time of the Doughty conspiracy and it was chance alone that foiled their plot. There is evidence that they mean this time to get the job done. I fear they have found someone more adept in the bloody arts than John Doughty.
Well, they won’t have an easy time of it. Drake is always with people who would hazard their own lives for him.
Where does he lodge?
At court, usually, with his pretty young wife. Sometimes he will stretch the hours by staying aboard ship at Gravesend when he journeys there. When he is here at Deptford he spends much time in meetings with my lord Admiral Howard who, you must know, has a house here on the Green. But if you ask me how we can protect Drake, I would say only this: get him to sea as quickly as possible.
Chapter 9
On the first floor of a broad Tenement House in Cow Lane near Smith Field, Gilbert Cogg was sweating profusely, which had less to do with the heat from the fire and more to do with his three-hundredweight girth and his exertions with a girl named Starling Day.
She had come to the door of his workshop asking for employment in his bawdy house. He told her he would not employ her without sampling what she had to offer, and said she could have sixpence and a tankard of ale. She asked a shilling. After a brief bout of bargaining, they had agreed upon ten pence. She had earned her money well, half-crushed to death beneath his prodigious weight. As he pounded greedily into her hungry body, his enormous bed threatened to break its boards and joists and collapse through to the ground floor.
But it survived, as did Starling Day. Now they lay together on the dirt-gray sheet. Cogg was panting as if he would soon breathe his last. His belly and chest heaved and sank like a ducking stool. Starling rolled over and slid out of the bed. Her body was thin from lack of nourishment, having walked from Nottingham to escape a marriage in which she had been beaten one time too many. Though the ribs in her chest looked like a washboard, her bruises had faded and she was still womanly. She would have been pretty had she had the opportunity to take more care of her hair. She dressed quickly, watching Cogg as his breathing eased. At last she held out her hand to him.
What would that be then, my pretty bird? Sixpence I do believe?
Ten pence, Mr. Cogg. You did agree ten pence.
Did I now? Did I so?
You did, sir, Mr. Cogg.
With difficulty he shifted himself upright off the bed. Standing naked in front of her, his member now flaccid and barely visible beneath a belly that hung down low like a sack of turnips, he pushed his stomach forward with evident satisfaction and grinned as he gave it a hearty slap. You don’t get a belly like that without some hard eating and drinking, my girl.
No, Mr. Cogg.
It’s living so near the shambles, little Starling, that’s what does it. The slaughtermen and butchers bring me offal and offcuts and in return I helps them with little things. Money for the rentman, pretty favors from friends like you. You name it, Cogg provides it. I provides fine favors for gentlemen, too, so those as works for me never knows who they might meet. You want fine sotweed? Cogg can get it. You want a prime view of a hanging, drawing, and quartering? Cogg provides.
I had heard you were a generous man, Mr. Cogg. I was told you might be able to give me work.
Well, we’ll see, won’t we? You’re new to Romeville, my girl, but you’ve already got some nice Boleynish tricks there. I reckon you could do with some feeding up, though. So I tell you what, I’ll give you a whole shilling this time so you can buy yourself some pies and perhaps you’ll come to see me again on the morrow and we’ll see what we can do.
I’d like that, Mr. Cogg. Thank you, sir.
He handed her a coin and squeezed her breasts, then clasped her face to his in a fetid kiss. Starling knew better than to pull away.
And do you have a lodging, my pretty bird?
She shook her head. There was a time when she would have cried in her misery, but those days were long past. Nights in the open or huddled beside the other poor and dispossessed in barns and byres had hardened her.
Well, get yourself to the vaulting house right by the Bel Savage, my girl, and tell them Cogg sent you. Talk to Parsimony Field. She’s my best girl. She’ll look after you and find you a comb to pretty yourself up a little. A cot, too. He slapped her behind as she left, knowing that the shilling was a fine investment that would pay him many times over.
Cogg was still naked when Miles Herrick arrived soon after the girl had gone. Swiving gave him a strong appetite and he had just sat down to devour the remains of a fat and fresh turkey cock that a farmer’s son from Suffolk had given him in exchange for a night with Parsimony. Most customers banged on his workshop door, but Herrick appeared in the chamber while Cogg was licking his fingers and chewing on some crisp, fatty skin from the wishbone.
The man stood there watching him, a dark shadow in black clothes. Cogg recoiled in shock, then jumped up from his three-legged stool, knocking it backwards into the hearth.
Who are you? he demanded, trying to gain his composure as he scrabbled for his breeches and shirt.
I was given your name.
So you just walk into a man’s chamber when he’s at his repast?
Herrick smiled. I think I just watched your repast leave by the front door. A fine but skinny wench, Mr. Cogg. It is Mr. Cogg… isn’t it?
It is, sir, yes, but who, pray, are you? Cogg was half-dressed now and trying to impose his authority on the situation.
I bring you gold, Mr. Cogg. And I believe you can supply a certain item in return.
Cogg pulled the stool from the fire. That depends on just who I am talking to.
My name is Herrick. Miles Herrick.
As if a taper had been lit behind them, Cogg’s eyes brightened. Ah, yes, Mr. Herrick. I had been expecting you. Suddenly all was clear. Cogg’s manner changed; here was the prospect of good money. He had been thinking of how to squeeze this orange ever since the commission had been agreed. Let us go down to my workshop, if it please you. It is more of a place to strike deals.
He led the way through the doorway, his bulk barely managing to negotiate the narrow frame, then down a flight of thirteen wooden and ominously creaking steps to a large shoplike area that took up the front half of the ground floor of the wide-fronted building. He opened a door to the rear and showed Herrick through.
The back room was a cluttered heap of boxes and barrels. A layer of dust covered many of the trunks and crates. The ceiling and corners of the room were clothed in cobwebs. Whatever you want, Mr. Herrick, I’ll guarantee you’ll find it here.
Herrick’s eyes flicked around the dimly lit room. He looked at Cogg, who was panting like a dog in summer.
I tell you, Mr. Herrick, Cogg continued. As a boy I used to dig marl. From the age of eight until I was twenty, day after day after day, I dug the same thick white-gray clay in the depths of a dark pit in the shire of Northampton. Backbreaking work that left me strong as a bull. The farmer treated his swine better than he treated me. But one day I just upped sticks and walked to London, where I got work slitting pigs’ throats in the shambles. I had my eyes on a better life, though, so I’d get things for people, like the foreman, who had a taste for chewing Moorish hemp. I’d go down to the docks and buy things from the mariners and sell them on: strange foods and odd carvings, knives taken from Indians and Mussulmans, medicines from the ends of the earth to cure the ague, wenches of every hue, not all of them Christian, wild beasts such as you’d never find even at the Tower menagerie. I can find you liquids that flame to burn down a house and perfumes that will poison with a sweet smell. Whatever a man could desire, Mr. Herrick, Cogg gets it for him.
You know what I want, Mr. Cogg. Herrick’s voice was cold. The question is: do you have it?
Cogg waddled ducklike among the crates and barrels. Oh yes, Mr. Herrick, you had a very special request, as
