The Bartholomew Fair Murders Page 13

  “I see the weapon,” Esmera repeated solemnly. “A blade, long and very sharp. The murderer is clever. He has killed but the crime goes undetected. How, you ask? How is this done?

  An excellent subterfuge. The murder seems to be the work of another. The death lies at another’s door. The murderer lives to kill again.”

  “What of the dead man? Who is he?”

  Esmera shook her head. “I cannot tell.”

  “Why not?”

  “I cannot tell,” she repeated. “His face is concealed.”

  “And the murderer?”

  Esmera shut her eyes again; a slow grim smile traveled across her face. “I see the murderer walk behind his victim. I see him reach for the long, pointed blade. Out it is drawn from its place of concealment, like an eel slithering from a clump of marsh grass. It is thrust in and again.” Esmera made a grimace of anguish as she repeated the phrase. Her body convulsed in dumb show of the vision; her eyes rolled up into her head, flashing their whites while the pupils grew small. Aghast at this manifestation, Joan could make no reply. Shortly, the fortuneteller’s fit ended, and Joan was able to catch her breath.

  “Surely this is murder plain and simple,” she said in a trembling voice. “It’s impossible to think it would not be recognized as murder.”

  “The murderer is a devil, as I have said. I see these jabs so violent and fatal, but in my vision of the corpse I see no wound made of man. Only raw, exposed flesh and bone where the dead man has been devoured.”

  “Devoured! First slain, then eaten. Awful to think of!”

  Joan quickly worked through the bloody scene in her imagination while Esmera, tranquil now, seemed to slide into another trance. Surely, this was a beast, this murderer of which the fortune-teller spoke. Foisting off on some dumb brute beast the blame for his own crime! But the victim! Who was the victim? Was it the poor wretch of the muckhill or some other yet to be? She hurled the question at Esmera, but so deep and imperturbable was her trance that Joan was forced to wait until the fortune-teller emerged from it. Minutes passed; Joan’s imagination conjured up horrible scene after horrible scene—all of

  which involved her husband. Now she was beset by grief and guilt as well as horror. Oh, Matthew! How sorry she was now that she had rankled at his counsel. Were his admonishments so insufferable then, aimed as they were at her good? Was he the one whom the murderer would strike next? Or was it Joan herself?

  “If it is my husband whose body you see, tell me, for Jesus’ sake. Who is it that lies dead and bloody?”

  As if in response to Joan’s appeal, Esmera opened her eyes at last. Her dark pupils enlarged, glistening with a cold, dispas^ sionate acceptance of fate, and Joan felt that acquiescence to what could not be changed was being forced on her. Then Esmera answered the question slowly and deliberately. “I can see no face, only the terrible wound. At least I cannot see now. Perhaps on another time the vision will be clearer, fuller. But this I can truly say, Mrs. Stock—you and your husband are in grave danger here. Take my advice and go home. Go home to Chelmsford. Go home before it is too late.”

  “Was there not more in your vision?” Joan asked quietly. Esmera shook her head. “Only this—death stands in the way of you both.”

  “Dear God!” Joan exclaimed, deciding she could stand no more. She stood, jarring the table while Esmera looked on calmly. “Blessed Christ, make it not so.”

  She turned and without another word to the cunning-woman pushed aside the tent flap and emerged into the open air. She nearly collided with the penny-gatherer and trod upon the feet of Esmera’s next customer; she mumbled an apology to them both and hurried on. By the time she reached the bottom of the toy sellers’ lane, her stride had become a steady jog that provoked more than one surly complaint from those she eh bowed and jostled in her panic and once, at least, the cry of “Stop, thief,” from one sure that no honest motive could so propel the little woman through such a throng.

  • 119 •

  • 12 •

  Arriving breathless at the Close, Joan found Matthew gone from the booth, which was attended only by Peter Bench, still reading his book of poems. “Oh, Peter,” she gasped. He saw how distressed she was and put the book aside.

  She did not endeavor to explain; it was all too complicated. She asked where her husband had gone and Peter told her he had gone to the bear garden some few minutes before. She felt another lump of anguish rise in her throat.

  Without thanking Peter for this information or indeed saying another syllable, she was off again, caring nothing for the spec^ tacle she was making of herself, darting around like a startled hare.

  At the bear garden, at which she arrived within ten minutes of leaving the Close and not without considerable difficulty for the crowds, she was dismayed to see another long line waiting to pay and get in, as though nothing could be seen or done at the fair but one must form a line to do it. She scanned every face and did not see Matthew. She concluded he must be inside already.

  Francis Crisp was taking admission at the gate. She ran up to him to ask where Matthew was and he told her that he had gone inside. “Pass ahead yourself, Mrs. Stock. Don’t bother about paying. Compliments of the house.”

  Inside the noisy bear garden she found the tiers of seats ah ready full and standing room only below, where the view of the proceedings was the poorest, blocked by hats and shoulders moving about in a constant stir. She insinuated herself amid the bodies until she arrived at the paling separating the spec-

  tators from the pit itself, ignoring the slurs upon her character from every side for her boldness.

  She looked all around, above, and below, in the tiers. Her vision blurred. A dozen faces she spotted might have been Matthew’s but hats concealed faces and some faces were turned from her in the direction of the bear’s tent. The crowd was clamoring for the bearbaiting to begin. Braces of hounds, soon to be in combat with Samson, joined the uproar. She realized it was hopeless. She prayed Matthew was here and safe, but how could she be sure until she saw him with her own eyes? And even then he was surely vulnerable to the murderer of whom Esmera had spoken and in whose existence Joan now believed beyond doubt.

  A trumpet blared somewhere behind her—a long, elegant flourish that, concluding, provoked a mighty cheer of approval from the throng who understood this was the signal for the contest to begin. In the center of the pit Ned Babcock now appeared, smiling proudly and holding his arms aloft as a gesture of silence to the noisy crowd. When the clamor lessened— silence was too much to ask of such a rout—Babcock spoke. He welcomed the spectators to his pit, which he called the Smithfield Bear Gardens, its more elegant title, and referred to those present as “good gentles’’ and “honored and distinguished guests everyone” as though he was speaking to the cream of society and not to as great a hodgepodge of every condition of man and woman as Joan had ever seen. Most were already drunken and had been so since midday, for the great heat had caused enormous consumption of every kind of liquor. And the sobriety of the rest was imperiled by the general atmosphere of holiday misrule. Nonetheless Babcock paid them more than their due. He made a very low bow to the tiers and another to those standing and then said they should all presently witness a spectacle of ursine puissance not to be matched at the bear gardens of Southwark or by other famous bears of the town he then proceeded to name.

  This boast provoked many a cynical guffaw and denial from the impatient crowd. Meanwhile the dogs, who had been con-fined in a small enclosure in front of Joan, began to bark and whine so that Babcock’s final remarks before disappearing into Samson’s tent were completely lost on the crowd. These same dogs had been raised to such a pitch of excitement by the hu-man noise and the smell of the bear that they now were prac-tically beyond the control of their keepers. They began to fight with each other, and their keepers were at great trouble to separate the most belligerent of them; at last one of the animals, a particularly scrappy little spaniel, was so bloodied in an encounter with a larger d
og that he was quite unfit to fight the bear and had to be removed.

  Meanwhile Joan, only vaguely aware of these happenings and caring less, continued to search for her husband in the crowd. Her searching was by eye alone, for she was unable to move from where she stood. It was not therefore that she could have done anything had she seen him. But just seeing him, and seeing him whole, would have been sufficient at this moment, for she had a terrible fear that somehow he had been swallowed up in the multitude and she should have to go back to Chelmsford alone with not even his dead body for company.

  The quarreling dogs had caused a delay in the proceedings. But their owners had now regained control and still the bear did not appear. The crowd began to boo and hiss and presently Francis Crisp came out of the tent and made motions for them to be quieter. His efforts were futile; the uproar increased. Crisp went back inside the tent.

  A moment later he appeared again, pulling a chain at the end of which was Samson, who was wagging his shaggy head and thrusting his nose forward in the air to sniff out the scent of the dogs.

  At the appearance of Samson the crowd’s boos turned into cheers. Crisp chained the bear to the tethering stake and as if on cue Samson rose to his hind-legs and stood manlike, pawing the air as though saluting the assembly—like an old Roman

  gladiator about to give mortal battle. “It’s no wonder he could kill a man,” someone said near to Joan, by which she under' stood the word had spread about the dead man. Joan felt yet another chill of apprehension. She futilely stared about her in a renewed effort to find Matthew.

  A short, thickset man in a loose-fitting shirt led his dogs forward and unleashed them one by one, so that each animal sprang forward into a position just beyond the extent of the bear’s swing. The crowd roared. Samson glared at the dogs with his small eyes and then took a mighty swing at the closest, catching a small, scrappy hound on the side of its head and sending it flying to within a few feet of the paling. While the dog lay stunned by the blow, his confederates now joined the attack, and in the fray that followed Joan could not hear the sound of dog or bear for the boisterous enthusiasm of the crowd for this bloody spectacle. Samson was now on his hind feet, pawing the air threateningly, bellowing and flailing at the attacking dogs. One spaniel, more courageous than the rest, attacked the bear directly and for a moment hung upon his chest, his teeth fastened into the thick fur, until Samson caught the creature in a hug that crushed the dog’s spine, then let him drop at his feet. In the meantime the other dogs were circling, snarling, and lunging, alert for any part of the bear’s anatomy that they might attack with impunity. Their fangs were bare and dripping with saliva, their eyes intense. The bear swung round and round, letting fly with his arms, crouching to protect his midsection, and then growing erect again with a threatening suddenness. Samson caught one dog on the side of the head and sent him sprawling into the dust, his head a bloody pulp. The bear shredded the fur from another’s back and broke the forelegs of a third, before the remaining attackers, recognizing the superiority of bear to dog despite their numbers, began to lose enthusiasm for the fight. Scampering over the bodies of their fallen kennel mates, they went whimpering back to their crestfallen master, who gave the bloodied survivors a few good kicks for their pains.

  The conclusion of the fight brought frenzied applause from all sides as onlookers scrambled to collect their winnings, which evidently were based on both the winner of the combat—bear or dog—and on the extent of the destruction—three dogs fallen out of the brace of half dozen who had commenced the attack. But Joan thought the whole spectacle the most disgust' ing she had ever witnessed. The fight confirmed what she had long believed: that here was the most abominable of sports for a Christian. And the worst was that as anxious as she was for Matthew’s safety and disgusted at the spectacle before her, she was now forced to stand as witness to this carnage while God only knew what mortal mischief her husband might be subject to, assuming as she did that he was somewhere within the con-fines of the bear garden. While bear and hound tore at each other with tooth and nail to the delight of the multitude, Joan could think only of the deadly blade so vividly described in Esmera’s vision, a vision enacted for her again every time one of the drunken louts she was wedged between jabbed an elbow in her ribs or shoved her from behind in the general excite' ment.

  It was with great relief, then, nearly an hour later, that she heard the trumpet sound the conclusion of the baiting. The crowd began to disperse. Now she was at pains not to be tram' pled as the unruly lot rushed toward the narrow gate, pushing and shoving, even more quarrelsome after the excitement of the baiting than before and all eager to move on to quench their thirsts at the nearest ale' or wine seller’s booth. She had passed through the gate herself and was standing about help' lessly, not knowing where to search next for Matthew, when Francis Crisp, coming up from behind her, tapped her on the shoulder and gave her the benefit of his horsey grin. “And how, Mrs. Stock, did you and your good husband enjoy the baiting? Tell me, did not Samson give those curs their due? They’re a bloody chastened lot of dogs now, I tell you.”

  Joan interrupted Crisp’s review of Samson’s exploits by in' forming him that she had never found her husband.

  “Not found him! Well, and no wonder with such a multi-tude. But I saw him enter just minutes before your arrival. Perhaps he’s gone to speak to Ned.”

  Joan thanked Crisp for this information and hurried back inside the pit. Here she found a few stragglers arguing about the baitings and a dog owner nursing one of his wounded charges. She walked toward Samson’s tent and saw Matthew talking with Ned Babcock in front of the bear’s cage. Samson was at work licking his wounds, several savage rents in his thick coat. Matthew and the bearward were in such earnest conversation that neither noticed her approach.

  “Thank God you’re safe, husband,” Joan said.

  “Safe enough,” Matthew replied, turning to receive her embrace, but appearing very solemn-faced.

  Joan was about to blurt out her report of Esmera’s latest warnings when her husband interrupted her.

  “There’s been yet another murder,” he said.

  Startled at finding her own worse fears realized, she could only stare back at her husband, and then at Ned Babcock. The bearward nodded his head in agreement.

  “Murder for a fact. There’s no denying it,” said the bearward.

  • 13 •

  Samson, in his cage, made slurping noises with his tongue as he licked his wounds. Ned repeated the story he had just told to Matthew while Joan listened, her heart in her throat. “It’s Jack . . . Jack Talbot,” Ned said with an anguished expression and speaking in short gasps as though winded. “He’s a wine seller ... his booth is nearby. I found what’s left of him ... in a pile of muck. O Lord! Just behind the tent. The baiting was over. I had gone out with a shovelful of bloody straw—couldn’t find Gabriel my helper anywhere. A flyblown corpse is Jack now, God pity him. Skewered in a dozen places and with cruel slashes on his forehead. A devil’s work to be sure, Mrs. Stock, as I just finished telling your husband.” Ned’s eyes filled with tears; his face was pale; his large body trembled.

  Matthew asked, “Have you sent word to the Justice?”

  “Not yet,” he replied. “There wasn’t time. I just found the body, not a minute before you entered. Good God, what bad luck for us all.”

  “Especially for the wine seller,” Joan observed.

  “You don’t think this will be blamed on Samson, do you?” Ned asked Matthew.

  “I shouldn’t think so. But the authorities will have to be told. And the sooner the better. Maybe, in the meantime, I should have a look at the body.”

  The bearward nodded his agreement, then looked with con^ cem at Joan. “It’s an ugly thing, Mrs. Stock, not fit for a woman to see.”

  Joan was sure it was no pretty sight, but having endured an afternoon of carnage she was positive another glimpse of blood and mutilation could do little damage to her already violated
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br />   sensibilities. Besides, she didn’t want to be left out of an inquiry in which she had come to feel personally involved. The dead man was a stranger to her, but she felt in her heart it might have been her husband whose brutalized corpse she was about to view.

  Ned led the way out the back of the tent and round a comer to a narrow alley separating the booths facing one lane from those facing the other. The alley was piled high with litter and garbage from the booths. As soon as she entered it, the fetid odor of decay assaulted her nostrils and made her recoil with disgust. She saw a pile of refuse partly covered with a raggedy tarpaulin. She stood close to her husband as Ned reached down and pulled the tarpaulin back, revealing the dead body of the wine seller. He was sprawled face down on a mound of stale, crusted ordure and trash as though it were a great teat he was sucking on. His filthy bloodstained jerkin showed where a weapon with sharp point had punctured the flesh, time and time again.

  A wave of nausea passed over her, made worse by the grip of dread around her heart. It was Esmera’s vision come true, the vindication of the fortune-teller’s powers. Joan turned her eyes from the scene, struggling against the urge to run.

  “That’s how I found him, Matthew,” Ned said. “I didn’t move him at all. I saw at once it was Jack. He was a good soul.”

  With his hat in his hand in an attitude of respect, Ned Babcock pronounced his words slowly and deliberately, as though composing an epitaph. Joan braced herself for another view of the body and turned slowly. Her husband was kneeling down by the pile. His face was very pale and glistened with sweat. His presence hardly disturbed the legion of flies that crawled upon the corpse and buzzed madly in the air around it.

  The three were now joined by Francis Crisp, who had come looking for his partner and had heard voices in the alley. He wore a grin of satisfaction on his long face that vanished as soon as he perceived what it was that had drawn them into the narrow alley.