The bedlam cadaver, p.25
The Bedlam Cadaver, page 25
Jerzy Boroski joined them. He was without his musquetoon, and free of the large coat that served to hide it. He sent a look of apology towards Harry for the way they had previously treated him, a look which turned into a friendly, good-natured grin. On Prusom’s Island, in Wapping, Harry had convinced Königsmarck and his men he had no part in kidnapping Elizabeth Thynne; they obviously all still believed it. Presumably, that was why they had transferred their attention to her husband and his men.
‘Have you no other avenues to enquire along?’ Harry asked.
‘We spend more time hiding than looking,’ Königsmarck complained. ‘All of London thinks us the cruel kidnappers of a rich heiress. Thomas Thynne offers a hundred pounds for our finding.’
‘A whole hundred? I’m only thought worth fifty.’
‘I must remind you, Mr. Hunt, that I am a Count. Besides, the hundred is for all of us, I think.’
‘Does he offer a further reward for finding his wife?’
Königsmarck stared at him, then looked more miserable than ever. ‘So far as I know, he does not.’
‘No, just for the men he accuses of kidnapping her,’ Vratz said. Stern and Boroski murmured their assent, although Harry was unsure how much of the talking they had followed, as it was all conducted in English.
Harry took a long look at the men he was with. At the Count, Karl Johann von Königsmarck, very little older than he was, like him passionately enamoured with another man’s wife, desperate for her return. At Kapitän Christoph Vratz, whose sanguine poise Harry could not help but admire, and whose loyalty to the Count was obvious. At Löjtnant Stern, who eyes constantly probed the demolition site around them, and who constantly fiddled with his hat. At Jerzy Boroski, solidly implacable, apparently imperturbable, and, Harry guessed, utterly dependable.
Harry made his decision. To all the other men’s surprise, he clambered up into the calash.
‘A shame there’s no reward for her,’ he said to them all. ‘Let me take you to Mrs. Elizabeth Thynne.’
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
THE BETHLEHEM RETURN
As they drove through Moorgate, Harry spotted the same disfigured beggar he had donated a sixpence to before, when going this way with Sir John and Joseph Fenn. The beggar had given Harry the idea of wearing a soldier’s uniform to disguise himself; such men are invisible to most.
Vratz halted the calash at Bethlehem Hospital’s gates. Under the watchful eyes of Raving Madness and Melancholy Madness, Harry, Königsmarck, and Vratz walked through them and up the steps. Stern and Boroski stayed behind with their vehicle, its horses drinking thirstily from a trough.
Joseph Matthews, the Porter, allowed them in through the penny-gate. He looked perplexed. Whenever Mr. Hunt had visited with Mr. Hooke, the architect, he always dressed plainly—usually in a brown leather coat, greatly bashed about. But the last time he had worn a waistcoat that probably cost a year of the Porter’s wages. Now Hunt was shabby again. His head had recently been shaved—and what was that paint besmearing each side of it?
Inside the lobby was also Millicent Matthews, the Matron. Recognising Harry, she gave a start. ‘You’ve not come back for William Jones? He’s still aggrieved. How he suffered from being inside the Justice’s lockup!’
‘No, not for him,’ Harry assured her, uncertain if he could trust Bethlehem’s staff not to claim the fifty pounds. ‘I wish to see one of your patients. Up on the female gallery.’
‘A patient?’ The Matron looked amazed. Her husband reassured her by squeezing her hand.
‘Yes,’ Harry said. ‘With these men with me. I’ve no notion of the name you know her by. It will not be her real one, I’m sure. I remember the room she was in.’
Mr. Matthews, looking worried, seemed to make a mental calculation. He reached for his bunch of keys and motioned the visitors across the lobby, to where the stout iron gate at the bottom of the stairs was closed against them. He paused to think again.
‘If you’re unsure about letting us through, you could ask Dr. Allen,’ Harry said.
Matthews shook his head. ‘He’s at his Finsbury madhouse.’
‘Dr. Allen spends much of his time there,’ Harry observed, having detected little respect in the Porter’s tone towards the Physician. ‘Perhaps the Apothecary, Mr. Lester, has authority?’
‘I don’t care to disturb him,’ Matthews replied.
‘He’s a phlegmatic fellow. Does he catch up on his sleep, I wonder? The last time I was here, he seemed in need of it.’
‘I shan’t speak out of turn,’ Matthews said, rolling his eyes complicitly. ‘You’re visitors, as any other visitors. Of course, I shall let you through.’ He bent to unlock the gate, performed with a great clanking of metal on metal. The men left the Matron behind at the bottom of the stairs.
The Hospital seemed eerily silent.
‘Last time I came here, a woman sang,’ Harry said.
Matthews scowled. ‘For a while, her singing was pleasant. But imagine such songs all day, and the day after, and all the days after that? We no longer allow it.’
‘How have you silenced her?’
‘We no longer allow it,’ Matthews repeated, not looking back as he led them upstairs.
After Matthews had unlocked and relocked the upper gate, Harry pointed to the far end of the women’s gallery. As he, Königsmarck, Vratz, and Matthews walked along it, golden evening sun raked in through the windows, angling across them. Only a few other visitors were in among the patients allowed the liberty of the gallery, who stood in their habitual desultory groups, apart from those preferring solitude.
Harry aimed for one of the rooms near the top of the western staircase, the one he had climbed with the Justice and Fenn. Its door stood wide open. The room was cool, just as Robert Hooke had designed it to be. Fresh air came in through its glassless window.
The room was empty.
‘She was here,’ Harry said to Matthews. ‘Manacled. And gagged, because she uttered profanities, Dr. Allen told me. Bad enough to raise Satan’s eyebrows, he said. She lay just there, on that mattress. The woman next door has straw.’
On seeing her portrait in Sir Peter Lely’s drying room, Harry had recognised her straightaway. The same eyes—although when he first saw them, here in this room, they had been terrified. The same resolute chin, under the gag, and the same confident nose above it. Harry had thought her hair—in her portrait a shade darker than copper—had been shaved to make her scalp ready for blistering, but more likely it was to conceal her identity: Elizabeth Thynne, heiress to the Percy estates.
‘The girl was only in for a short while, I recall,’ Matthews replied. ‘Her replacement is out in the gallery.’ He went to the window and looked down into the exercise yard, as if he might find Elizabeth there. ‘Was she even here for a night?’ he asked himself.
‘It was only ten days ago,’ Harry pressed him. ‘You must remember.’
‘I do. The first time I saw her was when I came to the women’s floor with you and the Justice.’
‘You saw nothing of her arrival?’
Matthews shook his head earnestly. ‘Nor of her leaving. I have little to do with the goings-on of the women’s gallery. My wife has dominion over this floor.’
Königsmarck stared at the empty bed, willing Elizabeth to reappear on it. ‘Where have they taken Betty?’
‘Is she elsewhere in the building?’ Harry asked Matthews. ‘In another room?’
Matthews shook his head. ‘Dr. Allen discharged her.’
‘You’ve no notion where she is.’
‘No notion at all. Remember, I’m but the Hospital’s Porter.’
‘We must find Dr. Allen,’ Harry replied. ‘Or we could ask the Apothecary. He may know of it.’ His face darkened. ‘I suspect others here know more.’
‘What do you mean by that?’ Matthews demanded. ‘You questioned us before, when you thought we’d swapped two women. You accused us. The Justice arrested Jones, our Basketman. I’ve allowed you inside from my goodwill towards you, Mr. Hunt. Your association with Mr. Hooke lets you in. I know you’re looked for. There’s a reward.’
‘I thank you for that, Mr. Matthews.’ Harry let out his breath to gather himself. ‘I don’t accuse you. I know why Sebiliah Barton was led to self-slaughter. That’s what angers me. She expected a child.’
Matthews looked genuinely dumbfounded. ‘I didn’t know that.’ He paused, thinking through the consequences of Harry’s information. ‘Sebiliah didn’t leave here for over a year.’
‘It was not yet too apparent.’
‘I’m sorry for it,’ Matthews said.
‘And the Hospital was willing to hold another woman against her will. I believe, only on the wishes of her husband.’
‘Not the Hospital, Mr. Hunt,’ Matthews said. ‘It’s the Physician, Dr. Allen, who elects who comes, and who goes.’
* * *
THE GROUP OF MEN WENT BACK downstairs, the Porter doing his duty with his keys.
When they reached the lobby, the first thing Harry laid eyes on was a bright red coat. Following up it led to a zigzag nose, a gaunt face, and deep-set eyes.
Joseph Fenn, aiming a flintlock pistol, nodded to him.
Next to the Marshalman stood the Justice of Peace, Sir John Reresby, grim-faced and tapping his stick.
And, running through the penny-gate to join them, Kidd and Singer.
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
THE WOUNDED CHERUB
‘Those are the men!’ Kidd shouted, pointing across the lobby. ‘Henry Hunt! With him’s the Swedish Count. And that, I’d hazard, is Vratz. Our master thinks they’ve taken with them his wife!’
Sir John flicked his nose. ‘Your master being Mr. Thomas Thynne? Then you pair must be his Gamekeeper, Mr. Kidd, and his Steward, Mr. Singer. Who is who? Which is the yellow, and which the blue?’
‘I’m Kidd,’ said the man with the scar, whose face and shirt were streaked with lead-tin yellow. He moved past the Justice to take Harry by the arm. ‘Mr. Thynne’s eager to question them.’
The Justice looked askance at him and twitched his stick. ‘As am I.’
Fenn turned his pistol a few degrees—far enough to redirect Kidd’s attention.
Feeling threatened, Kidd stepped back.
Sir John inspected Harry, who was also marked with paint. ‘I would never have known you, Henry Hunt, with your bald head and dishevelment. You are not the man I met at Gresham. You have done well to evade us so long, I credit you with that.’
Then he swivelled his head on his thick neck, looking at the other men with Harry. ‘Three birds together. Count Königsmarck. Is this your Kapitän, Christoph Vratz?’
Königsmarck and Vratz both nodded curtly. Vratz eyed the penny-gate, trying to see if it was unlocked. The Steward, Carter, stood by it, having opened it at the Justice’s knock. Kidd and Singer had arrived soon afterwards.
‘But no Mrs. Thynne,’ Sir John said.
Singer looked slyly at him. ‘You know our master’s importance, Justice. His influence. You’ve played your part to find these men, so be happy you’ve discharged your duty. I’m sure Mr. Thynne will recompense you for your time.’
Sir John’s face flushed a deep, dark red. ‘You must know your master well, since you presume to speak for him. You think you know me, too, as a magistrate to be bought.’ The Justice’s whole body quivered with indignation. ‘And you threaten me with Mr. Thynne’s clout.’ His vowels had become even more northern; short, sharp—cuttingly so. ‘You place him so far above the law he may take miscreants from its officials. Well, you are mistaken in all. Remember my influence, which comes from the King. Not from his bastard son, nor the seditious shits who support him. Even the shits in Parliament. Get you two gone to Cannon Row. Have no fear of this. If these men know of Mrs. Thynne, then they shall tell us soon enough.’
‘They have her, Justice!’ Singer protested. ‘Everything they do shows it. Mr. Thynne’s most anxious for his wife’s return.’
‘He’s not, I think,’ Harry said. ‘Sir John, these two men barged into Sir Peter Lely’s house, where they bullied him and his staff. They didn’t seek Mrs. Thynne.’
‘We never barged,’ Singer said.
‘Nor did we bully,’ Kidd added. ‘We looked for her.’ He glowered ferociously at Harry. ‘Of course we did.’
‘Inside the printing workroom, you looked along shelves. Did you expect to discover her sitting upon one?’
‘We tried to search all his house.’ Kidd spoke to Harry but looked at the Justice. ‘But you prevented us. You did your utmost to stop us finding her.’
‘For what was your search?’ Harry persisted. ‘Not for the portrait, as you continued to look after I saw you with it. You sought something smaller.’
Kidd and Singer looked at each other, then at the Justice. ‘Arrest these men, Sir John,’ Kidd said, as if he gave the Justice permission. ‘They’re murderers and kidnappers.’
‘Something smaller,’ Harry continued. ‘Perhaps for papers. Or a bo—’
The bang was so loud inside Bethlehem Hospital’s lobby, it stunned all the men in it.
Pain in Harry’s eardrums made him think they had burst. Smoke obscured his vision, although he was allowed a dim view of Fenn lying on his back with Kapitän Vratz on top of him. Vratz tried to pull himself away from the Marshalman; Fenn had locked his legs around him. Königsmarck pulled at Fenn’s fingers, wishing to extricate the pistol from his grasp. The pistol could not shoot again, but it might be used as a club. When Vratz had grabbed at it, it had fired a bullet into one of the lobby’s wooden cherubs, whose ear was shot away.
Gathering his senses, Sir John raised his blackthorn stick and charged towards Königsmarck, his limp barely slowing him down. The Count fended him off with a lurch to one side, and managed to wrap his arm around the stick and twist it away from the Justice’s grip. Vratz finally scrabbled clear of Fenn, whose veering nose was bloody. As he did so, he kicked out at the pistol in Fenn’s hand, which spun away from all of them.
Vratz got to his feet and ran to the penny-gate, pausing to check that Königsmarck followed. Carter—unwilling to risk injury—pushed open the gate to help them on their way. The two mercenaries ran off down the Hospital’s steps. About halfway down, Königsmarck flung the Justice’s stick behind them.
‘Damn! Damn! Damn!’ Sir John cursed, rubbing his aching thigh. Fenn sat up, blood dripping over his mouth and chin, and onto the lobby’s floor.
‘Their flight proves their guilt,’ Kidd said. ‘I told you they have Mr. Thynne’s wife.’
‘It proves nothing of the kind,’ Harry said. ‘More like, they’re averse to arrest.’
‘You did little to stop them, I noticed, Mr. Kidd,’ Sir John said. ‘You neither, Mr. Singer. Mr. Thynne described you to me as competent, soldierly men, yet you have little fight in you.’
‘We’ve proved our mettle many a time,’ Singer said, sneering at him.
‘Yet today you are careful to avoid altercation.’
‘I thought the same at Sir Peter Lely’s house,’ Harry said. ‘You don’t look for Elizabeth Thynne. Elizabeth Thynne, I say—I notice you only ever call her Mr. Thynne’s wife.’
Singer turned his sneer towards Harry. Kidd wore a similar expression.
Sir John nodded to Fenn. Fenn undid a new, shining pair of manacles from his belt, dripping blood onto them. Harry, feeling numb, could only think what his arrest was likely to lead to. He had seen the Tyburn Fair procession. He had been caught up in it, in fact, when inside the Justice’s coach, before Königsmarck’s men took him. Was that really only nine days ago? He remembered a couple of white-suited men on one of the carts, and a woman badly gashed, as the crowd had taken against her.
In the eyes of the two men arresting him, Königsmarck’s and Vratz’s escape could only further confirm Harry’s guilt, because of his association with them. Despondently, Harry put out his wrists; Fenn clasped the manacles over them.
After giving the manacles a shake to check they were fast, Fenn reclaimed his pistol from the floor. He reloaded it from the pouch on his belt, then raised it close to Harry’s face. ‘In case the Count and his men come back for you,’ he said, in his rasping whisper.
‘Get the intelligence out of him now,’ Singer demanded, judging Sir John had composed himself. ‘Then we may take the news to Mr. Thynne.’
‘You mean bully it from him.’ For a moment, Sir John looked ready for persuasion.
Kidd nodded vehemently, shaking lead-tin yellow to the floor. ‘Nothing you’ve not done before.’
Sir John’s expression darkened again. ‘You are far from Longleat now.’
Kidd and Singer looked at one another, then both shrugged their acceptance of defeat.
‘Get you gone,’ Sir John said to them. ‘When back at Cannon Row, together you may combine your colours. Your yellow, Mr. Kidd, and your blue, Mr. Singer, in commixture shall make the colour of your Green Ribbon Club. Of all those who support Monmouth in his bid to be king. The colour chosen by Shaftesbury, and his Brisk Boys.’
‘We’re not Brisk Boys,’ Kidd said, scornfully. ‘We only do our master’s bidding.’
‘As do I,’ Sir John growled. ‘Come, Fenn. Let us take our prisoner.’
They turned, Sir John with a last, somewhat consoling look at Kidd and Singer—he knew they would have to face their master’s wrath—and walked through the penny-gate.
Fenn walked close behind Harry, pointing the pistol at his back.
* * *
SIR JOHN RECLAIMED HIS STICK FROM the steps. By Bethlehem’s gates, a pair of marshalmen wearing the same red as Fenn waited by the Justice’s carriage. Both were armed, one with a pistol, one with a musket. Like Fenn, they also wore swords.
