The Bartholomew Fair Murders Read online

  The youth wondered how many men—yes and women too— he had known who were nothing less than the Devil in disguise—not to mention the lesser creatures his path had crossed. Because of their lesser intellect these were even more vulnerable to possession—all those black dogs, ravens, ragged goats, and even bleating lambs deceptive in their innocence but once possessed as dangerous as sullen bulls with black threatening eyes and the languid cats whose sinister regard always implied some dark knowledge.

  He was disturbed in these meditations by the creaking of a cart’s wheels and looked up toward the road to see a man, his cart, and the weary, sway-backed beast that pulled the load.

  The fat, bearded fellow in the cart dozed and whistled by turns, trusting to the good office of the sorry nag that pulled him to maintain their course and pace. He wore a broad-brimmed hat and an old russet suit of broadcloth, and the tune he whistled he had learned in the alehouse the night before—a simple ditty about a young maid whose unrequited love drove her to an early grave. The man in the cart remembered the pretty youth who had sung the song, stopped whistling, and sighed heavily. He loved such tunes. They never ceased to bring a tear to his eye when he thought of them, and such emotions as this convinced him that by nature he was a gentle and generous soul who loved his fellow man.

  He was indulging these tender thoughts when he looked up to see a lone pilgrim sitting forlornly beside the road not a hundred or more feet ahead. He drove the cart forward and, seeing

  that this pilgrim was a youth of pleasing appearance, he ordered his horse to stop.

  “God save you, young sir! A very warm day, isn’t it?”

  The youth looked up but did not respond to the man’s greeting. The man in the cart tried again:

  “I say good morrow to you. A fine, hot day.”

  “Ay, it’s hot,” replied the youth, using his staff to get up from the rock he had been using as a stool. The youth approached the cart and the older man could see that he was lame and that the sturdy staff he bore had a very practical purpose. He could see too that the heat of the day had given a rosy blush to the features of the youth’s face, which were finely chiseled. There was just a suggestion of down on the youth’s firm chin and he had the clear blue, guileless eyes of one who had seen little of the seamier side of life. A handsome young man indeed, thought the older one in the cart, removing his broad hat to wipe the sweat from his forehead and expose a head of hair that time had reduced to a few lank gray hairs. The man in the cart smiled agreeably.

  “Where bound, son?”

  “London, if it please you,” said the youth.

  “London, is it? A good long walk. For the pleasure of your conversation I’ll share half my seat with you and you can save your legs.”

  The youth seemed to consider the invitation for a moment, then answered: “Many thanks, sir. I’ll accept your offer.”

  The man in the cart motioned to the youth to climb aboard and introduced himself as James Fitzhugh. Fitzhugh suggested his new companion remove his pack and toss it in the back of the cart with the other gear but the youth said the pack was light and caused him no discomfort where it was. Fitzhugh said he could do what he wished with the pack and nudged the horse onward with a flip of the reins.

  As they traveled, Fitzhugh explained his own business. He was a puppet master, and amid the gear in the back of the cart he had both his “manikins,” as he called his wee folk—not without a certain fondness for the artfully made creatures—and the little theater of wood and painted cloth they played in, all disassembled now. Fitzhugh was bound for London too; for Smithfield, more exactly.

  “Bartholomew Fair, as they call it. The fair that is held every year from St. Bartholomew’s Eve to the day following the saint’s day itself. Three glorious days! O, it’s a very great fair, I warrant. All this world’s goods on display in the stalls and booths. A world too of good eating, especially for those who savor swine’s flesh and good strong English beer. Jugglers, magi-cians, fortune-tellers, bearwards, sellers of monkey, parrots, dogs, toys, odd trinkets, gingerbread and cakes and other sweets. ’S’blood, it makes my mouth drool to think of it all. Everything to delight the eye, ear, and nose. It is said the Queen herself will grace the fair with her presence.”

  “The Queen, you say?” said the youth, impressed.

  “The very same. Good Queen Bess herself. May God protect her in her old age. I tell you, lad, once I saw her, ten, fifteen years ago. She had come to Oxford to address the scholars. I stood in the crowd, I and my manikins, and watched with the rest. Comes this black-robed scholar and gives a fine speech in Latin. I understood not a word. Then the Queen responded. In Latin too. It was said she was a better scholar than he who professed there. All decked out she was in lace and jewels, a scarlet gown of such workmanship that an army of seamstresses might have devoted their lives to the making of it.”

  “A scarlet gown, was it?”

  “Oh yes, boy, it was,” answered Fitzhugh, warming to his theme and pleased at the apparent interest of his passenger. “She had half the court with her—great lords, dukes, earls, I know not what. All were finely dressed and marching in her train with a dozen deafening trumpeters blowing their heads off and heralds prancing fore and aft. Oh, it was a sight, I tell you. You should have seen how they bowed and scraped before her, kissed her royal foot, made a path of their very cloaks. The

  crowd went wild. You would have thought her the Queen of Heaven—no mortal woman certainly, with fleas in her far^ thingale.” Fithugh laughed. “Why, the Virgin Mary herself, she the Papists dote upon, is not so celebrated.”

  The remark led Fitzhugh to express his views on religion, describing himself as one who traveled a middle road between the absurdities of Rome and the ignorance of the Puritans, whom he professed to despise for their hypocrisy and cant. “Think they’re better than the rest of mankind. God in heaven, I never knew one but that he chased skirts and gluttonized at table. Hypocrites all.”

  But the puppet master’s young passenger was no longer pay-ing attention. He studied the road ahead with a dead eye, his mind still fixed on the puppet master’s description of the Queen. He had never seen the royal lady himself but he had heard her much spoken of—and much criticized, by his spir~ itual mentor, who blamed her for not doing more to advance the cause of reformation in England.

  Fitzhugh continued his discourse. The road became heavy with traffic. Some town lay ahead; a church spire could be seen. Carts, wagons, horsemen. Some heading north, some south, navigating as best they could the ruts and holes filled with brushwood, an ineffectual repair the next heavy rain would undo. Now and then a coach rattled by, raising a cloud of dust that left Fitzhugh and the boy gagging and filthy.

  They came to the town and passed through. Fitzhugh was still talking about religion, a subject on which he had strong opinions. They left the town.

  Fitzhugh asked, “How old are you, son?”

  “I will be nineteen come Michaelmas,” said the youth, star^ ing listlessly at the road.

  “Ah, nineteen, is it?” Fitzhugh said, plowing the thick growth of his grizzled beard and shaking his head as though such an age were quite beyond his recollection. “I was once nineteen myself. Must have been.” He laughed. “Lean and lim-

  ber as you are now. That was a good thirty years or more gone. What’s your name, son?”

  “Gabriel. Gabriel Stubbs,” said the youth.

  “Gabriel,” said Fitzhugh. He laughed. “Why, that’s a most fitting name for one such as you, boy, for there is indeed some-thing angelic in your looks. Tell me, I have confessed my jour" ney’s end, you confess yours.”

  The directness of the puppet master’s question caused Gabriel momentary confusion. The truth was that he wasn’t sure where he was going or why, London being not so much his destination as the end of the particular road upon which he had earlier set his foot. For days he had been making his way south, spurred by an undefined sense of mission, which only since reading the pamphlet had
begun to take shape. Other persons he had encountered on his way had merely assumed by his silence that he was a runaway apprentice or farmboy, heading toward London to lose himself in the anonymity of the metropolis. Now the puppet master’s question had forced the issue; yet Gabriel could not be honest. What could he say, after all? That he had been set apart? Commissioned of Heaven? Empowered by spiritual forces? These precious certitudes were not shared with just anyone. Not at this point; at least, not until a blinding light or a still small voice should reveal to him more particularly what his mission was. Meanwhile, the more he felt “called,” the less real seemed the world around him. What he observed with the physical eyes—and how untrustworthy were they compared to those of the spirit!—were merely images of deeper realities. The road ahead, the woods at a distance, the flat fields, even his companion in the cart were not what they seemed.

  Fitzhugh repeated his question and eyed his young companion curiously.

  “I’m bound for the fair too—Bartholomew Fair,” Gabriel said in a sudden inspiration. He was surprised himself that the lie so readily flew to his lips and sounded so convincing in his own ears.

  The puppet master’s surprised countenance betrayed no dis-

  belief. The older man slapped his knee in a fit of hilarity. “Why, you young devil! And you let me talk on about Bar' tholomew as though you n’er heard of it before. Say, doesn’t the very thought of Bartholomew pig a'roasting upon the spit make you drool like a hound an hour before the feast? Ah though maybe your tastes run to sweeter stuff. They say the girls of Smithfield are as hot as the weather around fair time—at least so they were when I was a young buck and had no look but to please my fancy.”

  Fitzhugh kept staring at Gabriel, studying his face. Then sud' denly he burst into a snatch of song in the high-pitched voice the puppet masters cultivated for their little folk:

  Oh, it’s rarely a lad who’ll disdain a fair maid Nor regard aught else until she be laid,

  Save the chance him befall that the maid ’gins to breed Then be sure there’s no pleading that young man will heed.

  Fitzhugh was about to launch into the second verse of the song when Gabriel flushed with what appeared to be embarrassment, looked at him angrily, and placed his hands over his ears. “That’s scurrilous talk—profane and damnable. Stop at once or I’ll get down and continue my way on foot.”

  For a moment the puppet master seemed too startled by the outburst to speak, and seemed on the point of casting his passenger out. Then, collecting himself, he frowned and said, “If it please you, I’ll be silent awhile. There’s no need to walk, I’m sorry if my song offends you. It’s an innocent enough thing, learned by me of a sailor in Chelsea who was wont to boast of amorous exploits. Now for me, I’m no womanizer. No, and far be it from me to offend those who forswear lechery with women. No, young sir, far be it from me.”

  The puppet master mumbled something else, shook his head several times as though to indicate his own disapproval at the song he had just sung, and then lapsed into a long silence. Gabriel, his heart still racing, turned stonily toward the road.

  The burst of indignation had somehow fired his imagination; his surroundings had become even less real, and he began to wonder if this were the experience he had been waiting for. St. Paul, he had heard a preacher say, had been converted upon the road to Damascus; why should he not have an equally trans-forming experience upon the road to London? His heart contin-ued to race with a strange excitement; he glanced sideways at the puppet master. The man’s large head nodded beneath the broad-brimmed hat. Gabriel waited for a vision.

  When it came, it was not what he had expected. He had evidently fallen asleep himself, totally exhausted both from the long journey and from sheer emotional excitement. While he slept he dreamed a disturbing dream full of savage beasts with monstrous bodies, bloody fangs, and massive hairy paws. They gathered about him, snarling and growling as he moved down an unfamiliar road. They assailed him on all sides but he kept walking toward a small point of light in the distance. Then the light faded and disappeared completely. He was aware of something touching him, pressing his inner thigh. He thought it was the beasts but they had vanished like the point of light and now all was a void of darkness in which he was aware of nothing but the sensation of being touched. It was not displeasing to him, the touch, only mystifying. The touch became a caress.

  A sudden jolt of the cart brought the boy fully awake. He stared about him in confusion as the void of darkness gave way to the blinding light of midday. He saw that Fitzhugh’s hand was resting on his knee, was moving then upward along the thigh toward the vulnerable groin. Fitzhugh was smiling strangely and crooning in his puppet voice, “Pretty young boy, pretty young boy.’’

  “Damnable sodomite,” Gabriel cried in disgust. He shoved the puppet master’s hand away and seized the staff at his side. Before Fitzhugh could defend himself, his young passenger struck him with the blunt end of the staff just above the right eye. Fitzhugh groaned with pain, turned his head, and put up his hands to ward off a second blow. But the boy was quick and full of loathing. He struck Fitzhugh again, this time with full strength of arm and will, on the side of the man’s skull. There was a loud, sickening crack. Fitzhugh was knocked back in his seat, then slumped forward as limply as one of his puppets.

  The horse and the cart maintained their steady pace over the rough road; the sun beat down upon the man and boy in the cart. Fitzhugh made no motion of himself, although his body jostled. Presently the boy replaced the puppet master’s hat on his head. It had been knocked off by the blows. He was aware of horsemen coming up from behind. Gabriel Stubbs turned to see who it was.

  The two riders had evidently not seen what had happened although they could not have been more than fifty feet behind the cart when the incident occurred. They pulled apace of the cart and looked down at the man and boy. One of the men asked if the driver was sick.

  The boy threw an arm protectively over the puppet master to steady him; with his free hand he took the reins. In a trembling voice, he said, “He’s my father, masters. He’s had more than he can bear of drink in the last town and so has turned the reins over to me. He’ll be himself anon.”

  One of the riders, who by his dress appeared to be a man of substance, laughed out loud and nudged his companion at this spectacle of human folly. “Is it so, lad? Then may he sleep the sleep of the just ’til he’s sober again. Godspeed you both.”

  The boy thanked the men and watched them ride ahead. The broad'brimmed hat concealed Fitzhugh’s face but the boy now noticed the little trickle of dark blood that had made its way down the puppet master’s cheek and was now collecting in the thicket of his beard.

  The old horse plodded along as though its master were still at the reins. Another town, a market town of good size, now ap-peared in the distance. Gabriel could see the roofs of houses and a church steeple, long and thin like the sheathed dagger or poniard the dead man packed next to his swollen gut. Before him on the straight road were other conveyances—carts and

  wagons. He saw a shepherd with his flock and a lady riding a palfrey with her servant.

  Gabriel knew that behind him were other travelers making for the town and that they surely must have seen what had happened. But except for the two horsemen who had paused to inquire as to Fitzhugh’s health, no one else seemed to be paying attention to the fat man and the boy, riding in a rickety old cart pulled by a sway-backed horse.

  His heart was still racing, but he felt no guilt at what he had done. Why should he? The puppet master’s filthy speech had been prologue to a filthy act. Gabriel had struck in self-defense, saving more than his life. Saving his eternal soul. His dream had somehow revealed the puppet-master’s true identity, and the man’s intemperate action had confirmed the truth of it. Satan's minion. The mark of the Beast.

  Ahead the road swerved to the right to accommodate a stone bridge. Beyond, a ragged hedge of hawthorn and oak separated the roadbed from a broad empty fie
ld. When the opportunity presented itself he steered the cart off the road through a break in the hedge, stopping where it would be concealed from the view of passersby by the thick tangle of branches and leaves. There he got down from the cart, dragging Fitzhugh’s dead weight after him.

  For a long while he stood contemplating the body. Where were the fat man’s filthy jests now, his idle memories of the scarlet-gowned Queen, his devilish opinions of the true believers? The death had been the judgment of God.

  But now Gabriel realized it had been something more. It had been a sign. He was sure now that his meeting with the fat man had been providential. Gazing down on the corpse, Gabriel felt a surge of spiritual strength, as though the puppet master’s death had augmented his own life in some mysterious way.

  He knelt down beside the body and found the dead man’s knife, a long, thin poniard of French design with a shaft of bone. He drew the blade from its sheath and for a long time sat studying it.

  Slowly an image appeared in his brain. He heard voices. The sun beat down on his head mercilessly. In a frenzy he seized the knife and obeyed the voices.

  Moments later, half-delirious with the intensity of his emo-tions, he stood and regarded what he had done through a blur of sweat and tears.

  And he was joyful for all of it, for at last he knew where he was going and what he should do once he got there.

  • 2 •

  In Matthew Stock’s shop on High Street, ordinary business had been suspended. The clothier and his wife were about to embark on a journey, and around the shop and house (the Stocks lived upstairs) there was that familiar mixture of excitement and confusion that accompanies leave-taking in a busy household. Harried servants ran here and there to fetch this and that—their mistress’s voice could be heard directing their efforts from upstairs. Meanwhile in the shop, the clothier’s apprentices lugged bolts of cloth from the trencher tables on which they were normally displayed out the door and into the street, where they were to be loaded into wagons. The drivers were impatient to be off. They were to have set out at dawn and it was already nearly noon. Their horses stamped restlessly on the cobbles. The spectacle of leave-taking had drawn a small crowd of neighbors as observers.