The Bartholomew Fair Murders Read online

  “What do you say now, Mr. Babcock?” Grotwell asked, turn-

  ing to where the bearward stood. “Have you seen what Samson has done? Come have a good look then, and persuade me if you can this isn’t the bear’s mischief.”

  For a moment Babcock made no answer to this challenge. Then he said, “I’ve seen enough. I grant it was no dog.” He sighed heavily. “But can you prove it was a bear and not some other animal?”

  “Perhaps the lion that is kept and shown in the Tower has escaped and feeds in Smithfield,” suggested one of the sergeant’s men in a sarcastic voice. Grotwell turned angrily on the man and told him to shut up.

  “No lion,” Babcock said. “Maybe it was a bear, God knows. But can you prove it was my particular bear?”

  The Clerk and the sergeant discussed this. The Clerk thought the evidence was insufficient against the bear or its owner, but Grotwell said the condition of the remains was proof enough for any reasonable man. The two began to argue, with no little help from the two bearwards, who sided naturally with the Clerk. Finally the Clerk remembered that Justice Bay-nard was the person to decide such a question in the first place and that the same gentleman now waited at home for further report. Grotwell agreed. “Yes, by all means, sir, let Justice Bay-nard decide. But I swear that if he does not issue a warrant for both bear and bearward within the hour, I don’t know the Justice’s mind in these matters.”

  “We will do what Mr. Baynard directs,” replied the Clerk coldly. “He is both honest and thorough.”

  “Let’s proceed to Mr. Baynard’s house, then,” said the sergeant, for it was very late, the air at the muckhill pestilent, and the presence of the corpse unnerving to them all.

  One of the officers asked the sergeant what was to be done with the dead man—or what remained of him—and before the sergeant could reply Rathbone interrupted to say that it could not very well be left where it was and that it must be removed. Grotwell said that he had no intention of leaving the evidence where it was for some dog to carry off, and would bear it to the

  Justice’s house and let him have a look at it. He directed one of his men to wrap up the foot and calf and carry it after him. The officer designated, however, was very hesitant to touch the dead man’s remains and begged to be excused from the task. Grotwell cursed him roundly and told him that if he disobeyed a simple order as he had been given, he wasn’t worth a damn in the watch and he might lose his office and, yes, rot in the stocks too.

  After that, the officer did as he had been ordered.

  “Let’s proceed to Mr. Baynard’s house,” said Rathbone impa-tiently. He was anxious to have the matter settled.

  Although Matthew was very weary, he agreed to Babcock’s appeal that he go along too. But Grotwell questioned whether Matthew had any proper business accompanying them.

  “My friend is constable of Chelmsford,” said Babcock.

  “Is he so?” answered Grotwell, with a snort of contempt. “A country constable in London? Well, I think he should leave his constableship at home and not meddle in matters hereabouts where he has no authority and less knowledge.”

  “Do you positively forbid him to come, then?” asked Babcock of the sergeant.

  “Oh, let him come, if he wills,” said Grotwell, as though he was weary of the subject. “Yet let him keep silent. He may be a constable in Chelmsford, but he is nothing here.”

  The men moved off and Matthew followed, not because he wanted to but because he could not deny the helplessness in his friend’s face.

  When Matthew returned, he found Joan in an anxious state. Unable to sleep for worry, she had kept a candle burning, now a mere stub. She greeted her husband with relief and asked him to tell her all that had happened. She wanted to know who had been killed and by what. She said he had been gone so long she was halTafraid he had met the same fate.

  “I looked at the body—what’s left of it,” Matthew said, spar^ ing her the more gruesome details. He sat down on the bed and

  began undoing his shoes. “Something more than dog ate him, my oath upon it. Afterward I went with Ned and the officers to see a magistrate who will inquire into the case.”

  “The Justice Baynard that was spoken of?”

  “The very man.”

  His shoes were filthy from the muckhill. In his stocking feet he walked across the rush-strewn floor to the hearth and with his knife scraped the soles clean.

  “They all think Ned Babcock’s bear did it, but this Justice is wise enough to want more proof.”

  “What sort of proof?”

  “The rest of the body, which may well show more bear marks as well as who the poor fellow was. Ned has asked me to help him.”

  “Help him? How?”

  “By clearing the bear of blame. By finding the true explana-tion for the death—for the murder, if murder it was. Justice Baynard wants a physician friend of his to examine the remains.”

  “I shouldn’t think the remains would want a physician at this point,” she said.

  “This physician is—or fancies himself—capable of drawing a wealth of knowledge from a very few facts,” Matthew said, while he undressed. “They all come to the bear pit in the morning—the Justice, the officers. Remains of the dead man come with them. Baynard swears he will get to the bottom of the incident. If the bear’s guilt is confirmed, that’s the end of Samson—the law will do what dogs couldn’t. Also the end of Ned’s business venture.”

  “A pity if the bear is innocent. What do you think?” she asked.

  “I don’t know what to think,” he said.

  “What I wonder,” she said, “is how the poor man’s part got to the muckhill in the first place. Surely he wasn’t eaten there— not if the bear had done it.”

  “I put the same question to the Justice,” Matthew said, yawn-

  ing sleepily. “He wasn’t pleased with my sticking my nose in and told me so—more elegantly, however, than Grotwell had earlier when Ned urged me to accompany them. A Chelmsford constable is not worth much in Smithfield.”

  “Well, it’s their loss if they think so,” she said with a snort of defiance.

  “It isn’t really my business,” he conceded.

  “But he is your friend,” she said, forgetting her plan to ask him to take her away from Smithfield in the morning. Friend-ship did count for something in this world of woe and faithlessness.

  “I hope Ned didn’t find the dead man at the bear gardens and try to dispose of the body himself to protect the bear,” Matthew said. “If he was so foolish—”

  “It would go poorly with him,” she supplied.

  Joan made no further comment on the possibility of Ned Babcock’s involvement. His complicity had crossed her mind earlier but she had said nothing about it, and she was happy that although her husband had been moved by friendship to provide moral support he had not been completely blinded by old loyalty.

  “Whatever happened to Mr. Beauchamp, Juliet’s husband?” Joan thought to ask.

  “A very sad case,” Matthew murmured. “Evidently he was an ill-tempered son-in-law to Ned and provoked the bear once too often. He took a whip to the beast and Samson repaid him with a blow across the head that near knocked his head off. Juliet blames her father for it. Ned says she is ever after him to give over bearbaiting.”

  “What a horrible way to die,” Joan murmured.

  “The mark of the beast,” Matthew said.

  “What was that?”

  “What?”

  “What you said. Just now. About the mark of the beast.”

  “Are you thinking of that fortune-teller again?” Matthew asked suspiciously.

  “Not she. I was thinking of the other dead man too—the one you and Samuel Hopkins found by the Chelmsford road with the cruel slashes in his forehead.”

  “A coincidence, surely,” Matthew said. “Besides, the pup^ peteer was found all in a piece.”

  He climbed into bed as though his last words were the end of the subject and blew out
the candle. The room became pitch black, a dazzling darkness. He threw an arm over her and snug' gled up close, but she took small comfort from his familiar env brace and gentle words. Soon she heard him snoring softly. Joan was still feeling the pressure of her anxiety, a heavy weight upon her heart. In the darkness of the strange room, her fears multiplied and played havoc with her effort to sleep. Later, she gave voice to her fears even though her husband was too deep in sleep to hear.

  “The beast’s mark. The three of them. He on the road, he in the muckhill, and Juliet’s young husband. It’s all passing strange, Matthew, and I think no coincidence, as you suppose.”

  Rose has stopped screaming. Not that she has lost the will but the ability: her throat is as dry as parched grass and her head resounds painfully with the echo of her own cries. Her alarm has brought more than a few witnesses to her distress, who crowd around her asking first what’s wrong with her and then, seeing what she has seen, become quiet and stand or squat there gaping, not sure what is to be done. Jack Talbot has come too. He stands embracing her, like a father. She has bur^ ied her face in the curly brown hairs of his chest, inhaling the familiar wine smell of the man and taking a kind of comfort in it. She is shaking uncontrollably, as though seized by a fever.

  “Come, girl, come. It’s no sin to find such a thing, but a bit of bad luck ’twas you and not some other,” says Jack Talbot consolingly.

  But she thinks it is a sin. It must be a sin—to find it even, the horrid, ghastly thing.

  Smithfield is covered by a thick, smoky darkness. More peo^

  pie, bearing torches, shouting. The word has spread, as such words will, with uncanny speed. But now Rose has told her tale many times over to anyone who will listen, how she found the limb, the savaged flesh. And having told her tale for others to repeat with whatever embellishments they wish, she is led away by the wine seller, his arm around her in a fatherly way. And she has not a tear left for her grief, and the pain in her head is almost more than she can bear.

  Ursula is not at her booth. Like the others, she has been drawn to the spectacle, for blood and bone are not things shunned by this generation—and even women and children turn cold eyes upon dismemberment.

  “Shall I stay with you?” the wine seller asks.

  “Nay, I’ll be all right,” she says, wondering if she will. For she also wonders who it is she has found in the muckhill and is filled thereby with a terrible dread.

  He tells her he must go to see a certain woman living in Cow-lane. On some business, he says. To take her mind off the horror, he asks if she will look in from time to time in his own booth, which is welhstocked in preparation for the next day and unguarded in his absence. She nods her head in agreement. Who knows when Ursula will return? She may spend an hour at the muckhill or maybe two or three, chattering with her gos-sips, some of whom she has not set eyes upon since last August. There will be much news to share and considerable speculation. Who is the dead man? How did he die? And if murdered, by whom or what?

  Jack leaves; she watches him go until his shadow fuses with other shadows in the dark lane. Paul’s bell sounds nine plain-tive times over the city, echoing to her alert ears as far as Smithfield. And in her loneliness the thought she fears to think insinuates itself into her poor brain. It is her beloved who is dead—sweet Gabriel of the golden voice. Dead and reduced to a tithe of himself.

  Her fear makes her smaller; the darkness itself is oppressive, suffocating. Satan rules the night, and she wants to scream

  again to drive the fear that gnaws at her but her throat is raw and she has no breath.

  Suddenly, she feels a hand upon her shoulder, hears a whis-per behind her.

  She turns and nearly faints from pure relief.

  “You’re trembling, Rose. Why?” Gabriel asks, alive.

  She moans, “I thought you ... I was afraid that ...”

  The tears come again, a torrent, just when she thought her eyes were as dry as her throat.

  “You thought I was what?” he asks incredulously, grinning in the darkness.

  “Dead.”

  “Dead?”

  He laughs an easy, pleasant laugh that quite disarms her anx-iety. She wipes away the hot tears.

  Then as best she can, she explains what has happened. She cannot read the expression in his eyes but his change of tone suggests that he too is affected by the horror.

  “Who do they say it was?” he asks.

  “No one knows. Only the . . . foot and ankle were there.”

  He says, “Then they may never know. It’s all one. The dead man’s soul has gone to heaven—or hell.”

  He quotes Scripture to comfort her, and within minutes her mood is lightened. She remembers that it is wrong to mourn the dead excessively—and it is easier to follow this admonition if he that is dead is nothing to you, not even a name.

  Now she remembers that Ursula is gone. The smoky darkness now seems more friendly than oppressive, for it provides a mea-sure of privacy. The voices at the muckhill—surely all Smithfield must be gathered there by now—are distant. Impetuously she embraces Gabriel. She is unmindful of the acrid bear smell about him, the sudden tensing of his muscles at the embrace. He stands stiff and silent. She is so happy to have him alive and to herself that she pays no heed to his lack of responsiveness. And yet neither does he unloosen himself from her embrace. They stand still, alone, and soon she feels a pleasant

  heat in her loins, an ache in her breast. Briefly but painfully she recollects her other encounters with men. But this time and for the first time it is different. Gabriel is different. They were wicked, but he is good and his goodness radiates from him like a warm fire.

  She lifts her face to his and kisses him. His lips are warm, and her body trembles again; it is not fear that quickens her pulse, elevates her temperature. She begins to experience an exhilarating sense of power now that she can feel, all along her own body, the growing responsiveness of his. She is very pleased. But then she remembers the dreadful Ursula and imag-ines her thundering down upon them.

  “It isn’t safe here,” she whispers.

  “If not here, where?” he asks.

  She thinks cunningly, remembers the wine seller and his plea.

  “Jack’s booth. The wine seller’s,” she whispers. “He’ll be gone these two hours. He said so. He asked me to look in on his goods. I said I would.”

  She disentangles herself from his arms and, taking him by the hand, leads him down the dark lane, he following childlike and silent, both stepping softly like thieves. For Rose the journey of a dozen or so yards is too long. Her heart is racing; the horror at the muckhill is forgotten. The terrible wrath of Ursula is forgot-ten. All Rose knows is that her present happiness seems to redeem all the miseries of her young life, all the abuse and brutality of act and word, the grinding poverty and cruel neglect.

  She leads him into the booth, pushing aside the canvas that conceals the back parts from the front, where the wine seller’s custom will drink from bottle and cup the next day. Inside it is even darker than the night, and closer. She smells the faint sweetness of the wine, oozing mysteriously through the slats in the barrels and casks. She turns to him.

  But his mood has changed. She embraces him but now finds no warm responsiveness but rather a shudder of distaste. The

  journey from Ursula’s booth, intensifying her ardor, has dimin-ished his.

  “No, ” he says in a tone that brooks no denial. “It is forbidden.”

  Forbidden? How can what she feels be forbidden? It is beyond her imagining. She can only stare with her mouth agape at the tall, shadowy figure that is Gabriel, this angel of a man, endowed with God-like power and voice.

  She hears his preacher’s voice, not unfriendly, but distant: “What we feel in our present condition, unsanctified by the bonds of matrimony, must not be. It is Satan, Satan who provokes us, not our better selves, which must not bum with lust but with a sanctified flame of chastity, pure and undefiled. The body is of Satan.�
� He continues even more passionately. “And it is our bodies that long to couple, like goats or flies. The soul belongs to God, but can only remain pure if the body is in subjection to it.”

  These are hard words for her to understand, so full of love is she. But then Gabriel quotes again the measured cadences of the Holy Book, the language she adores, and understanding comes. She feels the power not of his rejection now but of his love, feels it burning and near-consuming her flesh. Her will is not her own, her resistance is ashes in his fire. A calmness comes over her, a surrender.

  “Let’s pray,” he says, kneeling in the booth, kneeling before a great shadowy malmsey butt as though it were a holy altar.

  She kneels down with him, and Gabriel begins to pray.

  • 10 •

  Well before dawn, the clatter of cartwheels and the raucous shouts of hostlers roused Matthew and Joan from sleep. They dressed by candlelight, then went downstairs to breakfast, where all the talk in the great room of the inn was of the mam eating bear, Samson, “the terror of Smithfield,” as Joan heard the beast named by more than one, dependent for his informa-tion on nothing more than second' and third'hand accounts of those fortunate enough actually to have seen the bear’s leav-ings.

  “Come midday, a dozen ballads will have been composed on the subject,” remarked Matthew dryly.

  “And each with a different story to tell—by an eyewitness,” said Joan.

  In the gray light of early morning they were on their way to the bear garden, husband and wife speculating on the crime as they walked. Matthew felt sorry for his friend Ned. He said that even if Samson had killed the man, no blame necessarily at' tached to Ned, yet he would lose his livelihood. Joan agreed things did not look well for either the bear or its owners.

  They rounded a corner and entered the fair through Gilt'Spur Street. When they came to the bear pit they saw a group of men standing at the entrance. Joan recognized Babcock and his partner, the Clerk, and the barrebchested, gruff'voiced ser-geant who had brought word of the murder the night before. With them were two other men. One was stout and of very grave expression, the other tall and thin and scholarly, dressed in a drab doublet with silver buttons and hose encasing scrawny legs. The man carried a satchel. Babcock saw the Stocks ap-proach and called out a greeting.