The Tide Gate Murders

• Chapter 1 The Iron Chain
• Chapter 2 Blood on the Tide Gate
• Chapter 3 The Sergeant’s Round
• Chapter 4 A Body at Low Tide
• Chapter 5 The King’s Seal
• Chapter 6 Whispers in the Salt House
• Chapter 7 The Merchant’s Secret
• Chapter 8 Mud and Rope
• Chapter 9 The Second Watch
• Chapter 10 Shadows of the Basin
• Chapter 11 The Smuggler’s Code
• Chapter 12 Iron and Silt
• Chapter 13 The Harbor Master’s Lie
• Chapter 14 Restless Waters
• Chapter 15 Riot at the Fishmarket
• Chapter 16 The Poisoned Cask
• Chapter 17 Midnight on the Docks
• Chapter 18 The Guildmaster’s Vault
• Chapter 19 Traces in the Silt
• Chapter 20 The Sentry’s Silence
• Chapter 21 Confessions at Dawn
• Chapter 22 The Rising Tempest
• Chapter 23 The Traitor’s Mark
• Chapter 24 Storm over the Harbor
• Chapter 25 Lowering the Barrier
• Chapter 26 The Final Watch

The wind off the estuary smelled of rotting bladderwrack, tallow, and the cold, flat promise of snow. It was the kind of chill that did not merely settle on a man’s skin but burrowed through wool and boiled leather to gnaw directly on his collarbones. Sergeant Nicholas Elyot spat into the black, swirling water of the harbor basin and drew his sheepskin cloak tighter around his shoulders. Below him, the tide was rushing in through the narrow gap of the river mouth, muscular and foul-tempered, carrying the bloated carcass of a sheep and the shattered ribs of an old fish-crate.

"Pull, you miserable dogs! Put some grease into it!"

The voice belonged to Master Fowler, the deputy harbor master, whose throat sounded as though it had been scrubbed with coarse salt and vinegar. He was standing on the stone platform of the eastern capstan house, waving a lantern that cast frantic, yellow streaks across the dark water.

Nicholas walked down the slippery granite steps of the quay, his boots finding purchase in the cracks where the mortar had long since washed away. A dozen men of the Port Watch, along with a handful of pressed harbor laborers, were strained against the heavy timber bars of the great capstan. Their breath rose in thick, synchronized plumes of gray steam. Beneath their feet, the massive oak drum groaned, its iron bands shrieking in protest as the slack was taken up.

Out in the middle of the channel, something massive and dripping began to break the surface of the water.

It looked like a great black serpent at first, slick with river-weed and river-mud, but as the links cleared the surface, the true scale of the barrier became clear. This was the Great Chain of Oakhaven. Each individual link was as long as a man’s forearm and three fingers thick, forged in the royal ironworks upriver and maintained at the city’s immense expense. When slack, it lay dormant in the muck of the riverbed, allowing the deep-drafted cogs and carracks to pass freely into the safety of the pool. When raised, it stretched taut from the eastern capstan tower to the western bastion, a solid bar of iron that could shear the bowsprit off a three-masted merchantman or crack the hull of a raiding galley like an eggshell.

Nicholas watched the chain rise. It was a rare sight, and a miserable one. In his seven years with the Port Watch, he had only seen the chain lifted twice before: once when a French privateer had been spotted off the spit, and once when the sweating sickness had decimated the sheep-farming villages to the south and the bailiffs had panicked.

"Is she clear of the silt, Nicholas?" Fowler barked, leaning over the stone parapet. He was a small, round man who wore three coats at once, giving him the silhouette of an upright turnip.

"She’s clear," Nicholas called back, his voice steady against the howling wind. "The center links are six feet above the swells. Nothing bigger than a rowboat is getting through tonight, and even then, they’d have to duck."

"Good. Keep them turning until the pins are locked. I want no slack in her before the tide turns." Fowler wiped a greasy sleeve across his nose and cursed the weather, the king, and the cold in a single, breathy mutter.

A few yards away, standing apart from the straining laborers, was a figure wrapped in a dark, expensive cloak lined with fox fur. Sir Baldwin de Tracy, the King’s sub-sheriff for the shire, did not look like a man who spent much time on drafty quaysides. His boots were of soft leather, now thoroughly ruined by the slime of the fish-slip, and his face was pale with a mixture of cold and administrative fury. He held a parchment scroll in his gloved hand, the heavy wax seal of the crown dangling from it like a clot of dried blood.

"Is it done, Sergeant?" Sir Baldwin demanded, stepping forward. He walked with a delicate, high-stepping gait, as if trying to minimize his contact with the city of Oakhaven.

"Almost, Sir Baldwin," Nicholas replied, stepping into the yellow circle of the sheriff's lantern light. "The chain is up. The harbor is sealed. If there are any ships still out in the bay, they’ll have to drop anchor in the roads and ride out the gale. God help them if the wind shifts to the south."

"The ships in the bay are not my concern," Sir Baldwin said coldly. "The King’s peace is. The decree is absolute, Sergeant. No vessel enters, and more importantly, no vessel leaves. Not a fishing smack, not a coal-hoy, not a timber-raft. If a duck tries to swim out of this harbor, I expect your men to shoot it."

"A bit hard on the ducks," Nicholas said mildly. "But we’ll do our best with the boats. Might I ask how long we’re keeping the front door locked? The merchants are going to have a collective fit of the apoplexy by sunrise. The Flanders fleet is expected within forty-eight hours."

Sir Baldwin tightened his grip on his scroll. "The merchants may whine until their purses burst. The port remains closed by royal command until the murderer of Lord William is found, or until the Regent sends further instructions from Westminster. A peer of the realm has been slaughtered in his own bed not three miles from these walls, and the assassin was seen fleeing toward the docks. He is within this city, Sergeant. And he must not escape by sea."

"Lord William was an old man who lived in a fortified manor with twenty guards," Nicholas remarked, looking back out at the iron chain, which was now vibrating with the immense force of the outgoing current. "If someone managed to get past his guards, kill him in his bed, and slip into Oakhaven before the gates were shut, they’re not the sort of person who’s going to be stopped by a few watchmen in wet wool."

"Which is why you have the chain," Sir Baldwin snapped. "And why you have my authority to search every cellar, every warehouse, and every bilge along the waterfront. If you fail in this, Nicholas, the King’s wrath will not fall upon the assassin. It will fall upon the city. And the first head to roll into the gutter will be the one belonging to the man responsible for the gates."

"An encouraging thought to keep me warm," Nicholas said.

With a final, deafening clang that echoed off the stone warehouses lining the pool, the iron locking pins were driven home in the capstan house. The chain was set. The great harbor of Oakhaven, the busiest port on the southern coast, was now nothing more than a giant stone-lined pond, entirely cut off from the rest of the world.

Nicholas nodded to his deputy, a gangly youth named Toby who was currently trying to blow some life back into his blue-tinged fingers. "Get these men some small beer from the watch-house, Toby. And tell the landlord at the Anchor that if he waters it down tonight, I’ll have his licenses reviewed by the bailiff before noon."

"Yes, Sergeant," Toby said, his teeth chattering like castanets. "And what about us? Do we get to sit by the fire?"

"We do not," Nicholas said. "We have the midnight round. With the harbor closed, every thief, smuggler, and cutpurse in the tenements is going to be sober, bored, and looking for mischief. Keep your cudgel handy."

The laborers dispersed with low grumbles, their wooden-soled shoes clattering away into the dark, narrow alleys that led up from the waterfront. The silence that followed was heavy and unnatural. Normally, even at this hour, Oakhaven harbor was a place of constant, chaotic noise. There would be the creak of timber hulls riding the swell, the shouting of foreign sailors drinking on deck, the chantey of crews warping a late arrival into the basin, and the constant, rhythmic clink of the shipwrights' hammers.

Now, there was only the wind whistling through the rigging of the trapped ships, the dull thud of water against the stone pilings, and the ominous, low hum of the great chain holding the sea at bay.

Nicholas turned his back on the water and began the climb up toward the High Street. The town of Oakhaven was built like an amphitheater around its pool. The lowest tier, the waterfront, was a labyrinth of salt-houses, cooperages, sail-lofts, and squalid tenements where the mud was thick and the air smelled of stale fish and human waste. Above that lay the middle town, home to the respectable merchants, the wool-halls, and the stone churches whose steeples pricked the low, gray sky. At the very top, looming over the rest like a stone hawk, was the castle, where the King’s garrison spent their time drinking sour wine and complaining about the damp.

He had not gone fifty paces before he heard the sound of footsteps behind him. It wasn't the slow, heavy trudge of a watchman, but the quick, erratic patter of someone in a hurry and trying not to show it.

Nicholas did not turn around immediately. He kept his pace steady, his eyes scanning the dark entrances of the warehouses he passed. He reached down beneath his cloak and touched the hilt of his short-sword—a plain, unadorned piece of iron that had seen more use as a lever than a weapon, but was heavy enough to crack a skull if the need arose.

"Sergeant!"

The voice was a whisper, sharp and urgent. Nicholas stopped and turned.

A young girl was standing in the mouth of a narrow passage between two timber-framed wool stores. She could not have been more than fourteen, her hair a wild tangle of dark curls escape from under a dirty linen cap. She wore a stained canvas apron over a coarse woolen kirtle, the uniform of a kitchen wench from one of the taverns down on the quay.

"Who’s there?" Nicholas asked, keeping his voice low. "You should be indoors, lass. The watch is clearing the streets, and the wind is coming up."

"Are you the Sergeant? Nicholas Elyot?" she asked, her eyes wide and dark in the gloom.

"I am. What of it?"

"You're wanted," she said, taking a step back into the shadow of the passage as if afraid of being seen by the sentries on the wall above. "At the Tide Gate. Near the old salt-works."

Nicholas frowned. The Tide Gate was at the far western end of the harbor basin, where the mill-race emptied into the pool. It was a lonely, treacherous stretch of mud and rotten timbers, largely abandoned since the new salt-pans had been built three miles down the coast.

"Who wants me?" Nicholas asked. "If it's Master Fowler, tell him I'm on my rounds."

"It's not Master Fowler," the girl said, her voice trembling slightly. "It's Barnaby. He says you need to come quick. He says there's something in the mud that shouldn't be there."

"Barnaby is supposed to be watching the west sluice," Nicholas said, a cold knot beginning to form in his stomach that had nothing to do with the wind. "What did he find?"

The girl looked down at her feet, her hands twisting the rough fabric of her apron. "A man, Sergeant. At least, what's left of him. Barnaby says his throat's been cut from ear to ear, and he's pinned to the timber piles like a stuck pig."

Nicholas stood silent for a long moment. The wind howled through the narrow alley, rattling the wooden shutters of the warehouse above them. Out in the harbor, the great chain groaned again, a low, metallic shriek that sounded like a dying beast.

The harbor was sealed. The gates were closed. And the killing, it seemed, had already begun.

The western reach of Oakhaven harbor was where the city’s grand pretenses finally rotted away into the marsh. Here, away from the stone-faced quays of the merchant princes, the shore degenerated into a wilderness of black ooze, collapsing willow-hurdles, and the waterlogged foundations of abandoned tanneries. The air did not merely smell of salt and weed; it was thick with the acidic reek of oak-bark liquor, rancid tallow, and the sulfurous belch of the low-tide mud.

Nicholas walked quickly, his lantern swinging in a tight, nervous arc that cast long, monstrous shadows against the rotting timber walls of the old salt-pans. Behind him, the young girl, whose name he had gathered was Meg, struggled to keep pace. Her oversized wooden clogs made a wet, sucking sound each time she pulled them from the mire.

"Stay close, lass," Nicholas muttered, not looking back. "And keep your eyes on where I step. If you wander off the path here, the silt will have you up to your waist before you can squeak, and there’s no one but the gulls to hear you."

"I know the path, Sergeant," she panted, her voice muffled by the corner of her apron, which she had pulled up over her nose to ward off the stench. "I fetch driftwood from the sluice-gates when the tide is out. I’ve seen what’s down here. Though... nothing like what Barnaby found. Not since the Frenchmen came three winters ago."

Nicholas didn't answer. His mind was already at the Tide Gate, turning over the meager facts he possessed. A man pinned to the timbers. A throat cut from ear to ear. If this was the assassin of Lord William, he had made remarkably poor speed in his flight from the manor, or he had run straight into someone even more ruthless than himself. But Nicholas had lived too long in the shadows of the port to believe in convenient coincidences. In Oakhaven, when two men died violently on the same night, they were almost always connected by the same greasy thread of coin or conspiracy.

They reached the edge of the old salt-works, a desolate cluster of sagging rooflines and blackened stone chimneys that looked like broken teeth against the graying sky. The wind here was louder, whistling through the gaps in the timber frames with a sound like a wet finger run around the rim of a glass. Ahead, the path ended at the head of the western sluice—the Tide Gate itself.

The gate was a massive, twin-leafed barrier of black oak, reinforced with green-streaked bronze bands, designed to let the fresh water of the mill-race flow out at low tide while preventing the sea from rushing back up into the low-lying meadows during the flood. It was a place of dangerous currents, treacherous footing, and deep, silent pools.

A single lantern flickered near the base of the eastern stone abutment, its light reflecting off a patch of greasy water. Beside it, a figure huddled in a grease-stained leather coat, shivering so violently that the watchman's billhook in his hand clattered rhythmically against the stone.

"Barnaby," Nicholas called out, slowing his pace as he neared the edge of the drop.

The young watchman leaped nearly a foot into the air, his weapon swinging wildly before he recognized Nicholas’s broad-shouldered silhouette. "Sergeant! By God’s teeth, I thought you were... I thought it had come back."

"What had come back?" Nicholas stepped down onto the slimy timber sill of the sluice-way, his boots slipping slightly before he found his footing on an iron bolt-head. He held his lantern high, throwing its yellow light down into the narrow gap between the oak gate and the stone wall.

"Whatever did that," Barnaby whispered, pointing a trembling finger into the dark crevice.

Nicholas leaned over the timber balk, his hand instinctively resting on the cold iron of his sword-hilt.

The body was wedged vertically into the narrow space behind the western leaf of the gate. The rising tide had not yet reached its chest, but the water was already lapping at its knees, lifting the hem of a fine, dark-green wool kirtle and making it billow like sea-lettuce. The man’s arms were pinned flat against the timber piles by a massive iron spike—a surveyor’s pin, by the look of it—driven straight through his throat and deep into the ancient oak behind him.

The iron pin had done the work of a nail, but it was not what had killed him. As Meg had said, his throat had been opened from side to side with a single, savage stroke that had carved through the windpipe and the great vessels of the neck. The skin of his face was a terrible, waxy blue, his eyes staring wide and white up at the damp timbers of the walkway above. The blood that had poured from his neck had run down his chest, staining the expensive green wool of his tunic a dark, stiff purple before the cold river water had begun to wash it away.

"Jesus wept," Barnaby muttered, crossing himself with his free hand. "Who is he, Sergeant? He don't look like no dock-side scuttler."

Nicholas crouched lower, ignoring the cold spray that stung his face as the wind whipped through the sluice. He studied the dead man's features. The face was narrow, with a thin, pointed nose and a short, neatly trimmed beard of dark hair that had been carefully oiled. This was no sailor, nor was it one of the laborers who hauled coal-bags for three farthings a day. The hands, though now pale and stiffening in the cold water, were smooth, the fingers long and uncalloused. On the right middle finger, a heavy gold ring set with a dark red stone caught the light of the lantern.

"He's a scribe," Nicholas said softly, his eyes tracing the ink-stains that darkened the tips of the dead man's thumb and index finger. "Or a merchant's clerk. A man who lives by the pen, not the spade."

"Look at his belt, Sergeant," Barnaby whispered, leaning over Nicholas’s shoulder. "The purse is still there. If it was footpads, they’d have taken the silver and the ring, wouldn't they?"

Nicholas reached down, his fingers brushing against the ice-cold, sodden wool of the dead man's tunic. The purse was indeed still attached to the thick leather girdle. It was a high-quality piece of work, made of dyed pigskin with brass clasps. Nicholas unbuckled it with some difficulty, his own fingers stiffening in the biting wind. He emptied the contents into his palm.

There were three silver groats, a handful of copper pennies, a small bone-handled penknife, and a lump of soft bees-wax used for sealing letters. But there was no parchment. No letters. No identification.

"He wasn't robbed," Nicholas said, tucking the coins back into the purse and slipping it into his own cloak. "Which means he was killed for what he knew, or what he was doing down here in the dark. Barnaby, did you see anyone else when you came on your round?"

"Not a soul, Sergeant. I swear it on my mother's grave," the lad said, his chest heaving. "The wind was howling so loud you couldn't hear your own spit hit the ground. I came down to check the sluice-pin because the water was backing up, and I saw his hat floating in the pool. When I reached down to fish it out with my bill, I saw... I saw him. Pinned there like a beetle on a board."

Nicholas stood up, his joints popping in the cold. He looked up at the stone walkway that ran across the top of the Tide Gate. It was part of the old town wall, though this section had fallen into disrepair, with several of the battlements having tumbled into the mud during the winter storms of the previous year. It was a lonely spot, completely shielded from the view of the high town by the bulk of the abandoned salt-houses.

"He was killed up there," Nicholas said, pointing to the stone platform above them. "Then his body was tumbled over the side into the sluice-way. The killer must have climbed down after him to drive that iron pin through his throat. Why?"

"To keep him from floating away?" Barnaby suggested.

"No," Nicholas said, shaking his head. "If you wanted to hide a body, you’d tie a couple of heavy stones to his feet and dump him in the deep channel of the pool. At high tide, he’d be swept out into the bay and the crabs would have him clean in three days. Pinning him here... this was done to ensure he was found. It’s a sign. Or a warning."

He turned to Meg, who was shivering by the corner of the stone abutment, her face pale but her eyes remarkably steady for a girl of her years. "Meg, you said your tavern is the Anchor?"

"No, Sergeant. The Black Dog. Just off the salt-slip."

"The Black Dog," Nicholas repeated, his brow furrowing. It was a notorious cellar-hole, frequented by the lowest class of foreign sailors, coal-heavers, and women of the night. It was also the closest tavern to this end of the harbor. "Did you see this man in there tonight? Before the chain went up?"

The girl looked at the dead man's face again, then quickly looked away, her lips pressed into a tight line. "I don't know. Maybe. We had fifty men in the cellar tonight, all of them roaring drunk because the ships are stuck. He... he looks like one of the men who was sitting in the back corner with the master of the St. John. The timber-ship from Bristol."

"The St. John," Nicholas said. He knew the vessel. She was a heavy-bellied carrack, currently moored near the western basin, waiting for her cargo of oak planking to be cleared by the customs bailiff. "And who was he sitting with?"

"Just the master," Meg said, her voice dropping to a whisper. "And another man. A fellow with a scar across his nose and a long blue coat. They were whispering, like. Not drinking much. The man in the green coat—him in the mud—he had a big roll of parchment on the table. But they tucked it away when I came over with the herring-pies."

"A blue coat and a scarred nose," Nicholas murmured. "That sounds like dog-work. Half the ruffians on the wharf have scars, but a blue coat... that’s livery. The town bailiff’s men wear blue."

Before he could pursue the thought, the sound of heavy boots clattering on the gravel path behind them broke through the wind.

"Sergeant Nicholas! Sergeant!"

A watchman came running out of the darkness, his breath coming in ragged gasps. He was carrying a torch that sputtered and spat sparks of pitch into the wet air. It was Wat, one of the older men of the Port Watch, whose knees were so ruined by thirty years of walking the stones that he usually had to be bribed with a pint of gin to do the midnight round.

"What is it, Wat?" Nicholas called out, his hand dropping back to his sword-hilt. "Has the chain parted?"

"No, Sergeant," Wat gasped, catching his breath against the stone wall of the salt-house. "It’s Sir Baldwin. He’s down at the fishmarket with ten of the sheriff's men-at-arms. They’ve dragged three merchants out of their beds, and there’s a crowd gathering near the wool-hall. They’re saying the King’s men are going to burn the ships if the murderer isn't found by sunrise."

"Burn the ships?" Barnaby gasped, his eyes wide. "They can't do that! My uncle's boat is in the basin. Everything he owns is in her hull!"

"Sir Baldwin is a man who likes to show his teeth when he's frightened," Nicholas said, his voice flat. "And right now, with the King’s seal in his hand and a dead lord on his ledger, he’s very frightened indeed. Wat, go to the fishmarket. Tell Sir Baldwin I’ve found something at the Tide Gate. Tell him we have a body."

"A body?" Wat squinted into the dark sluice-way, his eyes catching the waxy reflection of the dead clerk's face. He let out a low whistle. "Mother of God. Is that Lord William’s man?"

"I don't know," Nicholas said, "but he’s wearing thirty shillings' worth of wool and a gold ring, and he’s been pinned to the gates like a crow on a barn door. That should be enough to keep the sub-sheriff from burning the town down for at least an hour. Go. Run."

Wat nodded, turned on his heel, and hobbled back toward the high town as fast as his bad knees could carry him, his torch leaving a smoky trail in the damp air.

Nicholas turned back to the body. The tide was rising faster now, the cold water swirling around the dead man's waist, his green coat floating up around him like the leaves of an underwater plant. In another hour, the water would be up to his chest, and by high tide, the sluice would be entirely submerged. If they didn't get him out now, the current would batter his face against the stone abutments until there was nothing left to identify.

"Barnaby, give me your billhook," Nicholas said.

"What are you going to do, Sergeant?"

"We have to get him up onto the stone before the tide takes him. Hold my lantern. And Meg, go back to the Black Dog. Tell the landlord that if anyone asks where you’ve been, you were fetching coal from the yard. Don’t say a word about this to anyone. Not to the sailors, not to the girls, and especially not to the master of the St. John. Do you understand?"

The girl looked at him, her dark eyes reflecting the yellow light of his lantern. She gave a single, solemn nod, then turned and vanished into the darkness of the salt-pans, her wooden clogs silent now as she ran lightly along the dry edges of the path.

Nicholas took the heavy iron billhook from Barnaby’s shaking hands. He stepped down onto the second timber sill, the icy water immediately soaking through his leather boots, numbing his feet. He leaned over the dark crevice, his chest pressed against the wet wood of the gate, and reached down toward the iron pin.

The pin was driven deep. The killer had used a heavy mallet, probably wrapped in rag to deaden the sound, to drive the surveyor's spike through the neck and into the oak piling. Nicholas hooked the curved blade of the billhook under the head of the pin and pried upward, using the stone abutment for leverage.

The iron groaned. The ancient oak of the gate resisted, its grain gripping the rusted metal like a vice. Nicholas spat a mouthful of salty spray from his lips and threw his whole weight onto the shaft of the billhook.

With a sharp, cracking sound that echoed through the narrow chamber, the pin gave way.

The body immediately slumped forward, its head falling limp against Nicholas’s shoulder. The smell of the corpse—a mixture of cold river mud, expensive rose-water perfume, and the faint, copper tang of old blood—filled Nicholas’s nostrils. It was the smell of a man who had died in terror, far from the clean sheets and warm hearths of the high town.

"Help me, Barnaby," Nicholas grunted, his arms straining under the dead weight of the sodden wool. "Get his shoulders. Up onto the stone. Quick, before the next swell hits us."

The young watchman dropped his billhook and scrambled down onto the sill, his face green with disgust as his hands found the wet, cold flesh of the dead clerk's neck. Together, they hauled the body up out of the sluice, dragging it onto the flat stone platform of the walkway.

Nicholas collapsed against the stone wall, his breath coming in short, painful gasps, his boots completely waterlogged. He looked down at his hands. They were covered in a mixture of black river silt and a sticky, dark grease that had been smeared across the dead man’s shoulders.

He held his hand up to his lantern, his nose twitching.

It wasn't blood. It wasn't river-mud either. It was thick, black, and had the sharp, pungent smell of Swedish tar—the expensive, heavy grease used by shipwrights to seal the seams of ocean-going vessels.

"Well now," Nicholas muttered to himself, wiping his fingers on his wet cloak. "What was a scribe doing with ship’s tar on his shoulders?"

Before he could ponder the question, the sound of horses’ hooves clattering on the wet stones of the western slipway announced the arrival of the sub-sheriff.

Sir Baldwin de Tracy rode down the narrow path on a tall, gray gelding that looked thoroughly displeased with the mud. Behind him came four men-at-arms on foot, their iron breastplates gleaming in the torchlight, their half-pikes held at the ready.

Sir Baldwin drew his horse to a halt just short of the stone platform, his eyes immediately falling upon the wet, green-clad heap at Nicholas’s feet.

"Is this him?" the sub-sheriff demanded, his horse tossing its head and spraying foam onto the stones. "Is this the dog who killed Lord William?"

Nicholas stood up, his bones aching with the cold, and bowed slightly—more out of habit than respect. "I doubt it, Sir Baldwin. Unless the assassin had a change of heart and decided to drive an iron pin through his own throat after he did the deed."

Sir Baldwin dismounted, his boots sinking into the mud with a soft sigh. He strode over to the body, his long cloak trailing behind him like a train of black silk. One of the men-at-arms held a torch close, illuminating the dead clerk's waxy features.

The sub-sheriff gasped, his hand flying to his mouth. For a moment, the arrogant, administrative mask of the King’s officer slipped, revealing a face that was suddenly very old and very pale.

"By the rood," Sir Baldwin whispered, his voice barely audible above the wind. "It’s Master Thomas."

"You know him?" Nicholas asked, stepping closer.

"He is... he was the clerk of the King’s Customs," Sir Baldwin said, his eyes wide and fixed on the dead man's face. "The collector of the wool-subsidy for the entire southern coast. He was supposed to be at the castle tonight, locking the tallies in the great chest."

Nicholas looked down at the dead clerk. The gold ring. The fine wool. The ink-stained fingers. It all made sense now. But the ship’s tar on his shoulders, and the surveyor's pin through his throat, did not.

"If Master Thomas was at the castle," Nicholas said quietly, "then why did he end up in the mud at the Tide Gate with his throat cut?"

Sir Baldwin turned on him, his face suddenly contorted with a fury that looked very much like panic. "That, Sergeant Elyot, is what you are going to find out. And you had better find out quickly. Because if the King’s customs money is missing, the Regent will not just take my head. He will take this entire city and burn it to the ground to find where the silver went."