The Poison Machine

CHAPTER ONE
THE THREE ASSASSINS

A skiff slipped past two brigantines moored close in by the quay. Three men inside it all wore black coats, with collars pulled up to their chins, as much to keep themselves concealed as to keep out the rain.

Cloud shrouded the moon. The night’s pressing darkness suited them.

One of the men, as far forwards as he could sit, murmured directions. The man he guided, far larger, pulled sculls with strong hands, his strokes not raising a splash. The third man sat behind.

A rope dragged a second skiff, a twin of the first, behind them. Looking dangerously low, it was weighted down by bundles. Sharp protrusions pushed into the canvas covering them, and coiled tubing escaped from under it. Despite the rower’s size and obvious strength, he struggled to make headway against the river’s flow.

The wind made the waves dance. The boats swooped and rolled over the water.

The man calling the way was bareheaded, his hair tied back, exposing a high forehead liberally smeared with soot. The man rowing wore a tight seaman’s cap and tough-looking gloves.

The third man had a black hat with a wide circular rim, hiding him from view.

Without a lantern, the navigator had to judge all the different blacknesses, one against another. Beyond the brooding shape of the Tower, darkest of all, lurked the mass of the City, stretching away and up from the Thames. Only a few lights on land indicated life: lamps or candles, or a wandering watchman carrying his searchlight. The water dully mirrored these points of brightness.

The hulls of the brigantines curved high over them. No one stirred on their decks. No noise signalled the pacing of a watch. These were East India Company ships, sailed from the Barbadoes. Water slapping lazily against them, they conversed together in creaks and rattles, urging departure as if they yearned for the ocean.

Sneaking by them, each man stopped breathing, anxious not to betray their presence. Coffee roasting inside the nearest ship made their noses twitch.

They relied upon the cold and the rain to stop any anchor watch patrolling the decks. Keep him near a stove’s comforting glow.

Next, past the Erebus, a Navy second-rate, newly fitted, its planking gleaming smartly. Only a single stern light far above them illuminated its anchorage; the navigator stayed well clear, keeping to the darkness beyond its reach. The smell of tarred surfaces, hemp cloth, oil, and flax wafted over the water. The ship awaited its full complement of men, and those soon to join it—yet aware of the fact or not—were mostly ashore, spreadeagled boozily along Wapping High Street.

To the west, from under London Bridge the clacking throb of the Morice waterwheels, as they pumped water through the City’s conduits, grew louder. To the east, the men could see the great Navy sheds of Storehouse Yard and King Henry’s Yard, filled with provisions for sea journeys months long. They passed more water gates, piers, and river stairs, slicked with sewage scumbled against them.

The skiffs moved on, slowly, quietly, their trails scratching white on the water. The Tower’s silhouette expanded ominously as they reached almost to its foot.

The navigator turned and pointed to a wharf running along the new quayside wall. Its rickety supports rose drunkenly from the river. The man at the oars slowed his strokes, steering them towards it.

‘Hoy!’ A voice called out from the quayside above them.

The three men kept perfectly still, their faces turned downwards to the belly of their boat.

The darkness had not served them well enough.

A face peered from over the quayside wall. ‘Be you honest men?’ The man waved a lantern, its metal frame clanking at the end of a staff.

‘Aussi vite que tu le peux!’ the navigator urged the rower. ‘Vas pour cette jetée!’

The rower no longer cared about any noise he made. His powerful strokes sped them towards a flimsy jetty protruding from the wharf. They would have to run to St. Katherine’s Stairs. Gripping onto the rail as the boat rocked wildly, the navigator, Boilot, shouted to the man under the hat.
‘Qu’allons-nous faire?’ What shall we do?

‘Nous devons le tuer. Il nous a vu,’ he replied. We must kill him. He saw us.

Behind him, the rower, Verdier, strained at his sculls, hefting them through the water, but Boilot knew anyone running along the quayside could easily keep up with them. The voice had sounded elderly, perhaps belonging to one of London’s watchmen employed to keep them from the almshouse.

They covered the distance to the small sufferance wharf, its jetty barely higher than the level of the water. Crashing against its timbers, their skiff skewed sideways. Boilot jumped to the jetty and slipped on the rain-sodden wood. He fell on his back, his feet in the river, the impact winding him. Verdier dropped his sculls to follow, scrabbling his way next to him, and quickly tied their boats. The third man reached for the higher platform of the wharf and climbed up in one swift, easy movement. Boilot rose from his fall, sliding again.

Boilot and Verdier crashed along the length of the jetty and turned onto the wharf, where their companion waited impatiently. They all reached the foot of St. Katherine’s Stairs, pitching steeply up to the quay, to where the watchman had called to them.

The man in the hat waved Boilot to go ahead. Breathing hard, Boilot reached the last stair, and found himself on the quayside.

He saw no one. He jogged between two sheds, where the shadows were deepest, keeping his footsteps light. The smell of fat from meat brought in by a Greenland whaler—the boiling performed that day on the quayside—nearly overpowered him.

As his colleagues reached him, Boilot motioned them to silence, pressing his lips together with his fingers. He listened into the blackness surrounding them, his concentration probing it for the sound of a boot or the rattle of a weapon.

All he could hear were the Morice waterwheels and the rain hitting the ground, until a new sound joined their noise. It became the din of cobbles pounded by horseshoes, with the rumble of wheels behind.

Torn between running from the noise of the carriage or looking for the watchman, Boilot chose to stay perfectly still. Ahead of them, at the end of the short lane, the horses slowed, their driver uncertain, and came to a stop. The coach’s wood, leather, and iron all made their individual groans and grumbles at halt.

The three men pressed back against the side of the shed.

Holding a lantern, the coach driver jumped down from his seat. He was tall and thin, and wore a purple cloak.

At the moment they had readied themselves to fly at him from the shadows, the man with the hat recognised him. ‘C’est Monsieur Merritt! L’homme de Seigneur Danby.’

He moved into the light and removed his hat, revealing a strange face tapering from a large forehead with a single eyebrow across it to a small mouth and sharp chin.

Richard Merritt held out his hand, to be surprised by the lack of pressure from the Frenchman’s grasp.

The watchman called again. ‘Hoy!’ They could hear his boots approaching.

Boilot moved along the quay, treading softly, stifling a curse as he tripped on a loose cobble. He took a knife from a sheath on his hip and gripped it close to his side.

He reached an upturned wherry raised on blocks for repair. The light from the watchman’s lantern skittered across its wet planks, reaching around its curve.

It lit up Boilot’s face.

At the sight of a man appearing as if magicked from the darkness, the watchman cried out. Boilot sprang forwards, grabbing at him, but missed, catching hold of his staff instead. He pulled at it, hard.

The watchman fell heavily, landing on his side. ‘For the love of Jesus, spare me,’ he pleaded. ‘And for the love of your fellow man.’ He drew his legs into his body, protecting his head with his hands. Not daring to look up at Boilot, instead he pressed his face into the rough, wet cobbles.

He was aged and frail. Just his misfortune to be here, doing his duty at St. Katherine’s stairs, at the moment the three Frenchmen arrived in London.

Boilot reached out and stroked the watchman’s hair. With his other hand, he slid the knife’s point through the man’s coat, seeking soft flesh between ribs, angling the blade to pass between the bones.

The knife went in, and searched about, cutting into lung.

Recognising he was not to live, the watchman lifted his eyes to Boilot’s. He clasped his hands together. ‘. . . Maintain . . . defend . . . true reformed Protestant religion . . .’ he croaked. He could taste blood in his mouth. He tried to rise, but could not. Boilot helped him, turning him to sit against the wherry so he could look over the river, at the lights of Southwark.

The watchman’s eyes moistened. His breathing slowed, then stopped. His head lolled back and came to rest, his jaw sagging to one side.

Verdier arrived next to Boilot. Together, they studied the watchman, as if seeking some enlightenment on the nature of death. Finding only stillness, Verdier moved to pick up the body by the armpits, and Boilot took the feet. They carried him to the edge of the quayside. Verdier found a pair of loose cobbles, which they placed into the dead man’s pockets.

Moving smoothly to them, the man with the single eyebrow and sharp chin signalled his assent. Boilot and Verdier heaved him into the water, then threw his staff and lamp in after.

As they watched the dead man disappearing into the Thames, and the last bubbles and ripples settle, the three Frenchmen each made their signs of the cross.