The King’s Evil. Andrew Taylor

fell with no more choice in the matter than a poleaxed ox. His head slammed against the coping. Pain dazzled him. He cried out. His arms and legs flailed as he fell. The damp, unyielding masonry grazed his fingers.

      Nothing to hold. Nothing to—

      His shoulder jarred against stone. The water hit him. The wintry chill cancelled all pain and drove the breath from his body. He opened his mouth to cry out, to breathe. The cold flooded his lungs. He choked.

      Fiery agonies stabbed his chest. He sank. He had always feared water, had never learned to swim. His hands scraped against unyielding stone. His boots filled, dragging his legs down.

      His head broke free. He gulped a mouthful of air. Far above him, he glimpsed the shadowy outline of a head and shoulders.

      ‘Help me,’ he cried. ‘For the—’

      But the words drowned as his body sank again and the water sealed him into its embrace. The purest in London, that’s what her ladyship claimed. His fingernails scrabbled against the stone, trying to prise out the mortar to find handholds. His limbs were leaden. The pain in his chest grew worse and worse. It was impossible that such agony could exist.

      Despair paralysed him. Here was an eternity of suffering. Here at last was hell.

      The pain retreated. He was no longer cold, but pleasantly warm. Slowly, it seemed, every sensation vanished, leaving behind only a blessed sense of peace.

      So this, he thought, this is—

       CHAPTER TWO

       One Day Earlier

      ON FRIDAY, I was watching the King healing the sick in the Banqueting House at Whitehall.

      ‘Don’t look round,’ Lady Quincy said softly.

      At the sound of her voice, something twisted in my chest. I had met her last year, in the aftermath of the Great Fire, during an episode of my life I preferred not to dwell on, which had left her a widow. She was a few years older than me, and there was something about her that drew my eyes towards her. Before I could stop myself, I turned my head. She was staring at her gloved hands. Her hat had a wide brim and a veil concealed her face. She was standing beside me. She had brought someone with her, but I could not get a clear view. Someone small, though. A child? A dwarf?

      ‘Pretend it’s the ceremony that interests you,’ she murmured. ‘Not me. Or I shall have to go.’

      We were on the balcony, and the entire sweep of the hall was laid out before us. My eyes went back to the King. In this place, the largest and by far the grandest apartment in the palace of Whitehall, Charles II was seated on his throne below a canopy of state, with the royal arms above, flanked by crowds of courtiers and surpliced clergymen, including his personal confessor, the Clerk of the Closet. His face was calm and very serious. I wondered whether he could ever forget that his father had once stepped through the tall window halfway down the hall on to the scaffold outside, where a masked executioner had been waiting for him with his axe. As a child, I had been in the crowd that had watched as the old king’s head was struck from his body.

      ‘Say nothing,’ Lady Quincy said. ‘Listen.’

      The Yeomen of the Guard marshalled the crowds in the body of the hall, their scarlet uniforms bright among the duller colours worn by most of the sufferers and their attendants. Many of the courtiers held handkerchiefs to their noses, because ill people did not smell agreeable.

      ‘I’ve a warning,’ she went on. ‘Not for you. For someone we shan’t name.’

      I watched the sick. Most of them had visible swellings, great goitres that bulged from their necks or distorted their features. They suffered from scrofula, the disease which blighted so many lives, and which was popularly known as the King’s Evil, because the King’s healing hands had the power to cure it. There were at least two hundred sufferers in the hall below.

      ‘I had a visitor on Wednesday.’ Lady Quincy’s voice was even softer than before. The hairs lifted on the back of my neck. ‘My stepson, Edward Alderley.’

      One of the royal surgeons led them up, one by one, to kneel before the King. Some were lame, hobbling on crutches or carried by their friends. There were men, women and children. There were richly dressed gentlemen, tradesmen’s wives, peasants and artisans and beggars. All were equal in the sight of God.

      There was a reading going on below, something interminable from the Prayer Book; I couldn’t distinguish the words.

      ‘Edward was in good spirits,’ she went on. ‘Full of himself, almost as he used to be when his father was alive. Prosperous as well, or so he would have me believe.’ There was silence, apart from sounds of the shifting crowd below and the distant gabble of the reading. Then: ‘Do you still know where to find his cousin Catherine? Just nod or shake your head.’

      I nodded. The last time I had seen Edward Alderley, he had struck me as an arrogant boor, and I knew his cousin would not welcome his reappearance in her life.

      ‘Good. Will you take a message to her from me?’

      ‘Yes,’ I said.

      ‘He told me that he knows where she is hiding. He said it was a great secret, and I would know everything soon.’ Lady Quincy paused. ‘When he has his revenge for what she did to him. He said that he and his friends would see Catherine Lovett dead and he would dance on her grave.’

      ‘His friends? What friends?’

      She shrugged and was silent.

      I was surprised that anyone might want to make a friend of Edward Alderley. He was a bully and a braggart, with a dead traitor for a father. After his father’s disgrace last year, Lady Quincy had lost no time in reverting to the name and title she had used when married to her first husband.

      In the hall below, the King was stroking the neck of the kneeling patient with his long fingers, while someone in the crowd was weeping and the clergyman was praying in an inaudible monotone. The King’s face was grave, and his heavy features gave him an air of melancholy. He was staring over the head of the kneeling woman. It seemed that he was looking up at me.

      ‘Do you think Alderley was telling the truth?’ I said.

      Lady Quincy stirred beside me, and her arm brushed mine, just for an instant. ‘He came to …’ There was a pause, as if she needed a moment to decide what to say. ‘He came in the hope of impressing me, perhaps. Or … Or to make me afraid of him.’

      ‘Afraid?’ I looked towards her again, but her face was still invisible. ‘You? Why should you be afraid of him?’

      ‘Warn Catherine for me,’ she said, ignoring the question. ‘Promise me you will, and as soon as you can. I don’t want her death on my conscience.’

      ‘I promise.’

      ‘I believe Edward would kill her himself if he could.’ She paused, and then abruptly changed the subject. ‘I shall listen to the sermon at St Olave’s on Sunday morning. Do you know it? In Hart Street, on the corner of Seething Lane.’

      I nodded. It was not far from the Tower, one of the few churches in the walled city that had survived the Great Fire.

      ‘Will you meet me there? Not in the church but afterwards – wait outside in a hackney. I wish to be discreet.’

      ‘Very well.’ I felt a stab of excitement. ‘May I ask why?’

      But she had already turned away. She slipped through the crowd towards the door, followed by her small attendant, who I now saw was a lad with dark hair, presumably her footboy though he wasn’t wearing her livery. He was wrapped in a high-collared cloak that was too big for him.

      Disappointment