Gregory House - The Lord Of Misrule

All of a sudden Meg Black, the most practical of apothecary apprentices, gave a loud sniff and burst in to tears. “Oh poor Walter — the poor lost lamb! I’m sure he’s been led astray! Oh, Walter — lost and alone in London!”

At this suddenly distraught scene Ned was at a loss. He’d only ever seen Meg cry once, and that was when recounting the death of her parents. To shed such prodigious tears for Walter, a mere stranger, set loose a veritable host of suspicions. The first and foremost of the pack was the prospect of a secret marriage contract between a reformist apothecary and a lad who was training to be a leading reformer. Not that he had any right to complain. Well not really…but…but he damned well didn’t like to be manipulated! So if that was the game, as his daemon whispered, Ned had a few ready plans for some revenge. He thumped the table with a fist. “By all the saints, stop your wailing. Trust me. Walter’s not that much of a lost lamb,” Ned replied bitterly.

The crying halted with a shocked sniff and Meg Black dabbed at her tear-stained cheeks with a linen kerchief and glared at him. “Why not? Have you no shame, Ned Bedwell! Poor Walter, lost, alone and bewildered in the city, at risk of every foister, nip or lewd punk!”

“Ahh…I think not.”

“What?” At this denial, Meg Black lost the last of any desire for weeping. Instead she surged up to a full, angry five foot and balled her fists as if to lay a blow. Roger, still with that amused smile on his scarred face, edged closer to intercept. As for Ned, it was purely an instinctive reaction that made him flinch.

Quickly he summed up his reasoning, or at least his daemon’s suspicions. “No, no. It’s not what you think! ‘Innocent lamb’ Walter took my lads from the Chancery for some six angels this morning at Hazard. Then he supposedly left Rob here with his purse.” Ned indicted the forlorn pile of scrap on the table. “That much nerve and skill takes a canny player of cozenage.”

Meg Black’s hands remained clenched and her words were still bitingly bitter. “What are you implying, Ned Bedwell, you cozening swaggerer?”

Ned could see he still had a long way to go before his own play was set, and spread his hands wide in the most innocent of expressions. “Just the facts Meg. For an innocent lad fresh from the country, lambkin Walter has already used two old cony-catcher’s tricks, and played them damned well. You’ve got to ask how many more does he know?”

Ned noticed Meg’s fingers unclenched slightly and, with just the barest margin of belief, before she shot back a suspicion tinted question. “So where is he then?”

“To be honest, I don’t know. We’re the only ones he’s seen in the city except for that blonde punk at St Paul’s.”

Oh no, that was definitely the wrong thing to say. Doubt and mistrust flooded back into Meg Black’s face as she lent forward, now quivering with menace. “Yes…St Paul’s. I’ve been meaning to talk to you about that Ned. Thank you for reminding me.”

Unless he thought quickly he was done for. Instantly his daemon reminded him of an old score. Ned put his hand over his heart and tried his best to appear both hurt and offended. “Me? Why, I had nothing to do with those punks. I don’t know them, despite what some may claim. However, perhaps we should ask someone who does, ehh Hawks ?”

Three sets of eyes immediate swung towards the previously amused Roger Hawkins. He didn’t look so happy now and Ned, leaning forward on the table with a quiet smile, fired off the first question. “So Hawks , how do you know Anthea?”

***

Ned stomped grumpily along the snow covered streets. Damn this stupid task and damn to the seventh level of hell that impudent, opinionated and foolishly stubborn Meg Black! At this time of the day he should be sitting down to haunch of mutton, spit roasted with wine, goose fat and rosemary basting. But no, instead he was out here in the freezing cold on a fruitless search for a lost lamb and to make a poor situation even worse, his two arch-ruiners of Christmas were right beside him. While he already knew one of them wouldn’t listen — she never did — the other however wouldn’t speak and Ned was certain that the solution still lay in Roger Hawkins murky past.

“Look, I don’t think this is a good idea.”

“Shut up Bedwell and keep walking. We’ve got four more of your measly haunts to check out.”

Ned shrugged. Well he’d tried. That tactic of shifting to Gruesome Roger’s acquaintance with Anthea back at the Sign of the Spread Eagle had really looked like a winner. He’d followed his daemon’s whispering and slung the mud around at the nearest possible target. It had been a masterful effort. Ned had alluded to an unknown past, doubtful associations and the claims of Anthea, a dubious witness, true, but it had been in his best lawyerly style and…nothing. Mistress, damn her stubbornness, Black didn’t believe any of it, not a pinch. His complaints had been to no avail. Mistress Black, avoiding the inconvenient truth of the false purse and her brother’s duping, focused rather on the Bedwell part of the problem. She’d ‘decided’ that it was still all his fault. It must have been his intemperance, or boasting that was at fault. In her warped interpretation, the story went thus wise;

At the evening feasting (at the mention of which Meg Black once more looked like she was thinking of using a hot iron), Red Ned Bedwell, arch-lewdster had freely boasted of his accomplishments through the Liberties of London. Then during the dicing, (Ned could see that at this section Meg was contemplating on how glowing white that iron of hers could get), Ned Bedwell, the archfiend’s willing minion, had once more led the impressionable and innocent Walter astray with his tales of success at the dicing dens of the Liberties and the stews of Southwark.

You know, said his daemon, as she recounted it, Ned by implication, could have been the worst rogue in all of London, a master of the gaming table and devoted swain to half the punks in the city. Then his daemon had sighed. If only it was true. Ned had been forced to temporise. Ambitions were one thing, reality another. Any fellow foolish enough to live up to this overblown reputation would be dead of the pox or a gaming dispute before the week was out.

That didn’t matter, which was why they were now tramping the streets of London. So far he’d taken the merry band of seekers to a small ale house he sometimes used at St Lawrence Poor Jewry, opposite the parish church. Apart from a scattering of drunken apprentices it proved, as he’d predicted, empty of Walter. Nor did the alewife recognise the lost lamb as a recent customer. Then he had been forced to traipse eastwards over to Monte Jovis Inn on Fenchurch Street, which he felt was particularly unjust, since he was sure Meg Black knew he only came here with Rob to sample the ale and listen to their gleeman.

Once more a waste of an hour, and here they were in Petty Wales on the riverside, eastwards of Smart’s Quay, another region on Meg Black’s little list, though to be honest, it was only an area he sought out when it was too risky to cross over to Southwark. Mind you, one heard damned good tales in the dockside taverns from men who’d travelled to the Western Indies and who’d seen the blood soaked golden idols of the Aztecs. Or sailed around southern most Africa to the fabulously rich Spice Islands where barrels of pepper could be had for a groat.

Ned was dragged out of his speculation by a thump. “What about that one?’ Meg Black waved a hand towards the carved sign of a goat’s head, suspended above the tavern doorway.