Stolen Lives (The Alice Chronicles #3)

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I don’t like Robin being in there alone,’ Jay says, when his brother has been some minutes in the ale house.

Alice smiles. ‘He said much the same about you.’ She concedes, ‘I’m not happy either, but your brother is very able with that stout stick of his. He saw off that man Messer at the nettle house. And this is the only way we can protect our young apprentice friend from reprisals. You can’t approach Turner, he might have seen the two of you talking in there. As soon as Robin comes out with him, you must make yourself scarce.’

Minutes pass while they wait. She asks, ‘Jay? May I ask you a question I have already asked Robin?’

He spreads his hands, looks enquiringly.

‘I was telling Robin about a neighbour of mine where I live. He is well liked locally and perhaps because of that he is protected, if you see what I mean.’

‘Protected from …?’

‘Unwelcome accusations.’

‘Which are not true?’

‘Which are probably true, though no business of anyone else. But the law is such that if it became their business they would surely condemn him.’

‘You like this man?’

‘I do. He is kind, generous, has a care for those less fortunate, though he is himself not rich. I do not wish such a man on the gibbet because the law says he should not love another man.’

There is a thoughtful silence. Then, ‘You were thinking to ask me a question?’ Jay says.

‘Robin suggested I ask you if you think Wat Meredith may be such another.’

‘You do not condemn him, then, as the world would?’

She smiles. ‘Why am I here if I do, Jay? I do not ride to save a man from one noose, only to send him to another.’

‘True.’ Jay thinks, then, ‘I can tell you Wat Meredith is not such a man.’

‘You would know?’

‘I would know.’

‘Is that why Robin suggested I ask you?’

He nods.

‘Thank you, Jay.’ A thousand times, thank you. For your courage in revealing as much as you have about yourself, to answer a question that might help Wat Meredith.

‘Who says he is?’ he asks.

‘Cazanove found something at the mansion and held it over Wat’s head as a threat.’

‘That man. He once had Wat beaten in front of us all.’

I know, Ursula herself told me last winter.

‘Later, he put out a story Wat had tried to seduce the mistress.’

So that’s where the rumour started.

Jay shakes his head as though still incredulous. ‘Problem is, some at the dyeworks believe it. He left a dark shadow in his wake, did Cazanove.’

The minutes stretch out to five, ten. Jay becomes as jittery for Robin as his brother was earlier for him, and Alice herself frets at the delay. ‘If it will help,’ she says to Jay, ‘follow the next customers in and see what you can discover. But make sure Turner does not see you.’ Jay needs no second bidding.

He is still inside when the door opens and a short, scruffy man in indeterminate brown garb emerges, followed closely by Robin, who signals Alice and points Turner in her direction. Under cover of a knot of men leaving, Jay appears at the door of the inn and stops, watching the two cross the road to where she stands.

‘This is my mistress,’ Robin tells the man. ‘This is the man you asked about, mistress,’ he says to her, and Alice takes a step back from the stale smell of old sweat. She regards the balding pate, the greasy rats’ tails of greying hair, the suspicion in the narrowed eyes. His scarred face and battered ears speak many an old fight. The man stares back. She says, ‘You are Turner?’

‘That I am.’

‘He met the man Meredith here last year,’ Robin says. ‘Isn’t that right?’

‘I only met him and told him what I had to,’ Turner says and Alice, mystified for the moment, leaves Robin to continue.

‘And he knows Meredith is alive and out to get him,’ Robin adds, with a covert wink at Alice.

‘He was supposed to hang!’ Turner objects. ‘That was the whole point.’

‘Oh, poor you,’ Robin says.

‘You say you’ve come to help me but you could be leading me into a trap!’ Turner accuses.

‘We can always just leave you if you prefer,’ Robin says. ‘I wouldn’t go down dark alleys at night, though.’

‘You can’t frighten me, little cripple.’

‘He already has,’ Alice says, ‘or you wouldn’t have come out of the inn to meet me.’

‘So? What are you going to do about this Meredith fellow?’

‘Why is he out to get you?’

‘I was a witness at his trial.’

‘And?’

Turner shrugs. ‘I suppose he hates me because he stole my money and got caught.’

‘And stole your horse too, I hear?’ Alice says. A picture is starting to take shape.

‘Well … yes.’

‘You never owned a horse, Turner,’ she says.

‘Course I did! How else did he steal it?’

‘You never owned a horse because you can’t afford one.’

‘I won it.’

‘You’re lying!’

‘At a fair. As God’s my witness!’

‘I doubt you’d know God if he waved at you from a cloud!’ Alice turns from him. ‘We’re wasting our time. We’ll leave him to Meredith’s mercies.’

‘Who are you?’ Turner demands.

‘Never mind who we are,’ Alice says. ‘If you want protection, and some more profitable work, you will tell me the truth. Oh, did my man mention Meredith was sighted earlier on the outskirts of the city?’

Turner’s eyes dart here and there in suspicion tinged with nervousness. In a fierce whisper as pedestrians pass he says, ‘I was forced into it! You can’t blame me.’

‘For saying what you were told to say?’

‘God’s truth! No, really, you must believe me!’ he pleads, grasping her arm. ‘I had to do it.’

Alice pulls her arm away. ‘Last chance, Turner. Mislead, avoid, lie to me and you’re on your own. What did you have to do?’

‘There was a man. He came to me in the inn there, said he wanted a job done.’

‘Name?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Name!’

‘K … Kuh … I can’t remember.’

‘Kemp?’

‘Longer than that.’

‘Cazanove?’

‘No.’

‘Think, Turner!’

‘Goldwoode! That’s it!’

‘Goldwoode?’ So Goldwoode set the elaborate trap to dispose of Wat. What was Cazanove’s role, then, that Goldwoode wrote thanking him so effusively? ‘How much did he pay you?’

It is a guess, but Turner answers readily. ‘Ten laurels.’

Alice scoffs. ‘Ten pence, more like.’

‘Ten shillings!’

‘Very well, we’ll agree ten shillings. After the job was done?’

‘When I gave him back the horse, so anyone who saw us thought he was buying the horse from me.’

‘So, ten shillings. What did you have to do for that?’

‘I was to fall into talk with Meredith in the tap room there.’ He points across the road.

‘How did you recognise Meredith? Did you already know him?’

Turner points up the street. ‘I was told to watch that house up there on a certain day. He was to call on a merchant at that house. The servant there was going to tell him to wait here for an hour, then call again.’

‘So you had an hour to get into conversation with him. Why the horse?’

‘I was to say I had bought a horse but had fallen on hard times and needed to sell it. The horse was in the stables behind.’ He indicates the inn. ‘I was to offer it to him and let him knock me down in price, but not less than two pounds. I’m quite good at persuading.’

‘You must be,’ Robin says, ‘if you can sell your rubbish points around the city.’

Turner scowls at him but continues, ‘We went and looked at it together. I was told to make sure he bought it. I asked seven pounds and he beat me down to three; it was a good horse for that. He said he’d have it and paid me for it. Then I was to tell him there was a saddle I had ordered from a fellow who was bringing it up to St John’s Gate. He had time to get there before the hour was up. So he went off to get it. That’s all I did. Sold him a horse and sent him to buy a saddle. Nothing wrong with that.’

‘So’ Alice says, ‘not that risky after all. And certainly not worth paying a huge amount like ten shillings for. Any churl could do that.’

‘Well… then I was to set up a hue and cry so they would catch him.’

‘And?’

‘And say he stole my horse.’

‘And?’

‘And nothing.’

‘And cut the strap of your purse as if he’d horn-thumbed it off you, and plant it on him in the scuffle, containing the three pounds, and claim it was yours.’

‘Well, something like that, yes.’

‘And you stood up in court and told those lies to all present.’

‘I had to. I wouldn’t have been paid, else. Now, are you going to get Meredith off my back or what?’

Robin steps in. ‘A moment, mistress. Turner, describe this Goldwoode.’

‘Big. You know, tall.’

‘Yes?’ Goldwoode was tall, she remembers that from examining his body. ‘What else?’

‘Grey hair. Expensive-looking.’ Yes, that was true of Goldwoode.

‘Hard eyes. Ordered me around like he owned me.’

That doesn’t fit. When he complained to Luella about his baby crying, he sounded querulous, not commanding. An idea. ‘Would you say he was a man of spare form?’ she asks.

‘You’re joking! Out here he was.’ Holding his arms out in front of his belly.

Hard eyes. Owned me. Out here. Rupert Cazanove to the life in those few short words.

‘He probably did own you, once you’d accepted his coin,’ Robin is saying.

‘You know this man, then?’

‘Just checking,’ Robin tells him. He and Alice exchange glances.

‘So why ask me if you already know?’

‘Mind your manners, fellow,’ Alice says. ‘If you want protection, you have to do something for me.’

The man is silent.

‘This Master Goldwoode was satisfied with the work you did for him concerning Meredith?’

‘He said he was a bad man. I took a great risk.’

‘Are you interested in another commission?’

‘Do I have a choice?’

‘A man needs to be, shall we say, removed from these parts.’

‘How much?’

‘You will be suitably rewarded when you have fulfilled the task.’

‘How much?’ Turner insists.

‘A better deal than you had from Master Goldwoode. You will come late this afternoon to the inn at the sign of the hatchet, and ask for Mistress Jerrard. You know The Hatchet?’

‘I know it.’

‘There you will receive your instructions regarding person and place and your role.’

‘How do I know you can protect me from Meredith?’

‘We have runners following him. We know where he is. But here is six pence for you, to show my good faith that I shall be there and you will be safe. Come and collect the rest of your deserts this afternoon if you choose.’

As he crosses the road back to the ale house. ‘A kindly hint,’ she calls. ‘Meredith is a very different man now from last year. He has risen in the world. Men of influence can afford to have the city gates watched. Don’t run, Master Turner.’

Turner shakes his head and shambles across the road.

‘I’d wager our fish will bite,’ Robin says.

‘If he doesn’t, we’ll have to come back and kidnap him!’ Alice says with the burst of a laugh. ‘So it was not Goldwoode who did that deal with him. What a good thing you probed further, Robin. I saw Goldwoode’s body and he was not a potbellied man. Cazanove was definitely “out here”. Cazanove impersonated Master Goldwoode.’

‘I had a feeling it was him,’ Robin tells her. ‘Making sure Master Goldwoode would be blamed if anything went wrong.’

‘You did well to suggest Wat is on Turner’s trail. I doubt we’d have found out so much without that.’

Robin grins. ‘I must tell Jay about having the gates watched. He’ll enjoy that. Man of influence !’

‘Let’s hope it works,’ she says. She played out the scene more on her wits than anything else and is suffering the reaction in a thumping heart. Did she do enough to get him to return? She is exultant and at the same time apprehensive. And the nausea has returned.

‘Why don’t we go and have some fun with our blue-clad friend?’ Robin suggests.

‘Exactly my thought,’ Alice says as Jay rejoins them from the alley. ‘You realise, don’t you, Robin, that this makes Master Norrys suspect also? He could have primed his servant.’ It saddens her that the man she thought was trustworthy might turn out to have been hand in glove with Cazanove.

‘Let’s see what we can find out,’ Robin suggests. And we’ve a thing or two to tell you too, Jay.’

‘First,’ Alice says, ‘let us find a decent inn where we may command paper and ink.’

Norrys’ manservant sighs at the re-appearance of the trio. This time, he reins in a retort and contrives an aloof air as he stands back for them to enter. ‘I shall advise my master you are here, madam.’

‘I wouldn’t just yet,’ Alice tells him. ‘My business is with you. I have a paper here that concerns you. Shall I read it to you or do you read?’

‘I can read,’ he says holding out a hand.

‘Uh, uh.’ Jay steps between them, snatching it away just as the other takes it. ‘Be advised, young sir, that when you have read it, my mistress desires you to sign it.’ He hands over the sheet. ‘You might like to sit down.’

The manservant gives Jay a withering look and unfolds the sheet. As he reads down, his eyes widen, his face blanches and his mouth opens and closes several times before he blurts, ‘You can’t do this!’ Then, with a glance behind at the closed office door, ‘This is scandalous!’ he hisses.

Leaning against the wall, arms folded, Jay says, ‘You’re right. Can’t think how you sleep at night.’

‘Best keep it quiet between the four of us,’ Robin advises. ‘Of course,’ he adds as a thought appears to strike him, ‘your master may have forced you all unwilling into this, so he won’t mind us sharing our discovery with him. Shall we go and…?’

‘No!’ the manservant throws out his arms to deny passage. He taps the paper. ‘You know him then? The man who made me do it?’

‘No one made you,’ Alice says. ‘You decided to do it for money.’

‘One of those little bonuses we talked about,’ Jay suggests, and the manservant throws him a narrow look, which serves no purpose but to widen Jay’s smile.

The manservant taps the sheet in his hand. ‘You describe him here just as I recall him. Big, expensive, hard eyes .’

‘And his name?’ Robin asks.

‘Goldwoode.’

‘I thought you’d say that.’

Alice asks the man, ‘What was your part in this?’

‘All I did was tell Meredith my master was from home.’

‘And that he should wait at the sign of The Ship,’ Robin adds.

‘It was nothing more than a little delay!’

‘It was nothing less than a gross lie!’ Alice tells him. ‘And to save you lying again, we know Master Norrys was here and waiting that day. Are you going to sign it, or is your master going to see it?’

‘You must promise not to tell my master!’

‘I promise nothing,’ Alice says, ‘except that if you do not sign it I shall most certainly tell your master. And I can bring a witness who knows Meredith was sent to that inn from this house.’

‘I… I don’t have a quill.’

‘Do not vex yourself,’ Jay says, pushing his shoulders off the wall. ‘I’ll just go and ask your master for one.’

‘No!’ and then more softly, ‘No, I’ll find one.’ Before he has gone two paces, Jay taps him on the arm and points to the sheet in his hand. ‘I’ll keep that safe until you return, shall I?’