Assassination by Steven Veerapen

Author:Steven Veerapen [Veerapen, Steven]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Sharpe Books
Published: 2020-11-11T22:00:00+00:00

15

Locusta gasped, in spite of herself, at the change she had effected in the man Georgie, whom she had stolen off the streets only a few days before. It had taken a set of skills she did not know she possessed, though she had seen it done often enough, of course. She had been dressed aplenty. Never had she been called upon to dress a man up, to make a likeness, save the limp old vagabond in the Bull Head.

Georgie was slumped, as drunk as a lord, on the carpet. She had cut his hair – a thoroughly disgusting job, which had required her to wash her hands in wine afterwards – and trimmed his beard. His tattered clothing she had cut away with a dagger. He remained insensible, thankfully, and did not cry out when she nicked him. And then she had folded his new suit of clothes onto him, slapping him about the face until he smiled like an idiot and grumbled, bidding him to straighten his arms and stretch his legs. It was an ugly, odd job, but she had done it.

Georgie, the pathetic wreck she had lured from the streets of London and delivered to her masters, had been transformed. All that was needed was the hat they had left her. She turned, reached down, and lifted it, plopping it onto his head.

And then she fought the urge to laugh.

If it had been legal to depict the king on the public stage – which, of course, it was not – Georgie would have done him justice. King James was no master of the regal presence; he was a stuffy looking old schoolmaster who ill-fit his clothes. And that, she thought, was what she had made of her charge: a fine, a more than passable, double for the king. In the candlelight, the similarity was really quite startling. She had seen the king often enough, at reasonably close quarters, and this creature might have been a cousin if not a brother. It was the clothes that sold it and, she fancied, the cut she had given the hair and beard.

It was just as she had been commanded: take this creature and clothe him as we provide, until he is a counterfeit king.

Now, she had to awaken him enough to get him out into the alley behind the house and into his carriage. This she managed only with effort. Georgie could not walk in fine clothes and could barely stand in the drunkenness in which he’d been kept for days. Yet she managed to lift him under the armpits, as though she were a tapster and he an unruly patron, and stagger out into the adjoining chamber. The stairs would be more of a challenge, she thought, grunting.

But she would not have to do it alone. One of the Augustans was already waiting outside. He immediately came forward and took the fellow under one of his pits, and together they got him down and out into the street.

In the narrow alley, the carriage stood ready.

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