Susanna Gregory: The Butcher Of Smithfield

‘You did not say where you have been,’ said Ellis, when Chaloner made no comment on his dreary monologue of storms, rain and drizzle. ‘Was it far?’

‘I visited Dover,’ replied Chaloner ambiguously. He was fortunate in that Ellis seldom quizzed him about the odd hours he kept, or the disguises he often donned. The landlord believed him to be a victualling clerk for the Admiralty, an occupation so staid and dull that few people ever wanted to know about it. Unfortunately, though, even Ellis’s incurious nature was goaded into asking about a sudden and abrupt departure that had lasted nigh on four months.

‘Dover?’ echoed Ellis, scratching his head. There were lice in his periwig. ‘In Kent?’

‘The navy has business there,’ hedged Chaloner. Careful phrasing meant he was not actually lying, because his ship had stopped in Dover before sailing for Lisbon. He supposed there was no reason why he should not tell people that he had been on official business in Portugal and Spain, but he had been trained to keep confidences to a minimum and, after a decade in espionage, it was a difficult habit to break.

‘There is a big castle in Dover,’ said Ellis, as if he imagined his tenant might not have noticed it. ‘It will be our first line of defence when the Dutch invade. I was in the Turk’s Head Coffee House last night, and it was full of talk about the great flotilla of boats the Dutch is building, ready to fight us.’

‘They do not need to build anything,’ said Chaloner, who had spent several years undercover in Holland. ‘They already have a great navy. And, unlike ours, it is manned by sailors who have been paid, and is equipped with ships that are actually seaworthy.’

Ellis shook his head. ‘The government should spend more money on defending us from foreigners, and less on chasing phantom rebels in the north of England. Have you been reading the newsbooks? The new editor, Roger L’Estrange, wants us to believe that Yorkshire is trying to start another civil war. He is obsessed with men he calls “phanatiques”.’

‘Right,’ said Chaloner vaguely, reluctant to admit that he had not seen a newsbook — an eight-page ‘news-paper’ produced by the government for the general public — since June or that he had never heard of Roger L’Estrange. He did not want to startle Ellis into an interrogation by displaying a total ignorance of current affairs.

‘L’Estrange is something of a phanatique himself, if you ask me,’ Ellis went on disapprovingly. ‘Someone should tell him the newsbooks were not founded to provide him with an opportunity to rant, but to disseminate interesting information to readers. I want to know who has died, been promoted or robbed in London , not L’Estrange’s perverted opinions about Yorkshire. And as for that piece about the Swiss ambassador — well, who cares what a foreign diplomat was given to eat in France?’

‘True,’ said Chaloner, supposing he had better spend a few hours reading, to catch up.

‘I am pleased to see you home again,’ said Ellis, searching for a subject that would elicit more than monosyllabic answers. ‘You said you might be gone a month, but it was four times that, and I was beginning to think you had decided to lodge elsewhere.’

Chaloner thought back to the blossom-scented June morning when he had received the message that ordered him to go immediately to White Hall. Such summons were not unusual from his employer, and he had not thought much about it. Like many politicians, the Earl of Clarendon — currently Lord Chancellor — had accumulated plenty of enemies during his life, and relied on his spy to provide him with information that would allow him to stay one step ahead of them. However, it had not been Clarendon who had sent for him, then dispatched him on a long and dangerous mission to the Iberian Peninsula. It had been the Queen — and no one refused the ‘request’ of a monarch, even though Chaloner had been reluctant to leave London. He smiled absently at Ellis, then made a show of listening to the sermon. Ellis sighed at his tenant’s uncommunicative manner, but did not press him further.

When the service was over, the congregation flooded into Fleet Street and Ellis went to join cronies from his coffee-house. They immediately began a spirited debate about a newsbook editorial that described Quakers as ‘licentious and incorrigible’; some thought the epithet accurate, while others claimed they would make up their own minds and did not need L’Estrange telling them what to think. Chaloner began to walk to White Hall, aware that his Earl would want to know he was home at last. The rain had stopped, although it had left Fleet Street a soft carpet of mud, and he was astonished by the lively bustle as traders hawked their wares. There had been few secular activities allowed on the Sabbath in Catholic Spain, and the contrast was startling.

‘God will send a great pestilence,’ bawled a street-preacher, who evidently thought the same. He stood on a crate in the middle of the road, and risked life and limb as traffic surged around him. ‘There is plague in Venice, and He will inflict one on London unless you repent.’

‘He has already sent one,’ quipped a leatherworker’s apprentice, as he staggered by with a load of cured pelts balanced on his head. ‘Half the Court has French pox, so I have heard.’

People laughed, and Chaloner was impressed when the lad managed a cheeky bow without dropping what he was carrying. The preacher scowled at him, and muttered that God would be including cocky apprentices among His list of targets when the plague arrived in the city.

Chaloner hurried on, warned by a rank, acrid smell that he was approaching the Rainbow Coffee House, an establishment infamous for the ‘noisome stenches’ associated with its roasting beans. Suddenly, the door was flung open and a man stalked out. He was tall, lean and elegantly dressed, and a pair of outrageously large gold rings dangled from his ears. His handsome, but cruel, face was dark with fury, and he gripped the hilt of his sword as though he itched to run someone through with it. Chaloner thought he looked like a pirate — dangerous and unpredictable.

Moments later, the Rainbow’s door opened a second time, and two more men emerged. Both were clad in the very latest Court fashions, although the spotless white lace that frothed around their knees and their clean shoes told Chaloner that they had not sloshed through Fleet Street’s mud that morning, but had travelled in style — carried in a sedan-chair or a hackney-coach. The shorter of the pair, who sported a long yellow wig, held a newsbook in his hand.

‘“Personal lozenges by Theophilus Buckworth for the cure of consumptions, coughs, catarrhs and strongness of breath”,’ he read in a yell that drew a good deal of attention from passers-by. ‘You call that news, L’Estrange?’

The tall man whipped around to face him, while Chaloner noted wryly that, for all London’s vast size — it was by far the biggest city in the civilised world — it was still a small place in many ways. Ellis had mentioned a newsbook editor called L’Estrange, and suddenly, here he was. Not wanting to be caught in the middle of a spat that looked set to turn violent, Chaloner stepped into an alley, joining a soot-faced lad who was disposing of a bucket of coffee-grounds there. The youth scattered his reeking, gritty pile by kicking it, and the stench of decay told Chaloner that the lane had been used as a depository for the Rainbow’s unwanted by-products for years. The coffee-boy pulled a pipe from his pocket and watched with interest as L’Estrange strode towards his tormentor.

‘That particular notice had nothing to do with me,’ he snarled. ‘My assistant inserted it without my knowledge.’