Lamentation

Then I drew a deep breath. I remembered again how, last autumn, Bealknap had made those uncharacteristic overtures of friendship; for a while seeming to be always hovering nearby, as if wishing to engage me. And then he had fallen badly ill — in the first months of the year, that would have been; at just about the time I took Martin on. I had thought Martin’s spying was connected with the heresy hunt. But what if Bealknap, too, had been trying to spy on me? Perhaps Stice had first recruited him and then, when Bealknap’s efforts to worm his way into my confidence failed, and he fell ill, Stice had gone looking for another spy and found that my new steward had money worries.

I ran a shaking hand through my hair. If Bealknap had been spying on me, that would explain his deathbed words. But who could have had an interest in me as long ago as last autumn? The heresy hunt had not yet begun and I was not even working for the Queen then.

My reverie was interrupted by the sound of a key turning in the kitchen door. Josephine and Brown entered, looking exhausted. Brown shook his head as Josephine slumped at the table opposite me. ‘We can’t find him, sir,’ he said. ‘We asked people, went into all the shops before they closed.’

Josephine looked at me. ‘Timothy — he has good clothes, and surely anybody who saw that gap in his teeth would remember it.’

Young Brown put a hand on her shoulder. ‘There are many toothless children on the streets.’

‘Not with Timothy’s smile.’ Josephine burst into tears.

I stood up. ‘Thank you for your help, both of you. I am going to Jack Barak’s house now. He may have some ideas.’ He would, I was sure; he had been a child on the streets himself once. ‘With your employer’s permission, Goodman Brown, we shall resume the search at first light tomorrow.’

‘Offer a reward.’ That was Barak’s first suggestion. I sat with him and Tamasin in their parlour, nursing a jug of beer. As always, it was a cosy domestic scene: baby George abed upstairs; Barak mending a wooden doll the child had broken; Tamasin sewing quietly by candlelight, her belly just beginning to swell with the coming child.

‘I’ll do that. When we go out tomorrow. Offer five pounds.’

Barak raised his eyebrows. ‘Five pounds! You’ll have every lost urchin in London brought to your door.’

‘I don’t care.’

He shook his head. Tamasin said, ‘What is Josephine’s fiancé’s first name? You always speak of him just as Brown.’

‘Edward, it’s Edward. Though I seem to think of him as just young Brown.’

She smiled. ‘Perhaps because he is taking Josephine away from you.’

‘No, no, he is a fine lad.’ I thought of his uncomplaining willingness to help tonight, his obvious love for Josephine. She could not have done better. Yet perhaps there was some truth in what Tamasin said.

She said, ‘I will go out tomorrow with Goodwife Marris. I’ll come to your house in the morning and we can divide the city into sections.’

‘No, you won’t,’ Barak interjected. ‘Going up and down the streets and stinking lanes. No.’ He put down the doll. ‘I’ll talk to some people; plenty of the small solicitors and their servants would be happy to look for the boy for five pounds.’ There was still amazement in his voice at the size of the sum I was prepared to lay out. ‘Have you paid the latest instalment of your taxes?’ he asked me.

‘Not yet. But remember I got four pounds from Stephen Bealknap.’ I frowned slightly, thinking again of his deathbed words.

‘Make sure you find him,’ Tamasin told her husband. ‘Or I will be out looking the next day.’ She asked me, ‘Is tomorrow not the day you go to Hampton Court?’

‘Yes. But I do not have to be there till five in the afternoon. I’ll search for Timothy till I have to leave.’

Next morning, while Barak was busy rousing people to join the hunt, Josephine and Goodman Brown and I went out again. They took the road eastward, to see if the boy had left London; if he had, he would be impossible to find. But he had spent all his life in the city, he must surely be here somewhere.

There was a little crowd in Fleet Street, for today was hanging day and people always gathered to watch the cart that carried the condemned to the great gibbet at Tyburn, its occupants standing with nooses round their necks. Some of the crowd shouted insults, others encouraged the condemned to die bravely. Though I shuddered as always at this spectacle, I stopped and asked people if they had seen Timothy. But none had.

I went along Cheapside, calling in all the shops. I had dressed in my robe and coif, to impress the shopkeepers, but perhaps some thought I was mad as I asked each a set of questions which soon became a chant: ‘I am looking for a lost stable-boy. . ran away yesterday afternoon. . thirteen, medium height, untidy brown hair, his two front teeth missing. . Yes, five pounds. . no, he hasn’t stolen anything. . yes, I know I could get another. .’