The Butcher of Smithfield (2 page)

‘There is nothing wrong with my house,’ interrupted Ellis, in a way that told Chaloner he was probably not the first to complain.
‘Rats have a penchant for wood, as I have told you before, and they always gnaw beams when folk leave their rooms unoccupied
for long periods of time. Of course, now you have a cat, rodents will no longer be a problem.’

Chaloner could have argued, but the chambers suited him well for a number of reasons. First, the subsidence
had allowed him to negotiate a low rent, which was important to a man whose employer sometimes forgot to pay him. Secondly,
Fetter Lane was a reasonably affluent street and its householders kept it lit at night – a spy always liked to be able to
see what was happening outside his home. And finally, it was convenient for White Hall, where his master, the Earl of Clarendon
worked.

‘Some letters came when you were gone,’ said Ellis, retrieving a bundle of missives from the chest under the mirror. ‘I was
going to give them to your next of kin.’

‘You thought I was dead?’

Ellis became a little defensive. ‘It was not an unreasonable assumption – you left very abruptly, and then there was no news
of you for months. I heard you playing your viol last night, by the way. At least the rats did not eat that.’

Chaloner would not have been pleased if they had. Playing the bass viol, or viola de gamba, was the thing he had missed above
all else during his time away. Music soothed him and cleared his mind when he needed to concentrate, and although Isabella
– the lady who had provided him with the hat and other comforts in Portugal – had arranged for him to borrow an instrument,
it was not the same as playing his own. He took the letters from Ellis as his landlord locked the front door behind them.

There were five messages, which included three from his family in Buckinghamshire. He opened these first and scanned them
quickly, afraid, as always, that a missive from home might carry bad news. All was well, though, and his brother was only
demanding to know why he had not written. The fourth note was from his friend, the surveyor–mathematician William Leybourn,
inviting him to dine with him and the woman he intended to
marry. A date of the twentieth of July was scrawled at the bottom, and Chaloner wondered whether he might find Leybourn wed
when he went to visit. He hoped so: Leybourn was always whining about not having a wife.

The fifth and last had been written just two days before, and was from a musician called Thomas Maylord. Maylord had been
a close friend of Chaloner’s father, and had played for Oliver Cromwell’s court; when the Commonwealth had collapsed and King
Charles II had reclaimed his throne three years before, Maylord had somehow managed to persuade the Royalists to keep him
on. The letter was brief, and begged the spy for a meeting at his earliest convenience. The tone was curt, almost frightened,
and very unlike the amiable violist. It was unsettling, and Chaloner supposed he had better find out what was distressing
the old man as soon as he could.

St Dunstan-in-the-West was a large, stalwart church with a big square tower and a walled graveyard that jutted out into Fleet
Street – much to the annoyance of carters and hackney-drivers, who tended to collide with it in foggy weather. It was full
that morning, as people crowded inside to hear Rector Thompson preach a sermon about original sin. It was probably an erudite
and well-argued discourse, but Thompson mumbled and there were so many babies and small children screaming that very little
of his homily could be heard. Chaloner leaned against a pillar, folded his arms and thought that obligatory appearances at
Sunday services was one aspect of home he had not missed at all.

Also bored, Ellis began to tell Chaloner about the foul weather that had beset the city while the spy had been
away. Chaloner glanced around and saw the landlord was not the only one to be talking while Thompson pontificated in his pulpit.
Behind them, two merchants discussed the imminent arrival of a consignment of French wine, while the man in front had his
arms around two women, and was enjoying a conversation that was bawdy and far from private.

‘You did not say where you have been,’ said Ellis, when Chaloner made no comment on his dreary monologue of storms, rain and
drizzle. ‘Was it far?’

‘I visited Dover,’ replied Chaloner ambiguously. He was fortunate in that Ellis seldom quizzed him about the odd hours he
kept, or the disguises he often donned. The landlord believed him to be a victualling clerk for the Admiralty, an occupation
so staid and dull that few people ever wanted to know about it. Unfortunately, though, even Ellis’s incurious nature was goaded
into asking about a sudden and abrupt departure that had lasted nigh on four months.

‘Dover?’ echoed Ellis, scratching his head. There were lice in his periwig. ‘In Kent?’

‘The navy has business there,’ hedged Chaloner. Careful phrasing meant he was not actually lying, because his ship
had
stopped in Dover before sailing for Lisbon. He supposed there was no reason why he should not tell people that he had been
on official business in Portugal and Spain, but he had been trained to keep confidences to a minimum and, after a decade in
espionage, it was a difficult habit to break.

‘There is a big castle in Dover,’ said Ellis, as if he imagined his tenant might not have noticed it. ‘It will be our first
line of defence when the Dutch invade. I was in the Turk’s Head Coffee House last night, and it was
full of talk about the great flotilla of boats the Dutch is building, ready to fight us.’

‘They do not need to build anything,’ said Chaloner, who had spent several years undercover in Holland. ‘They already have
a great navy. And, unlike ours, it is manned by sailors who have been paid, and is equipped with ships that are actually seaworthy.’

Ellis shook his head. ‘The government should spend more money on defending us from foreigners, and less on chasing phantom
rebels in the north of England. Have you been reading the newsbooks? The new editor, Roger L’Estrange, wants us to believe
that Yorkshire is trying to start another civil war. He is obsessed with men he calls “phanatiques”.’

‘Right,’ said Chaloner vaguely, reluctant to admit that he had not seen a newsbook – an eight-page ‘news-paper’ produced by
the government for the general public – since June
or
that he had never heard of Roger L’Estrange. He did not want to startle Ellis into an interrogation by displaying a total
ignorance of current affairs.

‘L’Estrange is something of a phanatique himself, if you ask me,’ Ellis went on disapprovingly. ‘Someone should tell him the
newsbooks were
not
founded to provide him with an opportunity to rant, but to disseminate interesting information to readers. I want to know
who has died, been promoted or robbed in
London
, not L’Estrange’s perverted opinions about Yorkshire. And as for that piece about the Swiss ambassador – well, who
cares
what a foreign diplomat was given to eat in France?’

‘True,’ said Chaloner, supposing he had better spend a few hours reading, to catch up.

‘I am pleased to see you home again,’ said Ellis, searching
for a subject that would elicit more than monosyllabic answers. ‘You said you might be gone a month, but it was four times
that, and I was beginning to think you had decided to lodge elsewhere.’

Chaloner thought back to the blossom-scented June morning when he had received the message that ordered him to go immediately
to White Hall. Such summons were not unusual from his employer, and he had not thought much about it. Like many politicians,
the Earl of Clarendon – currently Lord Chancellor – had accumulated plenty of enemies during his life, and relied on his spy
to provide him with information that would allow him to stay one step ahead of them. However, it had not been Clarendon who
had sent for him, then dispatched him on a long and dangerous mission to the Iberian Peninsula. It had been the Queen – and
no one refused the ‘request’ of a monarch, even though Chaloner had been reluctant to leave London. He smiled absently at
Ellis, then made a show of listening to the sermon. Ellis sighed at his tenant’s uncommunicative manner, but did not press
him further.

When the service was over, the congregation flooded into Fleet Street and Ellis went to join cronies from his coffee-house.
They immediately began a spirited debate about a newsbook editorial that described Quakers as ‘licentious and incorrigible’;
some thought the epithet accurate, while others claimed they would make up their own minds and did not need L’Estrange telling
them what to think. Chaloner began to walk to White Hall, aware that his Earl would want to know he was home at last. The
rain had stopped, although it had left Fleet Street a soft carpet of mud, and he was astonished by the lively bustle as traders
hawked their wares. There
had been few secular activities allowed on the Sabbath in Catholic Spain, and the contrast was startling.

‘God will send a great pestilence,’ bawled a street-preacher, who evidently thought the same. He stood on a crate in the middle
of the road, and risked life and limb as traffic surged around him. ‘There is plague in Venice, and He will inflict one on
London unless you repent.’

‘He has already sent one,’ quipped a leatherworker’s apprentice, as he staggered by with a load of cured pelts balanced on
his head. ‘Half the Court has French pox, so I have heard.’

People laughed, and Chaloner was impressed when the lad managed a cheeky bow without dropping what he was carrying. The preacher
scowled at him, and muttered that God would be including cocky apprentices among His list of targets when the plague arrived
in the city.

Chaloner hurried on, warned by a rank, acrid smell that he was approaching the Rainbow Coffee House, an establishment infamous
for the ‘noisome stenches’ associated with its roasting beans. Suddenly, the door was flung open and a man stalked out. He
was tall, lean and elegantly dressed, and a pair of outrageously large gold rings dangled from his ears. His handsome, but
cruel, face was dark with fury, and he gripped the hilt of his sword as though he itched to run someone through with it. Chaloner
thought he looked like a pirate – dangerous and unpredictable.

Moments later, the Rainbow’s door opened a second time, and two more men emerged. Both were clad in the very latest Court
fashions, although the spotless white lace that frothed around their knees and their clean shoes told
Chaloner that they had not sloshed through Fleet Street’s mud that morning, but had travelled in style – carried in a sedan-chair
or a hackney-coach. The shorter of the pair, who sported a long yellow wig, held a newsbook in his hand.

‘“Personal lozenges by Theophilus Buckworth for the cure of consumptions, coughs, catarrhs and strongness of breath”,’ he
read in a yell that drew a good deal of attention from passers-by. ‘You call that news, L’Estrange?’

The tall man whipped around to face him, while Chaloner noted wryly that, for all London’s vast size – it was by far the biggest
city in the civilised world – it was still a small place in many ways. Ellis had mentioned a newsbook editor called L’Estrange,
and suddenly, here he was. Not wanting to be caught in the middle of a spat that looked set to turn violent, Chaloner stepped
into an alley, joining a soot-faced lad who was disposing of a bucket of coffee-grounds there. The youth scattered his reeking,
gritty pile by kicking it, and the stench of decay told Chaloner that the lane had been used as a depository for the Rainbow’s
unwanted by-products for years. The coffee-boy pulled a pipe from his pocket and watched with interest as L’Estrange strode
towards his tormentor.

‘That particular notice had nothing to do with me,’ he snarled. ‘My assistant inserted it without my knowledge.’

‘I see,’ drawled the yellow-wigged man, exchanging a smirk with his dashing companion. ‘So, you admit you have no control
over what is published in your newsbooks, do you? That explains a good deal – such as why they contain all manner of dross
about the Swiss ambassador’s dinner in Paris, but nothing about the dealings of our own government.’

The coffee-boy grinned conspiratorially, and nudged Chaloner with his elbow. ‘They have been at it all morning,’ he whispered.

‘At what?’

‘Squabbling. L’Estrange edits the newsbooks – although
they
hold little to interest the educated man, except their lists of recently stolen horses; the rest is given over to L’Estrange’s
tirades against phanatiques. The fat fellow with the yellow wig is Henry Muddiman.’

‘Who is Muddiman?’ asked Chaloner, aware, even as he spoke, that this was a question which exposed him as an outsider. Unfortunately,
it was true. His postings to spy overseas, first for Cromwell and then for the King, meant the time he had spent in London
was limited to a few weeks. He was a stranger in his own land, which was sometimes a serious impediment to his work. He knew
he could rectify the situation – but only if his masters would stop sending him abroad.

‘Muddiman was L’Estrange’s predecessor at the newsbooks,’ explained the coffee-boy, looking at him askance. ‘Everyone knows
that.’

‘Oh, yes,’ said Chaloner, frowning as vague memories of the man’s name and the nature of his business began to surface. Muddiman
had produced newsbooks during the Commonwealth, and the King had kept him on after the Restoration. ‘I remember now.’

‘Muddiman was ousted for political reasons, and the pair now hate each other with a passion. These days, Muddiman produces
news
letters
, which are different to news
books
, as you will know.’ The lad shot Chaloner another odd glance, not sure if he was assuming too much.

‘Newsbooks are printed,’ supplied Chaloner, to show
he was not totally clueless. ‘Newsletters are handwritten. Printed material is subject to government censorship; handwritten
material is not.’

‘Precisely – which means the news
letters
are a lot more interesting to read. Of course, Muddiman’s epistles are expensive – more than five pounds a year! – but they
contain real information for the discerning gentleman.’