‘Never mind that,’ said Wiseman curtly. He looked enormous in the darkness, all barrel chest and powerful arms. ‘I have something important to say. As I watched folk swigging Brodrick’s brew with gay abandon earlier this evening, it occurred to me that brandywine might have been used in the potion that killed Chetwynd and Vine.’
‘So we went to visit Kersey, to find out,’ said Langston, taking up the story. ‘Wiseman sniffed Chetwynd’s corpse — his kin refused the offer of dissection, but they said nothing about sniffing — and brandywine was indeed one of the ingredients.’
‘No doubt it was added to disguise the taste of the toxin,’ added Wiseman. ‘Plain wine would have been unequal to the task. Unfortunately, Brodrick bought vats of it for his punch — all that was in London, apparently — and the cellar staff say it is impossible to tell whether any is missing.’
‘Who is Kersey?’ asked Chaloner, struggling to understand what they were trying to tell him.
‘The Corpse Keeper.’ Wiseman frowned when he saw Chaloner’s blank look. ‘Do you know nothing? Everyone has heard of Kersey.’
‘Well, I have not,’ snapped Chaloner, his aching head making him irritable.
Wiseman sighed, and began to speak in a way that could only be described as patronising. ‘When people die in Westminster — and thousands live and work here, so there is always someone breathing his last — their bodies go to Kersey until they are either buried or claimed by kin.’
‘His charnel house is near here,’ added Langston. ‘It is not a place I like to visit, but needs must. Chetwynd and Vine were colleagues, and I do not like the notion of them being murdered.’
‘Greene is your colleague, too,’ said Chaloner, recalling what he had seen the previous night.
Langston shook his head. ‘Greene is a friend, not a colleague. I am very fond of him, which is why I agreed to visit a charnel house with Wiseman — to see if we could prove his innocence.’
‘And how does brandywine do that?’ asked Chaloner, becoming confused. He wished he was home, lying in bed, not trying to talk to two men whose conversation was making no sense.
Wiseman peered at him. ‘You are slow on the uptake tonight. Are you unwell? Perhaps you should go home, and I will explain my clever theory tomorrow. I do not want to have to repeat myself.’
‘Have you seen any soldiers?’ asked Chaloner tiredly. He raised a hand to his head, which felt as if it might explode. ‘Not the palace guards, but a train-band, like the ones from the wars. They-’
Langston looked alarmed. ‘You were attacked! Is that why you are swaying like a drunk? They knocked you out of your wits? I heard a gang of villains has taken to infesting these parts, so we had better leave while we can. Come. We shall walk to the Great Hall together.’
He took Chaloner’s arm, and it was not many moments before they reached the light and noise of the ball. The music that wafted through the open door was curious and not entirely pleasant, as if someone had decided that the best way to emulate the tunes of the Ancient Near East was to take familiar melodies and play them sharp. Langston immediately disappeared inside, muttering something about it being safer than streets crawling with train-bands.
‘Go home and rest,’ ordered Wiseman, when he had gone. ‘I shall stay here and eavesdrop. And if I hear anything useful about these killings, I shall tell you tomorrow.’
Chaloner stared at him. ‘You want to help me?’
‘I want to help the Earl,’ corrected Wiseman. ‘I refuse to stand by and watch him make a fool of himself by persisting with his irrational belief that Greene is the killer. Do not worry about me. I am a surgeon, and my lofty intelligence is more than a match for any mere poisoner.’
Chaloner could not think of anything to say in the light of such hubris.
Chapter 3
The wind blew hard all night, whistling through the loose windowpanes in Chaloner’s room, bellowing down the chimney, and ripping across the roof. Exhausted though he was, it was not conducive to restful sleep, and he woke every time there was an unfamiliar bump, scrape or rattle. And each time he did, he found himself reaching for the dagger under his pillow, which reminded him unpleasantly of his recent mission to Spain, where constant and unrelenting danger had forced him into a similar state of high vigilance. He sincerely hoped London was not about to become the same.
It was not just the sounds of the storm that made him uneasy. An explosion in the neighbouring house the previous year had rendered his own building unstable. His landlord claimed there was nothing wrong, but cracks in the walls, window frames that suddenly did not fit, and a distinct list to the floor indicated otherwise. Chaloner was acutely aware that a high wind might tear the destabilised roof from its moorings, and as he lived in the attic, this would be a problem. He considered going to visit Hannah, but their courtship was very new — they had graduated to the bedchamber only the previous week, upon his return from Oxford — and he did not think she would appreciate being woken in the small hours by a lover whose sole intention was to secure a good night’s sleep.
It was four o’clock before the gale blew itself out. Chaloner dozed for another hour, then reluctantly prised himself out of bed. He lit a lamp, and saw water had seeped under cracked and missing tiles to dribble through the ceiling and down the walls; green stains indicated it was not the first time this had happened. Most men would have abandoned the place and found better accommodation, but the garret in Fetter Lane suited Chaloner for a number of reasons. Firstly, the structural hiccups meant it was leased at an attractively low rate, an important consideration for a man whose master did not always pay him on time. Secondly, Fetter Lane was a reasonably affluent street, and its residents kept it lit at night — a spy always liked to see who was going past his home in the dark. And finally, it was convenient for White Hall.
After positioning bowls to catch the worst of the drips, he sat on his bed and stared into space, feeling drowsy and sluggish. His head ached, his arm was bruised, and at some point during the skirmish, he had jarred his leg — an exploding cannon during the Battle of Naseby had left him slightly lame. In all, he felt decidedly shabby. He closed his eyes, and was almost asleep again when his cat jumped into his lap, jolting him awake. He had not known it was home, but was pleased to see it. He fed it some salted herring, which it devoured greedily. Then it left without so much as a backwards glance, its cool independence a far cry from Haddon’s fawning lapdogs.
Despite his weariness, Chaloner knew he could not afford to waste the day. He shaved quickly — it was cold in the room, and the water was icy — then donned a clean linen shirt, black breeches and stockings, and a blue ‘vest’ — a knee-length, collarless coat with loose-fitting sleeves. Unwilling to risk another blow to the head, he wore Isabella’s metal-lined hat again. Thoughts of her made him smile, and he wished there was a way they could have been together. Unfortunately, their blossoming romance had come to an abrupt end when he had been exposed as a spy, leading to his arrest, imprisonment and an escape so narrow that it still haunted his dreams.
And now there was Hannah. Her father had been a favourite of the old king, and the new one had drafted her into the Queen’s service after the death of her husband. Chaloner was not sure why he had been attracted to her — or her to him — because they had little in common, and he wondered whether it was an affection born of mutual loneliness. Yet he hoped the relationship would develop into something meaningful even so, assuming he did not ruin it by being reticent about his personal life — he had learned through bitter experience that most women did not like uncommunicative men.