A Beggar’s Kingdom

“Poisoning?” Julian opens his hands with a chuckle. “Constable Parker, Ilbert touches his mouth and face after handling the filthiest things. Has the man ever had a bath? He could’ve eaten a spoiled pig snout, old fish, bad eggs. In any case, it clearly wasn’t poison since Ilbert’s still walking around, alive as all that.”

“As opposed to who?” Parker says. “As opposed to an esteemed Member of Parliament, a Lord Temporal, who has vanished and can’t be found?”

“Do you always assume the worst when a man can’t be found for a day?”

The constable eyes Julian, then the Baroness. “Not any man. Lord Fabian. Many powerful people are going to notice the lord’s conspicuous absence. Among them His Majesty Charles II, your king.”

Julian and the Baroness stand motionless. Julian’s leg itches with anxiety.

“I don’t need to remind you both,” Parker says, “that murder by poison is a heinous crime. The punishment for it is being boiled in oil. Now will you two let me talk to the girl so we can clear her of any wrongdoing?”

They look for her, but Mallory can’t be found. Night is falling and the tavern is getting busy. The Baroness manages to charm Parker into returning on Monday morning, when he can have all day with Mallory if he likes. “And perhaps the honorable Lord Fabian will turn up by then, and this confusion will be put behind us.”

As soon as Parker leaves, Julian turns to the Baroness. “Ilbert’s not to be trusted.”

“What could Mallory have been grinding up in that pestle? Damn that girl!”

“Nuts, Baroness! But this isn’t about Mallory. It’s about Ilbert. You do remember, don’t you, how just this morning he and I dragged Fabian’s body down the stairs?”

“Shh!”

“On your orders, he helped me bind the man,” Julian says. “He carted him away. Ilbert knows for a fact there’s a body, for an absolute fact. What’s stopping him from leading the constable right to it?”

“Why would he do that?” The madam sounds offended. “We’ve had a death here before, some years ago. Ilbert was exemplary. Took care of everything. He’s been working for me for twelve years. He’s like a loyal son.”

“You’re sure about that? Because if he squeals, we’ll all be boiled in oil for murder and for conspiracy to conceal it. You, me, Mallory, and half your girls.”

“Murder! What are you on about? The lord had a heart attack! You said so yourself.”

“Who will believe you,” Julian says, “when his body is found bound and dumped in a canal?”

That Saturday night, from September 1 to September 2, 1666, is one of the worst Julian has at the Silver Cross. It’s one crisis after another. He barely has enough time to wash and change before Room Two is demanded by a contingent of celebrants who are willing to overlook the smell. They pay handsomely for a flow of wine and meat and girls to be brought up at regular intervals throughout the night. Carling stokes the fire, Mallory lights the candles and Ivy carries the ale and the steins. But the other nine rooms also need tending. At one point, Julian is reduced to changing the enseamed sheets himself. A fight breaks out between Brynhilda and a customer over the difference between services provided and price paid. Brynhilda, twice the size of the weasely john, punches him in the face, sending him tumbling down the stairs. For this Julian must negotiate a peace and restitution. One of the girls is sick in the night, vomiting violently in the middle of working, and the Baroness herself must haggle for a reduced fee instead of a refund. The night refuses to end.

It’s after five in the morning when the business of the house finally dies down, the patrons leave, the Baroness goes to bed, and an exhausted Julian locks up and returns to his room. It’s dark blue outside. Dawn is near. After taking off his jacket and puffy shirt, he gets the quill and dips it in ink. How many dots? Six columns of seven plus one; 43 dots in all. His forearm burns as the quill pierces the skin. He wipes up the drop of blood and wonders how many days he’s missed, four, a week, more?

A voice from a corner says, “Julian.”

He drops the quill, nearly falls himself. He thought he was alone.

Mallory is crammed between the dormered wall and the side of the cupboard, huddled on the floor, her knees drawn up. How did he not see her?

“Don’t scare me like that,” Julian says. “What are you doing?” He scans the room. It looks as if his things have been gone through. The journal is not where he left it, the shirts have been refolded. “Why are you on the floor?”

“Shh,” she says.

“What’s the matter?”

She rocks back and forth.

“Is it about Margrave?”

She won’t say.

He perches on the bed. Seeing her distraught makes him distraught. Outside the sun is not up yet, the air is blue-gray with a tinge of amber. The east wind is strong. On this wind, Julian can smell burning wood. What fools build fires in this crazy hot weather?

“You have to help me,” she says in a low cold voice. “This is all your fault.”

What is she talking about?

“Marg robbed me,” Mallory says from the floor.

“Peanut, don’t get offended again, but what could she take from you?”

She doesn’t answer. “You have to silence Ilbert,” Mallory says at last. “Do you know anyone in this town who can do it? Or can you do it?” She says the last part as if she doesn’t expect Julian can silence a mosquito.

“What do you mean, silence him? Like tell him to shut his trap? I can do it.”

“Well, perhaps before you beg him politely to quiet down, you can ask him what he’s done with the lord’s body.”

So she knows. The Baroness tried to shield her from it, Julian didn’t want to tell her, but she’s found out anyway. There are no secrets in a brothel.

“Mal, I’m really sorry—”

She cuts him off. “I heard you tell the imp to take the body far from here, and instead, Ilbert threw it into a canal a few streets away, a canal with barely six inches of standing water. The body isn’t even submerged. It’s what some might call hiding evidence in plain sight.”

Julian pales. “How do you know this?”

“Ah, it’s a funny story. I know this,” Mallory says, “because Ilbert told me.”

“Why would Ilbert tell you that?”

“Oh, no, dear one. You misunderstand. He didn’t confess to me because he wanted to get it off his skeletal chest. He told me, you see, because he wanted me to pay him to keep quiet.”

“Pay him? Why would you pay him?”

Mallory doesn’t answer. “But I can’t pay him because Margrave has stolen my money.”

“What money? The money we’ve been earning for you on the side? I thought you always keep it on your person? Isn’t that what you told me? Keep your valuables on you?”

“That little game Ilbert was playing with the constable about the mortar and pestle,” Mallory continues, as if Julian hasn’t spoken, “that was just him letting me and the Baroness know that we’ll all hang unless he gets what he wants.”

“What does he want?”

“Half,” Mallory says.

Julian fumbles inside his waistcoat pocket for the purse with the guineas in it. “Half of what?” he asks dully.

“Don’t you get it? If Margrave didn’t rob me, then Ilbert must’ve robbed me, in which case, he’s just toying with us. Tormenting us before the slaughter. It wouldn’t surprise me about him, wouldn’t surprise me in the slightest.”