The Bartholomew Fair Murders Read online

  “But you must come again,” Esmera insisted, looking up at Joan with her large dark eyes.

  Joan undid her purse from the broad piece of velvet that girdled her waist and searched for something to pay Esmera, but the woman made a gesture of her hand suggesting that she wanted nothing for advice. “I charge you nothing, Mrs. Stock. 1 will take nothing from you. Please, believe me, you and your husband are in grave danger. About such matters Esmera is never wrong. Come again, and soon. I may learn more. Re~ member, you may enjoy long life. I have seen the same in your palm. But the danger is unmistakable. Death is close at hand for you and your husband ...”

  Esmera’s voice trailed off. She shook her head with the tragic air of one who knows that there is no controlling what the stars have ordained or fate had inscribed in the smooth palm. Joan felt a chilling sensation in her backbone, compounding her anxiety. She mumbled her thanks to the strange woman and stepped out into the stark sunlight.

  Joan’s head reeled and throbbed; she was half-blinded by the glare. For a moment she stood staring at Esmera’s sign with its grotesque hand and jumble of symbols and felt the very image pressing down on her like the threatening hand of an angry parent ready to strike an unruly child. She tried to shake off the aftereffect of Esmera’s prophesy through the force of will, but the unfamiliarity of her surroundings aggravated her confusion. She looked around and decided to go at once to the Close. She wanted desperately to find Matthew and tell him all that had transpired since she had left him.

  As she hurried, her brain told her that Esmera’s knowledge might have been nothing more than a clever imagination, but in her heart she felt otherwise. Esmera’s words had thrust deep into her soul and planted there seeds of uncertainty and fear, and even as she tied Esmera’s tent Joan could sense the seeds beginning to grow.

  As she approached the Close, Joan saw Matthew emerging from the gate, Babcock with him. The two men were deep in conversation, laughing and gesturing, and for a moment Joan suppressed a twinge of irritation that Matthew could be so indiff ferent to the danger about him. Had Esmera not seen the beast? And what beast could she have seen, save Samson, Babcock’s own fighting bear, the terror of Smithfield and bane of foolhardy dogs?

  In the twenty paces she traveled between the realization and her arrival at where Matthew stood, her excited brain pictured the creature in startling clarity. The teeth and enormous claws were clean of flesh and blood now. But what of later? How Joan wished she could escape from this horrible place with its vicious animal stench and the blood of the poor, suffering hounds. Men’s sport! she thought with disgust.

  She interrupted Matthew without as much as a by^yourdeave and told him she was sick unto death and wanted to return straightway to the inn, an assertion the great bulk of which was true.

  Matthew received this word with alarm. “Sick! Pray God it is no contagion. Did you eat anything since last we met? Bar-tholomew pig is wondrous rich and can quite undo a delicate stomach.”

  “I ate no pig, nor sausage either,” Joan returned sharply.

  “Why, you’re as pale as a ghost,” Matthew said.

  “Paler,” observed Babcock, making a sympathetic but help' less face.

  “We will go back to the inn,” Matthew said. “Are you able to walk or should I find some conveyance?”

  “I can walk,” Joan replied stiffly, and the truth was she was less sick now, although very hot and weary.

  “I’m so sorry, Mrs. Stock,” said Babcock. “Pray this indisposi-tion is only temporary. Come, join me for supper this very evening. We’ll have a room to ourselves in the Hand and Shears. I’m eager for the both of you to meet my investors. My daughter, Juliet Beauchamp, will also be there.”

  Joan accepted the invitation as gracefully as her excited state of mind would allow, and looked appealingly at her husband. The two men shook hands, bid each other farewell, and then Matthew took Joan’s arm and steered her toward the inn. “It’s one of the unhappy consequences of sojourning in a strange place,” he said worriedly as they walked. “These sudden revolts and stirrings of the belly.”

  “Well, it was no pig,” Joan maintained steadfastly. “I’ll say more anon. For now, I need nothing but to wash off this dust and lie down for a while.”

  • 7 •

  “A fortune-teller!” Matthew exclaimed in a tone to suggest that Joan was quite out of her mind. “What, did she cast your nativity water or wound your ears with blather about horoscopes and the conjunction of planets?”

  “Don’t mock me, husband,” Joan warned—grateful, however, that he had saved this outburst of cynicism for the privacy of their chamber at the inn. In the street she had been of no stomach to conduct the quarrel that now threatened. “The woman did nothing more than plow my palm with her thumb and forefinger, from which plowing she reaped a rich harvest of truth.”

  “Truth, say you?” he scoffed.

  “About me. And you. And yes, about Elizabeth our daughter as well—and her child. She said you were constable of the town and in the way of wealth. She said we had a single daughter who in turn had but one child. Why, she even told me our daughter’s name. Now, tell me, Matthew, how was this fortune-teller able to do that save she was possessed of some art?”

  “Oh, I grant she has art,” her husband returned. “Joan, you amaze me—you, a woman whose mind I have always revered for its common sense, its—”

  “No more flattery! You have bent your bow, now make from the shaft.”

  “So, then,” commenced Matthew, with a determined sigh and what she thought was a rather fierce expression for him. “Let us begin with my constableship, of which you say this woman informed you. It’s no great skill to guess such stuff or my wealth. Look at that gown that covers your nakedness or that French hood that crowns you. A grocer or ironmonger of my

  income could not have clothed his wife withal, but since cloth is my trade that garment that a gentleman’s wife would not have scorned was well within my means. Is my wealth not a likely inference, then? And since your speech betrays you as an outlander, was it not equally probable that your well-to-do husband held some office in his town?”

  “She did first suppose you were an alderman,” Joan conceded.

  “Indeed! And I would wager it was you, not she, who announced that I was a constable.”

  “It was so,” Joan said.

  “It takes no great wit to suppose a wealthy townsman holds either office.”

  “But what of Elizabeth—her name and the fact she had but one child?”

  “I cannot say,” Matthew replied dismissively. “But on my faith, the knowledge was derived not from your palm but from the cunning brain of the woman. It was a trick, I tell you. From a few stones of accurate information, this kind can erect a great house that seems as real and plausible as God’s word. But it is all illusion at last.”

  “She felt the palm,” Joan persisted. “She had a vision of danger, as I have said.”

  Her husband sighed with exasperation. He stood looking at her as though her case was beyond help, as though he was a physician at a loss for a diagnosis, much less a cure. “I am much surprised that she did not prophesy some curious encounter with an attractive stranger, a long voyage at sea, or the discovery of some valuable roundabout the house. Such stale stuff is the common content of their discourse. Go you to Cow-lane where the cunning-men keep company and watch those goshawks pick the brains and pockets of the innocent and gullible.”

  “It was a vision of danger,” Joan insisted.

  “A mere variation on the theme,” Matthew returned with hardly a pause. “I do not suppose this woman said what danger, from what quarter it was to come and with what exact consequences. Was not the prophecy in fact vague and murky like vegetables floating in a thick soup, nine^tenths of them sub' merged and the rest barely discernible in the pot? Whoever heard a cunning-woman foretell a stranger’s visit but she claimed ignorance of the stranger’s name and hour of arrival. It is all gross imposture, the lot of
it!”

  “Esmera seemed most sincere,” Joan said feebly.

  “I warrant you, she did. You shall not find in London a more sincere^sounding person. That is her stock in trade. None of them but they ooze sincerity, and it’s a cool head indeed that sees through it to the truth.”

  “I just don’t know. I’m confused,” Joan admitted.

  “Well, given we are in London and in Smithfield, which is the worse, a vision of danger is not out of the way. Of course there is danger—on every hand. Cutpurses abound, as I have warned you. Tricksters on every hand. Sword'and'buckler bub lies and saucy bawds. This cunning-woman might have deliv-ered the same prophecy to a Cowdane alewife and with equal justice.”

  “She didn’t charge a penny,” Joan said, as though this were the ultimate verification.

  “Now there’s the marvel,” her husband replied cynically. “A cunning'woman she may be but she’s no businessman who sells her wares at such a price. I wonder what she meant by that? No doubt she wants you to return and become a regular seeker of her arcane wisdom, for which, growing dependent on such murky counsel, you will in time become her mainstay. The first visit is but bait for the unwary fish. Beware her lure, Joan. It’s all vile deception, every whit.”

  “And my fears groundless?” she said.

  Matthew walked over to where Joan sat on the bed, feeling very dejected and, yes, foolish too. Taking her hands, he opened her palms and studied them, tracing the lines in her left palm with the forefinger of his right, much as Esmera had done not an hour before.

  “Upon your palms I see happiness writ and I am but a

  clothier, no prophet. I see a fruitful life, a loving and devoted husband, a grateful and dutiful daughter, and a host of admir-ing friends. Isn’t that enough? What, must you seek out the dangers that in truth lie all around and from which God has half-protected us by keeping us ignorant of them?”

  It was not an unreasonable question and Joan gave it some consideration. Matthew stooped to kiss her cheek tenderly. “Come, now,” he said in a suasive voice. “Don’t let’s quarrel about this. It’s much ado over very little. This Esmera is a kind of entertainer—like the jugglers and acrobats. Her trade is words, rather. And hers have given you unrest. So, then, they are but words at last, nothing more.”

  But Joan was not sure that was all there was to it. In Joan’s mind, Esmera continued to cast a spell: she could still hear the strange woman’s deep throaty voice, see the dark moist eyes. Yet Joan was weary of arguing. She appeared to concede the point to Matthew but only in exchange for the quiet it would bring, the chance to stretch out on the bed and sleep.

  “Perhaps I was gulled after all,” she said, forcing a smile to conceal her lingering uncertainty.

  “Don’t say gulled, ” Matthew said. “You’ve lost nothing from the experience but a brief hour of happiness that might otherwise have been yours. Say, rather, that you were undone by the heat of the day, the strangeness of the place, and the charm of this Esmera. What is passed is done with. God be thanked that you are my own dear Joan again. For me, that is quite enough.” She let him help her, put her to bed. Like a child again, but now she lacked even the energy for shame, much less protest. He pulled the coverlet up over her and gently tucked it around her neck.

  “I have some business at the Guildhall that will occupy me for the next two hours,” he whispered. “Come suppertime we’ll go upstairs to Ned Babcock’s feast and forget our troubles in good fellowship and song. Ned is no mean host, I warrant you. And the cost of the meal is his alone. He won that honor for himself in losing a wager to me.”

  She thought to ask what manner of wager but the words never came. She listened to her husband’s farewell drowsily, as though she had taken a sleeping potion and was fast on the way to oblivion. She had not realized how weary she was until now—from the long journey, she supposed; from the heat and strangeness of the place, as Matthew had argued. With half-closed eyes, she stared up at the netherside of the canopy stretching above her bed like a little ceiling. The dark cloth lacked ornament or design, but in the instant before she crossed the threshold betwixt sleep and awake she thought she saw again the mystical symbols that had adorned Esmera’s tent and heard blended with the soft tread of her husband’s retreat the low incantation of the cunning'Woman’s prophecy.

  At dusk of that day, Rose again was sent to the muckhill with another bucketload of garbage from Ursula’s makeshift kitchen. Her earlier trip had yielded no view of the bearward’s helper, but she was undaunted and approached her destination with joyful anticipation. Gabriel was not there. No one was there. The pit had been dug several days earlier to accommo-date the refuse the fair was sure to generate and in the waning light it presented to Rose a spectacle of utter desolation. A great moldering heap of filth, a stinking pile that would have been quite nauseating had she not been accustomed to it by now. Standing there, her buckets at her feet as yet unemptied, she stared out over the pit. How she wished Gabriel was at her side to speak of sacred things, to lift her spirits from her sad-ness. She said the prayer he had taught her and crossed herself (he had not taught her that gesture—a vestige of Roman idola-try, he would have said). She began to empty the buckets. As she emptied the last and was preparing to return to the pig' woman’s booth, her view fell upon an object sticking out from a pile of refuse. It was a shoe, a shoe that she supposed by some mischance had been cast away. Being of an economical turn of mind, Rose reached down and grasped the toe, thinking that someone’s negligence might be her good fortune.

  But that there was more there than the shoe she soon real' ized, as she yanked it forth from the refuse. There was an ankle too, in patched worsted hose, and a lower limb ending in mid' calf in bloody, ragged flesh and bone.

  She stared at her discovery with disbelief while a scream of horror welled up inside her. She let the thing drop back into the muck and gave voice to her feelings, a shrill cry of terror and disgust.

  She screamed and screamed until someone came. More than one, a whole crowd, gathering around her and the muckhill, wanting to know what was the matter.

  “It’s Ursula’s girl,” someone said. “What’s her difficulty? A rat bit her, I reckon.”

  Another voice—Rose recognized it as Jack Talbot’s—was more sympathetic. She pointed to the offending object and someone, not the wine seller but someone else, bent over to examine it and uttered an expression of disgust and then ran away.

  “It’s bloody murder, that’s what it is,” declared the au^ thoritative voice of another. “Someone fetch the sergeant and the watch.”

  “Yes,” said someone else, “go find Grotwell. He’ll want to have a look at this.”

  “Someone search for the rest of him,” said another. “Bring torches.”

  “Search yourself, if you’re so keen.”

  “Are you sure the limb is a man’s?”

  “’Tis for a fact, unless beasts are shod and hosed in worsted. Quick, someone go fetch Grotwell.”

  • 76 •

  • 8 •

  Later the same evening, Joan, physically refreshed from her two-hours’ nap and in a better mind for company, went with Matthew to the Dolphin, a handsomely appointed chamber where the inn’s guests and their friends could take supper in private. They were greeted at the door by a smiling Ned Bab-cock, who was already mildly drunk. Within the chamber, a round table had been laid. About a half-dozen somber people stood at a sideboard, where various dainties and a large bowl of punch had been served. Whatever conversation had been in progress now ceased with the arrival of the newcomers.

  Babcock ushered them in and began a round of introductions. “Now, Francis Crisp you already know,” he said with a forced joviality oddly in contrast to the glum expressions of the rest of the company. “And this young woman is my daughter, Juliet Beauchamp.”

  Joan smiled and nodded at the rather plain-faced girl of twenty-one or twenty-two. Juliet was small and of compact figure. Dressed in black, she wore the resen
tful expression of one not present by her own will. She curtsied at the introduction and seemed uncomfortable.

  With a pained expression, Babcock reminded them that his daughter had been recently widowed, hence her mourning garments. “A terrible accident,” he said, without explaining just what sort of accident it had been.

  Joan expressed her sympathy; Juliet nodded. Joan felt a coolness between the girl and her father, and her curiosity was aroused, but before she could speculate further on the cause of their dispute, Joan’s attention was directed to her host’s next guest, a thin, tallow-faced man of about thirty-five, in a handsome worsted suit of elegant cut. This, Babcock said, was Mr. John Pullyver. Pullyver was a greengrocer with a shop in Cheapside and a house in Blackfriars. Since Joan knew that many greengrocers supplemented their incomes by lending money, often at usurious rates, she was not surprised to find one among Babcock’s investors. Indeed, as Babcock explained, this singularly unprepossessing man was the principal investor in the Smithfield Bear Gardens.

  While Babcock’s long introduction of the greengrocer was in progress, Joan noticed that Pullyver was casting intermittent glances at Juliet. And when Babcock presently said that the greengrocer’s wife had died only recently, leaving him with three small children at home, Joan guessed that Pullyver was a widower in want of a wife—and the wife he wanted was Juliet Beauchamp.

  But did Juliet want him? Joan didn’t think so. Babcock conducted her and Matthew to his remaining guests.

  These included a scrivener named Ralph Chapman and his wife, Margaret. Chapman was tall and loose-jointed and not quite as prosperous-looking as the greengrocer. He was also one of Babcock’s investors, but because Babcock treated Chapman with less obsequiousness than he had the greengrocer, Joan suspected the scrivener’s investment was also less substantial. Chapman’s wife was a round, red-faced woman who in other circumstances might have responded to Joan’s greeting with greater cordiality. She seemed a friendly sort, but oppressed by what appeared to Joan more a business meeting than a social gathering, despite the supper in the offing and the dainties already on the sideboard. When Babcock told the Chapmans, man and wife, that the Stocks were from Chelmsford, neither seemed to have heard of the town. “Mr. Stock is constable there,” said Babcock.