The second assignment was spying on the Earl of Bristol. Chaloner knew he would have no trouble eavesdropping on sensitive conversations, because it was something at which he excelled. The challenge lay in knowing whom to stalk, because he was not sure which courtiers had taken Bristol’s side, and who had remained loyal to Clarendon. He cursed his lack of knowledge about British politics: identifying the right men would take time, which might be something his earl did not have.
He turned his thoughts to his disguise. He recalled Vanders from Holland, a wizened, white-bearded ancient who spoke eccentric English. Chaloner could not make himself small, but he knew how to appear old and stooped, and he supposed poor English might encourage people to say things around him they might otherwise keep to themselves. He only hoped no one had either attended or heard about the upholsterer’s lavish funeral in The Hague three years earlier.
Chaloner awoke to another grey day, already thinking about Vanders. The upholsterer had been wealthy but mean, and people had mocked his slovenly appearance. Chaloner rummaged in the chest where he kept the materials for his disguises, and emerged with an unfashionably short jerkin and a pair of petticoat breeches – an item of clothing so voluminous that it was possible to put both legs in the same hole and not notice. In a city where the current fashion was for long coats, knee-breeches and elaborate lacy socks known as ‘boot hose’, he knew he would stand out as suitably outmoded, while at the same time not looking so disreputable that he would not be allowed inside White Hall.
He found an ancient horsehair wig, and ensured all his own hair was tucked well inside it – it would only take one strand of brown to expose him as a man thirty years younger than the fellow he was attempting to emulate. Then, using a trick Scot had taught him, he glued a light coating of lambswool to his cheeks and chin to produce a tatty white beard. He applied powders and paints to construct some very plausible wrinkles around his eyes, and spent several minutes practising Vanders’s crabbed, arthritic walk. He disliked being in White Hall without a sword, but Vanders had never worn one, so reluctantly he set it aside. He did not dispense with the arsenal of knives he kept concealed in his clothing, however. There was a limit, even to the best of disguises.
He went to the larder for something to eat before he began his day, but was not very inspired by the wizened turnips or the sack of wheat that sat amid the smattering of mouse droppings. He closed and locked the door, then clattered down the stairs, stopping to greet his landlord, who was waiting to ask whether he had seen a raker loitering around the house the previous morning. Fortunately for Chaloner, Daniel Ellis had not yet associated the appearance of some very odd characters with his tenant’s vague explanations of what he did for a living. Ellis gazed curiously at Chaloner’s attire.
‘That is an odd assemblage. It makes you look three decades older.’
‘Good,’ said Chaloner. ‘My brother wants me to meet a woman with a view to marriage.’
Ellis tapped the side of his nose in manly understanding. ‘Well, that costume should certainly put her off. She will not want to wed Methuselah.’
The clocks were chiming six o’clock when Chaloner stepped out of the door on to Fetter Lane, and the city was wide awake. Carts rattled up and down, laden with wood, coal, hay, cloth and country-grown vegetables for the markets at Cheapside and Gracechurch Street. The harsh voices of street-sellers echoed between the tall buildings – a baker offered fresh pies, although they were black with dried gravy and dead flies; a milkmaid had cream in the pail she carried over her shoulder; and children tried to sell flowers they had picked before dawn in the nearby villages of Paddington and Stepney. It was a dull day, the sky a mass of solid white above. It was darkened by smoke from the thousands of fires lit to heat water and bread for breakfast, and the drizzle that began to fall was thick with soot.
There was no point in going to White Hall straight away, because no self-respecting courtier would be out of his bed until at least nine o’clock, and Chaloner did not want to roam deserted corridors and attract unnecessary attention. It was also too early to visit the gunsmith, as such places tended to open later than the stalls that sold foodstuffs. Instead, he headed for Hercules’s Pillars Alley, a lane running south from Fleet Street, opposite the Church of St Dunstan-in-the-West. Just before he had left for Ireland, his friend Temperance North had bought a house there, and he had not yet been to see how she was settling in. It was an odd hour to call on anyone, but Temperance was a devout Puritan who always rose early for chapel, so he knew she would be awake.
Temperance had been left destitute and pregnant when her parents had died, but Thurloe had tackled the law-courts to salvage some of their estate for her. He had done better than anyone had anticipated, and although grief had caused Temperance to miscarry, she had rallied her spirits and spent her fortune on a rambling three-storeyed house taxed on fourteen hearths. It was a large place for a single woman, but she had enigmatically informed her anxious friends that she had plans for it.
On the chilly February day when she had taken him to inspect the building, Chaloner had thought it gloomy and unprepossessing, but three months later it was transformed. Gone were the rotten windows, and in their place were fresh, brightly painted shutters and flowers in pots on the sills. The roof had been re-tiled, and iron railings fenced off a small yard at the front of the house, paved with flagstones and shaded by a dripping tree. He was impressed by the speed with which Temperance had made her changes, and saw she had not allowed herself to wallow in self-pity.
He was about to approach the door, when it opened and two well-dressed men reeled out, although their drunkenness was not the boisterous kind. Chaloner ducked behind a water butt when he saw they were accompanied by a man called Preacher Hill, a nonconformist fanatic who did a great deal of damage with his loud opinions and bigotry. Chaloner waited until they had gone, then tapped on the door, pondering why the three men should have been visiting Temperance at such a peculiar hour. It was hardly proper, and he wondered whether Thurloe had been right to help her move away from the kindly widow who had looked after her following the death of her parents.
The door was opened by Temperance herself. She was a tall, solidly built woman of twenty, with a large, homely face and gorgeous tresses of shiny chestnut hair. These had been concealed under a prim bonnet when her mother had been alive, but now they were displayed for all to see, and Chaloner was sure even Lady Castlemaine would covet them. She had dispensed with the plain black skirts favoured by her co-religionists, too, and wore a tightly laced bodice that did not flatter her stout frame, with billowing skirts of green satin. She looked prosperous and confident, and her hazel eyes had lost the endearing innocence he recalled from a few months before.
She looked him up and down appraisingly, then gestured that he could enter. ‘You have come at an odd time. Most men prefer evenings, but I shall see what we can do, since you look respectable.’
Chaloner was bemused by the cool greeting. ‘What are you talking about?’
Temperance peered into his face, then released a bubbling chuckle of pleasure. ‘Thomas! I did not recognise you under all that paint. Are you engaged on another assignment for your earl? Where have you been these last three months? You sent a note in February saying you were going overseas, but since then I have heard nothing. I thought perhaps you were never coming back.’
‘You did not recognise me, and yet you invited me in?’
Temperance laughed again. ‘Only because you looked too old to cause any trouble.’
He had no idea what that was supposed to mean, and when he made no reply, she took his arm and led him into a warm, steamy kitchen at the rear of the house. As he passed the large room that overlooked the courtyard, his eyes watered at the fug of stale tobacco smoke. Dirty goblets and empty decanters were strewn everywhere, and spilled food had been crushed into the rugs. He glimpsed a furtive movement on the stairs, and glanced up to see a half-clad woman. Other voices told him she was not the only female in residence. Gradually, it began to dawn on him that Temperance’s plans for her new life had revolved around establishing some sort of bawdy house. He was not usually slow on the uptake, but Temperance hailed from a deeply devout family that believed even innocent pleasures like reading or singing were sinful, and the abrupt transformation was unexpected, to say the least.