Paul Witcover - The Emperor of all Things

‘I wish he had woken me before he left,’ Quare said. ‘We could be in big trouble. We need to get our stories straight.’

At which Clara blushed more deeply than ever.

‘What?’

‘Nothing,’ she said. ‘It’s just’ – she shifted, averting her eyes, then looking at him again – ‘I did wake up once last night and saw the two of you …’

‘Yes?’ he prompted.

‘Mind you, I’ve nothing against it. Live and let live, I always say.’

‘I don’t have the slightest idea what you’re talking about.’

‘Don’t worry, I won’t breathe a word to anyone.’

Comprehension dawned. ‘You think …?’ He burst into laughter.

‘I know what I saw.’

‘And just what was that?’

‘Tom was cleaving to you from behind, one hand clapped over your mouth. He saw me looking and winked at me over your shoulder, hissed at me to go back to sleep.’

‘You were already asleep,’ Quare said, disconcerted by the image. ‘You dreamed the whole thing.’

She shook her head and repeated, ‘I know what I saw.’

‘And I suppose I slept right through everything?’

‘Slept through it?’ She gave a disbelieving laugh. ‘Why, bless me, you were grunting like a pig the whole time!’

Quare’s amusement had soured altogether. He got out of bed and began to dress. ‘I think I’d remember if anything like that had happened.’

‘Like you remember killing them men in the Pig and Rooster?’

That gave him pause. After all, what did he really know about Aylesford? The man was a stranger. Perhaps he had attacked him in the dark. But it strained credulity to think that he would have slept through such an assault as Clara had described. Quare considered himself a man of the world; his life as a journeyman had brought him into contact with men who loved other men, or who sought out both sexes. Though sodomy was a crime punishable by death, his philosophy, like Clara’s, had always been live and let live. There had been furtive gropings in his boyhood with others his age, but those games had stopped even before his seduction, at the age of thirteen, by Emma Halsted, the wife of his master. But the whole thing was ridiculous. Surely there would be physical evidence of such an assault, and while his body bore its litany of cuts and scratches, aches and bruises, there was nothing to suggest he’d been raped. Either Clara had been dreaming, or, more likely, she’d misinterpreted what she’d seen. But what, then, had she seen? ‘And afterwards? What did I do then?’

‘Why, slept like a baby. But here’s a laugh! Maybe you was done in, but Tom was just getting warmed up, like. Took me twice before he left, he did!’

‘And I slept through that as well, I suppose.’

‘Like a lamb,’ she said.

‘I never knew I was such a heavy sleeper.’

‘A good rogering will do that. I’m feeling a mite sleepy myself,’ she added with a giggle.

He sighed. ‘Believe what you like, Clara. I’ll not argue with you.’

‘Why, it’s nothing to be ashamed of, love. Don’t I like it that way myself sometimes?’ She turned onto her knees and waggled her fleshy backside at him, though whether in mockery or invitation he couldn’t tell. ‘No need to go rushing off,’ she said, gazing over her shoulder with a wicked grin that seemed to settle the question.

But Clara’s abundant charms were not as enticing as they’d been a moment ago. There was too much he didn’t know about what had happened last night and what might be awaiting him this morning. Aylesford might have been taken already; the Scottish journeyman could have spilled his guts by now, blaming everything on Quare. He didn’t think it likely, but it was certainly possible, and growing more so with every moment. There was no time to lose. He had to find Aylesford, and fast. If only he hadn’t drunk so much last night … That had been his undoing. He pulled on his coat, searched the floor for his shoes. ‘I’ve got to go, Clara. I need to find Aylesford before he’s picked up. No doubt they’ll question you as well. Don’t tell them anything.’

She flounced on the bed. ‘What kind of rat do you take me for?’

‘Sorry,’ he said with an apologetic smile. ‘I know you’re no rat.’

‘Hmph.’ She tossed her head. ‘Under the bed.’

‘What?’

‘Your shoes.’

‘Oh.’ Sure enough, there they were … splashed with blood and other stains he preferred not to examine too closely. Quare sat down on the bed and pulled the shoes on over his stockings, then stood.

Clara leaned forward. ‘Give us a kiss before you go, love.’

He obliged. ‘You won’t be seeing me at the Pig and Rooster for a while.’

‘You know where I live. Stop by sometime.’

‘Maybe I will,’ he said; he did not bother to inform her that he had no idea where he was at present – he would discover that soon enough. He paused at the door to belt on his sword. Then, drawing the blade halfway from its scabbard, he noted with a sinking heart that brown streaks of dried blood were clinging to the steel; he would have to clean and oil the weapon as soon as he got back to his lodgings. ‘Have you seen my hat?’ he asked, looking for his black tricorn.

‘Another casualty of the night, I suppose,’ Clara said from the bed. ‘Here , take my cloak, love. You can’t step out like that – you look as if you’ve just come from a murder.’

‘I’m obliged to you.’ He took the dark brown cloak that hung from the back of the door. Though short on him, it covered the worst of the previous night’s leavings. He waved a last goodbye to Clara and hurried out into the morning.

As eager as Quare was to get to the guild hall, where Master Magnus was waiting, no doubt impatiently, to resume their conversation of the day before, and where he hoped as well to hear news of Aylesford and the others, he knew he needed to clean up and change into fresh clothes first. Wrapped in Clara’s cloak, he kept to back streets and alleys as he made his way from her lodgings in Clerkenwell to his own in Cheapside; it made for a longer journey, but he met fewer people along the way, and those he did encounter seemed as shy of attention as he, keeping their heads down and their steps hurried, as if upon urgent business of their own.

It occurred to him that he was not the only one with secrets to hide; it was a peculiar sensation to imagine that everyone he encountered, young and old, rich and poor, had committed some crime or harboured some guilt that, if it were publicly known, would take them to the pillory or to Tyburn. He had often felt himself part of the London mob – known that joyful if also thrillingly perilous sense of belonging to something greater than himself, which buoyed him up and swept him along: a vigorous, industrious, prosperous, high-spirited throng. This was the obverse of that, furtive, skulking, mistrustful … yet still, he realized, a true if heretofore unsuspected aspect of the city, the experience of which he would have gladly forgone. But London was always revealing fresh aspects of itself. He could live here a hundred years, he thought, and still not scrape the bottom of it.

He kept a wary eye out but saw no evidence of undue interest or pursuit from any quarter. So far, his luck was holding.

Guild masters and apprentices alike enjoyed free room and board at the guild hall in Bishopsgate Street, but journeymen were expected to fend for themselves. For the past year, Quare had taken lodgings at a comfortable if somewhat run-down house in Basing Lane, near Cheapside , that catered to journeymen of the Worshipful Company.

Quare surveyed the approach to this establishment from the shadows of an alley across the way. He watched carriages and wagons move along to the cracking of whips and curses as pedlars afoot sang out their wares, everything from candles to flowers to lemons and limes; saw ragged urchins darting quick as starlings up and down the walks, ignored by one and all, while overhead, like flags of battle displayed by a victorious army, ponderous painted wooden signs creaked as they swung, as if stirred by no other wind than that which arose from below, and higher still, from open windows along the street, women leaned out to shout down orders for whatever was needful: in short, all the normal colourful caterwauling that constituted life on Basing Lane or indeed any other London street.