gently pulled back fresh webs, as if he handled ancient lace, and let himself through. A muffled farewell to Montfallcon before the panel closed on him and he dragged off the hood and dropped it, reversed his cloak so that, with his sombrero on his head again, he was all in black. The place he entered was full of grey light, the source obscure, in which thousands of spiders crawled, upon floors, walls and pearly silk. He stood upright and moved carefully, to crush as few of the spiders as possible. The tunnel was of glass and had perhaps once been an orangery, for there were remains of tubs and pots, rotted branches. Now dust covered the glass and a roof had been erected some distance above that. It was through windows at the far end of what appeared to be a gigantic shed that the light came. The tunnel curved gradually, horseshoe fashion, and the air grew colder, the spiders fewer, until Quire came at length to a repaired door which he used, crossed a hard, littered floor until he reached a wall which must once have been an outer wall, to a garden. Through a gap in this he went, into semi-darkness; down steps, over a patch of naked earth. Now he shivered and dragged his cloak to his body, approaching a high, vast wall. A shoulder against one part and it swung so that he half-tumbled into daylight, into deep snow. He pushed back the brick door. He stood beneath a tall cliff of weather-yellowed brick and before him was a long, narrow ornamental garden, abandoned, overgrown, forgotten, whose outlines were made more precise by the snow and the ice. Black branches spread against the sky, broken statues stared from beneath a clothing of snow-the demigods of some sunnier realm, in ermine, frozen. Quire’s breath seemed grey against all this. Stepping high, he plunged booted feet along a familiar, but unseen, path, between the squares, circles and oblongs of barren flower- beds and clogged fountains, turning left towards another wall overhung with evergreens, jumped a small, iron gate, entered a grotto and trod a few cobbles that were free of snow, coming at length to a larger gate which he opened with his picklock, to stand upon a hillside where there was no longer a road. He was hungry. He began to run down the hill towards a thick grove of poplars lining a pathway, black with cart-ruts, glimpsed beyond. Wind blew the light top-snow so that it resembled the rippling waters of a wide, shallow river. Quire fell, rolled, cursed, then chuckled, stumbling to his feet, reaching the trees and their shelter, pausing to catch deep breaths which cut his lungs, leaning his stiff back against a bole while he looked down at the smoke of the city, not too distant now. A fence was his final obstacle and he clambered carefully over, not anxious to be seen, dropping into the spoiled track and slithering on the ice of a puddle before he was on the run again.
Through the ruts and the snow flew Quire, the crow’s feathers in his hat flapping in the wind, his cloak crackling like black fire, dropping faster and faster along the twists of the track until suddenly he had come to London’s walls and the unguarded archway which took him into salubrious northern streets and a respectable inn where he maintained the persona and name of a visiting gentleman scholar whose studies brought him frequently to the nearby Library of Classical Antiquity. The original scholar Quire had slain, during an argument over the likely identity of the poet Justus Lipsius, and taken his character complete. Here Quire bathed, dined on a better meal than any he would be likely to find in his usual ordinaries, and hired a good black stallion for himself. The cold had increased, driving many inside; the streets were almost deserted as Quire galloped east, for the river and the Seahorse, to tell Tinkler which men to rouse and where to go for the best steeds. Tinkler, infected by Quire’s briskness, hurried in his creaking new coat to the door and was gone, and Quire, finishing off a small measure of hot rum, was about to follow when Master Uttley’s unhealthy features confronted him. In all his spots and pocks, his little eyes were almost lost as he laid a propitiatory hand on the captain’s arm. “You’ve an enemy, sir, outside. Where your horse is.”
Quire looked to the clock overhead (Uttley’s pride) and saw that he had two hours before he was due to meet his men on the Rye road. “Some relative of the Saracen?”
“A lad you’ve done harm to, he says.”
“Name?”
“He gave none. If you wish, Captain, I’ll have the ostler lead your horse round to the back and you can join him there.”
Quire shook his head. “Let’s have a resolution, if it’s possible. I remember no lad, however.” With curiosity he approached the door and stepped outside, to lean against the jamb and study the slender boy who stood, with hot, uncertain eyes, near the horse and its wool-swathed ostler who held the bridle. The boy wore a hooded jerkin, rabbitskin leggings and patched shoes, and there was a quarterstaff in his mittened fists. Black, shining hair escaped the hood. He had dark, gypsy features, but it was his mouth which gave Quire a clue to his true character- it was wide, with a prominent, sulking lower lip. Quire grinned at him. “Me?” he said.
“You’re the Captain-Quire?” The boy flushed, confused between his imagination’s proposals concerning this encounter and the reality of it.
“I am, my beauty. What harm d’you claim I’ve done you?”
“I am Phil Starling.”
“Aha. The chandler’s child. Your father’s a retired sailorman. A good fellow. Is it money you claim? I assure you I’m not one to be in debt, particularly to an honest seadog. Yet, if it will help to see him, I’ll return with you, gladly.”
“You know more of me than I know of you, Captain Quire. I come on behalf of a young lady who has but lately passed her fourteenth birthday and upon whom you have laid lewd hands, threatening her virginity.”
Quire allowed himself a mild lift of an eyebrow. “Eh?”
“Alys Finch, servant to Mistress Crown the seamstress. An orphan. An angel. A sweet-natured paragon of goodness whom I shall marry and whom I now protect.” Starling gestured somewhat aimlessly with his stick.
Quire feigned controlled rage. “And how have I offended this virgin? Lewd hands? Upon the girl who collects my sewing, whom I’d not recognise a third or fourth time she came? Who told you this?”
“She told me herself. She was distressed.” The boy faltered. “She does not lie.”
“Young girls, however, fancy many things to be true-often most positively when their imaginings are the strangest.” Quire put fingers to jaw. “Visions, and such, you know. Visitations. They know so little of the world, they interpret the innocent remark as a vicious one, while the vicious suggestion is taken for virtue.” Quire became friendly. “What has she told you, lad?”
“Just that. She was distressed. Lewd hands.”
Quire held his gloved palms before him as if to inspect them. “I doubt they touched her. She took my clothes for mending. Was there another guest, in the same lodgings, whose clothes she collected?”
“It was you. You are known to be a very Prince of Vice.”
“Am I?” Quire laughed easily. “Am I, indeed? By whom?”
“It is the talk of all at the King’s Beard.”
“And you’re one to believe ‘em-these scandal-mongers? Because I do not mix with the crowd, I am envied, I am a mystery, I become an object of scandal. Have you heard of those who accuse honest men of vice they dare not or cannot perform themselves?”
“What?”
“Even you, lad, must indulge fancies of that sort. You hear that a man is wicked-and you guess what you would do in his shoes. Eh?”
A carriage, all creaking metal and leather, bounced past, drawn by two pairs of grey horses, its windows covered, a mingled scent of roasted duck and heavy musk drifting from it, as if a rich whore dined on the jog. The black stallion shifted his rump and the boy was gently pushed closer to Quire.
“That’s a good strong staff,” said Quire. “Is it for me?”
“You swear you did not touch Alys?” Starling was entirely confused.
“What does she say I did?”
“That you made her-that you forced her to show herself…”
Quire seemed stern. “I cannot remember ever laying a hand upon her.” Quire’s fingers encircled the boy’s stick. “But I’ll get to the bottom of this one, if I can. Let’s analyse the tale together, eh? Over a noggin? It could be, you see, that inadvertently, I made some gesture she misconstrued.”
Starling nodded, impressed by Quire’s gravity. “It is possible. I would not blame a gentleman unjustly.”
“I can read as much in those large eyes of yours. You’re a fine, upstanding lad. Sensitive, too, to the misfortunes of others. But a little quick to spring to the defence of those who do not always deserve it, eh? I can tell that, too, from your face. No wonder you are loved, for you have a beauty rarely granted a young man.” Quire removed the staff and placed it against the wall. He slipped a comradely arm about the boy’s waist. “I would be happy if I fathered a son as manly as yourself, sweet Phil.”
Warmed suddenly and euphorically by Quire’s flattery, Starling relaxed, and was lost.
