‘No, no.’ He waved a hand. ‘I will just sit a while.’
Jane clicked her tongue and eyed him, suspicious, afore fetching a jug of ale, a cup and a dish of oysters. ‘Tell me your tale, and spin it fast, for I would go to bed.’
Dowling smiled, hiding the expression quickly before she could spot it.
‘We must go away tomorrow,’ I told her, already feeling the need to defend myself. ‘And though I cannot think why I feel so obliged, I will leave you instruction should I not return for a while.’
She leant forwards and wrinkled her small freckled nose. ‘You will leave me instruction? That assumes there is something you are qualified to instruct me upon. Since I have no desire to emulate your enviable ability to piss with one hand and drink with the other, I wonder what other instruction you feel compelled to share with me.’
‘Do you always talk to me like this when I come home late at night?’ I struggled to recall. ‘Perhaps you forget, you are my servant.’
‘No servant of yours could ever forget it,’ Jane growled, cheeks flushed. ‘Not the day of the appointment, nor the detail of each day subsequent.’
‘Most servants would be glad to have me as their master,’ I protested. ‘I pay you well. I send money to your brother, to the brother of your sister’s husband, and to your uncle with the swollen head. Indeed I have never declined to help any member of your family, though they are legion. Yet you talk about me as if I am the Devil incarnate.’ I suddenly remembered. ‘And I saved your life.’
‘You don’t send money to my uncle, for he died more than a year ago,’ she retorted. ‘And you didn’t save my life.’ She leant back and folded her arms against her plump breasts. ‘Ruth saved my life. You took the opportunity to gaze upon my naked body, and do not think I have forgiven you for it.’
I sighed, sat down and filled my cup. We had debated many times before. In fact it was I, at great risk to myself, who entered my house when she suffered plague and tended to her while a drunken nurse lay slobbering and snoring downstairs. I changed Jane’s clothes when she lay in her own foulness. It was I who ejected the wretched harridan and found a new one, this Ruth.
‘You have gazed upon my naked body too, I reckon,’ I replied.
‘Aye, bathed in sweat and stinking of ale,’ she snapped. ‘For which task I could never be adequately rewarded.’ She peered out from behind strands of blazing red hair, green eyes sparkling. She was beautiful and I didn’t want to leave her.
‘Anyway.’ I slumped back in my chair. ‘Tomorrow we must go to Essex.’ I gazed back into her bright eyes, when usually I would look away. ‘To some small village north of Colchester.’
Her top lip jumped up to her nose, revealing sharp white teeth. ‘Is this a riddle? You take me for a fool and I will poke out your eye.’
‘No riddle.’ I drained my cup and filled it again. ‘Lord Arlington summoned us this afternoon and issued those orders. We are to leave in the morning. Ask him.’ I attempted to divert her attention towards Dowling.
Dowling buried his nose in an oyster shell.
‘What did you do?’ she exclaimed. ‘Spit in the King’s dinner? He might as well send you to Tyburn. I thought Arlington was your great new benefactor, your passage to wealth and fortune.’
‘So did I,’ I reflected.
‘Tell me, then!’
I ducked quick to avoid the arm she flung at me. ‘I hoped he would be grateful I saved his life.’
Jane glowered. ‘You stripped him naked and gazed upon his body too?’
‘No,’ I replied, fist clenched. ‘I saved his life. Yet he doesn’t trust me. He is afraid I might divulge the truth of his devious, black soul.’
‘As would I be if I were him, the amount of time you spend at the Mermaid lain drunk upon the floor.’ Jane raised her brows like I was a great fool. It was a good point I had not considered.
She prodded Dowling’s shoulder. ‘So he has sent you both on some strange pilgrimage of repentance.’
‘Whether we repent or not is of no interest to him,’ Dowling replied. ‘He wants us to find a man called James Josselin.’
I watched the two candles flicker in a sudden breeze that invaded from the corridor. Jane shook her head, lips pinched tight. ‘If you two ninnies wander woolly-headed into Essex then you will both die. The plague is worse there than it was here. They say half Colchester is dead already. For what did we spend six months living with pigs if it was not to escape the Pest?’ I saw tears in the corners of her eyes and felt my own eyes burning.
‘If we do not go, Arlington will have us killed.’
‘Who is this James Josselin?’
‘Arlington says he is a murderer, though Dowling and I have our doubts.’
‘Ha!’ Jane exclaimed. ‘You have your doubts. So you will ask this renegade the truth of it and he will confide all in you two? I think not.’ She pulled a face like she sucked upon a lemon. ‘
“Excuse me, sir,” says the butcher.
“Wilt thou reveal unto me whether or not you be a murderer, that we may inform the Honourable Lord Arlington, that doth search for you?”
The gentleman thinketh.’ Jane frowned and looked to the ceiling. ‘
“Why do you hesitate, good man?” enquires the short fellow that doth nothing but drink.
“Do ye not trust our good intent?”
With that the short fellow doth belch loudly, thus convincing the man who doth doubt his integrity, that these two good fellows are deserving of his trust.’
Dowling laughed out loud until he met her gimlet eye.
I saw she was afraid. Strange how quick I recognised it these days.
‘We have to attempt it else he will have us killed anyway.’ I said.
‘We are to go to Shyam and fetch Josselin back to London, with the help of one of Arlington’s agents, a murderous dog.’
‘If Arlington and his agent know where this man skulks, then what use are you two buffoons?’
‘Josselin has taken refuge in a small village where the plague is rife, where the villagers have closed their boundaries,’ I answered. ‘We are appointed to fetch him out.’
She dropped her hands and stared, speechless. A rare event.
‘So the instruction I would leave you relates to the disposal of my estate,’ I said, soft.
‘Your estate!’ she exclaimed. ‘Why tell me of your estate?’
‘Because I have no one else to leave it to,’ I replied. ‘I might as well leave the house and monies to you.’
She stood bolt upright, shoulders hunched about her ears, arms held out stiff like the wings of a tall, wading bird. ‘To me?’ Her voice echoed strangely deep, like the uttering of a demon.
‘Aye.’ I watched nervous as she stepped closer. ‘I have no one else to leave it to.’
She lowered her face and breathed over my nose. She smelt of sage and mint, just as she had that afternoon in Cocksmouth. ‘Leave it to your mother,’ she hissed. ‘Or leave it to her brother. But don’t you dare try and leave it to me.’
‘You don’t want it?’
‘You tell me you are sent to Essex.’ Her hand shot out towards my neck and I caught it just in time. ‘That you will likely die.’ Her voice tremored and tears gathered in long pools above her lower lashes. I hadn’t seen her weep before.
‘I didn’t say I would likely die,’ I protested. ‘You did.’
She screamed loudly into my face, sweet lips wide apart, head
thrust forward like an angry rooster. Once all the breath was blown from her body she fell back onto her heels and gazed, wide-eyed and bewildered.
Dowling lumbered to his feet and attempted to wrap an arm about her shoulder. ‘I will look after him.’
‘What!’ She pushed away his arm and peered into his great blank face. ‘You will defend him from the plague will you, butcher? Methinks not. And why do you sit there all moonfaced, anyway?’ Her eyes widened and she turned to me. My heart sunk to somewhere close to my toes and I wished I had not admitted him into the house.