Clouded in Clerkenwell

Evening of 9th December 1641 · Clerkenwell, the River Fleet

Three trinkets lay glinting in Henry’s palm: a pearl earring, an onyx signet ring with a tulip carved in miniature, and a cameo of Sisyphus pushing his rock. As he stepped onto the moonlit St John’s Square, his sour gut lurched.

Leave it to that man to own such lavish objects. Casting them away would be risky. They connected Henry to the accident and to the agreement, and that was enough to ruin everyone. Sell them, and his family could eat for another year. But if his plan succeeded, they would never go hungry again. The jewels had to be sacrificed to get shut of their owner.

A fierce wind whipped through Clerkenwell’s streets, slapping Henry’s cheeks numb and blurring his vision with tears. Were they from cold or fear? Henry could not tell. He shoved his fists under his cloak and into his armpits and hurried toward the riverbank, his breeches sawing his thighs raw. His breath clouded before him as he stumbled into an ice-filled pothole.

Over the past five years as a painter’s apprentice, he had learned not to hope. Hope was an absurd luxury that he could not afford. But tonight, everything sat on a scale between the prosperous life he craved and the gallows. Henry forced aside the thoughts of Nell learning of his execution and Benjamin growing up fatherless.

On the corner of Chick Lane, the Red Lion Tavern loomed ahead. Amber light spilt onto the frozen street as shouts and laughter crashed through the night. A savoury waft of sausages and roasted meats made him slobber and swallow hard. How in hell could he be hungry at a time like this?

Pick purses used the tavern’s hidden trapdoors to discard their more troublesome spoils into the River Fleet below, but Henry could not risk being seen tonight. Instead, he skirted along the river’s western bank. Two men stood with their backs to him, pissing on either side of the tavern’s entrance, their long, grotesque shadows flickering in unison with the torchlights. Head down, Henry passed them unnoticed and stepped from the road onto the bank, where the snow lay thick as mounds of freshly ground white lead.

He followed in the footprints of someone with a wide stride. The trail halted. Then Henry saw why. The previous man had squatted to shit, smearing an otherwise unspoiled canvas. The stink of it reached him, and with it, unbidden, a man’s voice he had not heard in seven years. When the stench of bowels stings the nose, it’s already too late. Henry had been ten, running across the road toward his father, when a stranger caught him by the collar and would not let him look. He had not understood the words then. But understood them now. Henry strode wide of it into fresh snow, and he took it as a sign. This was where Clerkenwell came to purge unwanted and foul things.

At the water’s edge, he glanced over both shoulders. Alone, blessedly alone. The reek of pig filth rose from the swollen black river. He peered into the churning flow, searching for the strongest current, the deepest channel. The last thing he wanted was for eager scroungers to fish the damning treasures out of the shallows come morning.

Like a greenhorn cutpurse, Henry’s hand trembled. He opened his fist, and the jewellery caught the dim light one last time. His arm whipped forward. The river swallowed them whole. A dense splosh echoed back. And they were gone. The last fragments of connection, devoured.

Henry scrambled back toward the street. His apprenticeship was over. For the first time since moving to London, he felt something like relief.

He walked the deserted streets back to No. 9 St John’s Square. Snow began to fall, settling over Clerkenwell like a fresh ground laid across an old panel, burying whatever the surface had been.

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