A Plague of Serpents

Book 0: Daniel Pursglove

by K.J. Maitland

Genres: Renaissance; Historical Mysteries

Synopsis

K.J. Maitland's gripping Jacobean historical thriller series comes to a dramatic conclusion...

'What a wonderful storyteller Maitland is' THE TIMES

'Find Spero Pettingar, discover what he means to do and bring the report of it to me, before Cecil's men find him'

Daniel Pursglove has one last chance to spare himself from the horrors of Newgate Gaol - or worse. But as two circles of conspirators gather in London, who is plotting to kill the King and who seeks to ensnare Daniel in their dark web?

**Pre-order the final novel in K. J. Maitland's Daniel Pursglove series**

PRAISE FOR THE DANIEL PURSGLOVE SERIES

'Dark and enthralling' ANDREW TAYLOR

'Colourful and compelling' SUNDAY TIMES

'Full of tension and danger... powerfully atmospheric' JENNIFER SAINT

'Goes right to the heart of the Jacobean court' TRACY BORMAN

'Spies, thieves, murderers and King James I? Brilliant' CONN IGGULDEN

'There are few authors who can bring the past to life so compellingly... Brilliant writing and more importantly, riveting reading' SIMON SCARROW

'A beautifully crafted thriller... Breathtaking and bone-chilling' MANDA SCOTT

'Maitland is a superlative historical novelist' REBECCA MASCULL

'Devilishly good' DAILY MAIL

'The intrigues of Jacobean court politics simmer beneath the surface in this gripping and masterful crime novel' KATHERINE CLEMENTS

'Beautifully written with a dark heart, Maitland knows how to pull you deep into the early Jacobean period' RHIANNON WARD

Release date: April 25, 2024

Publisher: Headline

Print pages: 480

Sample

JULY 1608

THE STENCH OF burning sulphur hung heavy on the darkened street, and the searcher coughed and wheezed as she slipped out of the door into the night air. Fear tightened her throat, making it even harder to draw breath. Was this the beginning? But she scolded herself sharply. If she once allowed that thought to take hold, she’d never be able to set foot in one of these houses again and then what would become of an old woman like her? She’d find herself back begging on the streets, that’s what, and maybe not even these streets. The rumour was they were rounding up the vagrants, herding them on to ships and sending them all the way to the ends of the earth in Virginia, whether they consented to go or nay, and a thousand worse deaths than this awaited you over there.

The searcher turned her head, alerted by the muffled rumble of wheels on the cobbles. They were coming. She had only just got out in time. Like the horses’ hooves, the wheels of the wagon had been wrapped in cloth to deaden the sound, but that only made the soft trundle, the creaking wood, the snorting of the beasts feel more ominous, like the hushed murmurs around the bed of a dying man. It was a ghostly sound – the soul cart of the Angel of Death himself, searching for his victims. All who heard it pass beneath their windows as they lay in their beds trying to sleep, knew it was not the coalman’s cart nor the nightsoil man’s wagon, and they feared that before the week was out, the carrion cart might be coming for them.

The searcher waited beneath the stout boards nailed over the casements, next to the door on which a red cross, a foot high, had been daubed. Above it, in scarlet letters, was a prayer. The searcher couldn’t read it, but she didn’t need to; it was painted over all the doors marked with crosses in the city and she knew it by heart – Lord have mercy upon us. The plea had not been answered, at least not for those who’d been locked up inside this house. She glanced up at the lights still burning defiantly in the upper casements of the other homes in the street, long after they should have been extinguished. Were they trying to prove to their neighbours that they were still alive and healthy, or did they simply fear to sleep in the dark, knowing they might never wake to the light again? This was the first house boarded up in that street, but it would not be the last; no one could hope for that.

The lantern on the front of the wagon swung back and forth as the horses plodded around the corner towards the old woman. Like her, the three men sitting along the seat at the front had cloth masks covering their faces and long coarse black coats over their clothes. But it was a warm summer’s night, and none of the four people were wearing the garments to keep out the cold. The work paid well, but you didn’t want people to know what you did for fear of being shunned, or worse, driven out of your home. It was not unknown. The city needed your services, but your neighbours didn’t want to share a flagon of ale with you or let their children play with yours, not once they knew.

The driver reined in the horses, which stood tossing their heads. The two carcass carriers jumped down.

‘How many, sister?’

‘Three. One of them in bed. Two, maybe three days gone. Another by the hearth and the last under one of the casements at the back. Fingers bloody – tried to claw her way out, I reckon.’

‘Search everywhere, did you? ’Cause we found a young’un hiding in the last house, thought to sneak out after we’d taken the corpses. ’Course she was half dead already, so we slung her in with the others. Save ourselves a journey later.’

He jerked his head towards the back of the wagon where a heap of bodies lay on straw under a piece of old sailcloth. Faint moans and terrified whimpers crept out from under the cloth and the searcher thought she could see something moving beneath the canvas, like an unborn kitten stirring in the belly of a dead cat.

The two carcass carriers lifted the lantern and plodded into the house. The driver flicked the sailcloth back on the wagon, ready for the bodies to be tossed in. The girl lay still on top of the heap of corpses, her eyes wide, staring up at the small ribbon of sky between the roofs, glowing orange from the light of the bonfires of bedding, clothes and straw outside the city walls. The searcher couldn’t tell if the girl was dead yet. If she was still alive when they came to toss the others in the pit, maybe someone would take pity on her and carry her to the pestilence house, or maybe not.

The searcher shuffled away down the street; then, when the driver was distracted by one of the horses, she drew back into the dark shadows of a doorway, keeping watch on the house. She counted as they brought out each corpse, one after the other, holding her breath after the third, but they did not go back in.

She waited until the wagon had pulled out of sight at the end of the street. Then she gave a long low whistle. A lad emerged from the opposite end of the street, a sack slung over his shoulder. His face was masked by a bag-like hood pulled down over his head and shoulders, with two eye-holes cut out. The searcher returned to the house, this time entering through the narrow yard that ran alongside it, and the lad followed.

The yard was surrounded by a high wall and was not overlooked by any of the casements of the neighbouring houses. It had taken the searcher several days to find such a place. She opened the door to the privy. It was dark and she could see little of what lay inside, but she could smell it. Even after all the buildings she had searched, all the victims, living and dead, she had found, she had never grown accustomed to that sickening stench that sent even vermin fleeing. She reached into the dark privy, fumbling around until she felt cloth and the cold flesh beneath. She tugged it and it tumbled forward into her arms.

The lad helped her drag the corpse out on to the flagstones, and between them they carried it over to the well. He lifted the sack. Something heavy clanged against the stones, and the old woman cuffed him.

‘Do you want to wake the dead?’ she hissed. ‘And be quick. I’ve to take it to him tonight and I don’t want to run into the watch.’

The lad drew a freshly sharpened meat cleaver out of the sack, raised it, then lowered it again. ‘Her head, is it?’ he asked and received another blow.

‘Ass! Heads can be recognised. Give us an arm.’

The boy raised the cleaver again. ‘Can’t see nothing,’ he grumbled.

‘Thank the good lord you can’t. She weren’t a pretty sight when she died. She’d a botch bigger than your fist on her neck and it’d burst right open . . . Oh, give it here. I’ll do it myself. You’re hopeless, you are.’

She felt for the arm, dragging it at right angles to the body. This one must have died soon after the man in the bed, for the corpse-stiffness had worn off and, unlike the other two, its cold limb was easily moved. Although the lad could see nothing, he recoiled at the sound of the blade crunching through bone, or maybe it was the stench, which had been bad before, but now rolled up like a suffocating fog to envelop them. It took another blow before the arm and shoulder fully parted company. By then, the lad was retching from the smell and the old woman was left to stuff the limb into the sack by herself.

She laid it carefully against the wall, where she could find it again in the dark, and hauled the boy to his feet.

‘Make yourself useful. Carcass needs to be down that well.’

Together they heaved the body to the edge and tipped it over. It thumped against the side as it tumbled, but if anyone heard the splash, no one came to investigate. Only ravens and rats go looking for death.

AS PROMISED, the Devil’s door on the northside of the small church had been left unlocked. The beggars who normally slept in the shelter of the church had been persuaded to abandon their customary nests by the threat of a sea journey to the New World, if the bribe of a few pennies did not prove sufficient.

The searcher checked that she was unobserved, then slipped inside and found the small wooden, lead-lined chest just to the right of the door, exactly where she’d been told it would be. ‘You will not require a light,’ he’d said, and she didn’t. She raised the lid, groping in the bottom until her fingers closed on a leather purse. She lifted it out, resisting the urge to count the contents, but she’d been a beggar for enough years to judge the worth of every coin by its weight and she judged that the contents of this purse were what she had been promised, maybe even more. She dumped the sack into the box, pushing and pulling until the arm inside folded and she could shut the lid, telling herself it was as well she had brought an arm instead of a leg.

Then, checking one last time that the lid was tightly shut so that the stench would not escape, she eased open the door and sidled out, dandling the purse in her hand once more to assure herself that the weight was satisfactory.

She was oblivious to the figure who stepped out from behind a tree until he was directly behind her. She did not feel the stiletto piercing coat, gown and shift until it reached her flesh. So swift was the thrust, so deep, that by the time her back arched violently in a spasm of pain, she could not even cry out. The purse slipped from her fingers and clinked on to the path, but she did not hear it, for she was dead before her body crumpled to the ground, the blade still in her back. Her killer would not touch that weapon again.

The purse was kicked into the trees. It was a waste, of course, but better to lose a small sum than to risk the contagion. Let a sharp-eyed beggar take his chances with it; at least he’d enjoy a hearty last supper. Inside the church, the killer dropped a length of cloth infused with bergamot over the box, before carrying it out into the silent graveyard. The night’s sky glowed red as hell’s mouth from the flames of the bonfires, and the air was heavy with the suffocating smoke of wood, burning cloth and sulphur. But behind his mask, the man was smiling.

RIVER THAMES, GRAVESEND

5TH NIGHT OF APRIL 1608

THE MEN-AT-ARMS were moving fast along the bank of the great river. The burning torches held by two of the riders gusted out red and orange over the oily black water, seeming to set it ablaze, as if a line of fire was racing towards the moored ship. A fine misty drizzle was falling and, caught in the torchlight, the droplets glowed blood-red, forming a diabolical halo around the men.

The gangplanks had been drawn back aboard the ketch. One of the crew of five had set his hand to the windlass ready to weigh anchor just as soon as the orders were barked at him. Two more were preparing the cast-off fore and aft, and the boat was already bucking at her moorings, tossed by the stiffening breeze, as if impatient to be off. A few minutes, that was all, before ketch, crew and their two passengers would be out in the middle of the Thames, slicing through the dark water, down towards the estuary and the open sea. Then they would be safely out of reach of land and trusting their lives to the waves, which, however capricious, often proved more merciful than man.

One of the crew called out to the captain, pointing down the wharf towards the approaching figures. The quayside was crowded with darting shadows and shafts of yellow and scarlet light cast by the swaying ships’ lanterns and the watchmen’s braziers. The six men-at-arms were forced to dismount and lead their horses around taunt hawsers and wooden bollards while the lights and shadows cavorted madly around them, like a coven of witches, making even progress on foot hazardous. The captain strode down to the stern, wiping the rain from his eyes, and watched the men approach.

The two passengers sitting on the deck had also seen approaching riders and, drawing even further away from each other, hunched lower beneath the gunwale. Each was wrapped in a heavy travelling cloak, hoods pulled down over their faces, so that in the darkness they might have been mistaken for barrels or bundles of cloth.

The younger man tugged his muffler higher, concealing his throat and the lower part of his face. He was tall and broad-

shouldered, in his mid-thirties, far more at ease riding a horse than riding a wave. Without raising his head, his gaze slid towards the hatch that led down into the hold, but no captain would allow a paying passenger down there into the suffocating gases and shifting cargo, even had there been room.

The older man was stooped and hollow-chested, his face gaunt above the sparse beard, which, even inside the dark shadow of the hood, white as drowned men’s bones. His stiff fingers plucked restlessly at the folds of his cloak as though fingering a string of beads, as he muttered what might have been a fevered prayer or curse beneath his breath. He was shivering in the biting river breeze.

The captain watched the approaching men-at-arms a few moments longer, then advanced upon the two passengers. ‘There are men coming up the wharf and, by the looks of those muskets they’re carrying, they’re not coming to bid us a safe voyage. If I don’t sail on this tide while the wind is set fair, that cargo of slaughtered pigs’ll spoil before I reach Calais and that’ll mean ruin for me and my crew.’

‘Then I pray you, cast off now, before they reach us,’ the elderly man said, fear crackling in his voice.

The captain glanced back at the wharf. ‘No time! We’d be in range of those muskets for too long. Besides, I can’t afford to fall foul of the law. My master would have me in irons and thrown in the deepest dungeon in hell if I got his ship impounded. You both swore to me your papers were genuine and you had leave to depart these shores. If I find either one of you was playing me for a fool, they’ll have to fish you out of the river. And there’s not many live long enough in that current to be dragged out alive.’

The men-at-arms were now standing alongside the ship, demanding that the gangplank be lowered in the King’s name, and before either of the passengers could speak, the captain strode off towards them.

The two men crouching on the deck didn’t move. There was nowhere to go, nowhere to hide. The older man’s gnarled hands fumbled over his jerkin, trying to discover if what he had concealed inside could be felt. It would make little difference in the end; whatever he had hidden they would find. He raised exhausted eyes towards the gunwale on the opposite side of the ship, wondering if, after all, it wouldn’t be better just to jump. He believed the captain when he said few men lived long enough to be dragged from that turbulence alive. He was counting on that. Drowning was comparatively quick and, however painful it might be, it was nothing compared to the days, the weeks, of torment and agony that awaited him if he was caught. But he made no move, silently begging forgiveness for even contemplating the mortal sin of self-murder.

The two passengers heard the grate and thump as the gangplank was pushed across, and the pounding of boots on groaning wood as the men tramped up on to the deck. The captain pointed in the passengers’ direction. Three of the men-at-arms fanned out and strode towards them, their muskets levelled at them. Another stood guard at the top of the gangway. The three men halted. Two of them levelled their muskets a foot from each of the passenger’s heads. The third man, who appeared to be in command, lifted one of the ship’s lanterns from its hook and held it up, so that the light fell upon him as well as the crouching passengers. He had been endowed by nature with an ox-thick neck and torso to compensate for an unusually small head and narrow face that looked as though it had been squashed in a vice. He stared down at the two men for a long moment before he spoke.

‘On your feet, if you please, sirs!’

They both clambered up, eyeing him warily.

‘Travel papers,’ the sergeant demanded.

The old man pulled his papers swiftly from inside his cloak; too swiftly, it might be thought, for an honest man who has no fear of the law. The officer took them. Holding them close to the lantern, he perused them slowly, pausing at intervals and tilting the lantern to study the man’s face, as if he could read the truth there. The man blinked and recoiled each time the candlelight shone in his eyes, but he couldn’t seem to tear his gaze from the flame. Beads of moisture glistened on his forehead and nose, but it was impossible to say if they were rain or sweat.

The sergeant pushed the documents back at him and thrust out his hand towards the younger man. ‘Papers!’ he barked, but his gaze was still riveted on the older man.

He barely glanced at the younger man’s travel permit, ignoring the other letters he had produced, then handed them back, still staring at the first man. For a moment, the spirits of both passengers surged as he seemed on the verge of walking away. Then without warning, he rounded on the younger of the two men, yanked off the muffler and jerked up his beard. He held the lantern close to the man’s throat. A slow smile spread across the sergeant’s face as the flame illuminated a vivid red firemark, like a noose, encircling his neck.

‘Why, if it isn’t Master Pursglove! But that’s not the name on the travel permit you’ve just shown me, is it? And I reckon it wouldn’t be the name on any of the other grand letters you’ve got, neither. Now why would that be, I wonder? Must have got muddled up with some other fellow’s papers last time you were searched. That’s the cock-and-bull tale the last fugitive tried to sell us, isn’t that right, lads?’ The sergeant turned his head, sharing the joke with the two guards behind him.

Daniel Pursglove grabbed the old man standing beside him and swung him hard against the grinning sergeant. As they staggered, trying to disentangle themselves, he ran towards the gunwale furthest from the quayside, preparing to jump. A musket ball, glowing like a firefly, whistled past his shoulder. He straddled the rail, lying as flat as his broad chest would allow, and had almost propelled himself over the side when a boat

suddenly appeared out of the darkness, sliding alongside them, no more a foot from the ship’s hull. It was a small wherry, perilously overloaded with passengers crammed together, riding dangerously low in the water. The wherryman was keeping as close to the ship as he dared, to avoid the strong current in the middle

of the river.

The wherry was now directly below Daniel. It would be impossible to jump clear: if he attempted it, he would come

crashing down on the people crouching beneath, probably capsizing the boat and spilling them all into the Thames. A few of the passengers had caught sight of him suspended high above them and were beginning to point and shriek in alarm. The wherryman too glanced up, missing his stroke, and the boat, instead of moving clear of the ship, began slipping back towards it, rocking alarmingly as the passengers craned and shifted.

The hard muzzle of a musket jabbed into Daniel’s ribs. Hands seized him, dragging him back from the gunwale, shoving him face down on to the deck, inches from where the old man was still trying to pick himself up from where he’d fallen. Daniel twisted, seizing the leg of the nearest man-at-arms, trying to jerk him off balance, but a savage kick in the stomach from one of the others knocked the breath from him. Two of the others joined in, slamming their boots repeatedly into his body.

The old man had got to his knees and was trying to crawl away from the melee as rapidly as he could, making for the side of the ship. But before he could reach it, there came the ear-shattering

crack of a musket, followed by a single shriek. The shot lifted the old man off the deck for an instance; then he crashed to the boards, blood pumping from the gaping hole between his shoulder blades. The body twitched and convulsed, then lay still.

A boot ground hard into Daniel’s spine, while two others pinioned his arms to the planks.

‘Not thinking of leaving us, were you, Master Pursglove? Cold night for a swim. I wouldn’t fancy it myself, would you, lads? Still, if that’s what you want, we can oblige. Tie you hand and foot and chuck you in, if you’re bent on taking a bath. Or you can walk off the ship on your own two feet and come along with us, peaceful and quiet. Which is it going to be?’ The foot pressed harder into his back, until he almost felt his bruised ribs crack.

‘Go . . . with you,’ Daniel gasped, barely able to draw breath enough to speak.

Two pairs of hands wrestled his arms behind him, binding his wrists. Then they hauled him to his feet and pushed him towards the gangway, the barrel of a musket aimed steadily at his guts.

‘Hey, what about him?’ the captain demanded, gesturing to the crumpled body lying in the pool of blood. ‘You can’t leave him there.’

The sergeant paused, glancing back at the body of the old man with as much indifference as if it were a dead rat. ‘You’ll have to call the constable to deal with it. I’ve no time to waste on that.’

‘But it’ll delay us for hours, and we’ll lose the tide,’ the captain protested.

‘Then it’ll teach you to check the papers of your passengers properly in future, won’t it? Even a blind beggar could have seen his travel permit was as real as fool’s gold.’

The captain opened his mouth to protest again, but the sergeant forestalled him.

‘You want to think yourself lucky; it’s only because I’ve orders to bring this man in for questioning without delay that I’m not having you arrested for helping fugitives escape the King’s justice.’

The sergeant gave a violent jerk on the rope. ‘As for you, Master Pursglove,’ he continued, ‘I dare say I’ll have the pleasure of escorting you to the gallows before the month is out. Seems you were marked for that when you were still in your ma’s belly. Fate always catches up with you in the end.’

NONSUCH GREAT PARK, SURREY

THE SLENDER HUNTING TOWER rose out of the small clearing among the grove of young trees. With the coming of dawn, the rain had finally ceased, but the bare branches of the trees still dripped and the wet stones glistened in the pale watery light filtering through the clouds. The sergeant, riding ahead, raised his hand and the men-at-arms reined in their horses. They dismounted and the guard who had been leading the horses on which Daniel had been forced to ride held the head of his fresh mount while their prisoner lowered himself to the ground. Daniel moved more awkwardly than usual, for his hands were still bound, though at least they had been retied in front of him for the long, hard ride. He gritted his jaw as his feet hit the ground, steeling himself not to wince, for the bruises from the kicking he’d received on the ship had stiffened on the journey.

The sergeant lifted the butt of his musket to rap on the heavy oak door of the tower, but whoever was inside had seen their approach from a distance, and the door swung open before he could strike it. The prisoner recognised the same burly servitor from the desolate manor in Rotherhithe, just five months before. If the servant was here, then he knew exactly who was waiting for him up in that tower.

‘Is he armed?’ the servitor asked, regarding the prisoner with the undisguised disdain he might have reserved for a lice-ridden beggar.

The sergeant slapped his own forehead, gurning like a comic actor playing a simpleton. ‘Now that’s what we forgot to do, lads. We forgot to search the prisoner,’ he said, and the men laughed. He pulled Daniel’s dagger from his own belt and tossed to it the servant, who caught it deftly. ‘That’s all the weapons he was carrying.’

One of the men-at-arms unstrapped a small pack from his own saddle and threw it to land at the servitor’s feet. ‘Only had that with him. Travels light.’

‘Valuables?’ the servitor asked.

The men-at-arms exchanged uneasy glances and shrugged. They had divided the contents of the prisoner’s purse between them, as they considered they were entitled to do when apprehending a fugitive, but they weren’t about to admit it.

‘He’s already tried to bolt once,’ the sergeant cut in swiftly. ‘The boil-brain thought he could escape by diving overboard.’ He squinted up at the high casements and sheer walls of the hunting tower. ‘I’ll leave some of my men on guard outside in case he tries it again.’

The servant pointed to a long, low wooden shelter some distance away, used by the hunt-servants and hounds while their masters drank and dined in the tower. ‘My orders are you’re all to wait over there in case you’re needed to take him to Newgate.’ He stared pointedly at the prisoner as he spat out the last word.

The sergeant looked annoyed, but judging by their broad grins, the instruction certainly cheered his men. They had been riding all night and half the day, only stopping long enough to change horses. Their muscles were aching and their bellies rumbling. The prospect of a nap and maybe something hot to eat was much more enticing than being forced to stand guard for hours.

The servitor jerked his thumb towards the low door and the prisoner stumbled inside, pausing at the foot of a wooden staircase which wound up the wall. The few candles burning on the sconces high above them guttered wildly as the servitor closed and then locked the door behind them, plunging the small windowless chamber into twilight. The room was as cold and damp as the Newgate gaol.

The servant prodded him in the back. ‘Up there,’ he said. ‘You’d best not keep Lord FitzAlan waiting, if you know what’s good for you.’ He dragged a bench across the door and lowered his bear-like rump on to the protesting wood, making it clear that there was no way out except through him.

As Daniel stiffly mounted the staircase, anger and humiliation rose up in him with each step he climbed, so that by the time he reached the door on the small landing, his temper had burned away the cold dread that had numbed him throughout the journey there. He had made no attempt to remove the rope binding his hands all the time he was on horseback. The sergeant had warned that if he even thought about fleeing, his men would be only too delighted to use him as target practice, as they had the old man on the ship. But now, keeping his back to the watching servant below, the prisoner wrested the rope from his wrists and, without bothering to knock, marched in.

After the dimness of the chamber below, this room appeared dazzlingly bright. A cold light streamed in from the wide casements on every wall which allowed those inside to spot game or watch a hunt in the park below. The room was simply furnished with a long table, benches and two dresser boards where meat could be carved and served, but the table and boards were bare. FitzAlan was seated close to a blazing fire in a high-backed chair carved with lion’s heads at the end of both arms, baring their fangs. His face wore an expression as savage as theirs. He was plainly clad, with unfashionably short hair and a sparse, though neatly trimmed, beard. But in the unforgiving light of day, FitzAlan’s face appeared thinner than when Daniel had last seen him on the night of the masque, the bulging bags beneath his eyes more pronounced. He looked hag-ridden. Daniel felt his anger rising again at the sight of him. Fighting to control his temper, he made only a curt bow, which was not nearly as deep as might have been prudent given that FitzAlan held the keys of life and death: his life, or death.

There was a low rumbling growl, and for a moment Daniel thought it was coming from the carved lions, the sort of mechanical toy that Inigo Jones might have designed for one of Queen Anne’s masques. But it was swiftly followed by the scrabble of claws on wood, and a huge hound padded out from beneath the table, still snarling. Daniel extended a hand and the dog fell silent, sniffing, then licking the outstretched fingers. The beast seemed to be inviting a pat, but FitzAlan swiftly intervened.

‘Down, Labros!’

The hound turned its great head, gazing at him reproachfully, and only when the order was repeated even more sharply did the dog curl up under the table again by its master’s feet.

‘So, they caught you, my wee sparrow. Trying to flee the cage, were you?’ FitzAlan paused, evidently expecting some kind of denial or explanation.

But Daniel knew either would be futile. ‘If that is what they say, sir.’

‘I dinnae need them to tell me what I already know, Master Pursglove. When I first clapped eyes on you in Newgate gaol, I told you the King has spies everywhere. And a man who seeks out a forger of travel permits is not planning a wee journey to Bath to take the waters for his health.’

Daniel’s jaw tightened. How many others had that forger taken money from and then sold to the authorities?

‘Were the Ridings of Yorkshire not far enough from London for you, Master Pursglove? Did that wee jaunt not satisfy your lust for travel?’

‘You know I was raised in the household of the late Lord Fairfax, sir, so the Ridings are my childhood home. I had a desire to return there, seek out the places I’d once known.’

‘Did ye now? And the fact that I had ordered you to stay close at hand in London and not to leave the city, did that just slip your mind in your hankering to see Yorkshire? Couldn’t help yourself, I suppose: li