Free A Murder on London Bridge by Susanna Gregory

crowded with courtiers tearing up and down its paths, showing off their equestrian skills to their mistresses. It was a large area enclosed by high walls that afforded it privacy, although certain members of the public were allowed inside. Chaloner saw the navy clerk Samuel Pepys there, strolling along with cronies from the Admiralty. Pepys bowed a greeting to Chaloner, but only because he was with the Earl. Usually, he snubbed him, deeming him as someone insufficiently lofty to warrant recognition.
    ‘There are Scarlet and Hussey,’ said the Earl, peering out of the carriage window to see if there was anyone to whom he could wave. He ducked hastily back inside. ‘I do not like them.’
    Chaloner looked to where he pointed, and saw an ill-matched pair. One was tall and fat, and the other short and wiry. Both wore the kind of clothes that said they were men of substance, but weathered skin suggested they spent time outside. The smaller of the two was sobbing, and his companion was trying to comfort him.
    ‘Who are they?’ asked Chaloner.
    ‘Wardens of the Bridge.’ The Earl saw Chaloner’s blank look and grimaced. ‘It is about time you learned these things. How can you serve me, if you do not know the first thing about London?’
    Chaloner was tempted to point out that he might learn them faster if Clarendon did not keep sending him on missions away from the capital – Ireland, Spain and Portugal, Oxford, and most recently, Wimbledon – but he managed to hold his tongue. ‘What do they do, exactly?’
    ‘They are responsible for the Bridge – they supervise the carpenters and masons who maintain it, collect rent from the folk who live in its houses, and hire guards to patrol it. Fat Robert Hussey is the Senior Warden, while his junior is little Anthony Scarlet. I shall send you to spy on them soon, because there is something odd going on with that Bridge, and you are the man to find out what.’
    ‘What sort of something?’ asked Chaloner. It sounded a much more interesting assignment than the death of an unpopular iconoclast.
    ‘Well, the Dowager has taken to frequenting it for a start, whereas she always used to travel by water. But speak of the Devil and he will appear, because there she is and her henchmen with her – Buckingham, Winter, Progers, the whole cabal. And the vicar of Wimbledon – Luckin is his name. He was recently arrested, you know.’
    ‘For allegedly witnessing Lord Bristol’s conversion back to Anglicanism, and giving him holy communion,’ said Chaloner, recalling what he had overheard at Somerset House the night before.
    ‘It was not alleged ,’ countered the Earl testily. ‘It happened. I visited Luckin in the Tower myself, and he made no effort to deny it. Indeed, he had the audacity to gloat at me – to claim that Bristol’s public renouncing of his religion is the first stage in his regaining favour with the King.’
    ‘So Bristol is in England?’ asked Chaloner, wondering why the Earl had not mentioned it before.
    The Earl grimaced. ‘I do not know, because Luckin refused to say where this curious event took place. Spymaster Williamson offered to find out, but the King does not want the Church clamouring at him for maltreating its vicars, so he ordered Luckin set free. And where did Luckin go afterwards? Straight to Somerset House!’
    ‘Why would he do that? If Bristol is no longer Catholic, then the Dowager will see him as a traitor to her faith, and Luckin as the facilitator of that treachery.’
    ‘On the contrary. If the ploy sees Bristol restored to the King’s good graces, she will consider Luckin a friend. And they certainly seem comfortable in each other’s presence, because he has been entrusted with her lapdog – and I do not refer to Progers. I mean that nasty yapping creature.’
    Chaloner looked towards the Dowager’s entourage, and saw one man holding a bundle of black and white fur. The fellow had been in Somerset House the previous night,