The Ashes of London. Andrew Taylor

with such a valuable jewel.’

      ‘So when Layne didn’t return that evening, you thought he might have run off with it?’

      ‘Indeed.’ Mundy drew himself up, pursing his lips. ‘A not unreasonable supposition, you must agree.’ His voice was solemn, nasal and monotonous: a voice to drive his listeners either asleep or distracted. ‘But in fact Layne had given it into Sir Denzil’s own hands. Sir Denzil was wearing it when he dined here on Wednesday. And I saw it again on his finger not an hour ago, when he called on Mistress Alderley.’

      ‘So Layne must have reached Whitehall?’

      ‘Yes. It was the last time he was seen.’

      Until, I thought, his body was found amid the ruins of Bishop Kempe’s chantry chapel in the nave of St Paul’s.

      ‘It must have been the Catholics,’ Mundy burst out. ‘They need no reason to murder honest Protestants.’

      He unlocked the other box, Jem’s. This one too had its owner’s initials burned beneath the lock. I had been a printer’s apprentice once so I knew enough to appreciate well-proportioned letters. These ones were neatly squared and equipped with serifs.

      ‘Could they read and write?’ I said.

      ‘These two?’ Mundy shrugged. ‘You can tell by their marks on the boxes. Layne could read, more or less, but he could barely write his own name. Jem could write well enough if he had to, and he could read as well as I can. He’d come down in the world. Because of his wickedness, no doubt.’ The steward raised the lid of the box. ‘He kept a strange collection of rubbish. But it’s only to be expected. The man was strange enough himself.’

      On top was laid a shabby serge coat. Beneath it was a small silver cup, a Bible with print so tiny and poorly set as to be almost unreadable, a cracked clay bowl with a ragged ochre line running around the rim, and a child’s doll about five inches long, crudely carved from a single piece of wood. The doll’s face was flat with tiny, blunt features gouged into it. The eyes were black dots. The mouth was a faded red line. It wore a dress of ragged blue cotton.

      Mundy poked the cup. ‘This has some value. Jem must have brought it with him from his old place. Or perhaps he had it from his own kin – I heard it said that long ago his father was a clergyman, but they turned him out of his curacy for his godless ways.’

      ‘Mistress Alderley told me he had once worked for the family of her husband’s first wife.’

      ‘Indeed. Mistress Lovett’s kin.’ He frowned. ‘Best forgotten.’

      ‘Why?’ I said.

      Mundy put the cup back in the box. ‘Are you finished here, Master Marwood? I have people waiting.’

      ‘One moment, sir.’

      I returned to Layne’s box, partly because I sensed that Mundy was trying to hurry me away. I took up the almanac. I lifted it up to the window and turned the pages against the light, to examine the paper more closely.

      As my father’s son, I knew at once that the paper was French, which was normal enough for any book. The watermark, a version of the bunch of grapes, told me that it came from a well-regarded mill in Normandy that used only rags from pure white linen in its manufacture. The type was sharp and clean, probably from a newly cast case of type, and it had been set by a man who knew his business.

      The binding told the same story. All in all, this was not a book that you would expect to find in the box of a servant who struggled to write his own name.

      I closed the almanac and put it into Layne’s box, tucking it under the cloak. Something stabbed my finger, and I withdrew my hand with a cry of pain.

      ‘What is it?’ Mundy said.

      I squeezed the pad of the index finger on my right hand, and a tiny ball of blood appeared on the tip. ‘Something sharp.’

      I licked the blood away and pulled aside the cloak. A batten had been nailed across the bottom of the box, bisecting it from back to front, in order to strengthen it. One of the nail heads stood proud of the wood, and its edge was jagged – and sharp enough to pierce the skin. There were two other battens parallel to it, to the left and the right. It struck me that the central one was made of a different wood from the others. It was newer, coarser grained and slightly thicker. The nail heads attaching it were new and rough, whereas those on the other side were dark with age and deeply embedded into the soft wood.

      I knew a little about hiding places. In his prime, my father had been something of a carpenter, like many printers, and sometimes he had had a need to conceal papers and other small objects. I took out my knife and used the blade to lever away the central batten from the base of the box. The nails securing it were much shorter than the size of their heads suggested.

      ‘Master Marwood! I cannot allow you to damage the property of one of our servants, even if—’

      Mundy broke off as, with a twist of the blade, I wrenched up the baton. Beneath it, gouged into the base of the box, was a shallow and irregular depression about four inches long and two inches wide. It contained a piece of paper, folded into a flat package.

      I picked it up. The paper was unexpectedly heavy. Something shifted within its folds. A guinea fell out. Then another; then a third, and then three more. I picked one up and held it to the light from the window. The gold shone like a miniature sun. The guinea had been minted this year: 1666.

      ‘You had better add these to your inventory, sir,’ I said.

      I took up the paper, smoothing it out before I rewrapped the gold inside it. There was something written on the inside in a neat, clerkly hand.

       Coldridge. PW.

      I rubbed the paper between finger and thumb and held it up to the light. Even before I saw part of the bunch of grapes, I knew that it was probably an endpaper torn from the almanac I had just examined.

      Six new guineas. An expensive almanac. A servant who had been barely literate at best. Two, neatly written words: Coldridge. PW.

      I asked to see Mistress Alderley again before I left Barnabas Place. I was shown into the parlour. She was writing at the long table while her sour-faced maid sewed by the window.

      She looked up. ‘Did you find anything?’ she said abruptly.

      ‘Very little, madam.’ I glanced at the maid, whose head was lowered over her work, and said quietly, ‘Layne had six guineas concealed in a hidden compartment of his box.’

      ‘What of it? His savings, I suppose.’

      Perhaps she was right, I thought, though it was a great deal of money for a servant to have. The guineas had shown no signs of use. Their hiding-place had not been made long ago, for the scars in the wood had not darkened with age.

      ‘There was something written on the paper that held the guineas.’

      She sat up, suddenly alert. ‘Yes? What?’

      ‘“Coldridge PW”. Does it mean something to you?’

      She shook her head, the interest draining from her face. ‘Why should it?’

      ‘According to Master Mundy, Layne wrote but little and poorly. So perhaps Jem wrote it. But in that case, why was it in Layne’s box?’

      I waited but she did not reply.

      ‘On Thursday you told Master Williamson that Jem once served a connection of your husband’s first wife,’ I said.

      She stared at me, as if surprised and even irritated that I should have raised the matter. ‘Yes – he served the father of my husband’s niece, Mistress Catherine Lovett. She’s his niece by marriage, not blood, by the way – the child of his first wife’s brother. Jem served her father, when they lived in Bow Lane off Cheapside. Afterwards he went with Catherine to her aunt’s house, and then he came with her here.’

      ‘May I