May 15, 1665
Of the many things William Coke regretted in his life, the bargain he’d made with Dickon was certainly one. And he had never regretted it as much as he did that morning.
When he’d first discovered the orphan starving in his doorway, after two weeks given to the necessities of food, clothes and warmth, he’d thought that it might calm the lad if he learned to read. Words, like music, could soothe, it was said, and Coke had assumed, even though the Bible had not impressed him much despite his parents’ and his tutors’ urgings, that the holy book might tame some of Dickon’s wilder jerks and lunges. But the boy remained uninterested; indeed, could not be made to sit even for a minute to trace with his finger the formation of the letter I. Coke had tried a basic grammar primer. Dickon had ripped out page after page by too forceful tracing, reducing it swiftly to so much “primer” for their hearth—a joke Dickon laughed at heartily when explained to him. Finally, in desperation, Coke had made his offer.
“Here’s a sixpence, Dickon. Go to the booksellers in the crypt of St. Paul’s and choose yourself a text you’d like to study.”
The boy had whirled off—and returned as excitedly and fast. “Th-this!” he’d declared proudly, thrusting the purchase into Coke’s hands.
It was a pamphlet. On its cover was a poorly executed woodcut of a woman with very large breasts, her arse offered up to what Coke supposed to be Satan, though his horns made him look like a bullock and his pitchfork was small enough for the eating of snails.
Yet a deal was a deal. Over a hard winter that kept them much indoors, Dickon learned to read—a little, at least, the choice of text always his. So he also learned rather more about some aspects of life than befitted an eleven-year-old, Coke felt.
Not all the pamphlets were about lust, though. Some were on the recent executions of notorious villains—a few of whom, like Swift Jack, Coke had known. Some combined carnal relations with other crimes. It was one pamphlet of this type that Coke held that morning; that caused him to groan and regret, for the thousandth time, his bargain with the boy.
The pamphlet was entitled The Monstrous Cock. The woodcut on its first page showed the interior of a carriage with three bodies heaped up, their torsos split open and what appeared to be yards of sausages trailing from each. Beneath these were the words “Captain Cock turns Bluebeard.”
Dickon stabbed his fingers down upon the letters, trying to mouth each word—a feat made harder by his mouth being, as ever, crammed with nuts, his one true passion. He did not understand that he’d been involved in the events so inaccurately described and was delighting in each new word he mastered, yelling it out. Coke felt the ink on the pamphlet, testing its fastness, for it had probably been published that day, two weeks after the events depicted.
His groan was echoed from the other side of the wall, startlingly loud so thin was the horsehair plaster dividing his room from his neighbours’. A Dutch immigrant, his wife and three young children lived adjacent. The man had been moaning intermittently all the morning, sometimes loud, sometimes low. Once there had come a long cry in the man’s own language, which Coke spoke a little. God was being solicited to relieve some agony.
Coke looked away from the wall, down to the pamphlet. “ ‘Sa-sa-saw …’ ” stuttered Dickon.
“You saw this?”
The boy shook his head. “Sword!” A finger impaled the word.
The pamphlet had expanded the reputation of Captain Cock as a “knight of the road” through the assumption that the weapon for slaughter had been his rapier. But Coke knew that the tool or tools that had reduced the two men to carcasses had to be thick-bladed knives, perhaps combined with a cleaver. Only the woman had fallen to a thin point, which could have been a sword but was more likely a dagger. A single thrust into her heart.
He closed his eyes, saw her again, felt her hand wrap around his wrist as he groped for her necklace. What had she said—“pale horse”? Was she giving him a clue to her killer? That would not narrow it down much. Every third horse in England was pale.
A groan again. The Hollander or him? Both probably. “W-well?” the boy asked.
“Well enough. Read on.”
Dickon turned back to the page, spluttering out the words. The text purported to be eyewitness accounts from several of the party who’d made the discovery. A local magistrate was mentioned, Colonel W. A local constable, one Geoffrey Boxer, of a place called Cuckolds Haven. And—Coke peered closer. A thief-taker, distinguished only as Mr. P., had led them to the site. He knew of several: Pockington, Pitman, Pears. Why did so many of that damned crew start with P? Yet this could be just another bit of information the pamphlet had got wrong. It did not matter—thief-takers from up and down the alphabet would be after him once they’d read, as he did now, the last paragraph:
This monster. This demon in a cocked hat. He must be taken before more worthy citizens and ravishing ladies are brutishly butchered. And so the Honourable Company of Ropewrights offers this reward for said taking: not only the hempen cravat from which this dandy will dance the Tyburn jig, but the sum of thirty guineas for his speediest apprehension.
Coke rubbed his forehead. Thirty pieces. The original traitor’s sum. Christ’s bones, he’d sell himself for such. And though not many knew him, a few did. Three fellow “knights”—no, two: now Swift Jack dangled at Finchley. Maclean and O’Toole, Irishmen he’d worked with on occasion to their mutual profit, who would sell their mothers for a groat, let alone Judas’s bounty. In sooth, O’Toole was the one who’d let slip Coke’s name when they were taking Lord Carnarvon’s coach on the Hounslow Road last December. The coachman had misheard it and reported it as “Cock.”
“C-c-c-c …”
The captain glanced down. The boy was labouring over the name he’d just been thinking. “Cock,” he pronounced.
“Cock-a-doodle-doo!” Dickon crowed, his imitation perfect.
“Aye, lad.” Coke tousled the boy’s hedge of fair hair and Dickon turned his head under the caress like a cat. “Though if we do not move soon, we may not have a chance to crow.”
There was no question. He would have to leave the city. Probably the country, though he hated that idea. He disliked abroad. He spoke English, damn it, and had spent too long away, forced to learn French, Dago, Walloon, all because of his loyalty to the Stuarts. Yet when he’d arrived back, what had been his reward? Far less than thirty guineas. Certainly not the return of the Coke lands in Somerset, mortgaged to send three sons to war in the king’s cause.
Maybe he would go to America. Did they not speak a form of English there?
Another groan shook him, joined now by a child’s weeping.
He would need coin. A thought came and he seized the pamphlet, to Dickon’s protests, and scanned the words again. No. There was no mention of the necklace. But that sort of detail would be included if known. Mind you, he thought, smoothing his moustache with two fingers, there’s nothing about the pistol I left either, damn fool that I was. The thief-taker must have found that.
After handing back the pamphlet to Dickon, Coke reached up to a rafter. There, between joist and plaster, was a gap, and he pulled down the bag with the necklace. When in exile in Antwerp, he had spent some time warding a jeweller—it was either serve or starve—so he knew a little about gemstones. The rubies in the necklace were good, the emeralds better. The silver they were set in appeared of good quality too. He would not be cheated as to price, though necessity might force him to accept less.
He peered closer. He’d not noticed earlier, but the lowest silver loop was broken. So a jewel was missing at the very bottom, which would have completed the display.
It did not matter. There was enough of worth here to see Dickon and him clear. Where to, he would decide later.
Pocketing the jewels, he belted on his sword, swept on his cloak and took up his hat—from which, on a sudden urge, he removed the green ostrich feather, leaving it plainer. He picked up his walking stick, tapped Dickon on the shoulder with its silver-knobbed end. The boy immediately showed him a word: “Shambles,” he said distinctly.
“Aye, ’twas. Now, listen. I am going out. I want you to pack up what we have. Most in the trunk, enough in a valise for a few nights on the road.”
The boy was instantly alert. “A m-mark?”
“Nay, we do not go to work. We just go. Tomorrow, with luck. See to it.”
Dickon nodded. Coke went into the corridor. He was surprised to find it busy at this time in the morning. Three families lived in the three rooms on his floor; four more in the rooms above, and the same below. Children, mothers, even men milled about. Then he remembered it was Sunday; the men were not at labour, and the better clothes showed that many were off to church. As he began to push his way through, the door next to his was flung open, and the groaning that the plaster had somewhat contained burst out, along with the Dutchman’s three daughters. Their mother followed, leaned against the doorway and cried, “Dood! Dood!”
“What’s she say?” The neighbour on the other side of Coke’s room was asking.
“She says someone’s dead, Mrs. Philips,” Coke replied. “I regret it is probably her husband.”
He tried to move on, but the rush of people, like crows to a corpse, held him before the door. Mrs. Philips and another lady pushed past the weeping wife.
“Merciful God in heaven,” came the cry from two throats.
They came out fast, splitting for their respective rooms. “What is it, Mrs. Philips?” he asked, following her.
“Plague.” There was terror in her eyes. “Plague, or I’m as Dutch as she is. My ma died of it in ‘36. I’ll never forget the signs.”
She’d whispered it—but enough had heard her and the word was carried from one person to the next the length of the corridor. People raised hands to their mouths, scarves if they had them. Catholics, hitherto concealed, revealed themselves in sudden crossings. Most of those gathered began to back away.
Coke did not. He’d got as far as Mrs. Philips’s door, which she now flung open. Just as she was about to step inside, he grabbed her arm. “What are you going to do?”
“Do?” she shrieked, then dropped her voice again. “I am going to pack my family up and be gone from this place within the half hour.”
“Why so fast?”
“Have you ever been in a plagued city, sir?”
He had. Bristol, during the siege. It was something he tried never to think about. Not when he was awake. When he was asleep, he could not stop her face coming to him as he’d last seen it. Swollen. Unrecognizable.
Evanline.
“As soon as this pestilence is known to the parish authorities, they will come and shut us up,” Mrs. Philips continued. “They will board up the house. They will station watchmen at the door. We will not be allowed to pass, and half of us—more—will be dead within the month.” She stuffed a hand into her mouth to stifle a sob, walked into her own room and slammed the door on him. He heard her turning out drawers.
He went back to his room. Dickon lifted the pamphlet. “Guts!” he said brightly.
“Pack,” Coke commanded, and began to scurry. Dickon joined him. In sooth, it did not take them long. Two years he’d lived there, the longest he’d lived any place since the wars, and all packed up in less than twenty minutes. All they could not carry easily about them they flung into his trunk. With two satchels apiece, they left. He locked the room, though he did not expect to see it or the trunk ever again.
The corridor was empty now, quiet. Then, down below he heard a thumping on the front door. “Open here!” commanded a deep voice. “Open for the headborough of the parish.”
“This way.” Coke followed others down the back stairs, past the two privies, around the cesspit. They blended swiftly with people in the back lane.
They did not go far. Along Duke’s Place, out the Aldgate. Just beyond it, on Houndsditch, was a coaching inn, the Hack and Horse. Access to a coach would be a good thing, he thought. Especially one that left for the eastern ports.
The inn was largely empty, it being Sunday morning. He placed Dickon in a corner, gave him coins for small beer and cheese. “Wait here,” he said. “I will return in a few hours.”
Dickon nodded. There was fear in his eyes now. He’d been abandoned too many times. “Read,” the captain said, pointing to the pamphlet where it was stuck in the boy’s breeches. “I will hear you when I get back.”
“C-Cap’n,” Dickon said, and settled on the nest of satchels.
As Coke left the yard, the Church of St. Botolph’s Aldgate began to toll its summons to service. He paused for a moment. Where would he find a jeweller to appraise his wares on the Sabbath? Then he remembered. The one he would visit did not attend any church.
He set off for the Jew.
“It is not that I do not want to help you, my dear Captain. It is that I cannot today.”
“Mr. Ferdinando—”
“Please, sir. Call me by my real name. By the grace of Good King Charles, I no longer need pretend to be a murano.” He laughed. “It was confusing for so long—the choice of being despised as a Portuguese Catholic or despised as a Jew. Let the confusion end and call me as I am.”
Coke took a breath. The man indeed had shed all pretense. When first they’d met for “business” three years before, he had worn wigs, a beaver hat. Now his own curly, silver hair fell to his shoulders, topped with a small circle of leather. “Mr. ben Judah,” he said. “You know I have never despised you or your kind.”
“At least not to my face.”
“Nor away from it. A man’s faith means little to a man who has no faith himself.”
“Now, there you sadden me. All men need faith. Faith is brotherhood. It is comfort in the darkness—even if that darkness lasts for centuries. Look at us Jews of England, exiled from the realm four hundred years ago. Some remained, adopted other names.” He inclined his head. “Ferdinando, for example. And now we are brought out of the darkness. Returned from the wilderness. Yet how could we have survived so long unless with the faith that God would bring the light again?”
“Well, sir,” replied Coke, “the late wars were fought at least partly for faith. For one man’s vision of it over another’s. Every day I saw faithful men pray fervently for God to preserve them in the fight—and the next moment saw them ripped asunder by cannon. Saw others stripped of everything that made them human—nose, ears, skin—and heard them pray to God for merciful death. Saw that death withheld and agony continue, for days sometimes.” He closed his eyes. But the vision of Quentin Absolute appeared behind them, so he opened them again and said, “I have only seen God do the opposite of what he was asked for. So you can understand why faith does not concern me.”
“I can understand, even if I—”
Coke was not there for a pity. He never wanted that from any man. Briskly he changed subjects. “We are straying from the point, sir.” He pushed the necklace across the counter. “I want a fair price for this.”
“And you will get it. Only, not today.”
“I am willing to take a little less today.”
“And I would be happy to offer it.”
“Then do so.”
“I cannot.” The Jew raised his hand to forestall the protest. “Captain, I am largely a gold- and silversmith. I know a little of jewels, but these …” He fingered the piece before him. “I do not know enough. Yet I have a cousin newly arrived from Antwerp. An expert. I will consult him, and then I will offer you a fair price. Bearing in mind the, ah, circumstances of its finding, yes?”
Coke flushed but kept his temper. Did this man know the details of its “finding”? It seemed unlikely—yet the Jews often had knowledge hidden from their gentile neighbours. Did he know already about people falling ill in the neighbourhood? Coke wondered. If plague had come, Isaac ben Judah was a man who would be much visited. Many would be trying to fund flight. Prices would go down.
The goldsmith put on spectacles and picked up the necklace. He held it up to the sunlight from the window. “This much I do know—it’s lovely work,” he said. “And good silver too. I can give you a guinea for that alone, and now. A pity the whole will have to be broken up. You can guess the reasons.” He smiled at Coke, then glanced back at the necklace. “What’s missing here, Captain? Did you keep a stone?”
“I did not. I discovered the necklace so.”
“I see. Well, judging by the setting and by the size of the broken clasps, I would not be surprised if it were a sapphire that is missing. Perhaps the richest jewel of them all. Still—” ben Judah let the necklace drop, caught it just above the table, folded it into some pocket within his cloak “—the rest will fetch a good price without it. Leave this with me.”
“May I return later today?”
“Tomorrow, Captain. Tomorrow.” The Jew held out two hands. A guinea was in one.
Coke took the coin, shook the other hand. “I will be here at eight.”
“And I will be here at noon. There’s a feast tonight in my cousin’s honour. There will be dancing. I may even drink some wine.”
Jewish celebrations could be riotous, he’d heard, and the image of the dignified grey-haired man before him cutting a caper made him smile.
The Jew put a second hand atop their joined ones. “Keep the faith, my friend.”
“I will keep the appointment, sir. No more.”
Coke stepped out of the shop, and squinted into sunlight. The house opposite the Jew’s had burned down some time before, so his was not in shadow, unlike the others in the row. Nearby, a bell tolled twelve. Coke had arrangements to make now, and perhaps a destination to choose. Then tomorrow, with fortune, he and Dickon would leave the realm.
So today, he would go see Lucy Absolute. He needed to, prior to departing for he did not know how long.
Decided, he took a few steps to the west before he remembered that today was the Sabbath and so she would not be at the Lincoln’s Inn playhouse; also that there was no point seeing her unless he had some money. She was ever short of it, and he’d vowed to keep her purse full. She would never have to do what most actresses did to fill it, not if he could help it. This he’d vowed to her brother, Quentin Absolute, the comrade he’d loved—even if he could now not recall one detail of the man’s face, only what it had become after case shot had scoured every feature from it on Lansdown field.