‘I have perfected it since then,’ said Wiseman coolly, not liking to be reminded of a venture that had been less than successful. ‘It now works extremely well. Why?’
‘May I have some?’
Wiseman regarded him suspiciously, but mixed him a batch from the supplies he carried in his bag. When it was ready, Chaloner used it and the clay he had bought to produce an accurate mould of the key-impressions he had made the previous night. It did not take long, and when he had finished, all that remained was to take the moulds to a forge and commission a copy in metal.
‘Should I ask whose house you intend to give yourself unlimited access to?’ asked Wiseman.
‘No.’
‘Well, perhaps I am better off not knowing, anyway.’ Wiseman stood. ‘Oh, I almost forgot. The Earl wants you to go to Woolwich tomorrow.’
Chaloner groaned. ‘He orders me to solve these mysteries by Wednesday, but then wastes my time by sending me on futile errands. I might have had some answers today had he left me alone.’
‘Very possibly, but do not antagonise him by refusing to comply. Apparently, a new ship, Royal Katherine, is to be launched, and a lot of his enemies will be there. He wants you to monitor them.’
‘What does he expect me to do?’ asked Chaloner waspishly. ‘Sink it and drown them all?’
Wiseman raised his eyebrows. ‘Now there is an idea.’
The following dawn was cold, wet and windy, so Chaloner dressed in clothes suitable for a day outside in foul weather, and trotted down the stairs to spend an hour on the cipher before he left. He had left it in his pen-box, and was troubled to note that it had been moved since the previous night.
He stared at it. The table had been polished that morning, because there were streaks of wax where it had not been buffed properly. Had Joan or one of the maids knocked the box as they had worked, so the disturbance was innocent? Or had they looked inside to see whether it contained anything interesting? Or, more alarmingly, had George?
Chaloner could see no way to find out — he doubted direct demands would yield truthful answers — and supposed he would just have to be more careful in future. As it was raining, he could not take the cipher with him lest the ink ran, so he knelt and slipped it in the gap between the wall and the skirting board. He stood quickly when someone entered the room. It was Hannah.
‘What are you doing down there?’ she demanded. ‘I hope we do not have mice again. George told me he had poisoned them all.’
‘Perhaps he missed one.’ Chaloner did not like the idea of George in charge of toxic substances, and when the footman marched into the room with a breakfast tray, he declined to take any.
‘Eat something, Tom,’ instructed Hannah brusquely. ‘You are already thinner than when you came home from Tangier.’
Chaloner refrained from saying that her cooking was largely responsible for that, because he could tell from her scowl that her morning temper was about to erupt. He accepted a piece of bread, but spoiled the ale and oatmeal by ‘accidentally’ knocking one so it spilled into the other; he did not want his wife poisoned by their footman, either.
‘Why are you awake?’ he asked. ‘It is not long past dawn — the middle of the night for you.’
‘Do not be facetious with me, Thomas,’ she snapped. ‘I have to go to Woolwich, because the ship named after the Queen is to be launched today. We are travelling there by barge, God help us. The last time I went on one of those, I was sick the whole way.’
‘Then perhaps it is as well the breakfast is spoiled. You cannot be sick with an empty stomach.’
‘Spoken like a man who has never suffered from mal de mer,’ retorted Hannah crossly. ‘Because if you had, you would know you could abstain from food for a week and still find something to vomit.’
On that note, Chaloner took his leave.
As he left the house, it occurred to him that it was time he followed Thurloe’s orders and purchased a handgun. There was only one place he knew where such weapons could be bought with no questions asked — given their potential for assassination, the government liked gunsmiths to keep records — and that was from the Trulocke brothers on St Martin’s Lane. Before he entered their shabby, uninviting premises, he bought a piece of meat, donned an old horsehair wig, and covered his face with the kind of scarf men wore to keep London’s foul air from their lungs.
Outside the shop was a fierce dog, which snapped at the ankles of passers-by. Chaloner tossed it the meat, then stepped around it when it leapt on the offering. It wagged its tail as he passed, and he wondered whether it remembered him feeding it on previous occasions.
Inside, the place reeked of gunpowder and hot metal. It was also busy, and all three brothers were dealing with customers. Like Chaloner, the other patrons had taken care to conceal their faces, but unlike him they did not appreciate that a disguise was more than just donning a hat and a scarf. He recognised Secretary Leighton from his scuttling gait, and although Harley knew to change his walk, his blazing devil-eyes gave him away.
Chaloner edged towards Harley. It was not a good place to accost the scout, because it would expose them both to recognition, but he could certainly ascertain what the man was doing in a place where illegal firearms could be purchased. Unfortunately, Harley’s business was just concluding.
‘It will be ready this evening,’ Edmund Trulocke was saying. ‘Come back at dusk.’
Harley nodded, and was gone without another word. Thwarted, Chaloner sauntered towards Leighton, pretending to inspect a nearby musket.
‘Are you sure?’ William Trulocke was asking worriedly. ‘It will render the trigger unusually light. If you stick it in your belt and touch it accidentally, it will blow off your-’
‘I am sure,’ interrupted Leighton shortly. ‘The damned thing is so stiff at the moment that I need both hands to set it off. I need a much more sensitive mechanism.’
Trulocke nodded, and a vast amount of money changed hands. Leighton gave instructions for the finished product to be delivered to his Queenhithe home, and left. Chaloner could only suppose that he was taking precautions to ensure he did not suffer the same fate as his fellow Adventurers — Proby, Turner and Lucas.
When Leighton had gone, Trulocke turned to Chaloner, who pointed to the gun he wanted. By the time they had negotiated a price, and Chaloner had been furnished with enough ammunition to blast away half of London, the shop had emptied and the other two brothers had retreated to their workshop. Chaloner laid the mould on the table.
‘We do not cut keys,’ said Trulocke immediately. ‘It would be illegal, not to mention treading on the toes of our colleagues the locksmiths.’
‘How much?’ asked Chaloner.
Trulocke named a sum, Chaloner halved it, and they agreed on an amount somewhere in the middle. Trulocke took the mould, and disappeared. The item was ready in record time, and it was not long before Chaloner was stepping around the dog with a gun in his belt and a key in his pocket.
Next, Chaloner went to see Thurloe. Unusually, the ex-Spymaster was not strolling in the gardens, but preparing to go out, swathed in a hat and cloak that rendered him incognito.
‘It is no day to be travelling.’ Thurloe looked at Chaloner’s coat. ‘You are already drenched, and the day has barely begun. I hope I do not catch a chill from this escapade.’
‘Where are you going?’ asked Chaloner. ‘Home to Oxfordshire?’
‘And leave you to deal with Fitzgerald alone? No. I am off to see Royal Katherine launched.’
‘Because you think Fitzgerald will be there? If he is as slippery as you say, your presence will put him on his guard, and you will be wasting your time.’
‘Probably,’ sighed Thurloe. ‘But it would be remiss not to try.’