It was late morning the following Saturday that I was due to meet with Susan Appleby. I had sent a message to Alice, but there was no reply. It was not surprising; the maid would have to bide her time, since she was fully engaged as a working servant in her household, but it was annoying to be ignored, or so I felt. Perhaps her master, Loughgren, had resented her afternoon with me. It was not as if maids were granted afternoons away from their households. It was irritating, especially since I was keen to arrange our next assignation. However, I determined that on the Friday it was impossible for me to leave the house in case Bagnall and his two vagabonds were outside. So I waited patiently, and by Saturday I felt secure enough. Besides, I was full of excitement for the bouts to come. Susan is an excellent bedfellow, and I was looking forward to a mutually wearying encounter, as I instructed Raphe to step to the door and ensure that no one was waiting outside. I had already loaded and set my handgun in my belt, where I could quickly bring it to bear.
On hearing his confirmation that all looked well, I slipped out, past the great church of St Helen’s, and back to Bishopsgate, where I procured a horse from a stable I knew, and trotted off, out of the city and up into the countryside. It had rained the previous weekend, and the waterways and ditches were full, the sun sparkling off the water. In such glorious weather, the journey was most pleasant, with pedestrians and riders alike smiling and cheerful in the bright sunshine. For my part, I was in a mood to be tolerant of all. I had my money from Geoffrey Vanderstilt, and while I had heard nothing from Alice, there was still the strumpet Susan to entertain me.
On reaching the inn, I soon saw her sitting decorously in a corner. Two patrons of the bar were attempting to engage her in conversation, but she was more than capable of fending them off, I knew, so I went and haggled over the price of a room for the afternoon, and had soon engaged a good-sized bedchamber over the front of the establishment. As soon as I had the key, I walked over to Susan, and gave the two suitors a cool glance as she took my hand and followed me, all meekness and sobriety, to the stairs. I had not climbed halfway before she was panting in my ear and yanking at my codpiece.
‘Woman! Wait till we are installed in our room,’ I pleaded, but she only chuckled throatily, and thrust her little hand inside, almost making me collapse there and then.
Somehow I managed to escape, and hurried up the staircase to the room allocated, where I entered, pulled her inside, and locked the door before she attacked me again.
This time I was prepared, and cast off my hauberk, sword, belt, jack and codpiece. She rocked back on her heels, already clad only in her chemise, and then we were grappling on the bed, and – well, as a sophisticated gentleman, I shall leave us there.
Suffice it to say that two hours later, I was exhausted, and Susan rose and prepared to leave me and return home. We parted on contented terms, she with a demure kiss and a prayer that we might meet again very soon. Standing there in the doorway, she looked as chaste as a nun. No one could tell what a ferocious vixen she was in bed from looking at her.
‘It was a shame, wasn’t it?’ she said as she pulled on gloves.
‘What?’
‘Your tenant. His disappearance.’
I gaped. ‘Disappearance?’
‘Yes.’ She glanced at me. ‘Didn’t you know? He went out two days ago and never came back.’
‘I had no idea. What happened?’
‘Last Thursday he went to a friend’s house for a meal, but did not return. His servant hasn’t seen him since. He was supposed to visit another merchant in the city, and he visited that house, but by all accounts, he left there in plenty of time to get home. Geoffrey disappeared between his house and yours.’
‘But that is terrible!’ I blurted. I was dependent upon the money from my tenant. Without it, I had a hole in my finances until I was instructed and paid for a fresh assassination. But, as I have explained, I had received little by way of encouragement that I could expect further commissions. It was a horrible situation in which to find myself. ‘Where can the fool have gone? I hope the constable is aware and searching for him?’
‘Of course. But there is no indication of foul play. Nobody saw him, and no one has discovered his body, so it’s thought that he must have run away. Everyone knows he owed you money for the house, for it’s said you were overheard threatening him. Others were owed too.’
‘No, he paid me,’ I said absently.
‘He didn’t pay his other debts. I know he kept saying that the money was coming shortly, but perhaps he thought it wouldn’t come soon enough, and he chose to run back to Holland. That was where he came from, I think.’
‘And this was Thursday?’
‘Yes.’
I cast my mind back. Of course, that was the evening after I had been happily rattling Alice at the inn. But although Vanderstilt had paid his original debt, I was depending on his regular payments. Susan slipped through the door, blissfully unaware of the horrible revelation she had imparted. I had debts of my own, in God’s name. If this poltroon of a foreigner had simply grabbed his things and run, what was I to do?
The first thing I must do was find out what had happened. I gathered myself, dressed, and rode back quickly to the stables, where I deposited my mount, and then hurried over to my old abode.
It was a house apparently in mourning. When I hammered upon the door, it opened slowly to display the features of the old bottler, Peter.
‘Where is he?’ I demanded.
The old man’s greying features were twisted and he exhibited every sign of distress. If he had only been a little younger, I could have been sympathetic. Younger men tend to be faster to resort to their fists. Since this fellow was so ancient and feeble, I felt secure in my ability to overawe him.
‘Where is your master?’
‘I do not know,’ he said, gazing at me from eyes bleary with age.
I knew how to deal with such recalcitrance. I kicked at the closed door. ‘Don’t give me that, churl! Has he taken his clothes? His money? His belongings? No? Then he must mean to return! Where has he gone?’
‘He went out to visit a customer, but he never returned.’
‘Which customer?’
The old man gave me the sort of look a gardener would cast at a slug. Eventually I learned that his fool of a master had gone to see a certain Sir Edmund de Vere to discuss business, but that he had not returned.
‘You must have some idea – did you not ask Sir Edmund’s household whether they knew what had happened?’
Of course not. The bovine fool could not imagine such a presumptuous course. I continued, trying to restrain my rising frustration, ‘Where is his office? Where does he work?’
The old man led me up to the room that had been my own strongroom. There he took a key from the ring at his belt and opened the door.
I studied the lock with interest, and then I took the key from him. He tried to hold it back, but I was stronger, and jerked it free. His head lowered, as I thought, in submission or acceptance of his subservient position, and I looked at the keys.
‘This lock has been changed!’
‘Perhaps my master did not trust that another key was held by someone.’
‘Only I had another key,’ I pointed out. Then I realized his insult. ‘You mean to suggest that I might break in and burgle the house? My own damned house? Yet he trusted you with all his keys? Why would he do that?’
‘Mayhap he felt I was with his keys and money safer than others might be.’
‘You villain! You dare insult a man of my standing?’
He said nothing to that. Obviously being confronted by a gentleman was unnerving for him. I tossed the keys back to him and stepped into my strongroom.
Little had changed. There was a new table, with a chest behind it. On the table sat a pair of quills and ink, while a pot with a spoon in it held sand for drying wet ink. After a show of reluctance, the servant shuffled forward and opened the chest. Inside there was no money, only a selection of papers that spoke of the wealth Geoffrey Vanderstilt was bringing in with his ships. There were also a number of notes itemizing his personal debts, with money owed to merchants, tradesmen, a master of defence, and a number of ship’s chandlers and other fellows of that sort. I riffled through a few. Most were to moneylenders, some to Lewan de Beaulieu and other merchants, some to his vintner – which was a shocking sum. The man must have had the belly of an elephant from the look of the wine he consumed!
‘Where is his money?’ I demanded, aghast. The money he had sent the previous week, I had thought, meant his ship had docked, and that he had money. Had he spent it all? It had not occurred to me that there would be no money here in his strongbox.
‘I do not know, but wherever it might be, it is his.’
‘I need my rental money for the month.’
‘He paid you for last month and this when I brought the money to you last Thursday,’ he asserted accurately enough, damn his eyes!
‘Yes, but there are other expenses, and if he wants to be able to return here, I will need the next month booked and paid for,’ I said. A listener might have said I sounded unconvincing, perhaps that I blustered a little, but the fact was, I was obviously in the right of it, and was due more money.
He disagreed. Perhaps he thought I sounded unconvinced. It is certainly true that I was a little unsure of my position. But it was my house, and I was within my rights to demand payment in advance. Especially if the house’s tenant had picked up his bags and fled. True, he had left behind a strongbox with proof of all his debts – but most men would be happy to leave all their debts behind.
‘He will be halfway to Holland by now,’ I said glumly. ‘He has taken his money and fled. You will have to clear off out of my house while I seek a new tenant. I’ll sell his goods to try to recoup some of my losses.’
‘He will return.’
‘Really? Where is he, then? I think he has run away. Did he have problems? Women? He certainly had enough debts.’ Unconsciously my eyes turned as though I could see through the walls to Susan’s house opposite. Had the harpy Susan taken a fresh lover from my old house? It would not surprise me if she had. She was ever eager for a romp.
‘No, he had no problems of that sort.’
‘Right, well, give me those keys. I will need to see what has been taken.’
‘No, master. These are his, and I will hold them,’ he said.
‘I think you will find I have the right to demand them,’ I said, and I squared up to him, fixing a stern glower to my features. I have been told that my stern looks can terrify even hardened warriors.
Not, apparently, in this case. The man, unperturbed, hooked the keys back on to his belt. ‘No.’
I snatched at them, and to my astonishment the old man moved like a snake. In terms of speed, I mean, because his arm came down and blocked my grasping hand, and he turned his left side to me, both fists raised in the unmistakable stance of a professional fighter. ‘I said no!’
Seeing he was determined, I gave him a conciliatory smile and stepped back a pace. ‘Friend, I did not mean to insult you,’ I said, rubbing my forearm where he had struck it. ‘But this is my house. I have to ask for the keys. If a door is locked, I must have access. You say your master will return. That is all well, but if he was knocked on the head on Saturday and his body dropped into the river, what then? Do you expect to be permitted to live here rent free until his body is discovered? It may never be. Too many men have been dropped into the Thames and never seen again. He may be one such.’
‘You seem to know much about murder.’
‘Me? No! No more than any other man,’ I protested. ‘Now, the keys.’
A little while later I left.
It was apparent to me that it was more diplomatic to allow the old fellow to keep the keys. He clearly felt a loyalty to his foreign master, and was most reluctant to pass them to me. That was all well, I felt. Besides, he looked as though he could best me even when I was armed with a sword and he had no weapon.
So I departed my house empty-handed, and as I did, glancing up the street, I saw a familiar face. It was that of the tor who had not possessed a club when the two moorstone blockheads accosted me with their master.
Seeing him, I was instantly convinced that it was time I was on my way, and even as he lumbered upright from his leaning position, I turned and took to my heels at the fastest rate I could go.
These fellows were infuriating. They must have known that I would return to my old haunts, and were prepared to leave a guard outside my house until that moment. But what did they want from me? A simple matter of blackmail, is how it had appeared to me then, but now a more thoughtful Jack was reconsidering. They had known I had been back to my house; they knew to watch for me. The question was why?
In the absence of my master, John Blount, there was only one man I felt I could speak to.
But first, I had to dislodge my persistent pursuer. I hurried to the river, and managed to gain the attention of a wherryman who took me over the water to the Surrey side, and then, by dint of hurrying down a series of alleys to London Bridge, I took a second wherry to near the Tower, where there was a landing stage.
From there, I managed to make my way home, a thoughtful Jack, wondering what on earth could have tempted these fools to follow me. They wanted to blackmail me as an assassin, so perhaps they were following in the hope of catching me in the act?
All I knew was I needed advice and help.