Borin glared. ‘Sell yourself, stupid trollop. Ma says you do anyway, soon as my back’s turned.’
Tyballis saw the fist coming and stood abruptly. Borin’s swipe went wild as Tyballis staggered, stabilising herself against another prisoner’s shoulder. The stranger yelped and wriggled quickly away. Borin sighed and went on eating his apple. Tyballis risked coming close again and said, ‘You know that’s a lie. You know it is.’
‘Humph.’ Borin stuffed the apple core in his mouth. ‘Best get over to Throckmorton’s, then. Ask for a loan against future business.’
She had never much credited her husband’s intelligence, but this surprised her. ‘Borin, you must remember – him being dead, that is. Throckmorton was murdered. That’s why you’re in here.’
‘Stupid trollop. It’s the bloody bastard brother, Harold, I’m talking about. The bugger what surely walloped his own brother to get the title. Well, I can’t expect him to fucking confess, can I? But the least he can do is pay my way.’ Borin prodded his wife’s concave midriff. ‘Get down there and see the bastard. Threaten him. Tell him I’ll squeal ’less he pays up. We might as well get a fair purse out of him – and then I’ll squeal on him anyway.’
‘Do you know he did it?’ demanded Tyballis.
‘Course I do.’ Borin paused, thinking a moment. ‘Stands to reason. But I can’t prove it,’ he admitted, ‘or I’d be out of here already.’
‘Throckmorton will realise that. He won’t pay up.’
‘Threaten the bugger,’ Borin scowled. ‘Or hitch up your skirts. Squeeze his cods and kiss his arse. Do something. Bad enough being in here without starving too.’ He scratched his groin. The lice and fleas wove their own trails through the damp and into the prisoners’ clothes and hair. ‘And after that,’ Borin continued, ‘you’ll start working on that bloody Constable Webb. Reckon the blind bugger fancies you.’
‘You expect me to seduce half of London?’
‘You’re no fucking use in bed anyways,’ Borin muttered with sullen resignation. ‘Just lie there puling like some stray dog got kicked. You can’t swive your way past the bedposts. Might as well do something worth all the whimpering.’
The neighbours were becoming interested. Several, hoisting themselves up onto their elbows and waggling the teeth they had left, became alert. Tyballis picked up her empty basket. ‘I’m going. I won’t be doing any of that, but I’ll try and find a shilling from somewhere. I suppose I could ask to see the new baron, but I doubt he’d agree to speak to me. But you’ve got a nasty mind, Borin Blessop, and while you’re in here at least, you could try being more friendly.’
Borin appeared startled by this suggestion. ‘I’m your bloody husband, not your bloody friend,’ he reminded her.
Through the centre of the reeking dungeon, an open trench bubbled with urine and excrement. Rats waded from one side to the other, nibbling at the prisoners’ bare toes and the frayed hems of their shirts. There were no windows but two high arrow slits allowed both a pale semblance of gloomy light and a bitter biting draught. Slime trickled a different stream down the walls and the damp oozed between the great stones. Thirty or more prisoners packed the stone floor. Some slept, grunting and snoring. The weakest, hungry and injured, moaned as they lay in their own piss. In a far corner two men were fighting, using their chains as weapons. Fleas searched for blood and found it everywhere. Borin, again absorbed with his crotch, caught something small, fat and pale, and squashed it between his fingers. The stench was making Tyballis nauseous. She began to move away, searching for a place to tread between bodies.
‘People who have to live together,’ she murmured, more to herself than to Borin, ‘especially while one is particularly dependent on the other, could still try and be nice to each other.’
Accustomed to the noise around him, Borin heard her, and sighed. ‘Brainless trollop,’ he mumbled as he closed his eyes.
Throckmorton Hall stood in considerable contrast to Newgate’s dungeons. Although not as grand as the great palaces that lined The Strand, it was a neat house, set back from the bustle of Bradstrete in the vicinity of the Austin Friary. Only a short walk from her own alley, it was a building Tyballis knew well. Borin had worked for the first baron in many capacities for some years, so she had been summoned there frequently for a variety of reasons, including that of coaxing her drunken husband home after he had finished whatever was required of him. But this was a new baron. She had never met him.
Although not such a grand house as that she had visited outside London’s walls only two days before, this was in far better repair. Tyballis pulled her cape over her headdress, found her way around to the back and entered under the archway leading to the stables, slipping through the familiar open door of the pantries. The perfumes of cooking seemed even less welcome than the stinks of Newgate, for she had eaten nothing since the pie shared with the beggar girl. Now Throckmorton’s midday dinner announced itself in clouds of aromatic steam.
The evaporating billows almost hid her, but she knew that a female daring entrance into John Knody’s kitchens would never pass unnoticed. A damp, large-knuckled hand grasped the back of her collar as Tyballis scuttled through. ‘You,’ exclaimed the head cook.
Tyballis spoke as quickly as she might while being hoisted back towards the doors through which she had come. ‘The new steward doesn’t know me. He’d never let me in.’
‘Of course not. You’re the wife of the man what slaughtered the last baron and now rots in gaol for the doing of it. So, you expect to be welcome here, girl?’
Tyballis shook her head. ‘He didn’t do it. And I have to see the baron.’
‘And I’m busy, with a dozen dishes to prepare afore the hour is up.’ John Knody wiped condensation from his forehead and sighed. ‘Go on then, girl. Get in there. And if you says as I was the one as gave you entrance, then I’ll swear different and get you the thrashing you no doubt deserve. Understood?’
She did. ‘Thank you, Johnny. You’re a nice man, though I suppose you’d deny it if I told anyone else.’
She dodged through the far doors and into the winding passageway to the main hall. A large fire was evenly spread across the hearth. Set in brick, the fire belched, and the flames lurched from their shelter, veneering the great chamber in shimmering light. A man stood alone in front of the hearth, his hands behind his back, standing close enough to singe his hair. Tyballis approached carefully but the man heard her at once and turned.
He was unusually tall, and beneath the dark sobriety of his clothes he was clearly well muscled. His hair was black and thick, and his face was strong-jawed with a large crooked nose between heavy cheekbones. The eyes, deep-lidded, were glazed scarlet in the firelight. He was not a handsome man.
Tyballis was surprised. Sir Thomas had been red-haired, small, bandy-legged and wiry. This man did not in any way resemble the brother. She curtsied low, stayed down and mumbled, ‘I apologise, my lord, for the interruption. I would not have come, except for it being so important. Perhaps, my lord, a matter of life or death.’
The man looked her over. It was some time before he spoke. He stood quite motionless, his hands still clasped behind his back, and eventually said, ‘I doubt it is me you’ve come to see, child.’