The Point of Death (7 page)

'To
business,' ordered Tom after a moment. They looped a noose around Julius Morton's body and pulled it tight beneath his arms, then they lowered him into the pit. As soon as the weight of the body came off the rope, Tom reached over to loop it round the lowest beam and tie it into place. If the time came, it would be an easy enough matter to pull him up again. Then it was but a matter of minutes before the covering was back in place, exactly as they had found it, and not even the most careful watch-keeper would have been any the wiser.

It
was as well they were quick about their work, for the wind, as fickle as the bawd it pretended to be, was carrying the reek of the carrion dogs up to the army of wildcats on the Scavenger's heaps, and the dangerous creatures were sidling down to explore already.

The
three of them turned away with great relief to finish their mission - they really did, after all, have to deliver Master Henslowe's dog meat to the Archbishop's Master of Hounds. Over the crest of the hill, the rough track they had been following led swiftly and easily down to the brightness of the Archbishop's lower garden gate hard by his kennels. The cart ran easily and began to rumble almost merrily, speeding downwards towards the light. So that none of the three adventurers knew of the seething black sea of wildcats which spread like liquid tar over the wooden mouth of the Plague Pit, then paused there to lick up the cold dogs' blood.

So
that the black-clad man who had followed them from the Rose, overheard much of their conversation and overseen most of their work, had to kick the screeching creatures viciously out of the way before he could kneel and check in detail exactly what they had been doing here.

Chapter Ten - The Mistress of the Game

Will's wherry dropped Tom at Goat Stairs, having swung north to drop the sleepy Ugo at Blackfriars. Then, as it was slack tide at midnight, it turned to run eastward ready to shoot the bridge and drop the weary playwright at Fresh Wharf. Tom, unlike his two companions, felt full of restless energy still. He tossed a two-penny groat into the boatman's hand and turned to run up the bustle on the stairs into the seething cauldron of Bankside.

The
atmosphere, the excitement, gripped him at once. Since the closing of the City Gates, the whole area had changed its character. The cooling air was full of a heady mix of lust and danger. All sense of control and order, loosely in place during the day, was gone now. There was a feeling that the only rules were what a man made up for himself - and this, in Elizabeth's strictly ordered society, was as powerful as the most potent drug. Like the City Watch, God's own ordinance did not seem to run here. And the rules the Bishop of Winchester's men enforced had little enough in common with the commandments his Worship preached o' Sundays. This was Greene's graveyard where the poor mad poet had run with a whore, sister to the King of Cutpurses, Cutting Ball, famously hanged at Tyburn five years back; who had scrawled off his poems, plays and pamphlets while being consumed by the pox. And if Kit Marlowe had lost his life downriver in Deptford, here was where he had caused the death warrant to be written. It was no wonder that Master Henslowe, who owned so much, slept safe in his bed, far, far away from here; or that Hemminge and Condell crossed the river at nightfall to escape the dark temptations; it was no wonder the straitlaced Ugo or the weary Will, with two shows on the morrow, should cross the river or run the bridge rather than coming here. For there was nothing forbidden on the Bankside, if a man had the means to pay.

Tom
shouldered his way along the busy thoroughfare, past the fronts of tavern after tavern. There were no normal houses there - the stews separated merely by alleys that bore their names, leading back into gardens - walled for the most part - that were simply extensions of the business. He pushed past the Rose Tavern, past the Bear, the Hartshorn, Ad Leonem and the Horseshoe, all within fifty yards. Then he paused. The Elephant stood slightly back, its form squarer and taller than the rest, its famous grey sign dull in the pale moonlight. Beside it, on the far side of Oliphant Alley stood the Herte, its sign much clearer, the white deer catching the silver from the sky. Although it was a masculine hart on the sign, everyone knew that it was the fair soft female hinds within that the customers came to see. Hinds, jades, bawds, trugs, sluts, trollops, trulls or whores to the better class clients who thronged here. Morts, stales, doxies, punks or bitches to the cant of local thieves. Winchester geese, named for the Bishop who owned the place. Mistresses of the game. And the games were without number or limit.

As
Tom, careful of his purse, pushed across to the wide-flung portal of the Elephant, a vagary of conversation came through the hectic babble to his ear. 'Nah there's a mort in this stew thinks herself a proper coney-catcher. Foreign doxy. Italian. Thinks she's the queen of cozeners. But there's me for one as'd be happy to play her at her own game.'

The
moment he heard this, Tom was shouldering towards the source of it – that dark alley between the two taverns. His ears were pricked for more of the thieves' cant, flowing apparently unremarked through the noise and bustle all around. There was a gang of professional card-sharps close by planning to rob the game he was planning to join by the sound of things. His eyes narrowed.

'Morts
in these places is all trulls. And trulls is none too clever, leastways up in Islington they ain't. We can turn her from a bitch to a bird in less time it takes to tell. Shall I be setter? I can do the Kentish gab.' His accent deepened, became that of a wellto-do businessman.

'Aye.
We need no verser for she's at play. Jack, you be the barnacle, and I'll be the setter and Sam, you be the purchase, for you have the pale young courtier's look about you. Now walk gentle and cut benely. We're country cousins tonight.'

Out
of the shadowy mouth of the alley three sturdy ruffians, looking indeed like well-to-do yokels up from Kent with the first of the season's apples and cider, wandered into the place. Looking less conspicuous and much less out of place, Tom followed them in.

The
Elephant was heaving. In effect, like most of the taverns here, it was a private house with a licence to serve drink and allow gaming. The room Tom entered now was a good, big parlour, lit with candles and flambards. At a dozen or so tables sat a range of employees and customers. The whores for hire walked about, some of them doubling as waitresses, their white bellycheats or aprons announcing that they were for hire. Most of the tables were laden with drink - a range of types from cider through ale to various wines, all in a range of vessels - pewter, leather, thick green glass. At the back of the parlour roared an open fire and the potman's wife tended a cauldron as assiduously as he tended the barrels. The tables nearest the fire were laden with platters and spoons - of pewter, wood and horn. These were shared by anyone hungry enough to be partaking of the pottage also for sale. At the table nearest the fire sat three young girls with their tops open and their soft white breasts on display. Opposite them, eyes bulging, sat the real country cousins, parting with groat after groat as the girls ate and ate. These were not whores - the country cousins would get no ease from them - but they pulled in almost as much money. Tom's lip twisted in a half smile. The smell of the pottage wafted past his nose, but the odours of earlier in the night had killed his appetite. And he had other games afoot. He pushed on through.

Behind
the main parlour there were other, smaller rooms, leading past the busy staircase to the equally busy garden, from where he could hear the lazy, lascivious playing of a lute. And a boy, singing a languid love song. In the first of the rooms sat the card-players. Tom eased himself round the door, eyes busy. The three coney catchers, playing their parts too well, were still outside drooling over the merchandise. Tom could set himself up to take more of a hand in the game.

The
table was dominated by the most beautiful woman he had seen on the Bankside. Broad shoulders supported alike a deep bosom of ivory-white and a long, slim neck. Her face was oval, her mouth wide and generous, her nose short, her wide eyes the colour of dark Sicilian olives. Her forehead was broad, high, unlined and capped with a gleaming wave of ebony hair. The arms reaching past the beautifully proportioned, perfectly presented cleavage were round and slightly dimpled. The hands were long, the fingers exceptionally so, capped with almond-shaped nails buffed to an opaline sheen.

Their
eyes met.
'Signor
?
'
At the sound of her warm, deep voice, the two men at play opposite her turned, frowning. They were both young gentlemen and were dressed like courtiers. Tom could hold his own in this company as well as in any other.
'Signorina
,
'
he said easily. 'Gentlemen. Thomas Musgrave, Master of Defence.' His smile widened. They had heard of him. The lady's eyes flickered up and down, speakingly. 'Constanza d'Agostino,' she said, her voice deep, vibrant. He bowed. Their eyes met as he straightened; something hot passed between them.

He
sat. A glance across the table-top told him all he needed to know about the game and the stakes. He reached into his purse as the cards fell in front of him and scattered a handful of gold across the plain deal boards.

There
was little conversation, for Triomphe was a demanding game, and all the players were desperate to win. As he held hand after hand, Tom secretly checked the edges of the cards for folds or marks. He studied their backs as well as their faces. He glanced furtively around the room looking for mirrors, glasses, reflective surfaces. The audience - mostly watching the lady rather than the play - was restless, passing trade. There were no barnacles amongst them, spying cards and sending signals. So no one at the table was coney-catching or cheating yet. None of the other players was a setter, in charge of a cheating game; none of them was a purchase set to walk away with the ill-gotten gains. The pile of gold in front of the beautiful Italian was there because she was a better player than the other two, and Tom was able to hold his own as he waited for the three from Oliphant Alley outside.

'The
King of Cups takes it,' he said at last, and reached across for the little pot of gold. As he did so, the atmosphere in the room changed and without looking up he knew who had arrived at last.

'D'ye
play, Mistress?' demanded the setter. Tom looked round like the other two, as jealous as they to be sharing the intimate interest of the bella donna. In the light he looked more presentable. A solid merchant - as well-dressed as Henslowe, though with none of the quiet élan which bespoke Tom to be a gentleman. This was the setter, though, getting ready to rob the game. 'Paul Carter. Merchant of Chiddingstone, up from Kent with a load of apples - best on the Cheap tomorrow. Now, what's our game?'

'Triomphe,'
supplied Sigorina Constanza as the big man settled himself at the table. 'Ha. I'm a Mumchance man myself,' admitted Master Carter, getting out his gold, but he fell to easily enough. A moment or two later a pale, almost courtly young man joined them. He introduced himself as Samuel something and mumbled into the fluff of his beard so that Sam was all they heard of him. Tom glanced at the two courtiers but they didn't recognise the newcomer. This would be the purchase, then, thought Tom and began to look around for Jack the barnacle.

As
he looked, so the lady's luck began to change in earnest. The pile of gold that had adorned the boards beneath the shadow of her bosom began to drift with relentless inevitability towards the pale young gentleman called Sam. Master Carter made a great play of sharing everyone else's growing frustration, but his hearty acceptance of his bad luck kept the atmosphere light and the game going.

At
last Tom saw the barnacle. Jack had positioned himself with practised care in a corner out of the lady's sight but where his sharp eyes could see her hand reflected in a pewter mirror, and the cards that Tom and the two courtiers held into the bargain. His signals to Master Carter were subtle but clear enough.

Tom's
eyes sought out la bella Constanza's and they shared a speaking look. The high ivory forehead folded into the slightest of frowns, the olive eyes vanished beneath black velvet curtains of lashes. The next hand seemed to stretch out almost endlessly. At first it looked as though the knave of swords would take the trick, but the knave of money turned up miraculously - then the queen of cups. The pile of coins in the middle of the table became a kind of Scylla or whirlpool, gulping in every piece of gold there. Tom glanced up and down, keeping an eye on the increasingly pallid barnacle reflected in the pewter mirror. His gestures were becoming wilder and more obvious now and good Master Carter was frowning with a combination of confusion and irritation. Tom left his hand face down on the table, offering one last card to be exchanged. He felt the faintest stirring of a toe-point against his instep from the fair dealer opposite and his card arrived face down atop his hand.

'Benedicite
,
'
crowed Sam the purchase. 'I have it all.' Such was the tension that he glanced across at Paul Carter with a relieved grin.

'Best
show us your cards then, sirrah,' suggested the merchant from Chiddingstone.

Master
Sam laid his hand for all to see. He had all the royal cups running down from the queen past knave to the six. He reached across to pull the pile of gold into his shaking hands. Tom glanced up. The barnacle was gone. The coney was caught. Everyone at the table was in ruins, every scrap of gilt and white money there on the smooth, cool boards.

'I
think not, Master Sam,' he said quietly. Lazily he reached across and used the top card from the pile in front of him to flip the others over. Every club lay revealed, in order from the ace to the eight. 'Or shall I call you Master Purchase, to go with Master Setter here?'

Both
the coney-catchers sprang erect, each of them reaching into the folds of their clothing for a weapon, but Tom's rapier was lying across the table before their rummaging was anywhere near done. 'Go,' he said. 'Collect your Barnacle Jack, and vanish or your next resting place will be in the Clink. 'Tis only ten doors up.' He raised his voice suddenly, his northern drawl lost in courtly imperiousness. 'Tapster, call the Watch.' His voice dropped a little. 'We'll see how the Bishop's Bailiff likes coney-catchers down from Damnation Alley.'

By
the time he had finished this little speech, Tom was talking to vacancy. Indeed the two young courtiers had vanished as well, leaving only Tom and the beautiful card-player, face to face across the table.

'Another
hand,
Signorina
?'
asked Tom, gathering up the winning hand and pushing it back towards her.

Their
eyes met over the pile of silver and gold.

'You
have won all,
Signor
. I have nothing left to play for but my honour.'