Chaloner turned away and made his way home.
Chapter 7
For the first time since Chaloner had returned from Portugal, the sun was shining when he woke. It caught the brown leaves in the churchyard of St Dunstan-in-the-West, and turned them to a deep, glowing orange that shimmered in the breeze. Yet even the glories of a bright autumn day did not distract him from his worries.
He was deeply disturbed by what he had witnessed at Leybourn’s house the previous evening, and his inclination was to visit the Fleet Prison in a concerted effort to see what could be learned about Mary. But Newburne was due to be buried at noon, and there was a chance that Chaloner might overhear something important as the mourners talked together. He would be no good to Leybourn if he was obliged to leave London because of a lack of employment, so he decided to dedicate the morning to the solicitor’s murder.
Newburne had lived on Old Jewry, an affluent thoroughfare that ran between Cheapside and the London Wall, which boasted two churches and the kind of houses that were owned by the upper mercantile classes. It did not take him long to identify Newburne’s home. It was one of the largest, and a lot of money had recently been spent on it. He recalled the tales of Newburne’s wealth, and saw they had been true — and so they should be, he thought. The man had earned a wage from L’Estrange, had business dealings with Crisp, and had been in the Lord Chancellor’s pay.
It was too early for anything to be happening, but Robin’s Coffee House was opposite, and provided a comfortable refuge in which to watch and wait. He found a seat in the window, and handed over a large leather token worth threepence to the coffee-boy; his cat had knocked a jar from the mantelpiece that morning, and he had recovered the token from among the shards. It was enough to buy him three dishes of a thick black sludge that felt as though it was doing harm when he swallowed it, and free access to a fire and The Newes, published that morning. Men came to drink before they started work, all thrusting through the door with the cry, ‘What news?’ Most received the reply that there had been an outrage perpetrated on Mr Cobb. Curious to know what outrage, Chaloner read:
It came to me this day, from a very sure hand, that one Mr Cobb, the Vicar of Wollaston, Northamptonshire, applying himself according to his duty to God and the lawes of the land to the Reading of the Divine Service, found the Common Prayerbook so bedaubed with tar and grease upon the services for the day that he was obliged to borrow another. Something I should add to this, of what I myself know for a certain truth. But first, it is too early to mention it; and secondly, it is too foule for the Honour of the Nation to be made publique.
It sounded intriguing, and Chaloner wondered whether L’Estrange really did have a ‘foule’ secret to impart to his readers, or whether it was just a device to make them buy the next issue. He glanced across the road, but Newburne’s house was still closed, so he read that Rowland Pepin, famous for his Cure of the Rupture and Broken Belly, also made ‘easy truffles of all kinds’, and that Theophilus Buckworth’s lozenges still worked against coughs, catarrhs and strongness of breath. He also learned that in Vienna, there was news of the Turks ‘up and down’, which was vague enough to mean nothing at all. His own piece was there, too, although it had been edited to make it more sensational than it should have been.
Eventually, when he started thinking he should have gone to the Fleet Prison after all, the door to Newburne’s mansion opened, and people began to arrive to pay their respects. First in was a man in a cloak and a large hat, surrounded by a mob of heavily armed henchmen. The Butcher of Smithfield was obviously intent on dispatching his obligations early, although Chaloner did not imagine there would be much of a queue, given Newburne’s unpopularity. He was surprised to see he was wrong: the funeral was not due to take place for another three hours, but a huge number of folk followed Crisp’s example. Chaloner could only assume they were making obligatory appearances, so as not to offend one of Newburne’s three powerful and generally nasty masters. After a while, when the initial rush was over and Crisp and his henchmen had gone, the spy attached himself to a party of law-clerks and followed them inside.
The front parlour contained Newburne and his coffin, reclaimed from St Bartholomew the Less for the occasion, and Dorcus Newburne. She was prettier than he expected, and her face was kind. She sat in a chair at the foot of the casket, clothed in black from head to toe. L’Estrange was at her side, hand resting solicitously on her shoulder, while Brome and Joanna hovered uncertainly nearby.
Brome looked uncomfortable in his dark mourning gear. The sword he wore was thin and new, and Chaloner was under the impression that it had never been drawn. Joanna was equally awkward in a boned waistcoat that over-accentuated her skinny figure. She eschewed the current fashion for wigs, and her brown hair still fell in the ridiculous rabbitear style he had come to associate with her. She was pale and sad, and her large brown eyes looked bigger than usual that day. When Dorcus began to cry, she knelt next to her and held her hand. L’Estrange leaned down to murmur something encouraging, and the widow reached up to touch his cheek. He shot her one of his grins, all flashing teeth, gleaming eyes and glinting earrings, but the smile faded when he spotted Chaloner. Ignoring Dorcus’s squeal of distress, he abandoned his post and came to grab the spy’s wrist, shunting him into an antechamber where they could speak privately.
‘I told you: I do not want the Earl meddling in Newburne’s death,’ he hissed. ‘Why are you here?’
‘The Lord Chancellor sent me to represent him,’ said Chaloner, freeing himself with rather more vigour than was necessary. He disliked being manhandled.
L’Estrange folded his arms and looked resentful. ‘I am sorry for you. Funerals are grim affairs, and I would give a good deal to be elsewhere today. However, Dorcus has need of me, so here I am.’
‘I am sure she does,’ muttered Chaloner.
‘These occasions invariably attract phanatiques,’ grumbled L’Estrange, waving a disparaging hand towards the mourning chamber. ‘The types who daub tar on prayer-books.’
Chaloner could not see any obvious religious bigots. ‘Where are they?’
L’Estrange flapped another vigorous hand, so his earrings swung. ‘The booksellers for a start. Why do you think I want to fine them all into oblivion? Then there is Muddiman — a brazen phanatique. Even Brome and Joanna display disconcerting signs of treachery on occasion — I heard them playing music composed by Locke last night, and he was a damned Roundhead!’
‘Did you retrieve Newburne’s key?’ asked Chaloner, changing the subject. L’Estrange was deranged, and should not be allowed to control the government’s sole means of disseminating information. He might use it to start another civil war. ‘You said you-’
‘I cannot bring myself to do it,’ interrupted L’Estrange. ‘Not today. I will ask tomorrow, when her husband is not in the coffin next to us. I plan to pay her a little private visit in the morning.’
He waggled his eyebrows, and Chaloner regarded him askance, astonished that he should baulk at asking for a key, but think nothing of foisting romantic attentions on her. Or was it Chaloner who had no understanding of such matters? It was, after all, L’Estrange who had the harem.
‘Someone is stealing your stories,’ he pointed out. ‘And anything that damages your newsbooks also harms the government. You cannot afford to have a vital key missing.’
L’Estrange glowered at him. ‘How does the Earl put up with your impudence? He is not a tolerant man, by any stretch of the imagination. I thought about what you said yesterday, incidentally — your conclusions about the annotated Newes and that ledger — and I have decided your theory is irrelevant. Someone must have broken into my office and stolen that one set of proofs, but it was a random event, not a regular occurrence. And the ledger can be interpreted in a number of ways.’