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The lighting on the bridge may have been poor, but Earless Nick’s last uninjured minion should have been more cautious, and perhaps indulged in second or even third thoughts. It must been his larger companion’s injury that spurred him on. Blood did that. Sometimes it broke men in combat and they fled. Other times they acted like lions. This fellow was, in fact, a foolish lion. The assault was bravely done, though with a serious flaw. He didn’t notice the poniard. Ned’s back slammed into the wall and given that it was stone, it should have been solid and it was. For an instant then, years of long winters and careless repairs gave way and Ned slid backwards through a sudden hole, his flailing hand seeking purchase even as he pulled the poniard from the groin of Earless Nick’s stunned minion. For an instant the hilt caught on a hollow in the mortar, until the weight of his screaming assailant landed on his shoulder and Ned lost his grip on the blade and tumbled backwards towards the yawning foul depths of the Fleete Ditch.

***

Chapter Thirteen: A Lamb Gathered In

Ned strode angrily down the street. The season’s snow didn’t appear nearly so inviting today after the trudging traffic of the city had reduced it to a pale slurry. In this chilly weather at least it didn’t reek. That was some comfort — a very small one. Ned was angry. Actually he was well past that shallow emotion now, he’d moved into the territory of absolute rage. Any physician wouldn’t have bothered with vague mutterings over the interpretations of a piss bottle’s colour. Instead they’d have immediately prescribed him a treatment for extreme choler, even strapping him down for a course of bleeding. Luckily no decent doctor trod the cold, cold lanes of London at Christmas, seeking to help the afflicted. Those stuffed sods were wealthy, warm, and most of all they were at home.

By all the blessed saints and Christ’s holy blood! Ned thumped his fist rhythmically into his thigh as he strode along. It would be fitting to blame someone else. Meg Black, for her conniving and scheming, would have been perfect or perhaps that duplicitous minion of hers, Gruesome Roger. The arrogant fool had known who’d locked their talons into Walter. It could have saved them hours of searching, even if it had been Ned’s own naivety which had unleashed the monster that prowled the London dens of iniquity in the first place.

Well now he had no choice. This morning Meg Black had been summoned to attend Lady Dellingham in some kind of tour of the city’s facilities of improvement, charity and detention along with his patron, Councillor Thomas Cromwell. All fruitful ground for the reform minded. After that Ned was ‘expected’ to produce a healthy, happy and ‘educated’ Walter for retrieval by the six o’ clock chimes at Williams the apothecary’s establishment. As if… They’d lost the not so innocent lamb at the fracas on the Fleete Bridge that had left Ned so perilously exposed to whims of Gruesome Roger’s wry amusement. Even his better angel whispered it was impossible. He’d have a better chance of whistling up the Queen o’ Faerie. Though Ned was loath to admit it, the Christmas Revel was a disaster, as was his guardianship of Walter. Even his better angel chided him on the error, of course given the chance lamb Walter would bolt, though it did at least admit that an undependable Walter at your side in a brawl was too risky.

As comforting as that was, it didn’t change the facts. In one day and a night the meek little sheep had turned into a prowling satyr, unquenchable and insatiable. Now Ned was left with only one last resort. It was off to the Sign of the Spread Eagle Tavern to beg the aid of his fellow revellers. A fee of four shilling each if they helped him scour the city should engage their interest and he’d post a two angel finder’s bounty to sweeten the deal. Thirty odd lads, even in their advanced state of ‘celebration’, should be able to find something. Perhaps returning in force to Earless Nick’s lair was a possibility, though whether Walter had slipped back there was difficult to ascertain. Ned sent a quick message to Captaine Gryne hiring two watchers to guard the Fleete Bridge and Newgate, plus a couple more to traverse the western London Wall. More damned expense!

Of course, if those measures didn’t work… well he’d cross that shit filled sewer when he came to it. Unconsciously he swung right into Bread Street after an unfruitful hour of scouring the riverside haunts of rogues around Queenhithe Ward. It was a few streets to the tavern and Ned could already hear the coins draining from his purse. Damn, not even enough to flee to Calais, that’s if any ships would risk the drifting floes of ice in the river, he’d have to ride down to Gravesend. His better angel chastised him on these thoughts — desertion of ‘sweet’ Meg Black, how could he even think it? At the same time his daemon gibbered in fear, reminding him that Mistress Black may be a reformist minded girl, but she still believed in the Old Testament style of revenge and she had lots of keen friends overseas not to mention that fearsome, secret satchel of hers. No. Reluctantly Ned put the idea of escape aside. Damn, he’d have to be all chivalrous and take the blame. That wouldn’t be so bad, except that all through this disastrous venture he kept on having the tingling suspicion that it wasn’t only Mistress Black who was playing him like a mummer’s puppet.

Some part of this ghastly venture was out of kilter. A part of his mind not currently imagining throttling revenge worked over the problems. Young Dellingham arrived fresh faced and meepish in the city. By some strange manner Ned Bedwell, the least reformist of Cromwell’s retainers, was selected along with Meg Black to lead this lad through the devil’s playground that was London city. Then over the course of two nights and the intervening day, this innocent rampaged through Satan’s cesspits, upsetting men even Ned would creep quietly past. What’s more, Walter had won at cards at least twice, dicing four times or so and Earless Nicks’ evident easy possession of the lad created its own suspicions. How had he done it? His daemon hinted that both Nick and Walter moved in too close a symmetry for chance. Chance huh! Chance had nothing to do with this at all. It was true that Lady Fortuna was known to cast her favours in an irregular fashion, but why would it all land on Walter? And why now? Luck didn’t flow like that in London. He should know!

This all still rankled him and Ned stopped in the midst of the street causing a following carter to curse him as an imbecile and to tell him in no uncertain terms to get out of way. Jumping aside he shifted towards the corner of St Mildred’s and Bread Streets and lent against the wall, under a projecting eave deep in thought. Ned had seen many tricks and cony plays before, loaded dice, shaved dice, marked cards, and he’d gained a canny knowledge of what cony traps were favoured and where. But it had taken months of watching and even so you still missed many gambits such as Earless Nick’s tricks with his five iron rings and lodestone dice. What a canny use of modern natural philosophy! If he hadn’t spoken to Rob last week and if their chat hadn’t veered towards the strange properties of iron on a pilot’s compass, Ned would have been lost. But that wasn’t all. One had to have the knowledge of where to go to employ these advantages. Ned had been in London on and off for a few years and he still occasionally got lost. For instance Earless Nick’s lair. Without Gruesome Roger’s reluctant admission, it would have remained hidden. So how did young Walter unerringly head for these secret haunts? His daemon suggested that was a secret to pry out later. In the meantime other more expensive matters held sway.