Susanna Gregory - The Butcher Of Smithfield

Suddenly, there was an explosive yell from the chamber above. Someone was being dressed down. Chaloner moved towards the stairs, better to hear what was being said.

‘ One advertisement?’ Chaloner recognised L’Estrange’s voice from the incident outside the Rainbow Coffee House. ‘Is that all? It is a Monday, and clients should be flooding through the door.’

‘It is early yet,’ stammered Brome. ‘And I thought you might like to see the first-’

‘Do not think ,’ snapped L’Estrange unpleasantly. ‘Leave that to me.’

Chaloner heard footsteps coming from a corridor that led to the back of the house and, not wanting to be caught eavesdropping, moved quickly to stand by a pile of tomes about navigation and ocean mapping. He snatched up the top one, and was reading it when a woman entered the room. She closed the door at the base of the stairs, muffling the bad-tempered tirade that thundered from above.

‘Are you a sailor, sir?’ she asked politely. ‘If so, then may I direct you to a specific book? Or have you found what you are looking for?’

Chaloner glanced up from his ‘reading’ to see a slender, doe-eyed lady, who was pretty in a timid, frightened sort of way. She was tall for a woman — almost as tall as him — although her clothes were sadly unfashionable, and overemphasised her willowy figure. When she smiled, she revealed teeth that were rather long, which, when combined with the eyes, put Chaloner in mind of a startled rabbit. The comparison might not have sprung quite so readily to mind had her hair not been gathered in two brown bunches at the side of her head, and allowed to hang down like floppy ears.

‘A sailor?’ he asked blankly.

She nodded to the book he was holding. ‘Only mathematicians or nautical men are interested in Robert Moray’s Experiment of the Instrument for Sounding Depths . You do not look eccentric enough to be a man of science, so I conclude you must be a naval gentleman.’

‘I developed an interest in soundings on a recent sea voyage,’ lied Chaloner. ‘But I am just passing the time until I can see L’Estrange.’

She looked alarmed. ‘I hope there is no trouble?’ Realising it was an odd question to ask, she attempted to smooth it over, digging herself a deeper hole with every word she gabbled. ‘That is not to say we are expecting trouble, of course. The newsbook offices are very peaceful most of the time. Very peaceful. We never have trouble. Well, not usually. What I mean is-’

It seemed cruel to let her go on, so Chaloner interrupted. ‘No trouble, just government business.’

‘Thank God!’ she breathed. Then she shot him a sheepish grin. ‘You must think me a goose! All worked up and talking like the clappers over nothing. We lost a colleague recently, you see, and it upset us, even though we did not like him very much. That is to say we did not dis like him, but …’

She trailed off unhappily, and looked longingly at the door that led to the back of the house, clearly itching to bolt. Chaloner felt sorry for her, thinking she was entirely the wrong sort of person to be employed in the devious business of selling news. He winced when the shouting from upstairs grew louder. ‘L’Estrange seems peeved.’

‘He is always peeved. Unless a lady happens along. Then he is all smiles and oily charm. If you want his favour, you might consider donning skirts.’ She blushed furiously. ‘I am not saying you look like the kind of man who likes dressing up in women’s clothing, because I am sure you do not, but …’

‘I never don skirts when I am in need of a shave,’ said Chaloner, taking pity on her a second time. ‘I find it spoils the effect.’

The comment coaxed a smile from her. ‘You should not let that bother you — it will not be your face he is looking at.’

‘You are Mrs Brome?’

‘Joanna. My husband is Henry. But I expect you already know that. Silly me! Henry is always saying I talk too much, but he is a man, and they do not talk enough , generally speaking. Unless they are politicians or lawyers, of course. Then they are difficult to stop.’

Chaloner was relieved when the door at the bottom of the stairs opened, and Brome returned. The bookseller’s face was flushed, and his wife rushed to his side with a wail of alarm.

‘It is all right, dearest,’ said Brome, patting her arm. He turned to Chaloner. ‘You have met my wife, I see. She helps me in my business. No one has a head for figures like my Joanna.’

Joanna smiled shyly. ‘I do my best. And everything needs to be accounted for, because a single missing penny might result in an accusation of theft. L’Estrange is very particular about money.’

‘It does not sound as though he is easy to work with.’

‘He is good to us,’ said Joanna immediately. ‘Well, he is good most of the time, and-’

‘It is all right, Joanna,’ said Brome quietly. ‘Heyden is from White Hall, so I am sure he already knows about L’Estrange’s … idiosyncrasies.’

Joanna heaved a heartfelt sigh. ‘Good! It is difficult to pretend all is well when Mr L’Estrange is in one of his moods, and I dislike closing the door and trying to distract customers with idle conversation in order to drown out his noisy rants. It feels duplicitous, and I am not very good at it anyway.’

‘We were delighted when he chose us to help him with the newsbooks,’ said Brome, seeming grateful to confide. ‘He said our shop suited him better than any other, because it is near all the booksellers at St Paul’s, and not far from his home. But he has such a black temper.’

‘Actually, he is a bully,’ whispered Joanna. She glanced nervously towards the stairs. ‘And neither of us were really “delighted” when he said he was going to use our shop from which to run his business. We like the money — he pays rent for his office and for our help with his newsbooks — but he is not someone we would befriend, if we had a choice. He is so … well, strong . And we are not.’

‘Yes and no,’ countered Brome. ‘He does not always get his own way.’

‘True,’ conceded Joanna. ‘We managed to prevent him from publishing that libellous attack on ex-Spymaster Thurloe last month. It took some doing, but he admitted we were right in the end — that there was no truth in the spiteful things he had written.’

‘I have no love for Cromwell’s ministers, but that editorial was pure fabrication, and would have made us a laughing stock,’ said Brome. ‘L’Estrange needs our commonsense and sanity.’

Chaloner did not think Joanna would be overly endowed with either, because she seemed rather eccentric to him. Then he reconsidered. Her gauche awkwardness was doubtless due to her shy and nervous nature, and he did not blame anyone for being fearful when the likes of L’Estrange was brooding upstairs. When she smiled at him, and he saw the sweet kindness in her face, he found himself feeling rather sorry for her. He smiled back.

‘He is in a foul mood today,’ Brome went on. ‘Unfortunately, he read that newsletter — the one addressed to Pepys — as soon as it arrived this morning, and it contains some of the stories we had planned to print in Thursday’s Newes .’

‘Again?’ asked Joanna, shocked. ‘But how? And what are we going to do? This cannot continue, because people will not buy the newsbooks if they are full of old intelligence.’

Chaloner frowned, not sure he fully understood the situation. ‘I would have thought printing would confer a significant advantage on you. Surely it is faster to print a hundred sheets than to handwrite them, like Muddiman has to do? How can he disseminate news more quickly than L’Estrange?’