The Bartholomew Fair Murders Page 9

  The greengrocer Pullyver evinced mild interest; he took his eyes off the young widow he wanted and said that he had recently seen at the Globe one of Mr. Shakespeare’s plays, which

  featured a constable named Dogberry. “A very droll, comical fellow, though somewhat deficient in intellect,” said Pullyver.

  Matthew said he had not heard of such a character or seen the play.

  “You have heard of Mr. Shakespeare?” asked Pullyver, with an incredulous expression that anticipated a negative answer.

  Matthew said that he had; indeed, he had seen at least one of his plays. And at the Globe.

  Pullyver, evidently a great frequenter of the Southwark the* aters, now began rattling off the names of a dozen plays he had attended during the last quarter. To Joan it was all boasting, probably for Juliet’s benefit, although she thought the young woman in mourning looked distinctly unimpressed by it all.

  Two other strangers were in the room and Babcock now led Matthew and Joan on to them. One was the Clerk of the Fair, a Mr. Rathbone. Rathbone was a stout, distinguisheddooking man with prematurely graying hair. At his waist he carried a watch, an invention still novel enough to proclaim the social prestige of its wearer. Standing by him was a man of about fifty, with the cadaverous expression of an undertaker. This fellow, named Foote, had also something to do with the fair. Like Rathbone, Foote nodded cordially at the Stocks and welcomed them both to London. But Joan was still aware of a tension in the room, as though her and Matthew’s entrance had merely interrupted some unpleasantness that would resume once they left again.

  She noticed during the introductions that Francis Crisp had wandered off into the comer, away from the other guests. He was dressed very shabbily for the occasion in a garb hardly more decent than that she had seen him in that morning at the pit, when he was hot and sweaty from labor and still stinking of the bear. Crisp’s eyes looked glassy and his expression vacant as though his mind was somewhere else, perhaps back at the pit with his beloved Samson. Like his business partner, Crisp had

  been partaking of the punch in great quantities, and he seemed unsteady on his feet.

  The introductions completed, supper was now served. Sev-eral waiters came in bearing the first course—a salad of dry greens and cucumbers. “At last,” cried Babcock. “The food! Come, let’s sit and eat. Let each give thanks to God in his own heart—and express it by leaving not a morsel uneaten.”

  “Nor a drop undrunk,” added Francis Crisp from his corner, saluting the chamber with a newly emptied glass and smiling keenly at Pullyver, who was leading a stony-faced Juliet Beau-champ to her chair.

  Juliet was seated opposite the greengrocer and Joan across from her husband. At her left was the Clerk of the Fair and across from her Babcock and his partner. On around were the scrivener Chapman and his plump wife. At Matthew’s side was the cadaverous Mr. Foote, whose mordant expression was no brighter at the prospect of a free meal and who studied his plate of greens with the concerned look of one expecting some dis-gusting insect to be concealed beneath the lettuce.

  They commenced to eat. There was little talk during the first course or the second—several sorts of fowl and lumpy pudding. Joan doubted the tall scrivener or his wife were very commu-nicative in the best of times, nor the tallow-faced greengrocer, but she could not remember what funeral or bankruptcy she had experienced that had been quite so solemn. There was something sour in the room, the savory food notwithstanding, and that sourness was something more than Francis Crisp’s unwashed linen.

  Meanwhile she observed that Babcock seemed indifferent to the awkwardness of the gathering and ate hardily. Matthew did likewise. But Joan had no appetite. The tension in the room had taken it away and the want of pleasant conversation—the spice of any good meal—had left her to her own thoughts, which again turned to Esmera’s prophetic warnings. Joan found herself hearing the cunning-woman’s deep, thickly accented voice, and her eyes were inevitably attracted to the hands of

  those at the table. Babcock’s were large and ruddy with hairy backs, Crisp’s smaller and brown with gnarled fingers, vivid veins, and broken nails. The greengrocer’s hands Joan found especially intriguing: Pullyver’s fingers were very long, the backs of the hand smooth, white, and hairless, almost puffy, like some exotic vegetable sold in his shop.

  Joan was beckoning to the waiter to remove her plate, for she wanted no more to eat, when her thoughts were interrupted by a racket of stomping and knocking at the door of the chamber, and then a loud, commanding voice inquiring of anyone within hearing distance where Mr. Babcock the bearward could be found.

  In the next instant, the door burst open and in marched a large, squareTaced man in sheriff’s livery, bearing a cudgel. At his heels were two other officers.

  The scrivener’s wife shrieked with alarm at this uncer-emonious entrance and all rose at the table.

  “I am the man you seek,” Babcock announced in a trembling voice, waving a napkin at the intruder as though he thought to defend himself with it. “What’s your business? It better be hon-est business, for I am not alone and undefended here.” He waved an arm around at his guests.

  “What is it, sergeant?” asked the Clerk.

  “Oh, it’s you, Mr. Rathbone—and you too, sir, Mr. Foote,” said the leader of the intruders. He apologized for breaking in, then said gruffly, “I’ve come in search of the bearward.”

  “Well, I am he,” Babcock repeated, apparently satisfied that the intruders were officers rather than brigands.

  “A man is dead. Dead at the fair,” said the sergeant.

  “And what’s that to me?” asked Babcock.

  “We believe he was killed—by your bear.”

  At this Juliet moaned, turned white as a sheet, and slumped into her chair.

  “Killed by my bear!” exclaimed Babcock, unsure as to whether to speak in defense of his bear or see to the condition of his daughter. “Why, my bear has harmed no one.”

  “Well, it appears he has, sir,” said the sergeant.

  “Come, Grotwell, out with it, fellow,” demanded the Clerk impatiently. “This is a serious charge. Give us the particulars.”

  “A body has been found at the muckhill at the end of Taylor’s lane,” Grotwell said. “I should say a part has been found, for there is hardly more than a shoe and hosed foot and ankle. This same member has been examined by myself and others.”

  “And?” prompted the Clerk.

  “And we think the bear has eaten the poor devil that is dead,” said Grotwell. “There’s teeth marks on the bone. God knows where the rest of him is. ”

  “Teeth marks,” said Babcock, giving the sergeant his full attention now, for Juliet had recovered and, although pale from the announcement, was having her brow moistened by Joan.

  “Very large teeth,” said Grotwell, looking at the bearward accusingly.

  Other guests of the inn who had been attracted to the Dolphin by the uproar had now collected at the door and were looking in with anxious faces. The host of the inn himself appeared, a big, burly man who demanded to know whether there was not sufficient cause to raise the watch, for he was convinced a rebellion was in progress.

  “We are the watch,” said Grotwell gruffly, turning to the host and ordering him to close the door and mind his own business. Reluctantly and with much complaining that it was after all his own inn, the host complied. Then Grotwell continued his story. The fragment of body had been found at sundown. By one Rose Dibble, a servant of Ursula, the pig-woman. The girl had screamed her head off and drawn thereby a huge crowd to the muckhill to see. That the body had been ravaged by some huge beast was the general opinion of everyone who had examined the grisly remains.

  Babcock denied that Samson had done it; a sobered Francis Crisp agreed, if anything, more vehemently.

  Joan gave over attending Juliet and began to pay more attention to the discussion. Grotwell described the remnant of flesh

  in sickening detail, and Joan thought, Gnawed by a beast
, ripped to pieces by a bear. A bear?

  Esmera’s prophecy had been fulfilled, after all! She looked at Matthew. Would he believe her now? He was following the sergeant’s description intently; but Joan couldn’t tell whether he was making the connection or not.

  “Samson has killed no one,” insisted Babcock. “Save for the hounds brave enough to come at him. A more gentle creature around mankind one could hardly find. Do you really think, sir,” Babcock addressed the sergeant, “that a beast of mine could have made a meal of human flesh and I not know of it?”

  “Or I!” echoed Crisp with a fierce expression.

  “Do you imagine a poor creature such as he who is dead would have suffered his dismemberment in silence?” Babcock continued, “Look you now, my bear garden is at the very center of the fair, elbow to elbow to a dozen stalls and booths. Would someone there not have heard the screams of anguish, the ag' ony—”

  “Father!” said Juliet sharply.

  Babcock stopped and turned to his daughter. Juliet’s eyes were full of tears, her lower lip trembled. “How can you speak so after what happened?” she complained bitterly.

  Babcock turned back to the sergeant, but said no more.

  Crisp now took over the defense of the bear. “Even if it was a bear that did it, there’s no evidence it was Samson. He’s not the only bear in London.”

  “That’s true,” Pullyver said. “It may have been another crea* ture that did this.”

  “Come now, sergeant, what proof have you that it was Saim son and not some other?” Babcock said.

  “Don’t I know a bear’s tooth when I see it?” snapped Grot' well, heated now. “And indeed there are bears in London, but what of Smithfield? There I know of only one and Samson is his name.”

  An angry exchange followed between Crisp and the sergeant, in which Crisp said that Grotwell didn’t know a bear from his

  own buttocks and the sergeant said that he certainly did and told Crisp where he might put the bear and his filthy mouth too. The two men were about to come to blows, which would have been indeed unfortunate for Crisp, since he was unarmed, when the Clerk stepped between them and ordered both to be silent. Rathbone said that Mr. Justice Baynard, Chief Magis-trate of the Court of Pie-powders, should be notified of the incident at once, but his companion, Mr. Foote, questioned whether this famous court, held during the three days of the fair, would have jurisdiction.

  A debate followed between the two men, which was finally resolved in the Clerk’s favor. Grotwell sent one of his men to notify the Justice.

  Now Matthew came forward and said, “Could it not have been wild dogs who ate the poor fellow, perhaps finding him somewhere dead first, then dragging the body off to the muckhill? It wouldn’t be the first time such a thing has hap-pened.”

  Babcock and Crisp thought this a very fine suggestion, and Babcock said that the very thing had occurred within living memory, to an unfortunate and aged ragpicker who had frozen to death one winter in Holborn and whose body parts were found thereafter scattered over an area of several miles.

  “I would have supposed dogs had done it myself, sir,” said Grotwell, eyeing Matthew with cautious respect, pending his discovery of just who this well-spoken citizen might be. “The truth appears otherwise. If Mr. Babcock and the rest of you masters will accompany me to where the body was found, each may examine the remains to his heart’s content. I assure you that no dog or pack of them killed the man. It was a large animal, and I doubt that it was any other than Mr. Babcock’s bear.”

  “If what the sergeant says proves true,” said the Clerk, turning to Babcock and regarding him with a serious expression, “your Samson must die by order of law. There’s no help for it,

  not after what happened to your son-in-law, William Beam champ. ”

  “That was not Samson’s fault,” Babcock protested.

  But it was, Joan thought, a halfhearted protest, uttered with more bluster than conviction. She noticed that Babcock cast a sidelong glance at his daughter. Juliet’s face was turned away from her father. The girl was still distraught by the news. And by something else too. Joan resolved to find out more about William Beauchamp’s death. It was clear from what the Clerk had said, and Babcock conceded, that Samson had killed him. But what had been the circumstances?

  “Grotwell, lead the way,” said the Clerk. “Those who wish may follow.”

  Matthew told Joan he would accompany the others to the scene of the crime, but Joan had little interest herself in view-ing the grisly remains or in traipsing about Smithfield after dark. She said that she would go up to their room and wait his return.

  There was now a brief leave-taking on all sides. Pullyver said he would see that Juliet Beauchamp was safely delivered to her own home. The Chapmans thanked their host for their supper and begged to be excused from the expedition to the muckhill. Both husband and wife looked pale and distraught. It had been an evening few of them would forget soon.

  In her chamber, the door barred behind her and the tall candles flickering uncertainly, Joan sat on the bed, still dressed. Her mind raced with the events of the day: the tour through Smithfield, the visit to the bear garden, her consultation with the fortune-teller, and, most recently, this unpleasant supper and most horrid discovery of murder—if that was indeed what it was. But whatever it was, deliberate savaging by bear or the carrion work of less threatening beasts, it presented to her mind a grim omen. Certainly Esmera’s prophecy had been fulfilled

  and with dispatch. Joan wondered now what greater horrors awaited.

  She uttered a prayer for Matthew’s safe return and began to prepare for bed. As she did, she wondered who the unfortunate victim of the muckhill murder had been. An itinerant peddler perhaps? Worse, some innocent child astray in that region of stinking devastation? But would a bear have wandered there, unrestrained and unobserved, to do the deed?

  That did seem most unlikely.

  Then she had a terrible thought; her heart sank with it. What if it was the bearward’s helper who was slain—this very evening, while his masters were carousing in the Dolphin—and the monster that had done it was now loose in Smithfield, foraging for more human meat?

  She had a vision of the handsome young man she had observed that morning and the girl he loved, and wept softly for the very pity of it.

  • 9 •

  Spectral shapes of men, women, and children, illuminated by torchlight, had gathered around the muckhiil. They talked in whispers and moved aside obediently when the officers came. Matthew followed behind the Clerk, the sergeant, and the two bearwards to where several of the sergeant’s men had earlier formed a protective ring around Rose Dibble’s gruesome discov^ ery.

  The truncated limb rested upon a piece of dirty rag someone had found amid the refuse and retrieved to afford a modicum of dignity to the dead man’s remains. The foot and calf lay there, the focus of every eye that could see it, like a religious relic, but the response they provoked was not reverence but fear.

  Matthew knelt down to examine the remains. The foot was poorly shod and the remnant of worsted hose was of inferior quality and much patched. A fragment of sharp, white bone protruded from the hose and bore the marks of the powerful teeth that had snapped it from the rest of the body, like a twig broken from a dead branch.

  It was obvious to Matthew the dead man had not been mauled by a dog. Obvious too that the onlookers were of the same mind. Something had made a meal of some human soul, something large and vicious—much to the disgrace of the fair and the peril of them all.

  The whispering Matthew overheard suggested that something had been Ned Babcock’s bear.

  “The creature should be killed forthwith,” muttered someone standing behind Matthew.

  “Tortured first—drawn and quartered,” said a second voice, hard with malice.

  “Boiled in oil, blinded, and declawed,” said yet another.

  “God only knows what other poor devil he’s eaten,” said the first voice. “Where’s the re
st of him? That’s what I want to know. Scattered hither and yon in this filth, I’ll warrant.”

  Matthew heard these comments at his back and didn’t like the sound of them. The crowd at the muckhill was more than frightened; it was looking for someone to blame for the outrage. Ned Babcock’s bear seemed the inevitable choice. He noticed that the two bearwards had been strangely silent since arriving at the muckhill, especially in contrast to their vigorous defense of Samson at the inn. Neither man had pushed forward for a closer view of the corpse. Was this because they knew already that Samson was to blame—that the great bear was a destroyer of mankind as well as dog? Or was it because they feared to be identified as the owners of this alleged monster?

  In either case, the silence of the two men had made them inconspicuous and that was well for both. Matthew knew from bitter experience how quickly a nervous multitude could turn into a raging, howling mob.

  Perhaps Rathbone, the Clerk of the Fair, knew this too. He announced that there was little to be done until morning, when the muckhill would be searched for more evidence, announced it loudly so that his voice carried over the whispers of the crowd and the occasional whimpering of children dragged from their beds to see this new wonder. At this, some of the gawkers began to disperse, either because their curiosity was satisfied or because they feared to be compelled to search the refuse for the rest of the body—a task well within the sergeant’s right to order. The Clerk directed Grotwell to send the rest of them home.

  Then they were alone—the Clerk and the officers and the bearwards and Matthew—in that expanse of awful darkness. The single torch that remained and was held by one of Grot-well’s men did very little good in dispelling the eeriness of the place.