I expected Tamasin to shout back at him, but she only sighed and spoke quietly. ‘Jack, I wish you’d accept your status in life, live quietly. Why must you always fight with people? Why can’t you be at peace?’
‘I’m sorry,’ he answered humbly. ‘I should have thought. We’ll be all right, Master Shardlake will help us.’
She closed her eyes. ‘I’m tired,’ she said. ‘Leave me for a while.’
‘Jack,’ I said quickly, ‘let’s go out and discuss this case. I’ve some interesting news. I know where we can get a pie – ’ Barak hesitated, but I could see Tamasin was best left alone for a while.
Outside the door, he shook his head. ‘That was some storm,’ he said.
‘Ay. The hailstones were thick on the ground at Westminster.’
He nodded back at the house. ‘I meant in there.’
I laughed. ‘She’s right. You are incorrigible.’
WE WENT TO a tavern near Newgate jail frequented by law students and jobbing solicitors. It was busy already. A group of students sat drinking with half a dozen apprentices round a large table. The barriers of class, I had noticed, were becoming blurred among young men of military age. They were well on in their cups, singing the song that had become popular after our defeat of the Scots at Solway Moss three years before.
‘King Jamey, Jemmy, Jocky my Jo;
Ye summoned our King, why did ye so – ’
And now apparently the Scots are waiting to fall on us, I thought, reinforced by thousands of French troops. Hardly surprising since the King had been chivalrously waging war on their infant Queen Mary for three years. Looking at the group, I saw an older man among them, and recognized the scarred face and eyepatch of my steward. Coldiron, his face flushed, was singing along lustily. I remembered it was his night off.
‘Go to the hatch and get me a beer and a pie,’ I told Barak. ‘I’m going to sit there.’ I nodded to a table screened from the body of the tavern by a partition.
Barak returned with two mugs of beer and two mutton pies. He sat down heavily, and looked at me apologetically. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said.
‘Tamasin is in a great chafe.’
‘She’s right, I know. I shouldn’t have given that arsehole a flea in his ear. Soldiers are touchy. Did you hear – a band of German mercenaries made a riot up at Islington this morning? Wanted more pay to go to Scotland.’
‘The English troops are going quietly enough.’
‘Can you get me out of it?’ he asked seriously.
‘I hope so. You know I’ll do what I can.’ I shook my head. ‘I saw a hundred men from the Trained Bands setting out from Westminster Stairs earlier. And at Lincoln’s Inn I heard there are twelve thousand men in the navy. Sixty thousand militia on the Channel coast, thirty thousand in Essex. Twenty thousand on the Scottish border. Dear God.’
Beyond the partition, one of the carousing youngsters shouted, ‘We’ll find every last damned French spy in London! Slimy gamecock swine, they’re no match for plain Englishmen!’
‘He’d feel different if he had a wife and child.’ Barak took a bite of his pie and a long swig of beer.
‘If you were their age again and single, would you not be singing along with them?’
‘No. I’ve never run with the crowd, particularly if it’s heading over a cliff.’ Barak wiped his mouth, took another swig.
I looked at his near-empty tankard. ‘Slow down.’
‘I don’t drink much now. You know that. It was that which parted me from Tamasin. Not that it’s always easy. It’s all right for you to lecture that never drinks enough to drown a mouse.’
I smiled sadly. It was true I drank little. Even now I remembered my father, after my mother died, spending his evenings in the tavern. I would be in bed and would hear him being helped upstairs by the servants, stumbling on the steps, mumbling nonsense. I had sworn never to end like that. I shook my head. ‘What did you find out today?’
‘I think there’s something odd about Michael Calfhill’s death,’ he said in a low voice. ‘I talked to Michael’s neighbours, saw the local constable. He’s an old gabblemouth, so I took him for a drink. He said Michael had a spot of trouble with some local apprentices. Corner boys, standing around looking tough, with eyes peeled for French spies.’
‘What sort of trouble?’
‘The constable heard them shouting after Michael as he passed. Apparently the lads didn’t like the way Michael looked at them.’
‘What way?’
‘As though he’d have liked to get into their codpieces.’