themselves from layers of cloaks and hats, carelessly spraying the laborers around them with drops of frigid rainwater. They walked without hesitation towards the table where she stood, and she hurried to the kitchen to bring them cups of ale, warmed earlier with a heated poker. They settled themselves onto chairs and stools and once seated began to look about the room, studying every downturned face, noting the sudden quiet. The man at the fire had turned away, but his head was tilted in an attitude of cautious readiness, as though listening for sudden footsteps from behind.
When Anne returned with the cups, she startled to see the fifth seat empty and whispered to the man at her elbow, “Here now, Brudloe, who’s missin’?”
He snaked his arm around her hips, pulling her closer, and said, “Poor Sam Crouch. He’s lost his last argument.”
“What d’ya mean?” she hissed. Brudloe had begun to pull her onto his lap, but she grabbed his thumb and, pulling it back painfully in its socket, said carefully, “This won’t play. Ya know Blood asked for five men, five
Brudloe freed his hand and shook it with elaborate hurt, laughing. “Annie, d’ye reckon there’s not bullies and bravos enough in London to replace Sam Crouch? Or d’ye think we can’t take care ourselves to advance Blood’s scheme?” His smile was suddenly gone and she regarded his small frame and balding head, cross-hatched with scars from a knife fight that had separated his scalp down to the skull. He had, after finishing the fight, pulled the shredded skin back over his head, paying a seamstress to sew the wounds together with silken thread. She knew that his greatest asset was his surprising strength and agility, far beyond most men twice his size. His weapon was a short-bladed knife because he preferred plying his trade up close, but his true pleasure lay in tying intricate knots; some for immobilizing his victims and some for garroting. She looked at his forearms and knew he could strangle a cow if he needed to.
Anne turned to the others in quick succession and had to admit the four men together could be formidable against all but a heavily armed group of mercenaries. Baker, seated next to Brudloe, was unremarkable in either size or appearance, although he was rather tall, and he sat alternately studying his nails and observing the room in affable silence. He was a professional torturer, sometimes taking his victims north to Scotland, where the rack and the wheel were still tolerated, if not readily accepted. She also knew he had a wife and five children in a house on St. Mary-at-Hill, only a few streets from the tavern which stood on Lower Thames Street, within the shadow of the Tower of London, where he sometimes worked late of an evening.
Next to him was seated Hammett Cornwall, named after his place of birth, though past infancy he’d never traveled beyond the walls of London, and so massive that his coat was made from two cloaks stitched together. He never asked questions, never lost in a throw-down, and had been in with Tiernan Blood when he planned and executed the robbery of the Crown jewels from the Tower. He was the only one of the men who had seen Blood’s true face, and he had been known to break an opponent’s neck without beading a sweat.
When Hammett felt Anne’s eyes studying him, he said suddenly, “Enough talk, yeh? Sausage.”
The fourth man, the youngest, dressed in the elaborate sword and scabbard of wealth, said, “And bring something other than this piss. Rhenish or, better yet, Canary.” He had the weak good looks of any young titled man she had lifted her skirts to because they paid in ready coin, although of late she had had to do her business in light enough to see that the coins weren’t Dutch stivers or a French sou picked up in some foreign war.
“Who’s this?” Anne asked Brudloe, jerking her thumb over her shoulder towards the young rake, ignoring his demand for costly drink.
“Edward Thornton, late of the Dutch wars,” Brudloe answered, leaning in closer to Anne. “Though, to my mind, the most action he’d seen in the Low Countries was in turning over his shaving razor.” He smiled at Thornton, who stiffened but said nothing. “All in all, though, Annie, he is a man for us.” When she still looked doubtful, he whispered loudly. “Edward here turned out Sam.”
“Samuel Crouch was a trimmer,” Thornton said, frowning distastefully into his cup of cooling ale.
When Anne looked in surprise at Brudloe, he nodded his head. “It’s true. Sam’d been takin’ money from Blood as well as from some tangle of pope’s whores out of Spain. Thornton caught him out and Baker trimmed his buttons.” He snorted gleefully at his own joke. When she looked at Baker for affirmation, he nodded pleasantly and made snipping motions with his fingers, as though holding a pair of shears.
“Sausage,” Hammett said again, more forcefully, and as Anne turned to go to the kitchen, Thornton thrust his cup into her hand and said, “Canary wine, sweet bird.” He slid his tongue between his first two fingers, silently casting for a quick lay, but she decided she would turn him down. Something about his eyes made her stomach clench; he would probably ask for something unnatural.
She walked quickly towards the kitchen, passing the tables emptying as the men finished their dinners and ducked back out into the rain. The man at the fire had not moved and seemed to have fallen asleep in his chair. In the kitchen she gestured for Min to prepare more food and turned to see Georgie sitting by the hearth, stuffing the last of an oyster pie into his mouth. He smiled at her broadly and she regarded him thoughtfully for a minute.
“Georgie,” she said. “How old are ya now?”
“Fourteen, if an’ it please you, Annie,” he said with pride.
She nodded and stood closer to him, waving her apron at the cook fire, stirring up the scent of her body like fresh-steamed bread. “A great big boy, now, ain’t ya? How’s yar traps workin’ at catchin’ eels?”
He wiped at his face with his sleeve, cleaning off the dirt around his forehead and chin, saying, “The traps is mostly broke, and that’s the truth.”
She pulled up a low stool and sat close to him. “Ya know how th’ French catch eels, Georgie? A sailor told me. They takes a horse’s head and ties it up good to a line. They throws it in the river for a day, mebbe two, and when they pulls it out, it’s filled with eels. Coveys of ’em. It sometimes takes three men t’ pull the head out, so heavy is it. The eels, ya see, they’ve sneaked inside th’ brain, t’ eat.” She had absently picked up his hand and was toying with his fingers as she talked. He shivered slightly, though she didn’t know whether it was from the thought of the eels burrowing deep into the horse’s flesh or from her touch.
“Would ya like me to find ya a horse’s head, Georgie? I could ask my ol’ man. He’s a carter with more dead nags in a week than there’r martyrs in Heaven.”
He smiled at her gratefully and she sent him away, promising to meet him at the tavern before daylight with a handcart bringing a fresh-severed head.
She brought food to the table and the sweet wine for Thornton, ignoring his disapproval over the crusted, half-emptied bottle. She seated herself in the fifth open chair and turned to Brudloe, who was speaking softly of the ship that had been chartered.
“The captain’s name is Koogin,” he said, spearing a sausage with his knife. “He was born a Dutchman, but only insofar as his mother’s cunny was filled up with some Low-Country yeoman. He’s of no country now. His only ’vestment, and loyalty, is to his own pockets and he’s been proven more than once. He’s run powder and flint to the colonies for ten years or more and he’ll ask no questions. His ship is a three-masted hull with a crew of only a dozen or so men.”
Baker roused himself, saying, “Blood’s paid for five men and he’ll know if we board only the four of us. How do we propose to fill our fifth?” It was the first time he’d spoken and Anne marveled at the gentleness of his voice. She tried to imagine how many times he had softly, and reasonably, questioned prone men screaming out their last agonies into his face.
Brudloe said, “There’s only a few left alive, or out of prison, who’ll serve for our purposes. There’s Pillater, for one.” He looked around the table and seeing no affirmation or dissent continued, “What about Knox?” He looked to Cornwall, who shrugged and rolled his head. “Christ on a cross. Well, then, there’s Markham.”
“Ah.” Baker smiled musingly and shook his head.
“Frig me, then,” Brudloe muttered. “We’re in for four, and Blood will take his own back.”
Thornton snorted. “Four of us and one colonial dirt farmer…”
An enormous hand wielding a knife plunged onto Thornton’s plate. The knife slowly removed the remaining sausage, dripping grease over the younger man’s velvet breeches, and Thornton’s startled, angry gaze turned to Cornwall, who shoved the sausage whole into his mouth. He chewed thoughtfully for a moment and then rumbled, “Big man. Big,
Brudloe guffawed and clapped Cornwall on the back, saying quickly to forestall Thornton’s reach for the butt
