer.”

  Even so practiced a dissembler as Bacca could not hide his surprise.

  “Really!” he cried. “What murderer? You must tell me.”

  “Someone has killed two of the city’s whores,” I replied. “Martha and I have been given the job of finding the murderer.” Martha and I had solved just such a series of murders a few years before. I could only hope that Bacca hadn’t heard of our exploits.

  Bacca eyed us suspiciously. “Why can’t the Justices find the killer on their own? Why summon a midwife?”

  “You know the godly,” I replied. “They have treated the whores worse than they have the actors. What doxy would trust a godly magistrate?”

  “And why would they trust you?” Bacca asked.

  “Since coming to London I have worked with them, delivering them of their bastards. I have done them no wrong.”

  “I find your story fascinating, but it does not begin to explain your presence in the Crown. There are no doxies here.”

  “We believe that the killer may be a man who frequents the Crown,” Martha said. “We came here in hope of finding him.”

  Bacca looked at us, clearly suspicious. “Why did you tell me the truth so easily?”

  “We have no reason to lie about this matter,” I replied. “What objection could you have to our work? And as you can see, unless you are the murderer, our businesses cannot collide.”

  After a moment Bacca nodded. “If you are telling the truth, you have taken up a dangerous task. Perhaps I can help. Who is this man you are hoping to find?”

  I had not expected such an offer and hesitated. Of course I could not refuse—what reason could I give for rejecting such courtesy? But I also knew that an invented name would not fool Bacca for long.

  “It is Charles Owen,” I said. “He is the owner of the Crown.”

  “Charles Owen,” Bacca repeated. “And what evidence do you have?”

  I shrugged. “The magistrate told me not to say. We are not even sure he is the murderer. But we know he frequented the women who were killed. So he may have seen the murderer.” I hoped that my evasiveness on this point would make the rest of my story seem truthful.

  Bacca nodded. “I know Charles. He does not seem like that kind of man. But who can know the truth about anyone?” He stood and for a moment I thought we might be free. “I will send him here to answer your questions, and remain nearby to ensure that you are safe.”

  “You mustn’t tell him why we have come,” I said. “It is better that we catch him unawares.”

  Bacca paused and nodded. “Yes, you are right. Better to surprise him. I will say nothing.”

  Bacca strode to a man and woman standing behind the bar. They could only be Charles Owen and his wife. Bacca leaned across and whispered to Owen. He looked at us, suspicion clear on his face. When Bacca finished talking, Owen nodded and came from behind the bar. He was a tall, loose-jointed man who moved with such ease he seemed more snake than human.

  “You are friends with Lorenzo,” Owen said when he arrived. His accent revealed his origins in England’s southwest, Devon or Cornwall, I thought. “He said that you have some questions to ask me. What about?”

  When he leaned on the table I was struck by the strength in his arms. Muscles seemed to twitch beneath the skin even when they were still, as if they longed for labor to keep them occupied. I imagined his left hand grasping Daniel’s throat, while his right thrust a dagger into his chest.

  “We are here about the murder of Daniel Chidley,” I replied.

  “Are you now?” Owen’s eyes flashed, and the air about us crackled with the threat of violence. “And are you truly so eager to follow him to the grave? Because that, I promise, is what will happen.”

&nb
sp; Chapter 15

  I held my breath, a part of me sure that Martha and I would soon meet the same end as Daniel Chidley. I wanted desperately to signal Lorenzo Bacca that his “friend” had threatened our lives, but did not dare take my eyes off of Charles Owen.

  “What do you mean?” Martha asked. Her eyes remained sharp and her voice did not quiver as I knew mine would if I spoke.

  Owen stared at Martha, but after a moment his demeanor softened and he sat down. “I mean Daniel was playing a dangerous game with dangerous men, and you would be wise not to join in.”

  “What game?” she asked. “What men?”

  Owen looked toward the door as if he were waiting for someone. I could not tell if he did so out of fear or anticipation. His eyes returned to us, but he remained silent.

  “How did you know Daniel Chidley?” Martha asked. “You favor the King, and Mr. Chidley was a Leveller—there’s not much common ground there.”

  “We both hated Cromwell, didn’t we?” Owen spoke so softly Martha and I had to lean toward him to hear. “Strange times make for strange bedfellows. Cromwell or one of his creatures must have had his fill of Daniel’s agitating and killed him. As I said, that’s a shame but not a surprise.”

  I marveled that he spoke so openly of his hatred for Cromwell, but I supposed there was no safer place in London to say such things.

  “You think he was killed by Parliament men?” I asked.

  “It makes the most sense, doesn’t it?” Owen replied. “Cromwell fears the Levellers as much as he does the Royalists. And if he’ll sentence His Majesty to death with that counterfeit trial, he’d hardly balk at putting so low a man as Daniel in his grave with no trial at all.”

  I considered how best to put Owen off his guard, and decided to play our ace of trumps. “Daniel wasn’t killed by Cromwell,” I said. “He was working for Cromwell. He was a spy.”

  Owen stared at me with a mixture of surprise and disbelief. “Who are you?” he asked. “Why are you here?”

  “We are looking for Daniel Chidley’s murderer, just as I said,” I replied. “We heard that you might know something of it.”