Anatomy of a Heretic, page 11
Skilled as he is in the art of overlaying his reality with illusion, he cannot truly imagine himself settling to such a life. He has already exceeded every ambition that he set himself when he came to England seeking his father. He has served a great man. Has proven himself as soldier and spy and learned how to secure advancement through favours remembered and secrets forgotten. There are other ways for him to prosper, of that he is certain. Why continue with this cruel, ungodly campaign? Why accept such a dangerous, foolhardy commission? Why put himself into this Hell of enemies and disease: to rejoin the ranks of the common soldier and journey to the East Indies to do bloody murder to men as well protected as his uncle?
He shakes his head. Wrinkles his nose, disappointed at the inevitable realisation that he is doing this to please his benefactor, and because the formidable Mrs Towerson looked at him with such desperation that to refuse was beyond him.
‘Mrs Towerson,’ he mutters, tapping his tankard against his teeth and allowing himself a little smile. ‘To consider yourself the equal of a man would be an act of diminishment.’
He still has not fully digested all that she has shared with him about the vicissitudes of chance and misfortune that led her to the crypt beneath the little church, parlaying with the Duke of Buckingham’s retainer about a campaign of bloody violence against those who have wronged her. He thinks again of those piercing, joyless eyes; the look of absolute conviction in the way she held herself. This would be done with or without his involvement, of that she was certain. There have been others in her employ – others who have tried to reach her targets. Some have lost their life in the process. Others secured scraps of her fortune by eliminating softer targets. Her favoured assassin suffered severe wounds and succumbed to fever while securing the transportation of a Japanese mercenary from the fortress in Batavia where he had lately been serving his Dutch masters, alongside dozens of his countrymen.
Nicolaes drains his ale. ‘Madness,’ he mutters. ‘True madness.’
He pictures her mouth. Summons up the image of those full, tulip-petal lips as she spoke, so matter-of-factly, about her life.
‘I was a gift,’ she told him, by the soft light of the lantern, as her brother-in-law sheathed his sword and returned to his vigil in the dark. ‘I have been twice married to Englishmen and twice I have found myself grateful to God for providing me with such good and steadfast men. I was little more than a child when the Great Mughal Jahangir developed a friendship with an Englishman at his court. My William was a great adventurer and a forthright, honest man. Jahangir wanted to please him, as one would a favoured guest. He set himself the challenge of finding a good Christian bride for his new friend. I was selected for that honour, and though it hurt bitterly to bid farewell to my family in Agra, he was indeed a good and attentive man. I was the best wife I could be to him, and ours was a union of friendship and love. We had been married too few years when my husband, every inch a weather vane for what was to come, decided we should return to England.
‘Alas, he sickened on the journey home and did not reach England alive. And so I found myself, an Armenian by birth, raised in a court in India, widowed by an Englishman, in this strange and unwelcoming land. My late husband’s employers, your veritable East India Company, proved reluctant to honour certain financial agreements that should have by rights passed to his widow. It was only by the good graces of those who showed kindness to a stranger that I was not abandoned at the docks. Of those who showed me kindness, I thank God for steering me into the care of Gabriel Towerson. The love I felt for Gabriel repaired me and somehow, our union seemed to please God. My fortunes changed. The monies owed by the Company were finally paid, and having sold those jewels which I had been gifted by my family, I received the joyful tidings that we were to leave England. Mr Towerson was appointed principal factor in the Moluccas – a position long overdue and too little reward for his years of loyal service.’
Nicolaes shifts in his chair, the weight of his sheathed dagger pressing against his back. He thinks again of the way it had slid into the samurai’s gut as if quartering fruit. Shakes his head, lest the memory become more than an echo. He knows from past experience that those whose lives he has ended can linger if he dwells upon their memory: bloodied spectres with empty eyes, staring accusingly at the man who stopped their hearts. He thinks instead of Mrs Towerson – of the melody in her voice and the sudden flash of light in her eyes as she spoke of the man for whom she threw off her widow’s gown.
‘After a return to India, we made our home in Amboyna – a time I recall with great fondness. He was a strong, adaptable man, full of laughter and ever eager to delight me. He was like a child in the way he would run to me, a butterfly upon his knuckle or a glittering stone upon his palm, thrilled to show me something that might make me smile. He was a true jewel for the Company, making it his business to represent the Crown and his employers with wisdom, humility and grace. Truly, he was a victim of that insidious, creeping evil that infects the minds of powerful men.’
Nicolaes had kept quiet, for fear of dragging her back from the memory into which she stared. No tears fell, but her eyes grew dark as she remembered that which was done to Towerson and his English colleagues in 1623.
‘The Dutch and the Spanish had fought bitterly over the spice trade,’ she’d said. ‘The English merchants who traded at Amboyna were viewed with suspicion by the authorities, amid fears that they would switch allegiances and attempt to capture the island. I swear by Almighty God that such imaginings were fantasy, but the idea took root in the mind of that damnable bastard Herman van Speult, who feared above all things that the sultan would begin to favour traders other than his own countrymen. In this time of hot tempers and simmering blood, Dutch soldiers identified some Japanese mercenaries looking uncomfortably closely at the fort’s defences. They arrested these men and reported their findings to van Speult. Under torture, the mercenaries identified my husband and his countrymen as the leaders of a conspiracy. They were accused of attempting to seize the island and with formulating a plan to kill the governor.
‘My husband, a respected man, attended the fort to answer what he knew to be ridiculous accusations. He, and men he considered friends, were tortured beyond their wits. Though my husband stood firm, the Englishmen condemned themselves by confirming each devilish contention that was put to them. Men I knew to be wise and godly were beaten to mulch. Gallon upon gallon of water was poured into their bellies. Bloodied, broken, they were held in manacles until the rotting flesh of their wrists and ankles spilled over the rusted irons. And when my husband saw that his countrymen had broken, he was made to press quill and ink to a confession.
‘In front of the men of the fort, my Gabriel was murdered. So too were those factory owners who had been similarly brutalised, together with the Japanese soldiers who had first been put to torture. Four Englishmen and two Japanese prisoners were pardoned, having given confessions that condemned Gabriel and his associates. My husband’s head was mounted on a pole at the fort gates, Master Pelgrom. And these many years I have petitioned the Company, Parliament, the king – I have begged them to demand redress for this ungodly massacre. They have ignored my pleas until this day, Master Pelgrom. On this day, finally, they send me you.’
Nicolaes is yanked from the reverie at the sound of raised voices from the adjoining room. Forces himself to stay present. Stay alert. A watchman was here not long ago, reminding the innkeeper that curfew was growing closer by the moment and that only a good meal and a hearty helping of ale could persuade him to forget such a salient fact. He has joined a gaggle of younger men in the back room: apprentice glovers, coopers, brickmakers, tanners. They are boorish, headstrong, physically able young men, whose thirst for drink seems unquenchable and who daily and nightly fill the pockets of the innkeeper.
The tavern is owned by a man known to one and all as Trotter: so named because of his facial disfigurement. Trotter lost a portion of his nose in a fight while not much more than a boy and the remaining portion has become something of a snout: pink, mucus-crusted slits offering obscene windows into his round, meaty face. He’s a grotesque creature: a man of average height who carries himself like something from a nightmare: hunchbacked and rangy, his legs bent low as he waddles between the tables. He’s broad-shouldered and strong and Nicolaes knows the lamentable caricature he displays is nothing more than a ruse. When threatened, Trotter straightens himself. Closes his open mouth and strips himself of the simpering, toadying nature with which he clothes himself when his customers are behaving as he would wish. Wronged, he is half-savage: a dog in a bear pit, all teeth and claws.
Nicolaes is familiar with both aspects of his character and knows each to be similarly repulsive. He has a secondary income as a procurer of the young and disposable: catering to whims of men with purses deep enough to ensure no thirst is ever left unslaked.
‘Van Speult,’ mumbles Nicolaes, eyes closed like lips, swallowing the name. ‘Sent home in disgrace by the East India Company. Died at Mocha, off the Yemeni coast.’
He thinks again of Mrs Towerson, her voice cracking as she spoke the names of those she would see dead. ‘The gossips would have it said that van Speult died onboard ship two summers since. That is a lie, sir. I have paid handsomely for information and van Speult lives, I swear to you. So too that accursed Coen, even now Governor-General in Batavia. Both must pay for what they oversaw. The Englishmen pardoned for their treachery returned home. Two are to die at your hands in the manner you see fit. Another has already succumbed to sickness. The other yet lives. The torturer who flayed my husband’s flesh is a Dutch soldier, sir – even now filling his belly in an Amsterdam brothel as he awaits orders to join his new ship and return to the East Indies. Of the Japanese traitors, you need think no more. You have already ended his struggle for life; while the other, who died aboard ship, festers and pours through the grates of the gibbet at the edge of the lane.
‘As for me, sir, I am to return to India. Petitioning the Company has been as much grief as the loss of my husband. They paint me as some grasping, ungrateful harlot: some foreign witch eager for naught but unearned recompense. They do not understand, sir. Only your Buckingham understands. Blood must be met with blood. Buckingham has spoken plainly, Mr Pelgrom. Though the negotiations between the two nations will continue, there is no hunger for conflict. To earn redress, I cannot expect cannons. And so, sir, I must wield a hidden blade.’
Nicolaes breathes deeply. Massages his temples, his head beginning to ache. He has nowhere to sleep tonight. He will make his way to Wapping before the morning tide, seeking passage on a ship bound for Amsterdam. Tonight is his last night as an Englishman. By the morning, he will be speaking in his native tongue and adopting the mannerisms of a Dutch soldier. Inside his shirt, beside his locket, is a commission as a private soldier in the Army of the United Provinces, attached to the Dutch East India Company and awaiting passage to Batavia on the next available ship.
‘And may you come back and spew your coin into a fat man’s purse, you rabble of bastards.’
Nicolaes looks up, cocking an ear as the watchman and his new companions grumble their way through the door and into the warm air of Cheapside. Listens as they lower their breeches and aim their splashes of piss up the front door and laugh, raucously, as one of their number succeeds in forcing their jet of beery froth onto the lower reaches of the window. There comes a low laugh from the hallway, beyond the partition wall, as Trotter closes the door behind the last of the men and leans, heavily, against it. Slowly, the raised voices grow quieter, and the sound of stumbling footsteps disappears into the night.
‘By Christ, sir, I had forgotten thee!’
Nicolaes raises his head. Trotter stands in the doorway, a hand over his chest, half lost in the great mass of hair that coats him. He wears a leather jerkin over a stained doublet, unfastened to the waist, and his gut sits over the top of his breeches like baking bread. At his belt is a coin purse and tucked into a length of cord is a long strip of black leather descending from a wooden handle. Recovering himself, he follows his customer’s gaze.
‘Aye, a bull’s pizzle, sir. I’ve wielded many a club and cudgel and these fat hands have hefted a sword and pike when war has called for it, but I have never felt as well at ease as when I feel this here piece of beef in my hand.’ He stops talking for a moment, his voice thick with mucus. He hocks something back into his throat and spits onto the floor, his nostrils opening and closing like the gills of a landed fish. ‘The bird was to your satisfaction, sir? You’ll forgive me for not refilling your cup – I was dealing with that ragged bunch of chisellers and roustabouts and feeling the watchman’s pincers nipping at my purse. It is no time to be a tavern-keeper, sir. There are always those willing to pick an honest man’s pocket.’
He steps forward, looking at the near-extinguished fire and squinting at the handsome, well-dressed man he has ignored this past hour. He takes in the mud and blood of his boots and assesses their worth. Peers at the fine features and then his gaze stops upon the hilt of the sword. He sucks his teeth appreciatively.
‘A fine rapier, sir. I see you are a man of means. If you are without a bed for the night then perhaps I could kick out one of those ungrateful bastards who lingers upstairs. If you were of a mind for company, there are few pleasures that cannot be catered for. My own dear wife makes for a comfortable hump, though she’s in drink this night and may not even wake until you were done. If you seek somebody with a little more spirit, a little more… shall we call it fight… well, I know of a young boy who comes to me for scraps, and who can pretty himself up to be a maiden while still letting his pride jut like a mainmast, if you’ll take my meaning, sir…’
Nicolaes smiles, a gentleman considering his options. ‘Your name is Bellew, is it not?’ he asks, softly.
Trotter, who has been moving forward as if carried along in a trail of ooze, stops short. He scowls at the name. ‘And if that name meant something to me, what sort of a fool would I be to admit it to a stranger?’
‘You’ve done well,’ says Nicolaes, calmly. ‘Just two years back in London and already so well connected. A tavern of your own and a network of apprentice boys glad to do your bidding. You make money at the bear pit, so I’m told. Will pay for inconvenient men to be removed, yes? Can secure the services of whatever a man might fancy, no matter what the cost. You have put that hard-earned coin to good use, I see. I wonder, does van Speult know what he has funded? It would no doubt do him good to see what a turncoat Englishman can become when given a proper start.’
Trotter fondles the bull’s pizzle. Sniffs, throatily and allows his mouth to open in a leer. ‘The name means nothing to me, boy. ’Tis clear you’ve had your fill of ale and per’aps that’s addled your wits. I’ll overlook the slight upon my honour, seeing as you’re young and pretty and not worldly enough to know that you don’t tell a man what you know of his past until he’s already bleeding and both hands are nailed to the floor…’
Trotter lashes out with the strap of hard leather: its tip hard as tarred rope, whistling past Nicolaes’s cheek as he pushes himself back in the chair. Off-balance, Trotter lunges forward and Nicolaes uses his boots to push against the table and pitch the chair over backwards, rolling through into the reed-strewn space behind him, turning on his shoulder and regaining his feet in one motion. Trotter swings the weapon but it passes harmlessly by as Nicolaes jerks forward, his head smashing into the vile, damp hole in the publican’s face. There is a sickening crunch, and Trotter is falling backward. Nicolaes grabs him by his matted chest hair and smashes his forehead with his cheekbone. He feels Trotter slump, spilling backwards, his knees buckling. He drags him forward, dropping him on the table, blood leaking from his mouth and ruined nose.
Nicolaes steps back. Picks up the dropped bull’s cock from the floor, and considers it. It’s a fine object. Well-made and with a pleasing heft. He rolls Trotter onto his back and places an arm under his fat neck. Smiles, as if having seen an old friend.
‘You’re going to tell me things, Trotter. I won’t make you any promises about still being alive in the morning, but your death can come one way or another. My employer has left the details up to me. Now, I am going to give you some names. And you are going to fill my head with information with the ease that this world spills coins into your purse.’
Beneath him, Trotter squirms, drowning on his own blood as it drips from his ruined features into his throat. He gurgles something: a curse or a threat, but most definitely nothing that Nicolaes wants to know. He shakes his head, sadly. Slides his knife from its sheath. Slowly, deftly, almost tenderly, he slices off the fat man’s ear and throws it onto the embers that glow in the hearth. He shoves the bull’s pizzle in his mouth to mask the scream, feeling the blood jet over his sleeve.
‘There are lots of pieces between you and death, Trotter,’ he says, as the smell of burning meat rises into his nostrils. ‘We just have to find something that you want to keep.’
He glances down, a slow smile crossing his features. Beneath him, Trotter’s eyes bulge in their sockets.
‘Now,’ says Nicolaes, as his grin reflects in the steel of the blade. ‘Tell me the truth and I shall set you free.’
