Witness of Bones Read online

  Table of Contents

  Copyright

  Dedication

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-One

  Praise for Leonard Tourney’s Elizabethan Mysteries

  “Vividly evocative of the era and marvelously readable.”

  People

  “Mr. Tourney seems to have a good understanding of his scenery, and his dialogue has a nice unmannered period feel. He gives us just enough of a sixteenth-century culture to establish the appropriate tone.”

  The New Yorker

  “Tourney is a superb writer, skilled in the richness of the Elizabethan use of language.”

  Tulsa World

  “Superior period mystery—with rich, gritty atmosphere, piquant characterization, and solidly layered plotting.”

  The Kirkus Reviews

  Also by Leonard Tourney

  Published by Ballantine Books:

  KNAVES TEMPLAR

  OLD SAXON BLOOD

  THE BARTHOLOMEW FAIR MURDERS

  FAMILIAR SPIRITS

  LOW TREASON

  THE PLAYERS' BOY IS DEAD

  WITNESS OF BONES

  Leonard Tourney

  BALLANTINE BOOKS • NEW YORK

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States of America by Ballantine Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Originally published, in hardcover, by St. Martin's Press, Inc., in 1992.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording or any information storage and retrieval systern now known or to be invented, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who wishes to quote brief passages in connection with a review written for inclusion in a magazine, newspaper or broadcast.

  ISBN 0-345-38319-2

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  First Ballantine Books Edition: April 1993

  For Jolene

  Fairest of cousins, best of friends

  Some graves will be opened before they be quite closed.

  —Sir Thomas Browne, Hydriotaphia

  One

  It was a city churchyard, draped in yews and fat with the dead. The day’s rain still clung to the monuments, and in the darkness of the March night such little faith as the men had quivered before the cold stones.

  One of the men was a sailor without a berth. He had a blind eye, patched; the other eye glared with pupil so enlarged that hardly any white showed. The sailor’s name was Simkins. He had agreed to this unsavory task because he was desperate. It was either this or starve—a difficult choice for any man to make. But he was no shirker. One had to give him that. He shoveled the skull up from the moist, hummocky earth and flung it against a neighboring gravestone with no more pity nor horror than if it was a stone or an old boot. The skull made a hollow crack when it struck and buried itself in the ivy beneath which in the darkness neither Simkins nor his companion, Motherwell, could see it.

  Leaning upon his pickax, Motherwell, a barrel-chested man of fifty or more with a face ruined by smallpox and a habitual grimmace, snorted with amusement. “I warrant that’ll knock some sense into his coxcomb, whoever he was.

  Dig to the left. He whom we seek is hardly a year planted. The wood will not yet be rotted.”

  Motherwell looked at the sailor, a lean-bodied man with sharp features. Simkins said nothing in response. He kept digging, informed earlier that the coffin would be found a good three to four feet down in a section of the churchyard that was so thick with the dead of the last plague that the earth could hardly be penetrated but it divided asunder some wretch’s bones.

  Motherwell wondered what sort of man it was who would take a handful of silver to dig up a body by moonlight and not ask wherefore it was done nor what poor soul was to have his mortal remains so molested. He had found Simkins loitering near the church, had determined he was a man of the sea, in London today, next week in hell—so far, so good. No danger from him hanging around to speak too loosely of how he made easy money for an hour’s work while the rest of London slept.

  Yet Simkins had seemed to know the work was not mere grave robbing or body snatching. He had demanded no share in the spoils. He had only asked at what peal of St. Crispin’s bells was he wanted and how soon they were to finish and if he was to be paid upon finishing or later. He said he had been a ship’s officer. He wanted a ship more than anything in the world. As it happened, Motherwell knew someone who knew someone who was a shipmaster. That had been part of the bargain. The silver and the name of someone who’d get him back to sea again.

  “When the work’s done you shall have your money as promised,” Motherwell said. “And the name of one to help you to a berth.”

  Simkins complained he had nothing wherewith to dig.

  “I’ll provide, never fear,” said Motherwell. “Bring but a sober mind and a willing back and keep the project to yourself.”

  Now the two men took turns digging. One dug and the other watched, squatting. A quarter moon was the only light. Motherwell stared into the darkness bravely. He wasn’t afraid of the night or of the dead. Of those who rested in the churchyard, he had buried many—and dug them up again after a decent interval to place their bones in the charnel house. Lay the stiffs to bed and yank ’em forth again, such was his creed. Make room for new occupants. There was just so much space in God’s acre. Headstones could curse all they might those who disturbed their bones, but one had to be practical. There was just so much land, and a great many of the dead. More of them were being bom every day. Mother-well laughed to himself at the very idea, persuaded it was his own.

  His bladder full to bursting, Motherwell went off to make water against a tree, came back, squatted some more and watched, envious of his companion’s unflagging physical strength.

  After a few minutes, Simkins’s shovel scraped against wood.

  “That will be it,” Motherwell said. “Careful now, there’s to be no damage to the coffin. Here, man, get yourself down into the hole and uncover the earth away by hand.”

  Motherwell noticed the man seemed hesitant. He gave the order again.

  “You said I was but to dig,” said Simkins.

  “So I did. But you may dig with your hands as well as with a shovel.”

  Simkins grunted. It was so dark Motherwell could barely make out his companion’s face, but he remembered it from daylight—a thin, desperate countenance and the glaring eye of an unemployed man. No one, certainly, that Motherwell would want as an enemy, but Simkins’s hesitancy annoyed him. What, did this one-eyed son of the sea think he was too good to touch a dead man?

  After a few minutes in the grave, Simkins said, “It’s cleared of earth. What’ll you have now?”

  “Why, we shall wait. Anon comes a certain gentleman to give us our final instructions and our due.”

  Motherwell sat down beside the open grave and leaned his back against the tombstone the skull had struck. In the cold

  and dark he wished he had a bowl of hot caudle or sweet wine to comfort his innards, or perhaps juicy Liz, the hot whore of Bankside, to wrap round him in a warm blanket of female flesh. He heard Paul’s authoritative chi
me. One o’clock. He cursed Stearforth for being late. Did the young puke think the sexton of St. Crispin’s had all the night to loll about the churchyard?

  Motherwell heard footsteps and looked up to see a man’s form emerge from the trees.

  “Master Stearforth?” Motherwell said in a hushed voice.

  “Sexton?”

  “Good morrow to your worship.”

  The man Motherwell had called Stearforth came over and looked down into the grave. He was a solidly built, youngish man, with a heavy brow, prominent nose, full lips, and neatly trimmed beard. “I came near to breaking my neck back there stumbling over a vine. Have you come to the coffin?”

  “We have.”

  “You’re sure it’s the right one?”

  “Did I not watch while the man was buried and see to the placement of the stone? We shall have a look at his face presently.”

  “ ’Twill do no good, if you’re mistaken. I never saw the man, myself.”

  “I’faith, I did and will certify him to be even who he should be.”

  “If you can see in the dark.”

  “Trust me, sir. My eyes are not so old they cannot make out a proper face,” Motherwell said although privately he knew his eyes were not what they used to be when like a hawk he could spot his quarry, some buxomy tart, at a hundred paces.

  Motherwell scrambled into the grave and with the shovel’s blade as a pry, he began to unfasten the coffin lid. The wooden pegs gave readily and when the lid was removed he stuck his face down into the coffin to take a good look at the corpse before the stench of decay overpowered him.

  “Blessed Jesu, his corpse is as rotten as his life was saintly,” Stearforth said above him.

  Motherwell looked up to see the young man pull a handkerchief from his sleeve and cover his nose and mouth. The sailor, also in the grave, seemed indifferent to the smell. Perhaps, Motherwell thought, sailors could not afford delicate noses, with the bilges of ships no better than floating privies.

  “I warrant the man was not so saintly but a little sin could make his corpse noisome,” Motherwell said. “All saints are but hypocrites, whited sepulchers, if you ask me.” Mother-well stared at the corpse. All was shrouded in a winding sheet save for the white face.

  “Have no fear, sir,” Motherwell said to Stearforth. “Ecce Homo, as the priests say. Or what he was when quick.”

  “You have no fear of this place, this deed then?” Stearforth asked.

  The sexton laughed and stood up in the grave so that ground level was at his belly. “I care not for life nor death nor God or whatever else men imagine in their hearts to be but never was nor will.”

  “That’s a strange philosophy for a sexton,” Stearforth said.

  “Marry, sir, it’s the only philosophy for a sexton, for what is our work but to ring bells and dig graves? I have buried my shovel’s blade often enough in moldering corpses to believe in naught but the worm, sir. I have never once come upon a soul, only the worm that feeds upon the body. And so I am become a devout believer in the worm and would fain worship at his altar if one had the courage to erect a church to his honor.”

  “Is the good Master Graham aware of his sexton’s blasphemies?” Stearforth asked.

  Motherwell laughed again, although it was a laugh without merriment in it—a hard, cynical laugh. “Master Graham is a devilish hypocrite. I care not a groat what he thinks or why. A great fool he is, hardly aware of himself, much less does he care that I ring the bells and bend my back planting the dead, as this fellow here.”

  “Which fellow we must now transplant,” Stearforth said. “The question is where. The river, perhaps.”

  “A good league,” said Motherwell, shaking his head. “Besides, the body may be found unless we put lead in his pockets. Even then the tide—”

  “Right, of course, sexton.”

  “Now, sir, I have a thought.”

  “Yes.”

  “Where it will never be found—and if found taken no notice of.”

  Motherwell told Stearforth his plan. Stearforth agreed it was a good one.

  “First, we must look to the coffin,” Motherwell said.

  “How so?”

  Motherwell climbed out of the grave. He picked up the lid where it lay by the grave and propped it against a headstone. He gave it a few swift kicks.

  “Good,” said Stearforth when the lid was smashed. “It will look as though our friend below escaped by his own strength. Now to the body.”

  Stearforth nodded to Simkins who all this while had stood watching the two other men. “Here, fellow, lend the good sexton a hand with the corpse. He’ll tell you what to do with it.”

  Simkins wanted to know about his money, and about the ship he had been promised.

  “Never fear, fellow,” Stearforth said with easy assurance. “Return here when the body is disposed of and for your labors and your silence you shall have your deserts.”

  An hour later, the moon having drifted behind clouds and the churchyard an even murkier confusion of dripping shadows, Motherwell and the sailor came back and found Stearforth awaiting them.

  “It is done?”

  “It is, sir,” Motherwell said.

  Stearforth handed the sexton of St. Crispin’s a small leather purse. “Let neither of you speak of this—or even think of it,” he said.

  “Speak of what, sir?” asked Motherwell, grinning. “If I am asked, I slept all the night and can find ten men and not a few women who will swear it is so. As for this fellow, he’ll be gone to sea, have his mind on wind and sail, isn’t that right?”

  Simkins said it was so and looked eagerly at the purse in Motherwell’s hand. Noticing the man’s expression, Mother-well opened the purse and took out his money. “Here,” he said.

  The sailor took the money. Stearforth told him where to come the next day about the ship. “Yes,” he said. “I’m good friends with a shipmaster. He’s looking for an experienced man.”

  “You have done well, sexton,” Stearforth said after Simkins was gone. “I may have more business to send your way.”

  “Grave-digging by moonlight?”

  “Perhaps something along different lines.”

  “I aim to please in everything, sir. If your money is good, then my work will be likewise, for he who is paid well for his labor has no cause to regret it after, save of course it is a hanging offense. I trust what I have helped you to this night will not come to that?”

  “Perish the thought,” said Stearforth, suddenly lighthearted. “You shall see presently what it shall come to and, given your philosophy, you will no doubt take as much delight in the jest as I.”

  “Oh, I have ever loved a good jest, Master Stearforth. I wish you a very good night, or what’s left of it,” Motherwell said.

  “The same to you, honest sexton,” said Stearforth.

  Two

  Matthew Stock paused to catch his breath at the top of the hill and survey the farmstead hunkered down in the bottom as though it were ashamed of its poverty. A wisp of smoke came up from a hole in the thatch. In the uncertain light of dawn, Matthew could make out the farmer moving around in the muddy enclosure next to a small shed. Matthew smelled pig dung and chicken dung and the more wholesome scent of sodden earth and thatch.

  He walked down into the bottom and was almost to the farmer’s house before he hailed its owner. The farmer turned quickly and looked in Matthew’s direction.

  “Fair day, Goodman Brewster.”

  “Less fair than yesterday,” replied the farmer, scowling as though Matthew were somehow responsible for the weather, which had been wretched for a week, with no sun and almost constant rain.

  Giles Brewster was a tall, rawboned man with shaggy dark hair and a jaw bestubbled with a growth of beard. The sleeves of his loose-fitting shirt were rolled up to reveal sinewy forearms. He stared at Matthew suspiciously, obviously wondering what the town constable wanted, tom be-

  tween curiosity and annoyance at having his work interrupted
. Matthew knew Brewster well. There was a wife too, somewhere, a pitiful slight creature half her husband’s height and so fearful of him that she would rarely speak in his presence. There were Brewster children, grown, however, moved off someplace, embittered at the father. Matthew could understand why.

  “What trouble brings you, Matthew?”

  Matthew walked to the edge of the pen but Brewster didn 't move. He stood fixed and defensive, as though he already had an inkling of what the trouble was. A resonant snort came from within the shed and its occupant appeared, waddling out, snout in the air, a huge animal that took up a position behind his owner like an obedient dog.

  “It’s about your boar,” Matthew said. “There’s been a complaint.”

  Brewster said nothing.

  “The parson says the boar has been seen three times in the churchyard. He did damage to some of the monuments. He rooted up one of the graves.”

  Brewster wanted to know whose grave it was, as though that made some difference in the gravity of the offense.

  “Cyrus Terrill’s, John Terrill’s grandfather who died upon Michaelmas. The body was half eaten. Found by some children. John is vexed. The parents of the children also. It’s a great disgrace.”

  “Is it?” said Brewster, suddenly calm. “Well, Master Stock, I would fain know who has seen my boar and how it can be claimed to be mine rather than some other’s.”

  Matthew recited the names of witnesses. There had been other complaints too. The boar had made himself free of the town’s midden heap. Had strewn garbage hither and yon. Had frightened this widow and that goodwife and not a few stout men out of their wits. Matthew looked at the boar. How much must an animal of that size weigh?

  Brewster glanced down beside him at the boar, as though inquiring as to whether any of these testimonies were true.

  Then he looked up at Matthew again. “It must have been some other beast. It was not mine.”

  “The witnesses swore it was. The boar was huge, mottled like unto yours.”