“Let’s be about it smartly then, guv’nor,” said Bob Shaftoe, striding off the boat they’d hired near Charing Cross and lighting on King Henry’s Stairs. “This may be nigh on the longest night of the year, but it can’t possibly be much longer; and I believe that my Abigail awaits me at Upnor.”
This was a gruff way of speaking to a tired sick old Natural Philosopher, yet an improvement on the early days in the Tower, when Bob had been suspicious and chilly, or recent times when he’d been patronizing. When Bob had witnessed John Churchill shaking Daniel’s hand on the Tower causeway a few hours earlier, he’d immediately begun addressing him as “guv’nor.” But he’d persisted in his annoying habit of asking Daniel whether he was tired or sick until just a quarter of an hour ago, when Daniel had insisted that they shoot one of the flumes under London Bridge rather than take the time to walk around.
It was the first time in Daniel’s life that he’d run this risk, the second time for Bob, and the fourth time for the waterman. A hill of water had piled up on the upstream side of the bridge and was finding its way through the arches like a panicked crowd trying to bolt from a burning theatre. The boat’s mass was but a millionth part of it, and was of no account whatever; it spun around like a weathercock at the brink of the cataract, bashed against the pilings below Chapel Pier hard enough to stave in the gunwale, spun round the opposite way from the recoil, and accelerated through the flume sideways, rolling toward the downstream side so that it scooped up a ton or so of water. Daniel had imagined doing this since he’d been a boy, and had always wondered what it would be like to look up and see the Bridge from underneath; but by the time he thought to raise his gaze outside the narrow and dire straits of the boat, they’d been thrust half a mile downstream and were passing right by the Traitor’s Gate once more.
This act had at last convinced Bob that Daniel was a man determined to kill himself this very night, and so he now dispensed with all of the solicitous offers; he let Daniel jump off the boat under his own power, and did not volunteer to bear him piggy-back up King Henry’s Stairs. Up they trudged into Wapping, river-water draining in gallons from their clothes, and the waterman-who’d been well paid-was left to bail his boat.
They tried four taverns before they came to the Red Cow. It was half wrecked from the past night’s celebrations, but efforts were underway to shovel it out. This part of the riverfront was built up only thinly, with one or two strata of inns and warehouses right along the river, crowding in against a main street running direct to the Tower a mile away. Beyond that ’twas green fields. So the Red Cow offered Daniel juxtapositions nearly as strange as what he’d witnessed in Sheerness: viz. one milkmaid, looking fresh and pure as if angels had just borne her in from a dewy Devonshire pasture-ground, carrying a pail of milk in the back door, stepping primly over a peg-legged Portuguese seaman who’d passed out on a heap of straw embracing a drained gin-bottle. This and other particulars, such as the Malay-looking gent smoking bhang by the front door, gave Daniel the feeling that the Red Cow merited a thoroughgoing search.
As on a ship when exhausted sailors climb down from the yards and go to hammocks still warm from the men who replace them, so the late-night drinkers were straggling out, and their seats being taken by men of various watery occupations who were nipping in for a drink and a nibble.
But there was one bloke in the back corner who did not move. He was dark, saturnine, a lump of lead on a plank, his face hidden in shadow-either completely unconscious or extremely alert. His hand was curled round a glass on the table in front of him, the pose of one who needs to sit for many hours, and who justifies it by pretending he still nurses his drink. Light fell onto his hand from a candle. His thumb was a-tremble.
Daniel went to the bar at the opposite corner of the room, which was little bigger than a crow’s nest. He ordered one dram, and paid for ten. “Yonder bloke,” he said, pointing with his eyes, “I’ll lay you a quid he is a common man-common as the air.”
The tavernkeeper was a fellow of about three score, as pure-English as the milkmaid, white-haired and red-faced. “It’d be thievery for me to take that wager, for you’ve only seen his clothes-which are common-while I’ve heard his voice-which is anything but.”
“Then, a quid says he has a disposition sweet as clotted cream.”
The tavernkeeper looked pained. “It slays me to turn your foolish bets away, but again, I have such knowledge to the contrary as would make it an unfair practice.”
“I’ll bet you a quid he has the most magnificent set of eyebrows you’ve ever seen-eyebrows that would serve for pot-scrubbers.”
“When he came in he kept his hat pulled down low, and his head bowed-I didn’t see his eyebrows-I’d say you’ve got yourself a wager, sir.”
“Do you mind?”
“Be at your ease, sir, I’ll send my boy round to be the judge of it-if you doubt, you may send a second.”
The tavernkeeper turned and caught a lad of ten years or so by the arm, bent down, and spoke to him for a few moments. The boy went directly to the man in the corner and spoke a few words to him, gesturing toward the glass; the man did not even deign to answer, but merely raised one hand as if to cuff the boy. A heavy gold ring caught the light for an instant. The boy came back and said something in slang so thick Daniel couldn’t follow.
“Tommy says you owe me a pound then,” the tavernkeeper said.
Daniel sagged. “His eyebrows were not bushy?”
“That wasn’t the wager. His eyebrows are not bushy, that was the wager. Were not bushy, that’s neither here nor there!”
“I don’t follow.”
“I’ve a blackthorn shillelagh behind this counter that was witness to our wager, and it says you owe me that quid, never mind your weasel-words!”
“You may let your shillelagh doze where it is, sir,” Daniel said, “I’ll let you have that quid. I only ask that you explain yourself.”
“Bushy eyebrows he might have had yesterday, for all I know,” the tavernkeeper said, calming down a little, “but as we speak, he has no eyebrows at all. Only stubble.”
“He cut them off!”
“It is not my place to speculate, sir.”
“Here’s your pound.”
“Thank you, sir, but I would prefer one of full weight, made of silver, not this counterfeiter’s amalgam…”
“Stay. I can give you better.”
“A better coin? Let’s have it then.”
“No, a better circumstance. How would you like this place to be famous, for a hundred years or more, as the place where an infamous murderer was brought to justice?”
Now it was the tavernkeeper’s turn to deflate. It was clear from his face that he’d much rather not have any infamous murderers at all in the house. But Daniel spoke encouraging words to him, and got him to send the boy running up the street toward the Tower, and to stand at the back exit with the shillelagh. A look sufficed to get Bob Shaftoe on his feet, near the front door. Then Daniel took a fire-brand out of the hearth and carried it across the room, and finally waved it back and forth so that it flared up and filled the dark corner with light.
“Damned be to Hell, you shit, Daniel Waterhouse! Traitorous, bastard whore, pantaloon-pissing coward! How dare you impose on a nobleman thus! By what authority! I’m a baron, as you are a sniveling turncoat, and William of Orange is no Cromwell, no Republican, but a prince, a nobleman like me! He’ll show me the respect I merit, and you the contempt you deserve, and ’Tis you who’ll feel Jack Ketch’s blade on his neck, and die like a whipped bitch in the Tower as you should’ve done!”
Daniel turned to address the other guests in the tavern-not so much the comatose dregs of last night as the breakfasting sailors and watermen. “I apologize for the disruption,” he announced. “You have heard of Jeffreys, the Hanging Judge, the one who decorated trees in Dorset with bodies of ordinary Englishmen, who sold English schoolgirls into chattel slavery?”