Martin Stephen - The Desperate remedy

He began to hum the words from his favourite song of the moment:

'Thou art my King, O God…'

It had a springy, firm rhythm and a quick tempo, one of Tom Campion's best, he thought.

Through Thee will we Overthrow our enemies And in Thy Name I will tread them down. 1 will tread them down…'

Tom Wintour paused as he left the tavern. It had been a week or more since he had had a woman. The whores at The Duck and Drake were of the best kind, aimed at the fashionable clientele of the tavern. Even at this hour a handful were on duty, dressed like Court ladies. Why not, he thought, as his roving eye caught the glance of a particularly fine girl dressed in deep red. Why not? She was one of Moll Cutpurse's girls, he knew, and Moll's girls were the best there were.

Gresham slipped out of the side gate of the House in the early evening. His doublet was worn and stitched in two areas, his hose washed out and his cloak threadbare at the edges. It was more and more difficult for him to act as an unknown in the city, or in Cambridge, but his change into the clothing of a gentleman fallen on hard times was not disguise, but caution. Where he was going, fine clothes were a call to robbery as well as a call to attention, and Gresham wished for neither. His sword hid its fine steel under a plain hilt and a weather-beaten scabbard. Behind him came Mannion, dressed in a rough jerkin.

'We walk,' he announced firmly to his rather sour-looking body-servant. 'You're getting too fat, and you need the exercise.' If Mannion muttered something under his breath, Gresham chose not to hear it.

It would have been far easier by boat, using the House's own vessels, the single bank manned by the vast-chested George, or even the magnificent four-bank of semi-regal splendour. Yet Gresham preferred to walk, despite the filth of the streets and the appalling press of the crowds. a restlessness came over him at times which could only be released by exercise, and in this instance there was the extra dimension of a need to feel in touch with the life and blood of the sprawling and corrupt city. And, of course, it allowed him to be rude to Mannion.

London was at its noisiest. The lawyers flushed out from Westminster were there in force, heading back into the City along the Strand, soberly dressed and bent forward to hear the muttered protestations of their clients. It was a long walk, from the Strand to Fleet Street, entering the City at Ludgate and skirting St Paul's. From Watling Street and Candlewick Street they turned right to cross London Bridge, joining the throng of citizens heading to Southwark for the playhouses.

They passed the stalls of the puppeteers in Fleet Street, each trying to shout above the din of the colliers, the chimney sweeps and the incessant din of the barrel-makers and every other worker who seemed to need a hammer above all other tools. The fresh-water carriers with their yokes and double wooden buckets, the strangely brownish water giving more than a hint of the River, the oyster sellers and the orange sellers all yelled their wares into the summer day.

They crossed London Bridge, its ancient piers supporting the half-timbered shops and residences that made it one of the talking points of Europe. Gresham eyed the pitted and mouldering stone, feeling the bridge shudder beneath his feet, wondering as he always did how much longer it could survive the neglect of its foundations and the thundering torrent of the Thames.

The Dagger in Southwark was Moll's place of business, before the magistrates or her creditors forced a change to another den. A significant portion of London's underworld was gathered there, nursing their sore heads. The assembled mass was one of the most unattractive sights he had ever seen, thought Gresham, a collection of rats and wolves in human form. He gave the merest nod to several with whom he had worked in the past. Gresham was ushered into the inner den of Moll, past three of the burliest men in London, all nursing vast cudgels.

'Hello, Mary Frith,' said Gresham, his face alight with mirth at the figure before him.

At first sight, it was not a woman at all who met their gaze. Dressed in doublet and hose, with hair cut short, Moll Cutpurse looked for all the world like a man, ensconced on a stool, legs set fairly apart and a brimming tankard of ale in her hand. The smoking pipe clenched firmly between her teeth added to the impression of a lad-about-town, determined to enjoy the day and the night as if it were his last. Only on closer examination did the smoothness of her skin and the twin bulges beneath her doublet become apparent.

'Mary Frith! You insolent vagabond, you spittle of Bedlam!' The figure wreathed in smoke put her stool forward on to three legs, where previously it had been resting back on two, and grinned in equal measure at Henry Gresham. 'Mary Frith died years ago, as any true bastard knows full well.'

Henry Gresham, a true bastard, accepted Moll's greeting with a low bow.

'Bastard as I am,' he replied, 'I salute an even greater bitch, be it Mary Frith or Moll Cutpurse!'

'You whoremonger!' she said joyfully, rising up from her stool and moving round the table to greet him. 'You come to me now for news, when you used to come within me! Am I so worn out as no longer to excite your fancy?'

'Madam,' said Gresham, bowing even lower, 'I'm old and weary, starved in my bones, a mere dried-out husk of the man I used to be. I can admire your beauty from afar…' he stepped back and looked with admiration at the trim figure hidden beneath the man's clothes,'… but, alas, it needs a young man to sire a beauty with so much youth still in her!'

Moll sat down on the table edge, stuck out her feet and took a huge draught of ale. Licking her red lips, she eyed Gresham up and down appreciatively.

'You always were a liar, Henry Gresham, and I like that in a man. You're none of your penny-pinching, arse-grabbing kind of liar. You,' she said as she poked him with the end of her clay pipe, 'you lie like the Devil himself, and take delight in it. For that, I'll even forgive you the bruises! And you always did have a body from Heaven, even if your mind was from Hell.'

Moll was fun enough to deal with and to lie with, but her evil temper was infamous, her mood swings greater than the tide on Dover beach, and she had had men, and women, murdered for a twopenny debt. She was one of the most dangerous people Gresham had ever known. She ran more brothels and stews than anyone except the Bishop of London, offered more watered-down wine and beer to tavern-goers and fenced for half the vagabonds in London. She defied authority, even to the extent of appearing on stage in front of a cheering full house at The Swan to recite bawdy ballads and sing songs that a sailor would blanch at. She had been arrested more times than she had eaten dinners, always bribing herself out of trouble with the seemingly endless money at her disposal.

'Enough of this babbling.' Moll bored very easily. 'You've no more need of poor Moll and her like in the old way, even if I hadn't become a respectable businessman, which I have. And I hear you have someone to keep your bed warm at night, so what is it you intend to rob a maid of instead?'

'I've never robbed you of anything you weren't hot to give, Moll Cutpurse,' said Gresham firmly, 'and for anything else I've taken you've received good coin in exchange. Enough of this babbling, indeed — yours and my own. The business is simple. What do you know that I should know?'

Moll slumped down behind the table, signalled Mannion to take a seat and took another vast gulp from her flagon, motioning irritably for it to be replenished by one of the villains standing guard over the door. He took it in his huge paw, filled it from a nearby barrel and gave it back to her. She looked moodily at Gresham.