“You just happened to take it into your head to visit Windsor this morning, did you? Is that what you would have me believe?”
“Sure then, but ’tis more pleasant than a day spent in the likes of Smithfield Market or Covent—”
Sebastian’s hand flashed out to close around the other man’s neck and shove him back against the low stone wall.
Flynn let out a yelp, fingers digging into Sebastian’s forearms as he bent the man backward over the parapet. “Here, what you wanna go and do that for?”
“Let me warn you right now,” said Sebastian, keeping his voice low and even. “Follow me if you like; I can deal with that. But if I hear you’ve been anywhere near my family again, I swear to God, I’ll kill you.”
The man’s face contorted into a parody of pain. “Ouch. It’s hurting me, you are.”
“Good.” Sebastian tightened his hold on the man’s throat. “Who sent you?”
“I told you; I don’t work for nobody.”
“I don’t believe you.”
Diggory Flynn’s eyes rolled sideways as he considered the drop-off behind him, his tongue flicking out to moisten his dry lips. “You can’t kill me. People’re watching. There’s laws agin’ murder in this country. Just ’cause you’re a viscount don’t mean you can go around killin’ folk.”
“Don’t worry,” said Sebastian, releasing his grip on the man and taking a step back. “If I kill you, there won’t be any witnesses.”
“That supposed to reassure me?” Flynn carefully straightened his grimy neckcloth and tugged at the hem of his worn, rucked-up waistcoat. “You’re just trying to scare me, you are.”
“You should be scared. I mean what I say.”
Flynn’s mismatched eyes widened ever so slightly. Then he pushed away from the old stone wall and scuttled off, his head down, the tails of his tattered coat fluttering in the breeze.
“Who was that?” asked Tom, drawing the curricle up beside Sebastian.
“I’m not quite certain.”
“’E’s a real Cap’n Queernabs, he is,” said Tom.
“A what?”
“Don’t ye know? A Cap’n Queernabs is a cove what’s dressed real shabby-like.”
“He is that.” Sebastian leapt up into the curricle. “Hear anything of interest in the stables?”
“They’re all talkin’ about how somebody prigged one of the old kings’ heads.”
“So much for swearing all interested parties to secrecy,” said Sebastian, taking the reins. “Anyone have any idea who might be behind the theft?”
“Oh, they got all sorts of ideas. But ain’t no two alike.” The boy scrambled back to his perch. “What’d you say was the name of that cove?”
Sebastian gave his horses the office to start. “Flynn. Diggory Flynn. Why?”
“Calhoun was talkin’ ’bout somebody hangin’ around Brook Street the other day—somebody who sounded more’n a bit like yon Cap’n Queernabs.”
Sebastian reined in hard and turned to stare at his tiger. “When was this?”
“Dunno. Few days ago. Why?”
But Sebastian only shook his head, the wind cold on his face as he whipped the horses for home.
Chapter 34
“The thing ye gots t’ understand,” said the costermonger, leaning against the side of a donkey cart piled high with whole, fresh fish still glistening and wet from the market, “is that not ev’rybody sellin’ on the streets is a coster.”
“Oh?” said Hero, intrigued by the costermongers’ determination to hold themselves apart from all other street sellers.
“Course not,” said the coster. He was a big man named Mica McDougal, with beefy arms and a wind-reddened face and dark hair covered by a small cap. “Why, the Dutch buy-a-broom girls, the Jew old-clothes men, the pea soup and bread ’n’ butter sellers, the wooden-spoon makers—ain’t none of ’em proper costermongers.”
“So what makes one a ‘proper’ costermonger?”
“Proper costermongers sell stock we buys at the fruit and vegetable and fish markets. Some of us ’as stalls or stands in the streets, and some of us makes rounds with a barrow or donkey cart. But you’ll never find a costermonger sellin’ tatted ’air nets or wooden clothes pins.” He wrinkled his nose in disdain.
“How far do you travel on your daily rounds?”
“Oh, usually nine or ten miles.”
“That’s quite a distance to walk every day.”
“Nah. Sometimes in the summer, Liz ’n’ me’ll go on country rounds for as much as twenty-five miles.”
“Liz?”
The coster grinned and shifted to lay an affectionate arm across his donkey’s withers. “Liz.”
The donkey peeled its lips away from its long teeth and let out a loud hee-haw.
“Do you live around here?” Hero asked.
“Ah, no; we lives off Fish Street Hill, m’lady. You’ll find most costermongers what deals in fish lives thereabouts, so’s we’re close t’ Billingsgate Market.”
“You have children?”
“I got three: two boys and a girl. ’Twere five, but two o’ the little ones died o’ fever afore Christmas.”
“I’m sorry.”