The Wolves of Andover

CHAPTER 8

ANNE CARTER STOOD at the groaning board, surveying with satisfaction the thirty or so men who sat in the tavern eating, but mostly drinking, their Thursday-night suppers. They were almost to a man dockworkers, off-loading bales and crates and barrels from wherries and barges bringing their loads direct from the large merchant vessels anchored farther down the Thames. They were, as dock laborers went, a quiet lot, there to drink their ale, eat their bread, and stagger off to their crannied bunks to sleep for a few hours before starting again in the morning, hours before dawn.

She had been keeping a careful watch on the man leaning comfortably against the far wall near the fire, and when he raised his chin to look about the room, she shook her head at him. He had been nursing the one cup of ale for more than an hour and she teasingly rubbed her fingers together to show him he should order another cupful and spend some coin or leave the premises. He grinned at her, tucking his neck further into his coat, but made no move to comply.

There was a feeble pounding at the door and she sighed, leaving her station at the table to go and open it. The men were quiet but not above stealing a pie or a few oysters when she wasn’t guarding the food. The main tavern door was heavy with iron cladding and, in moderate weather, left open during hours of business. But a cold and brutal wind, a Normandy blow, had raked its way from east to west, and Anne had closed and latched it earlier against the rain. She opened it to a boy straining to hold with both hands a bucket of eels, thrashing and boiling in dark coils.

“Oh, Georgie,” she said. “Sweetheart, come in.” She laughed as the buffeting wind blew them both back into the room, and as she struggled to shut the door again, she felt the man at the fire come up behind her. He pushed his hands against the door to help her, but his thighs pressed against the back of her legs. Giving him a warning glance, she expertly danced away and put her arm around the boy.

“Georgie,” she chattered, “did ya swim here with the eels? Look at ya. With a towelin’ ya’d still be drownin’.” He laughed with her and shook himself like a dog. He snuck a peek at her bare arm wound tight around his neck, and blushed to purple. She smiled at his discomfort and teasingly brought her wrist to his mouth, wetting his lips with the rain off her skin.

Anne looked into the bucket and clucked approvingly at the muscular slapping of the eels. “Ooh, sweetheart. Go now into the kitchen and tell Min to give ya some oysters and bread. And tell her I said ya’r to have ale and not the small beer, mind ya, but a proper cup with both legs and a head.”

She gave his ear a playful tug and he colored again up to the roots of his hair. He went into the kitchen, carrying the bucket, and she walked through the room, table to table, checking each man’s portion to see if all had been paid for. In the corner farthest from the hearth she passed a makeshift table with a dead rabbit, head and feet intact, lying starkly on the naked boards, a small pinprick of red staining the wood beneath its neck. She was pleased to see every man in the place had taken note of the warning and had steered well clear of that corner of the room. The dead rabbit was Tiernan Blood’s mark, and his little joke to the world. His trade name on the streets and alleyways of London was the Gaelic word raibead, pronounced like the English word “rabbit.” Translated, it meant a man greatly to be feared. But to those outsiders who did not know his reputation for violence, it often meant fatal misjudgments in their dealings with Tiernan Blood.

A wind at her back caused her to turn, and she saw a cluster of men come into the tavern, unwrapping themselves from layers of cloaks and hats, carelessly spraying the laborers around them with drops of frigid rainwater. They walked without hesitation towards the table where she stood, and she hurried to the kitchen to bring them cups of ale, warmed earlier with a heated poker. They settled themselves onto chairs and stools and once seated began to look about the room, studying every downturned face, noting the sudden quiet. The man at the fire had turned away, but his head was tilted in an attitude of cautious readiness, as though listening for sudden footsteps from behind.

When Anne returned with the cups, she startled to see the fifth seat empty and whispered to the man at her elbow, “Here now, Brudloe, who’s missin’?”

He snaked his arm around her hips, pulling her closer, and said, “Poor Sam Crouch. He’s lost his last argument.”

“What d’ya mean?” she hissed. Brudloe had begun to pull her onto his lap, but she grabbed his thumb and, pulling it back painfully in its socket, said carefully, “This won’t play. Ya know Blood asked for five men, five ready men, and unless ya can increase yar number as quick as a whore’s plague, ya’ll have to answer for it.”

Brudloe freed his hand and shook it with elaborate hurt, laughing. “Annie, d’ye reckon there’s not bullies and bravos enough in London to replace Sam Crouch? Or d’ye think we can’t take care ourselves to advance Blood’s scheme?” His smile was suddenly gone and she regarded his small frame and balding head, cross-hatched with scars from a knife fight that had separated his scalp down to the skull. He had, after finishing the fight, pulled the shredded skin back over his head, paying a seamstress to sew the wounds together with silken thread. She knew that his greatest asset was his surprising strength and agility, far beyond most men twice his size. His weapon was a short-bladed knife because he preferred plying his trade up close, but his true pleasure lay in tying intricate knots; some for immobilizing his victims and some for garroting. She looked at his forearms and knew he could strangle a cow if he needed to.

Anne turned to the others in quick succession and had to admit the four men together could be formidable against all but a heavily armed group of mercenaries. Baker, seated next to Brudloe, was unremarkable in either size or appearance, although he was rather tall, and he sat alternately studying his nails and observing the room in affable silence. He was a professional torturer, sometimes taking his victims north to Scotland, where the rack and the wheel were still tolerated, if not readily accepted. She also knew he had a wife and five children in a house on St. Mary-at-Hill, only a few streets from the tavern which stood on Lower Thames Street, within the shadow of the Tower of London, where he sometimes worked late of an evening.

Next to him was seated Hammett Cornwall, named after his place of birth, though past infancy he’d never traveled beyond the walls of London, and so massive that his coat was made from two cloaks stitched together. He never asked questions, never lost in a throw-down, and had been in with Tiernan Blood when he planned and executed the robbery of the Crown jewels from the Tower. He was the only one of the men who had seen Blood’s true face, and he had been known to break an opponent’s neck without beading a sweat.

When Hammett felt Anne’s eyes studying him, he said suddenly, “Enough talk, yeh? Sausage.”

The fourth man, the youngest, dressed in the elaborate sword and scabbard of wealth, said, “And bring something other than this piss. Rhenish or, better yet, Canary.” He had the weak good looks of any young titled man she had lifted her skirts to because they paid in ready coin, although of late she had had to do her business in light enough to see that the coins weren’t Dutch stivers or a French sou picked up in some foreign war.

“Who’s this?” Anne asked Brudloe, jerking her thumb over her shoulder towards the young rake, ignoring his demand for costly drink.

“Edward Thornton, late of the Dutch wars,” Brudloe answered, leaning in closer to Anne. “Though, to my mind, the most action he’d seen in the Low Countries was in turning over his shaving razor.” He smiled at Thornton, who stiffened but said nothing. “All in all, though, Annie, he is a man for us.” When she still looked doubtful, he whispered loudly. “Edward here turned out Sam.”

“Samuel Crouch was a trimmer,” Thornton said, frowning distastefully into his cup of cooling ale.

When Anne looked in surprise at Brudloe, he nodded his head. “It’s true. Sam’d been takin’ money from Blood as well as from some tangle of pope’s whores out of Spain. Thornton caught him out and Baker trimmed his buttons.” He snorted gleefully at his own joke. When she looked at Baker for affirmation, he nodded pleasantly and made snipping motions with his fingers, as though holding a pair of shears.

“Sausage,” Hammett said again, more forcefully, and as Anne turned to go to the kitchen, Thornton thrust his cup into her hand and said, “Canary wine, sweet bird.” He slid his tongue between his first two fingers, silently casting for a quick lay, but she decided she would turn him down. Something about his eyes made her stomach clench; he would probably ask for something unnatural.

She walked quickly towards the kitchen, passing the tables emptying as the men finished their dinners and ducked back out into the rain. The man at the fire had not moved and seemed to have fallen asleep in his chair. In the kitchen she gestured for Min to prepare more food and turned to see Georgie sitting by the hearth, stuffing the last of an oyster pie into his mouth. He smiled at her broadly and she regarded him thoughtfully for a minute.

“Georgie,” she said. “How old are ya now?”

“Fourteen, if an’ it please you, Annie,” he said with pride.

She nodded and stood closer to him, waving her apron at the cook fire, stirring up the scent of her body like fresh-steamed bread. “A great big boy, now, ain’t ya? How’s yar traps workin’ at catchin’ eels?”

He wiped at his face with his sleeve, cleaning off the dirt around his forehead and chin, saying, “The traps is mostly broke, and that’s the truth.”

She pulled up a low stool and sat close to him. “Ya know how th’ French catch eels, Georgie? A sailor told me. They takes a horse’s head and ties it up good to a line. They throws it in the river for a day, mebbe two, and when they pulls it out, it’s filled with eels. Coveys of ’em. It sometimes takes three men t’ pull the head out, so heavy is it. The eels, ya see, they’ve sneaked inside th’ brain, t’ eat.” She had absently picked up his hand and was toying with his fingers as she talked. He shivered slightly, though she didn’t know whether it was from the thought of the eels burrowing deep into the horse’s flesh or from her touch.

“Would ya like me to find ya a horse’s head, Georgie? I could ask my ol’ man. He’s a carter with more dead nags in a week than there’r martyrs in Heaven.”

He smiled at her gratefully and she sent him away, promising to meet him at the tavern before daylight with a handcart bringing a fresh-severed head.

She brought food to the table and the sweet wine for Thornton, ignoring his disapproval over the crusted, half-emptied bottle. She seated herself in the fifth open chair and turned to Brudloe, who was speaking softly of the ship that had been chartered.

“The captain’s name is Koogin,” he said, spearing a sausage with his knife. “He was born a Dutchman, but only insofar as his mother’s cunny was filled up with some Low-Country yeoman. He’s of no country now. His only ’vestment, and loyalty, is to his own pockets and he’s been proven more than once. He’s run powder and flint to the colonies for ten years or more and he’ll ask no questions. His ship is a three-masted hull with a crew of only a dozen or so men.”

Baker roused himself, saying, “Blood’s paid for five men and he’ll know if we board only the four of us. How do we propose to fill our fifth?” It was the first time he’d spoken and Anne marveled at the gentleness of his voice. She tried to imagine how many times he had softly, and reasonably, questioned prone men screaming out their last agonies into his face.

Brudloe said, “There’s only a few left alive, or out of prison, who’ll serve for our purposes. There’s Pillater, for one.” He looked around the table and seeing no affirmation or dissent continued, “What about Knox?” He looked to Cornwall, who shrugged and rolled his head. “Christ on a cross. Well, then, there’s Markham.”

“Ah.” Baker smiled musingly and shook his head.

“Frig me, then,” Brudloe muttered. “We’re in for four, and Blood will take his own back.”

Thornton snorted. “Four of us and one colonial dirt farmer…”

An enormous hand wielding a knife plunged onto Thornton’s plate. The knife slowly removed the remaining sausage, dripping grease over the younger man’s velvet breeches, and Thornton’s startled, angry gaze turned to Cornwall, who shoved the sausage whole into his mouth. He chewed thoughtfully for a moment and then rumbled, “Big man. Big, big man.” He pointed the knife blade at Thornton and uttered carefully, “Little man.”

Brudloe guffawed and clapped Cornwall on the back, saying quickly to forestall Thornton’s reach for the butt of his sword, “Calm yerself, Edward. Do you know what it means when there are three nuns together with a horse? It means the horse is in for a rough ride.” His smile vanished and he gave the rake a serious look. “You’re the young blade here, laddie. Keep quiet, listen good, and you’ll live to collect yer pay.”

“I reckon a ship’s passage to be a danger,” Annie said suddenly, as though thinking aloud. Her voice cut through the fog of tension and she looked cautiously around the room, seeing only the sleeping man left at the fire. She lowered her voice to a forced whisper. “Who’s to say what will happen on the water with a hard blow and a rollin’ deck so bad as to pitch a man o’er the side?”

Brudloe smiled and reached for her arm. “What are you sayin’, Annie, dear?”

“I’m sayin’ five men board a ship and four men get off.” She looked to each man but when her eyes fell on Thornton, he smirked and said, “Look out, boys, she’ll snap your wick right off with her cunny.”

“At least any of their dicks’d be stiff enough t’ hit the mark,” she snapped.

Thornton scowled but buried his face in his cup.

Brudloe tapped her arm and said, “Go on.”

“What if I can find someone t’ fill the gap? No need to pay the impress men. I’ll find th’ mark and we’ll split the fifth man’s pay.” She turned to Thornton and said, pointedly, “Equal shares.”

“Blood won’t like it,” Brudloe said.

“Blood won’t know,” Anne answered, looking around the table, each man giving his nod of complicity.

“He always knows,” Cornwall mumbled sadly, eating the last of the damp morsels off the table with his fingers.

As Brudloe signaled for the men to go, she saw that the sleeping man had left his place at the fire, the door just closing on his retreating form. As Baker stood from his stool, he pointed to the rabbit and asked politely, “May I take the rabbit for my wife?” She nodded and he saluted her, his fine hands gently folding the rabbit’s corpse into his cloak.

She locked the door behind them and smiled at her own cleverness. As long as the work at hand was attended to, Blood would never begrudge her initiative. He had sparked to her abilities, and though he could have his pick of any woman, he had chosen her for his special attentions. It wasn’t merely the sweaty business in bed that she was partial to; his parts worked like any man’s. It was the talking he did when they were about it. He would whisper wetly into her ear, “My oyster, my briny-dewed oyster… my careless pearl… my wine-dark abyss,” and other such nonsense. The words stretched out into the long groan of rutting, words which uttered at any other time would have brought laughter from her mouth, but which, at the frantic moment of release, brought violent and thrilling images of falling from a vast height, with nothing but rocks below to catch her.

One brief moment of doubt crossed her thoughts, that he would settle on her harshly for dealing him false; but it was only flickering, soon gone with the rapid pulse of her breath. Blood would be in her room close by, still warm from the long wait by the fire, perhaps yet good-humored that his hired assassins had been so close and yet unaware that he had been seated in the tavern all along. She would trust, due to their greed and their fear in equal parts, that none of the men would reveal their little plan for the fifth man, and though she had grown fond of Georgie, it would be a very small thing to replace one eel boy with another.