Gloriana

THE THIRD CHAPTER

Captain Quire sat up on his grey and grease-veined bedsheet, flicking an ankle free of a blanket which clung to it like a dying rat, staring at a diffident young girl who, with a basket, had entered the seedy room. “The sewing?”

“Yes, sir. I was sent to fetch it.” Bodice, petticoats and embroidered skirt too lavish for her station and evidently her own work. A good pair of hips; shy, sensual features. Quire grunted.

In his shirt Quire stretched a hand to the stool where all his torn and bloodstained clothing lay, black, damp, muddy. The shirt itself had blood on it. He peeled some patches off as his eye caught them, he brushed his thick hair back from his wide forehead and stared as she moved towards the stool. “My clothes are important to me. Those clothes. They are me. They are my victims. It’s why they must be washed and mended well, my girl. Your name?”

“Alys Finch, sir.”

“I’m Captain Quire, the murderer. Shakestaffs of the Watch seek me. I slew a Saracen last night. A young noble with a perfect body, unblemished. It’s blemished now. Twenty times my sword slipped into him.”

“A duel, sir, was it?” Her voice was trembling as she reached for the rags.

He drew out his blade from beneath the bedclothes; a finely made sword, a perfect weapon, the best of its kind. “Look! No, it was clever murder, disguised as a duel. We went out to the fields behind White Hall and there I killed him. You’re a pretty little dell, ain’t you. That’s good hair, brown and curly. I like it. Big eyes, full lips. Are you broken yet, young Alys?”

She took his breeches up and put them in her basket while his calm, terrible eyes looked at her bodice. “No, sir. I hope to marry.”

His smile was almost tender as he touched her shoulder with his unclean sword, as if he dubbed her a Lady. “Unlace, Alys, and let me see your buds. This sword"-he stroked her throat with it-"has killed so many. Some were fairly slain. But at my suggestion last night’s Moor was tying back his robe’s hems, bending, when I took him first, below the ribs and ripping up, swiftly, in and out. There were witnesses I could never have suspected on such a dark cold night.” Quire’s tone became momentarily bitter. “The trees were frozen. Our lanterns were shielded. But two soldiers, more’s the pity, of the Watch, came by-and one of them recognised me.” He directed her fingers to her laces and the blouse began to loosen, though she fumbled a great deal, out of fear. His voice was distant. “They attacked before my Saracen was properly dead-the slashes in my coat and doublet are theirs, and so’s this cut on my thigh.” He patted a place beneath his shirt. “The hole in the hose is where the Saracen struck at me with a knife from the ground, the traitor-I’d thought him dead-even as Tinkler took his boots from him, his lantern set aside. Fine, fancy boots, but Tinkler daren’t wear ‘em now. See his blood, there? And that, closer to the tip? A soldier I dispatched before his comrade ran away.” He held the point under her eye so that she became very still; he touched it to her lips. “Taste.”

The blouse entirely loosened, he pushed the linen back. She had small breasts, not full as yet. He prinked at the tip of one with the sword. “You’re a good girl, Alys. You’ll come back to me soon, eh? You’ll bring my sewing?”

“Yes, sir.” She breathed heavily but cautiously, having turned a strong colour.

“And you’ll be an obedient girl, shall you, and let Captain Quire be first to your treasures?” His sword-point fell from cleft to cleft. “Shall you, Alys?”

Roe’s eyes closed, rose lips parted. “Yes.”

“Good. Kiss the sword, Alys, to seal our pact. Kiss the soldier’s brittle blood.” She kissed as the door thumped. He directed her hands to her laces and looked lazily towards the sound. “Aye?” As an afterthought he pricked her shoulder for a red pearl, which formed. “Good girl,” he whispered. “You are Quire’s now.” He stretched up, grasped her, sucked the wound, then fell back upon the stained linen. “Who’s there?”

“The innkeeper’s wife. Marjorie, sir, with the food you ordered, and the suit.”

Quire wondered for a moment, then shrugged, keeping a good grip on his Toledo sword. “Come in, then.”

The woman floundered through, a coarse sea-cow, frowning at Alys Finch, who, with a quick breath, bobbed and made for the door.

“Soon, Alys.” Quire spoke affectionately.

“Yes, sir.”

Taking the dark suit from under his fat landlady’s arm, Quire began to dress, in evident dismay, while she placed the tray of mutton stew, bread and wine upon the chest at the foot of the bed. “These were the best you could find, Marjorie?”

“And I was lucky, Captain.”

“Then here you are.” He handed her an angel, a piece of gold.

“It’s too much.”

“I know.”

“You’re evil, through and through, Captain, but you’re a generous devil.”

“Many devils are.” He drew the stool to the chest, grasped the big spoon and began on the mutton. “It’s in their interest.” He was wiry, muscular and dangerous as he ate.

Marjorie lingered. “There was a fight up at the Seahorse, then? A rough place.”

“No rougher than this, and better booze. It was in White Hall fields, though. A duel, interrupted by the Watch, who now seek me.”

“It’s a foolish law that stops men duelling. Why shouldn’t they kill one another, useless slopgollops? The Queen’s too soft.”

“Ah, well, better that than too hard.” Quire, so used to being lured, adopted an instinctive neutrality. “And the law’s to stop murder under the guise of the duel, and to stop the decline in gentlemen bridegrooms. They were slaying one another at far too fast a rate. The Queen feared for the continuation of the aristocracy. No nobles would mean a dissolute future, in Chaos!”

“Oh, Captain!”

“’Tis true as this stew is tasty.” He did not flatter her.

“It’s good, that, you monster.” Mistress Marjorie folded her arms. “What were you doing with Crown’s dell?”

A dark grin. Quire put bread to stew, knowing a would-be cohort in sin. “Quickening her interest, awakening her blood, warming her up for the time I’ll need comfort, maybe.”

“You’d terrified her. She has a lad. Starling’s son.”

“Of course I frightened her. ‘Tis the best way to enrich her imagination and guarantee her curiosity, for she’ll want to test herself against me-and all the time tremble for enslavement. Don’t I frighten you, Marjorie?”

“I think I can control you.” But she was doubtful, holding on to her gold in one fist. She picked at the corner of her mouth.

“I’m glad you think so.” He was not ironic.

“But Alys Finch is no doxy for the likes of you.” Weakly. “She’s a good girl.”

“She is indeed. The Watch?” He had his doublet belted. He wriggled uncomfortably; he tied faded cotton about his long throat. He sat to drag on his jack-boots, lacing them above the knee.

“No closer. But they will be. Many know you stay here.”

He downed a sparing glass-"Aye"-found his hat, smoothed the feathers. “Finch and Starling? She’d lay a strange egg if allowed to pair, what?”

“Leave her to him. He’s a hot-tempered boy.”

“Oh, Marjorie, my interest wanes already. Let them build their nest.” He fingered the hat on his head and tilted it. He grinned at her, thin-lipped. “Maybe I’ll play cuckoo, later, when it’s spring.”

“You’ll be hanged by then.”

“Not Quire. Besides, Gloriana hangs no one. And even if the Law were changed I’d survive. For I am Quire the Trickster, Quire the Thief-I’ve too many deeds undone, as yet-too great a fascinated audience for my art, awaiting my masterpiece.” He sheathed the long sword, slipped knife in boot, poignard at his back. “And I’m Quire the Shadow. I’ll need a cloak.”

She shrugged, her smile doting, as upon a wicked, charming son. “Downstairs. Choose one on the run and it may be the owner won’t notice.”

“Thanks.” He pinched her arm to show gratitude and she watched him go through the door, into the glooms, the light from the landing window catching his gleaming eye for a moment before he had flown down the stairs, taking her advice. She heard a scuffle, a bench go over, a yell, then prepared herself to soothe the fresh-robbed diner.

Quire plunged in stolen fur through the dirty snow of London’s lanes, where men and women cursed and slipped and children slid and giggled in and out of the mist while breath and steam mingled at foodstalls set up to provide high-priced soups, pasties and nuts to the shivering, desperate crowd as it flowed. His pursuer was too cold to follow far, and Quire took Leering Street, piled at the sides with frozen snow mixed with urine and manure from the mews flanking it, turned into covered Rilke’s Passage, into Craving Lane, beside the gothic walls of the Platonic College, to a plaza in which a frozen fountain (Hercules and the Hydra) shone with pink and green lights, reflections of the lanterns on the walls of some fashionable ordinary. Another archway or two, through a crowd of snow-fighting boys, into a darker mist, half-fog, half-smoke, from a glueman’s brazier, out of that and Quire was back at last in his alleys, slowing his pace as he reached the peeling door of an alehouse most men would have preferred to pass, Bale’s. Quire sniffed the hop-sweet air before he tried the door and found it open. He left cold and damp behind him and entered stifling heat while unshaven features turned suspicious eyes over hunched shoulders, for there was not a client of Bale’s who did not earn a living by thievery or begging; the place was shunned by the jack-thieves and other rogues of higher rank, and this suited Quire, for he found no enemies here, only admirers, or those who betrayed a thin sort, a safe sort, of envy, not worth his considering. At the far end of the long, narrow room, behind his counter, lounged the unwholesome Bale with his jugs of beer and cider and his pouch of farthings and ha’pence, and on the left of him, leaning where the bar met a black beam set into a lath and plaster wall, snag-toothed Tinkler, sword jutting under a dead watchman’s leather coat.

Quire was surprised. He approached the counter, waving aside the mug Tinkler offered him. “Here already? Did you visit our friend as I told you?”

“Aye. I’m from there, just now.”

Quire put out his hand. “You have the documents to save us further dodging?”

Tinkler scratched his exposed tooth and shook his head, his eyes confused.

“What? Are we without a patron, all at once?” Quire betrayed a hint of frustration, perhaps of consternation. He lifted his arm and placed it round Tinkler’s bony shoulders.

“He refuses a blank this time. It’s too serious, Captain.” Tinkler whispered, even though Bale, tactful from experience, had moved to the far end of the counter and was counting copper.

“I thought he wanted his Oriental extinguished.”

“He calls our work clumsy. He disapproves very greatly.”

Quire agreed. He sighed. “So it was. But it was an accident, the Watch. You paid the ruffler? King?”

“Half an angel, as agreed.” Tinkler showed the split coin on his palm and grinned. “There it is.”

“You killed him?”

“No. I took it back from him at dice before I left for our friend’s. So much terror filled him, because of the Watch being on the hunt, that he could not think. I was good to him, Captain, as you suggested. He has all the Saracen’s effects now and doubtless will have tried to pawn some ring, or that jewelled cutlass.”

“He’ll betray us, of course, when caught.” Quire laid a palm upon his heavy jaw. “I expected no more. But without our papers we’ve no alibi.”

“Bale here would speak for us. Or Uttley at the Seahorse.”

“No good. Who’d believe ‘em? We need our patron’s powerful signature. Won’t he scrawl it at all, Tink?”

“He’s angry. He says to give yourself to the Watch. Then to Sir Christopher Martin’s inquisition. You must plead a plot against you, speak of King’s rivalry-a common ruffler. Something of a stolen hat and cloak-yours. And so on.”

“And I’m transported.”

“No. If you’re swift to do this our friend will send Sir Christopher evidence that you were elsewhere-on Queen’s business-and you’re free. But he says you must act immediately, for you’re needed-an urgent task. You must be clean before you begin, or his plans are tangled. See?”

“Aye, but he could be tangling me.”

“Why be so complicated?”

“Because he knows I’m hard to murder. He could use this to ensure my exile. But it doesn’t smell of that sort of scheme. Every spider spins his own web and the work can always be recognised, after a while.”

“Then you’ll present yourself to Sir Christopher’s men?”

“No choice, Tinkler. Still, I’m resentful of the time it’ll take, particularly if there’s urgent business to follow. When shall I sleep?”

Tinkler, putting a leather cup to his twisted lip, looked surprised, as if he had never imagined his master anything but forever awake.