‘This will be the last time I go across the river, I promise you,’ says Ned Monkton. ‘I’d stay to comfort you, but–’
‘Go! Just go,’ groans Rose. She is slumped across the side of the bed, her head over the bowl she keeps there, because these days – whenever she wakes – there are always demons stirring paddles in her stomach. She is beginning to wonder if, when she finally gives birth, the little rogue might not have cloven hooves instead of little pink toes.
‘Are you sure, Wife?’ asks Ned uncomfortably. Until he fell in love with Rose, he had never encountered intimate female frailty at close hand. His instinct is to stay and comfort her; but this seems to be the very last thing she wants. He is confused. ‘I can bring you some oysters from Ralph Stout’s shop, if it might please you.’
‘For Jesu’s sake, go!’
At the Mutton Lane stairs he waits in the sunshine until a wherry arrives. Sitting silently in the stern during the crossing to Blackfriars, he looks downriver to London Bridge, lying like a street full of tall houses dropped into the water by mistake. It holds dark memories for him. Two men have died beneath those arches – at his hands. They died because they intended to murder Nicholas Shelby, and he and Mistress Bianca had refused to let that happen. He wonders what Rose would think of him if she knew. Knowing her loyalty to Mistress Bianca and Master Nicholas – as strong as his own – he trusts she would approve and forgive him.
At the Blackfriars stairs he bids a curt thank-you to the wherry-man and saunters – if a man of his size can ever be said to saunter – up Water Lane towards Ludgate. All the while he stays on the lookout for a small, bald fellow with perpetually hard-done-by features. He knows it would be far easier to ask after him in the shops and taverns, but that would only advertise his interest. This, he knows, has always been a game of stealth.
But today Ned is ready to take the chance. He has promised Rose that he will make no more forays into this part of the city, so the risk has been made acceptable by desperation.
At the top of Water Lane the old buildings of the order of the Black Friars have been pulled down or turned over to more secular use. Now it is full of shops, tenements and private dwellings. Maintaining a determined pace, Ned suddenly has to hurl himself into a shadowed cut between a skinner’s shop festooned with hides and a pouchmaker’s stall. To his consternation, the very quarry he has hunted so fruitlessly for so long has just stepped out from beneath a lurid sign of a blade dripping blood – the entrance to the Hanging Sword tavern. Balanced on his shoulder is a large stone jug, which he steadies with his left hand.
The pouchmaker opens his mouth to protest at Ned’s sudden intrusion. He swiftly shuts it again as he digests the interloper’s true size. He goes back to his seat without a word.
Ned is almost certain the fellow with the jug has seen him. But when he sneaks another glance, he sees that the man’s heavy load forces him to walk with his head at an angle, limiting his view. Ned turns his face towards the pelts hanging from the wall and waits for the fellow to pass by. When he’s sure it’s safe to move, he mumbles an apology to the pouchmaker and slips out into Water Lane.
The fellow with the jar is some twenty yards ahead. He walks stiffly under his burden. Ned hangs back. He knows that if his prize so much as shifts the heavy jar on his shoulder, he could be seen.
Following him in the direction of the Blackfriars water-stairs, Ned sees the man turn left into a narrow alley connecting Water Lane with St Andrew’s Hill. He hangs back, only daring to enter when he’s sure the coast is clear. Reaching the end of the now-empty cut, he looks to his right towards the river. He sees no sign of the fluted top of a stone jar swaying above the other heads. He looks left, up St Andrew’s Hill. Within a moment he has the man in sight again. Ned resumes his quiet pursuit.
He knows he sticks out like a performing bear. If the man spots him, his only hope will be to catch him before he drops the jar and runs. And a shattered jar spilling its contents over the street and around everyone’s feet will be an effective barrier, even to legs as sturdy as Ned Monkton’s.
After barely a hundred yards the man stops outside a narrow, unremarkable timbered house in a row of five, set between the church of St Andrew of the Wardrobe and Carter Lane. Ned steps briskly into the shade of the overhang of the building opposite. He has nothing to rely on for cover, other than the people passing by. Wishing for once he was half the man that God had chosen to make him, he gets glimpses of the fellow hoisting the jar into a more comfortable position and rummaging in the pocket of his jerkin with his free hand for a key. A cart piled high with thatcher’s reeds rumbles past. When it has gone, the man with the jar has vanished inside.
His heart pounding, Ned Monkton makes a careful study of the lane, so that he can identify the correct house on his return. Then he goes back to the Hanging Sword.
When he walks in, he gets the reaction he’s become accustomed to whenever he enters an unfamiliar tavern: some customers turn their glances hurriedly away, while others – he can see it in their eyes – weigh up the odds of making their reputation as a slayer of giants.
‘There was a little bald fellow in ’ere a moment ago – I believe you sold him a flagon,’ he says as peaceably as he can to the young taproom boy who stares at his bulk with ill-disguised fear. Then, seizing on the first thing that comes into his head, ‘I ’ave a message for him, but I don’t know his name.’
The taproom lad – too scared of the fiery countenance glaring down at him to wonder why someone would tell you to deliver a message, but fail to give you the name of the recipient – says, ‘You’re speaking of Master Ditworth? Is the message for him or his master?’
‘His master?’ Ned says, sensing a veil being lifted.
‘Aye, Sir Fulke Vaesy,’ the taproom lad says, gaining a little courage, now that it appears this newcomer isn’t planning to crush the life out of him with one immense hand. ‘But if it’s physic you’re after, I’d take your message elsewhere. No one around here would trust that rogue to cure a flitch of bacon.’
‘Vaesy… Vaesy?’ says Rose, looking up. She has spent Ned’s absence checking the accounts for the rebuilding of the Jackdaw. ‘Wasn’t he that professor of anatomy Master Nicholas ’ad a run-in with, a few years back?’
‘The very same,’ Ned tells her, unlacing his boots. He can smell pottage stewing in the hearth. What good fortune to have such a wife as this, he thinks. There cannot be many husbands on Bankside whose women can cook and read. He wonders if he dares ask her to teach him how to make sense of all the incomprehensible scrawls on the papers laid out before her. ‘It was the year we had all those murders,’ he adds. ‘I remember Master Nicholas telling me he’d studied under Vaesy – that Vaesy had lost his place with the College of Physicians because he hadn’t seen the signs of foul play on the bodies that Nicholas had. An’ there was that scandal with his wife, as well. From what they told me at the Hanging Sword, Vaesy’s been reduced to little better than a pox doctor.’
‘An’ you think he was the author of the false letters?’
‘Why else would he ’ave sent his little arseworm over here to see what had happened to Master Nicholas? Looks to me like Vaesy has finally decided to be revenged for his fall.’
‘But how can you be sure?’
‘I’ll ’ave to ask him, won’t I?’
To Ned Monkton, Rose has always shone with a bucolic light. If verdant fields and plump rolling hills bathed in sunlight could ever be made flesh, his wife’s face is the very model. But now, as he looks at her proudly, he sees the warmth drain out and the fear rush in.