4

THE TRACT OF TEARS

Pitman had always believed that ghosts were nothing but Catholic superstition; that none would rise from their graves to walk again until the last trump sounded and Christ returned to judge both the quick and the dead.

Well, bugger I, he thought, I’ve turned Papist. For there are ghosts before me now.

He watched them from where he lay in the playhouse corridor, each figure shimmering white and moving as slowly as if underwater, their every sound half-drowned, barely piercing the sharp whine that had taken near all his hearing. Yet this was not unfamiliar, this scene, this sound, and he suddenly recalled the cannon that had exploded next to him on the ramparts at Brentford. It had made ghosts of all its crew and nearly him as well though he didn’t see them.

And the king hadn’t been there. This king, indeed, would have been a child then and so unable to stride down the corridor, bend and shake him, mouthing words that slowly, slowly began to penetrate the whine.

‘Pitman? Pitman? Are you hurt? Pitman?’

He swung onto his knees, bent his head, and thought he was going to puke. But the king’s hand was now upon his back, and the king’s voice was becoming clearer. ‘Rest easy, man.’

Instead of vomit he managed spit. His mouth was filled with plaster and he voided it onto the floor. ‘Your pardon, Majesty,’ he managed to croak.

‘Take your time.’ Charles turned. ‘You there! Bring wine.’

Pitman rolled and placed his back against the wall. One of the king’s guards approached flask in hand and he gulped the canary gratefully, swilling his mouth clean. His senses were clearing, he could smell the wine now, and the king’s cologne, even through the sulphurous reek that dominated the air; he could hear other voices down the corridor and even a greater murmur from beyond it, from the auditorium. With returning senses came memory. ‘Captain Coke?’ he gasped and tried to rise.

‘I am here.’

His partner knelt beside the king, who said, ‘Do you have him, sir? I should show myself or the crowd may panic.’

‘I have him.’ Coke smiled. ‘And we have Your Majesty’s canary, so we will be fine.’

‘Keep it,’ said Charles, rising. ‘Recover – and remain, if you please. There are matters here I do not understand, such as your presence – again – when me and mine are under threat. I would discuss it.’

With that he was gone, into the enfolding arms of his guards, several engaged in brushing the plaster from their scarlet coats. He swept into his box, and they heard the upsurge of voices that greeted his reappearance and then his reassuring tone. ‘Calm, ladies, gentlemen, I pray you, calm. I am quite well.’

Someone pulled the thick box curtains closed, and Charles’s voice came to Pitman muffled through them. It let him concentrate on the man before him. ‘You do not look like a ghost, Captain,’ he croaked, coughed and drank.

‘Ghost?’ He looked down. ‘Oh, the powder. Nay, once I’d flung the bomb through the window, I retired swiftly into the shelter of the box.’

He reached down and began to dust Pitman’s shoulder, but the larger man took and held his hand. ‘And the bomber?’

‘Fled. Out the front.’

‘It was our pigeon from the tavern?’

‘It was, aye. But I have his face fixed. We’ll find the rogue again.’

‘Indeed. I would ask him some questions.’ Pitman drank, shaking his head hard. ‘Captain, my hearing is still a little affected. But is that…screaming I hear?’

Coke stood, stepped towards the large hole that the grenado had torn in the wall. ‘ ’Tis. A woman’s and in front of the theatre. She…she’s screaming blue murder and –’ he turned, ‘and real murder too. Someone’s dead out there.’

‘Help me up.’

Pitman thrust out a hand and Coke pulled him to his feet. ‘Are you sure you are able?’ he asked.

‘My body feels like a thousand horses have trampled upon’t. But I’ll manage, on your arm. If there’s murder outside the theatre, it must be connected with the attempted murder within it. Let us see it before some fool interferes with all the evidence.’

They were halfway down the stairs, moving slowly, when the voice halted them. ‘Is all this mayhem to do with the pair of you?’

They looked down. Sarah was at the bottom of the stairs. But she was up them in a moment and her arms around each of them. ‘What happened? What was the explosion? Are you hurt?’

The story, what they knew, was swiftly told as they descended and then stood before the theatre and the mob that milled there. Relief shaded quickly into anger. ‘And you, sir,’ she said, striking Coke on the arm. ‘You try to fob me off with reassurances that your work is none so dangerous?’

‘Most is not, Sarah. Besides, we need –’ He broke off.

‘The money. I know.’ She touched her belly. ‘But our child would rather have a father than a full purse.’

He laid his hand on hers. ‘He shall have both, love.’

‘Oh? You are certain that I carry your son? Marry, sir, it is far –’

‘Peace, both!’ Pitman interrupted. ‘Delighted as I am to witness that you love each other enough to bicker so, we have work here to do.’

He said this as he began to move through the mob across the cobbled lane that separated playhouse and park. But the mob was thickest before one tree – the tree, he now remembered, behind which he’d seen that cloaked and muffled figure before the play. ‘Make way, there,’ he called and, when the backs did not shift, added on a bass bellow, ‘Headborough of the parish! Make way!’

Most parted then, enough to reveal the body on the ground – and a man crouched over it, who looked up now. ‘Not this parish, Mr Pitman. I’m headborough around here.’

He looked down at the man he’d known a little when they were both constables in adjoining parishes in the city. The fellow who’d been plump then was huge now, though his formerly ramshackle beard had lately been trimmed to a regal moustache. ‘Congratulations on your promotion, Mr Deakins. Oh, and it’s Pitman, as you’ll remember no doubt. Plain Pitman, without the “Mr”.’

‘Ah, yes. “Plain Pitman” indeed.’ He extended a hand which Pitman shook. ‘How’s the watch in St Leonard’s?’ He looked at the other’s clothes. ‘Or have you given up crime for plastering?’

‘Nay, still in the field. But at St Mary-le-Bow now.’

Deakins whistled. ‘Now there’s an elevation, sure. Richest parish in the city? Headborough?’ The other nodded. ‘How d’you swing that?’

‘I did the state some service. My reputation –’ He shrugged.

‘Oh yes. I heard something ’bout that. Saved…’ – he looked around at the jostling, whispering crowd – ‘someone’s life, eh?’ He sucked air between his lips. ‘Well, you always had an eye.’ He jerked his head. ‘Care to cast it over this here?’

Pitman nodded, and the two men knelt. ‘Stabbed,’ Deakins said. ‘Right in the heart. Killed him straight. A lucky jab for both, for sure.’

Pitman stared at the man he’d last seen alive in the Seven Stars tavern. Death had smoothed his features, stilled his wild eyes – though it had done nothing to lessen the stench Coke had talked of. Rather the opposite. ‘May I?’ He gestured at the blood-soaked clothes.

‘What you will.’

He felt the wetness. Yet warm, not surprising since he’d fled less than ten minutes before. There was a lot of it too, and its source was confirmed as he pulled open the slick buttons of the doublet and reached inside the lawn shirt. Deakins was right, the heart had been directly punctured. But he was also wrong. The wound was neat, minuscule. No luck was involved here. Not for the victim – nor for his killer.

‘Rest in peace,’ he murmured, reaching up to close the youth’s eyes. Yet as he did he glanced down, and noticed it: the corner of paper sticking out of a pocket in the doublet he’d folded aside; he’d nearly missed it because it had soaked up the blood and so was blended into the cloth. He did not reach for it, though, not yet. Some things needed to be kept to oneself. Instead he turned. ‘Have you constables to take him to the mortuary?’

‘Aye,’ Deakins replied, rose and called out, ‘Egbert! Fleetwood! Here!’

As soon as the man turned, Pitman reached both hands to the corpse – one to prise open the pocket, one to withdraw the paper. A little split off but he got the bulk out and swiftly tucked it away inside his coat.

The watchmen arrived. Sharp orders overcame their reluctance and the wet body was soon slung between them, the crowd parting to let them through. ‘Anything to identify him, Pitman?’ Deakins asked.

‘Nothing.’

‘Ach, we’ll find that soon enough. He’s well dressed, so someone will be missing him. Probably a jealous lover, eh? He must have been pretty enough once to woo the ladies – or the boys,’ he added with a wink. ‘Yes, I’ll be studying the mourners careful. Good fortune, man.’

He left, following his constables, the small crowd moving away to reveal Coke, Sarah and others. Standing with them were two men: one, tall and hefty with the same hard look as one of the king’s guards, who was looking around as one of the guards would do, searching for threats; the other Pitman had met for the first time only the day before. He was, Pitman supposed, their current employer. Under-Secretary for State, he was also the nation’s spymaster. ‘Sir Joseph,’ he said, coming to them. ‘I did not know you liked the theatre.’

‘I loathe it.’ Williamson was long and skinny, bent forward like a heron poised above a fall of water, though not a crested one, his hair long since having retreated over the high, bald dome of his head. He was a Cumbrian by birth, his native vowels further clipped now by his impatience. ‘I would much rather be at my desk and about my business. But something told me I should attend this day. And was I not right?’ He pointed with his chin to the body being carried away. ‘What news?’

‘Have you met Captain Coke and Mrs –’

‘What news, sirrah?’

Pitman had never been a servant and disliked being treated as one. It confirmed what he’d half decided anyway: to withhold whatever his pocket now held. It might be nothing; that he would decide once he’d seen it. Besides, possession of information only he had meant power now – and perhaps coin later. ‘Only this, sir. The would-be assassin is dead. Killed within minutes of his attempt by…’ he hesitated, ‘…by someone who knew what he was about.’

Williamson’s eyes narrowed. ‘By someone, er,’ he glanced at the others then back to Pitman, ‘sanguine?’

Pitman shrugged. ‘Perhaps.’

‘Hmm.’ He stared for a moment longer. ‘We will discuss this further. Tomorrow. Nine o’clock. My office. Whitehall. Bring all your thoughts there. Oh yes. Then there’s this.’

He nodded to the guard who reached beneath his cloak, undid a pouch from his belt, then held it out to Pitman. ‘The sum agreed,’ his employer said, and when Pitman took it, he turned again, taking a step, his guard a shadow on his shoulder. ‘You may go.’

Pitman’s voice halted him. ‘Thank you, sir. But the king ordered us to remain and speak with him.’

The minister stopped and turned. ‘The king has changed his mind. He is ever…changeable. And he would see the end of this play.’

It was Coke who spoke, in surprise. ‘After this?’

‘Especially after this. He would not have any say he is afraid. Indeed, he delights in bravado. It can make his safety a little, ah, difficult to manage.’ He sniffed. ‘However, I am sure the players will struggle to match his sangfroid.’ Finally, his gaze alighted on Sarah. ‘Means “cool blood”, girl. Think you can muster some for His Majesty?’

He spoke as if to a child. Sarah let her accent slip back to the streets she was born in. ‘Oh, I think I might manage it, cock. So ’ow about you pop in after and warm us back up again?’

She was rewarded with the faintest rose on the pallid cheeks. ‘Interesting,’ the spymaster said, before walking away.

He’d merged into the crowd at the playhouse doors before Coke and Pitman broke into laughter. ‘I suspect there’s few who can make that man blush, Mrs Chalker,’ Pitman commented.

‘Ah, he’s just a man in the end. Easy to judge, like all of you.’ She looked to the theatre. ‘Here we go.’

The bugler had stepped out again. His blast was less assured now, his voice wobbly. ‘The p-play. Back to the play. It rec—recommen— starts again.’ The bugler slipped back inside.

‘I will see you later. Here, or at our lodgings?’ Sarah said to Coke.

‘Nay, here,’ he replied. ‘Indeed, I’ll come in and watch. If the king has sangfroid then, damn me, so have I. Pitman? Pitman?’

‘Hmm.’ The thief-taker’s gaze that had been up to the sky returned to them. ‘Er, no. I have matters to attend to. I must go home and see my Bettina. She will have an unguent for my side which still aches from the blast. Maybe she can candle my ears, for they still ring. I will see you both later.’

They went, and Pitman turned his gaze heavenwards again, closing his face to the rain. Sangfroid, he thought – cold blood. He had no doubt that the murder had happened coldly. Blood, still warm from the side of the dead man, soaked into the mud before him.

He stepped under the scant shelter of the same tree and carefully pulled the damp paper from his cloak’s pocket. Unfolding it tore it slightly more, as he was surprised to find that he could not control a palsy in his hand. Yet he was still able to recognise what it was: a prophecy tract that some millenarian had printed up on cheap paper and sold for tuppence. Here, one ‘Hebediah Baker’ had set down his visions. Reading was not one of Pitman’s strengths and he pieced it together slowly, his finger tracing the words, his lips moving.

‘A fire, a consuming fire, shall be kindled in the bowels of the earth which will scorch with burning heat all hypocrites, unstable double-minded workers of iniquity. Yea, a great effusion of blood, fire and smoke shall increase up in the dark habitations of cruelty, howling and great wailing shall be on every hand in all her streets.’

‘Blood. Fire. Smoke,’ he mumbled.

He had seen such tracts as this before. They told of the destruction to be visited upon that modern Babylon, that seventeenth-century Sodom and Gomorrah, that London. Yet this one, stained red by a man who, howsoever deluded, considered himself a martyr, disturbed him as no other had. He raised his eyes to the sky and closed them to the chill rain. And felt it – another crease in the paper. He looked down.

Someone had written in ink a date at the foot of the paper. September the third 666. Not 1666. Just those three numbers that everyone knew – numbers and a date he now watched run from the page in blue and red, and made no effort to stop their blurring.