‘He is right,’ said Chaloner in the silence that followed. He rarely joined coffee-house debates, because he disliked the attention it earned him. However, this was a matter about which he felt strongly. ‘The slave trade is an abhorrent business.’
‘How do you know?’ pounced Stedman. ‘You appeared last week all brown and healthy after months of absence — which you still have not explained. You were clearly in warmer climes, so where did you go? Barbados? Jamaica? Is that why you hold forth about the slave trade?’
Chaloner was aware that everyone was regarding him with interest, and wished he had held his tongue. ‘Tangier,’ he replied, supposing there was no harm in telling them. His mission had not been secret, and an evasive answer might be more trouble than it was worth.
‘How unpleasant,’ shuddered Farr. ‘I understand it is a vile place, full of snakes and swamps.’
‘No, that is New England,’ countered Stedman. ‘Tangier is in the middle of a desert. The Portuguese were delighted to foist it on us, because it is hot and nasty. Is that not right, Chaloner?’
‘It is certainly hot,’ replied Chaloner, wondering how the Rainbow’s patrons came by such wildly inaccurate information. How could Stedman think Tangier was in the middle of a desert when it was being fortified a sea port?
‘I have been told it will be a useful slaving centre one day,’ said Farr. ‘But Thompson is glaring, so we had better discuss something else. How about this Collection of Curiosities near St Paul’s, which is the talk of the city? Has anyone been to see it? Apparently, it has an “Ant Beare” from Brazil on display. Where is Brazil, exactly? Is it anywhere near China?’
While Stedman obliged him with a lesson in geography, Thompson gave Chaloner a strained smile. ‘I am glad one of my acquaintances has proper views on the slave trade. I preached against it in my sermon on Sunday, but I do not think anyone listened. I have a bad feeling that we will follow the Portuguese into the business, simply because there is money to be made.’
‘Portugal is not a major factor in the trade any longer. Holland has supremacy now.’
‘But the Portuguese do continue to take slaves to Brazil,’ countered Thompson. ‘You should not ignore their role in this evil simply because the Dutch have surpassed them in wickedness. More to the point, did you know that the Adventurers transported more than three thousand people to Caribbean plantations last year? It is disgraceful, barbaric and … and wicked! And it is not as if the Adventurers need more money. They are all fabulously rich already.’
‘Wealth seems to be one of those commodities that no one ever admits to having enough of,’ said Chaloner. ‘The more someone has, the more he itches to acquire.’
‘Yes,’ said Thompson caustically. ‘In my line of work, we call it greed.’
Night had fallen by the time Chaloner left the coffee house, a set of carefully forged documents in his pocket for Reyner — he had borrowed pen and paper from Farr, although it had not been easy to dissuade the other patrons from trying to see what he was doing. Many other pedestrians had hired linkmen — carriers of pitch torches — to light their way, especially north of Charing Cross, where fewer houses meant it was much darker. Chaloner did not bother, although it meant he was in danger of stumbling in potholes or treading in something unpleasant. There was another peril, too: two louts approached him with the clear intent of demanding his purse, but they backed away when his hand dropped to the hilt of his sword and they saw he was able to defend himself.
He reached the Crown and spent a few moments studying it from the shadows cast by the Gaming House opposite. Lights blazed on the ground floor, and a lamp was lit in the attic, but the rooms in between were in darkness. He crossed the road and entered the tavern. It was full and very noisy; Landlord Marshall moved between the tables with a genial smile and amiable conversation.
Still happy to gossip, Marshall informed Chaloner that the Piccadilly Company had permanent hire of the first floor, while the two storeys above it were rented by tenants, namely Pratt and a woman for whom he seemed to hold a fatherly regard. Chaloner sat for a while, watching and listening, and when he was sure no one was looking, he slipped up the stairs.
The Piccadilly Company’s chambers were locked, but it did not take him long to pick the mechanism and let himself inside. He lit a candle from the embers of the fire, shielding it with his hand so it would not be seen from outside.
The first room was an elegantly appointed parlour, with wood-panelled walls and a finely plastered ceiling. Its only furniture comprised a large table of polished oak, with benches set around it. He examined them minutely, then did the same for the panelling, floorboards and chimney, but if there were secret hiding places for documents, then he could not find them. The only evidence that papers had been present was in the hearth, where some had been reduced to ashes.
The second room was a pantry, indicating that refreshments were sometimes served, but a search of it yielded nothing. He returned to the parlour and sat on one of the benches, wondering what it was that Fitzgerald the pirate, the Dutch Janszoons, the nice Mr Jones, the Portuguese man, the three scouts and their cronies discussed. It was clearly something they wanted kept secret, or they would not have hired Brinkes to stand guard downstairs.
Could they be plotting rebellion? There had been dozens of uprisings since the King had reclaimed his crown — by Parliamentarians unwilling to accept that the Republican experiment was over, and by fanatics who believed the throne should have been offered to Jesus instead. They occurred so frequently that the newsbooks no longer bothered to report them, and the only person remotely interested was Spymaster Williamson, whose duty it was to suppress them.
But Chaloner did not think Harley and his fellow scouts were the kind of men who would care about politics — they were too selfish to risk themselves for a principle. However, Fitzgerald had lost his fortune in a storm, and Landlord Marshall believed he intended to make himself wealthy again. Somehow, money seemed a far more likely explanation than insurrection. But what were they planning, exactly? And how did the Tangier massacre fit into it?
As sitting in the parlour was not providing answers, Chaloner stood to leave. He glanced at the ashes in the hearth and, out of desperation, poked among them until he recovered a fragment that had escaped the flames. He tweaked it out, but it had been written in cipher:
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jvb
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xlp
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qcm
ftq
xds
cmr
zva
knt
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pad
dpm
znx
pdk
yto
jgw
pup
qpj
rbh
tjo
ufz
moq
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hjh
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