‘What are you doing there?’ he asked. It was unlike the demure Temperance to climb furniture.
‘I am trapped,’ she replied, although he could hear laughter in her voice. She thought her predicament amusing, unlike the raw terror of the first person who had spoken. ‘That bird snaps at me every time I try to reach the door. Be careful. It is very vicious.’
‘Is it a turkey?’ asked Chaloner. He had read about turkeys, and had even eaten some at a feast given by Downing in The Hague once, but he had never seen one alive.
‘It was supposed to have been delivered dead,’ came the whisper. Chaloner looked around the shop, but still could not locate the speaker. ‘I am a game dealer. Game means someone is supposed to have shot it. How am I supposed to cope with living goods?’
Chaloner jumped back as the bird lunged at him, beak open in an angry gape and wattles bobbling menacingly. ‘It will be dead soon enough if it does that again.’
‘Really?’ asked the voice eagerly. ‘You would be doing me a great service if you were to dispatch it. My regular patrons are too frightened to visit, and the damned thing is ruining me. It has been here almost a week now, and you and Miss North are the first customers I have seen since Tuesday. Look out! Here it comes again!’
Chaloner took a piece of bread from his pocket – left from the meagre breakfast he had eaten while waiting to see Thurloe – and tossed it towards the bird, hoping to stall its relentless advance. The ugly head dropped towards the offering, then began to peck, flinging the bread this way and that as it broke it into manageable pieces.
‘It is just hungry,’ said Chaloner, watching it with pity. ‘Do you have any seed?’
‘I am not usually required to feed my merchandise, but I suppose I can make an exception,’ replied the voice. ‘Look in the cupboard behind you. There should be some barley.’
Chaloner eased towards the chest while the bird was occupied, and found the sack of grain. He scrambled away in alarm when a thick neck suddenly thrust under his arm in an attempt to reach the food. The bird was a fast and silent mover. There followed a brief tussle, in which the turkey tried to grab the bag and Chaloner resisted. When the bird’s neck was stretched to full length, the snapping beak was uncomfortably close to his face, and the furious cackling at close quarters was unsettling.
‘Do not antagonise it!’ cried Temperance, frightened for him. ‘Let it have what it wants.’
‘Turkeys will slay a fellow without a moment’s hesitation,’ yelped the voice at the same time. ‘In New England, they are feared by man and beast alike.’
With difficulty, Chaloner managed to extricate a fistful of grain, and the bird’s head followed his hand to the floor, gobbling greedily. He edged around it while it was feeding, and began to lay a trail. ‘Where do you want it?’
‘I want it dead,’ said the voice. ‘Use your dagger to cut its throat while its mind is on the barley.’
Chaloner studied the featherless neck without enthusiasm. He had never enjoyed killing, and suspected any assault on the turkey’s life would end with them both being hurt, since he had no idea how to slaughter something of its ilk. Besides, there was something about the bird’s bristling defiance that appealed to him. ‘I will entice it out of your shop, but you can dispatch it yourself.’
‘I cannot!’ cried the voice in horror. ‘Not a great, dangerous brute like that!’
‘It can stay in here, then,’ said Chaloner, watching it eat. It was clearly starving, and the barley was probably the first food it had seen in days. It was no surprise the creature was in such a foul mood.
The disembodied voice released a resigned sigh. ‘Then lead it into the yard. But for God’s sake make sure the gate is closed first. I do not want it to get into Fleet Street – I will be fined.’
‘You are limping,’ said Temperance, watching Chaloner entice the bird towards the back door. ‘Did it bite you?’
‘No,’ said Chaloner shortly. That was something he would have to remember to disguise when he met Thurloe: the ex-Spymaster could not be expected to recommend anyone in a poor physical condition. ‘There is grain in my boot.’
‘Then get it out,’ advised the voice. ‘Or that greedy bird will chew through your foot to get at it.’
It was not long before the turkey was installed in a tiny garden with the rest of the barley and a bowl of water. A thickset, lugubrious man with a black beard emerged from under a bench to watch it through the window, while Chaloner helped Temperance down from her perch.
‘Thank you,’ she said gratefully. ‘I was beginning to think I might be there all day. I knew it was a mistake to order one of those things for Christmas, but mother insisted. They dine on turkey in New England, you see, and she wanted to show kinship for our distant Puritan brethren.’
‘If she wants to eat like them, then she is going to have to behead it herself,’ said the shopkeeper shakily. ‘You can tell her it is in the yard, waiting.’
The turkey incident had taken some time, but Chaloner was not entirely convinced Leybourn had really gone. He walked across the road to Praisegod Barbon’s leather factory, and pretended to inspect the jumble of displayed merchandise. Barbon, only recently released from the Tower for anti-Royalist ranting, nodded a startled welcome to a rare customer, but Chaloner declined to engage in conversation, and lingered near the door while he waited to see whether the bookseller would reappear. It was the first opportunity he had had to draw breath since chasing Snow and Storey out of Lincoln’s Inn, and he used the time to think carefully about the theft of the satchel and the stabbing of the post-boy.
Most of Thurloe’s spies were now unemployed, and Chaloner would not be the only one wanting to be hired by the new government. Was the entire incident a test, to see who was the most efficient, and whose name should go forward? Chaloner would not put such a trick past the wily Thurloe. The question was, would returning the satchel with news that its theft had been ordered by Kelyng be sufficient, or would Thurloe expect robbers in tow, too?
Bells chimed, telling him it was noon, and that he had been gone more than four hours – too long. He donned the hated wig, and to ensure he was not being followed, took a tortuous route through the Clare Market to Lincoln’s Inn. The market, recently established by the Earl of Clare, was a chaotic jumble of stalls, alleys, sheds and runnels. Chaloner held his sleeve over his nose when he passed the shambles, wincing at the rank, choking stench that emanated from the butchers’ and fishmongers’ shops. He emerged near the new theatre built for the Duke’s Company in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, although all the ornate plasterwork in the world could not disguise the fact that it had enjoyed a previous life as a tennis court. Checking for the last time that he was alone, he cut across the Fields to Chancery Lane.
The gate to Lincoln’s Inn was answered by the same porter who had admitted him that morning. The man raised his eyebrows questioningly, and Chaloner brandished the satchel, feigning a buoyancy he did not feel. The porter grinned and waved him inside, letting him make his own way to Thurloe’s apartments. Chaloner crossed a neat square that was bound by accommodation wings to the north, west and east, and the chapel to the south. It was dominated by one of the ugliest sundials he had ever seen. He weaved through knots of black-gowned students, then climbed a set of creaking stairs in the building that abutted on to the western end of the chapel, before knocking on the door to Chamber XIII.