“I want to go,” decided Avice. “And Petronella can carry the basket.”
“The great Tower,” sighed the baroness, “is one of Christendom’s most beautiful palaces. The White Keep, the silver moat, the vast council chambers and the royal apartments where every king for five hundred years has stayed to await his holy anointing.” She stared up at the walls again, and lowering clouds above. “A place of gaiety and pleasure, but also of responsibility and wise political governance.” She shook her head. “And instead it seems I have come to gaze at a pit of eels drowning in their own slime.”
Although one of the three men now striding the riverside up Lower Thames Street was the younger brother to an earl, it was not at all obvious to any passer-by. All three men, two of them short and thickset, the other tall and slim built but wide shouldered, were dressed as market traders and their short capes barely kept the rain from their legs nor their heads.
“Dammed weather,” complained Jerrid Chatwyn. “What wretched dockside did you say the boy was heading for?”
“Bilyns Gate,” muttered Rob Bambrigg, “what’s no more’n a sniff and a blink away now, m’lord, as I reckon you already knows right well.”
“I’ve been sniffing and blinking for the past hour,” objected Jerrid, “and I’m tired of tramping through rain and mud. If the wretched boy needs his useless lifesaving, then let’s hurry up and do it before supper.”
“We ain’t had dinner yet,” Harry pointed out from beside and slightly below. “But there’s a good few decent taverns round here does a tasty pottage and a good pot o’ beer.”
“Well, you should know,” nodded Jerrid. “You both lived somewhere near here once, didn’t you?”
“Tenement to the left,” Rob said. “Docks to the right. Both smell the same.”
In the small annexe within the Cock Inn at Bilyns Gate dockside, Emeline shook her head and stood in a hurry. “It’s been long enough, Mister Venter. And since you can’t leave these premises to go to his lordship’s aid while you’re supposed to be watching over me, then I shall have to come too.”
Alan looked alarmed. The stool toppled back as he stood. “My lady, if I might escort you first to the little church we passed –”
“Certainly not,” said Emeline. “I intend looking for my husband.”
The rain now slanted, steel ice. Emeline stared through the veils, peering for some sign of Nicholas. Instead she saw Adrian. He was talking to another man, sheltering at the corner of the main storage shed and barely visible through sleet and bustle. Emeline set off towards him. Alan followed close, his huff of disapproval lost amongst the restless noise.
Adrian turned, swore, and, stepping forwards, managed to smile. Emeline said, “Where is he?”
“A delightful surprise,” Adrian said with a slight bow, “I did not expect to see you here, my lady. The weather is not – but no doubt coming from Gloucestershire, you are accustomed. May I assist you with something, my lady, or perhaps you have a message from my sister?”
“I’ve a message for you, sir, but not from Sissy,” Emeline informed him. “I came with Nicholas some hours ago, because he received a message from you. Or thought he did. What’s all this silly nonsense of false names, anyway?”
Adrian frowned. “That message was never intended for my cousin,” he said with an impatient nod towards his companion. “And I’m now much occupied, madam. I apologise if I seem unhelpful, but Nicholas left some time back and I have no idea where he went.”
From slightly behind, Alan Venter cleared his throat. “I’ve a notion where, my lady, if you’ll come away now.” And Emeline scowled at Adrian, wished him a cold damp afternoon, and hurried away. “I know the rental where his lordship would be searching,” Alan said, under this breath. “And I’ll be off there now to see what’s amiss. But you can’t come, my lady. Not in no conditions, nor will I permit it.”
Emeline thought a moment. “Go on then,” she relented. “He’s been away too long and must need help. But I shall wait at that other corner where there’s some shelter, and they’re selling eels from those big baskets. There’s a lot of other women there and I shan’t seem conspicuous, but I can see if you come back with his lordship and David.”
Resigned and in too much of a hurry to argue, Alan ran to the building where Rob had already informed them Adrian was lodging. Emeline put her hood up and her head down and hurried to the baskets of live eels and the fishwives jangling their purses and objecting to whatever price was mentioned.
“And what,” suddenly said a disastrously clear voice behind her, “are you doing here, my girl? When I’m fully aware I left you at the Strand not three hours gone?”
“Oh, Lord have mercy,” stuttered Emeline. “Maman! I don’t know whether to be pleased or horrified.”
“You might as well be pleased,” said Avice, grabbing at her sister’s sleeve. “Since we’re here anyway. And Martha. And Bill. And Nell. So what are you up to and where’s Nicholas?”
“That’s exactly what I want to know,” said Jerrid Chatwyn, his voice booming from a few paces away as he strode across the open harbour towards them.
Rob pushed unceremoniously in front. “Has his lordship gone to the rental where I seen Sir Adrian?” he demanded.
Emeline nodded, turned, and pointed. “That’s what Alan thinks. And he’s just gone there too.”
“Third floor,” added Rob, “can’t be missed.”
“Right then,” said Jerrid, “no time to waste.”
Avice and the baroness stared in amazed alarm. “No time to explain,” Emeline said. “Come on.”
They followed, Martha close behind and Petronella with Bill at a distance, as Jerrid pushed open the half broken door to the leaning four storey building, its frontage almost touching that of the little house opposite across the lane. “This hovel?” demanded her ladyship. “I am expected to enter here?”
“No, not ’xpected,” said Harry, turning at the foot of the stairs. “Best not, in fact.”
“Buy eels instead,” suggested Rob.
“I’m coming in,” insisted Emeline, picking up her skirts and running up the stairs.
There was a clatter and a squeak. A small boy hurtled down the steps from the echoing darkness. Avice grabbed the skinny bare wrist. The boy squealed. “Twenty – thirty – and fighting,” and he pointed upwards. Avice let the child go and he ran. She took a step forwards but the baroness pulled her back.
“But Maman, Emma’s up there.”
“You are far too young and feeble,” her mother informed her. “I shall sort it out myself. Are you coming, Martha?” She began a sedate climb.
Several things had happened at the same instant. Jerrid, Harry and Rob reached Sir Adrian Frye’s rented chambers on the black shadowed third floor and found the door wide open. Before they were able to enter, one man rushed out. Limping badly and bleeding from a slashed leg and torn ear, he tumbled down the stairs, pushing aside those on their way up. It was lightless, with a smutty leakage of dark smoke from above where the city’s effluent of coal fires and urine filled gutters leaked down the chimney and through the broken windows, and the stench of river, brine and fish from below.
The noises were of scraping feet, heavy breathing, the thump and creek of floorboards and the clash of steel. In one corner of the small squashed rented chamber, David Witton, pleading for release at the top of his voice, was bundled in an uncomfortable tangle of fish scale crusted ropes. Two bodies lay slumped on the floor, one dead, one half alive, his groans fading as he gurgled blood. Nicholas, feet dancing across the sprawling body, was fighting two other men. But his breathing was strained, his forehead was streaming blood and his knuckles on one hand were slashed to the bone.