Page 76 of Who Cries for the Lost

Alexi stared back at him. “You think any of us are truly sane? After twenty-five years of war?”

Sebastian met her gaze. “No. Probably not.”

Chapter 42

Later that morning, Kat Boleyn stood at the window of her house in Cavendish Square, her gaze on the street below. She could see a workman painting the black iron railing around the leafy garden in the square; a ragged woman selling ribbons from a tray; a costermonger in a flop hat and jaunty red kerchief flirting with one of the cooks from down the street. Kat studied each one carefully, even the women, for she knew now that the person watching her could change his appearance with the practiced ease of one of the world’s best actors.

She’d seen him clearly twice. Once he’d been dressed as a costermonger, the second time as a clerk. But she was certain it was the same man, despite the difference in clothes, hair color, and body type, for the shape of his head gave him away to a practiced eye. A skilled actor could alter his clothes and his posture; add pounds and years; thrust out his jaw or hunch his shoulders; alter his walk and entire demeanor. But the shape of his head was immutable. She’d been trying to remember if she’d known an actor over the years with that head shape, but she couldn’t think of one.

She turned away from the window with a smothered oath. “Stop it,” she told herself, saying it out loud, as if that might somehow be more effective. “Just stop it. What is wrong with you?” She’d faced death before, had come perilously close to dying more than once. So why was she so rattled this time?

Drawn against her will, she went back to the window, careful not to disturb the curtain lest he be watching and know he was making her nervous. If he was there, she couldn’t see him, but she could feel him. And even though she knew it sounded ridiculous, she thought she understood at some fundamental level what was so disturbing about this particular man. It was the animosity emanating from him, a level of malevolence such as she’d never before encountered.

Life is full of scary things, her stepfather used to tell her. The trick is to not let your fears get in the way of your living. Whatever else you do, Katherine, don’t settle for a life half lived.

“You’re definitely one of the scary things in life,” she whispered now to the unseen man out there, somewhere, who intended to kill her. “But I’m not going to let you destroy my life. You hear me?

“I’m not.”

Shortly after midday, Hero took a wherry from Parliament Stairs all the way down the river to Three Cranes Wharf, just above London Bridge. She had never before done such a thing, and she found it a magical experience to glide silently past sights at once familiar and—from this angle—totally unfamiliar. The breeze rising off the water was cool and sweet, the sky a soft blue filled with wind-scuttled white clouds, the June sun bathing the world in a warm, intense light.

“Look there,” said her wherryman, drawing her attention to a pair of snowy white egrets rising from the mudflats before Somerset House.

The wherryman was a big man named Devon Clark, built tall and broad across the shoulders and chest, with a massive head and powerful jawline. He wore a broad-brimmed hat with the typical pilot jacket and canvas trousers of a waterman, and he told Hero he’d been impressed twice—and had the stripes on his back to prove it.

“Ye’d be hard put to find a wherryman wasn’t impressed at some point,” he told her as they slid past the leafy chestnut trees and sweetly scented roses of Temple Gardens. “The Lord High Admiral has the power to demand a certain number of watermen serve in the Navy, ye see. Ye can try hidin’ when there’s a press in progress, but the press masters know where to look ’cause they’re members o’ the company themselves.”

“They are?”

“Oh, aye. An’ they always make sure they take apprentices when they can, rather than freemen. But then, who’d want an old stager in the Navy, hmm? It’s hard enough on a young’un.” He stared off down the river, his eyes narrowing against the glare off the water, his features tightening in a way that told her his memories of his time as an impressed seaman were not fond ones. “At least the Watermen’s Company looks after those who come back too broken to work, which is more’n ye can say about His Majesty and that lot.” He hawked up a mouthful of phlegm and turned his head to spit into the water.

“Do they resent it? The fact that so many wherrymen are impressed, I mean.”

He looked at her, his face utterly blank. “What would be the point? It’s just... life on the river. I reckon ye’ll find more wherrymen riled up about these new bridges than about the press masters. Time was, the closest bridge after London Bridge was at Kingston, twenty-five miles upstream. But look at it now. Next thing ye know, they’re gonna have a dozen or more bridges over the river. Ye ask me, instead o’ buildin’ all these new bridges, what they ought to do is rebuild London Bridge. The thing’s a bloody hazard—beggin’ yer pardon fer the language, me lady.”

Hero stared down the river to where the crumbling old thirteenth-century bridge was just coming into view. With its narrow arches and thick piers, London Bridge acted essentially like a weir, holding back so much water that at times there could be as much as a six-foot difference in the height of the river above and below its medieval arches. Passage under the bridge was dangerous at all times, but it was particularly deadly when the tide was flowing. Most wherrymen refused to go anywhere near it; their passengers had to disembark at the Old Swan Stairs above the bridge and go on foot to hire a new boat below. But every month or so, a group of young bucks eager to test their mettle would find some wherryman desperate enough to take their money and try to shoot the rapids.

“Reckon there’s somewhere between twenty-five and fifty fools killed there every year,” Clark was saying. “They call it ‘shootin’ the bridge.’ ”

Hero nodded. “I heard there was a young wherryman killed just the other day, trying to shoot it.”

“Ye heard about that, did ye? I’m surprised. Wherrymen die on the river all the time, and most folks don’t usually give it a second thought. I’m still hearin’ about that grand lord’s son they pulled out o’ the Pool a week ago. A week ago! Wouldn’t nobody ’ave heard o’ him if he’d been a wherryman.”

“Except he didn’t simply drown,” said Hero. “He was murdered.”

“Aye, so he was. And there was a wherryman murdered that same night—stabbed in the back, he was. But ain’t nobody talkin’ about him.”

Hero looked up from her notes, the wind catching at the brim of her hat so that she had to put up a hand to steady it. “Where did this happen?”

“Who knows? They found his body down by the Isle o’ Dogs, although his wherry was just knockin’ against the dock of that old tannery by Jacob’s Island what shut down a few years back.”

“When did you say he was found?”

“Tuesday. He disappeared Saturday night, but they didn’t find him till just a few hours before that lord’s son come up with the East Indiaman’s anchor.”

Chapter 43

The remains of the McGuire Tannery lay just downriver from Jacob’s Island, on the south bank of the river in a wretched neighborhood laced with tidal streams from the Thames. At one time it must have been a lovely place, with hedgerows and lush green meadows and lazily grazing cows. Now it was a hellscape of abandoned tan pits and dye pits, the earth blasted bare of all vegetation and stained various shades of red, blue, yellow, green, and pink. The tannery’s tall smokestack was crumbling, the brick walls of the finishing shop and warehouse smothered in vines, the windows broken. The shattered remains of old drying racks lay strewn about, jumbled together with pushing poles and what looked like pieces of old wooden wheelbarrows.

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