A Verse to Murder

by Peter Tonkin

  ‘Mistress Yeomans, ye say?’ demanded the battered face. ‘With a message for Master Poley?’

  ‘Yes! It is most urgent that I give it to him...’

  ‘Well ye don’t just walk in here, cully, message or no.’ The lips, almost as thick as the battered brows. parted in a mocking grin to reveal the brown stumps of random teeth and to release a breath that seemed to have issued straight from the nearest dunghill. ‘Mayhap ye’d better get yourself taken up by the pursuivants, then ye’ll be in here quickly enough. Master Gauge is to hand and he’ll be happy to oblige...’

  There was a moment of silence as Tom tried to think of a riposte to this. But then matters moved on. The man at the door turned to glance over his shoulder. There was a stirring behind him and he turned right round. ‘Ho Mistress Bess,’ he said, suddenly the most courteous gallant. ‘I did not see ye there. Is everything satisfactory?’

  ‘It is, thank’ee. But my mistress wishes me to return home.’

  ‘Of course.’ The key turned, the door opened and Bess appeared. ‘Why Master Musgrave,’ she said with a low curtsey as she saw him waiting there. ‘What do you do here, sir?’

  ‘A message, Bess,’ he said. ‘For Mistress Yeomans and Master Poley.’

  Bess’s eyes widened. The shadow of a conspiratorial grin flitted over her face then she turned to the turnkey. ‘This is Master Musgrave,’ she said. ‘You should let him enter and show him to Master Poley at once. And no need to disturb Master Gauge nor any other of the pursuivants for if they aren’t at evensong they will be on their way.’ She hurried on out, pausing only to curtsey once again. And, before the bemused turnkey could shut the door again, Tom stepped in to the Marshalsea prison.

  iv

  The turnkey looked at Tom, clearly less than happy with what was going on. But then, pretty little Bess knew this tall, well-dressed stranger and had recommended him. So the turnkey gave a mental shrug and decided to do as she had asked. ‘Master Poley,’ he concluded, ‘and don’t disturb master Gauge’. All of the thoughts were reflected in his battered countenance, each one following the other so slowly that Tom had time to look around the jail’s reception area, which was little more than a stone-walled room with a desk where the prison records could be kept - by someone who could write and therefore not the turnkey, he thought; perhaps by the mysterious master Gauge. The desk had a torch blazing above it. Opposite, in the shadows, was a bench, clearly for prospective inmates. A strong wooden strut ran the length of it at ankle height, worn and splintered, clearly from gyves and chains. Beyond that, a corridor opened into near darkness, no doubt leading also to the cells. ‘Master Poley,’ said the turnkey, recalling Tom’s attention. You clearly didn’t need to be Aristotle’s intellectual equal to earn the post of turnkey at the Marshalsea.

  ‘Lead on Master Turnkey,’ said Tom breezily, as though he was used to making free of more prisons than the Clink, which was run by his old friend Talbot Law.

  ‘Master Poley,’ muttered the turnkey once more and ambled into the shadowy corridor, the stench of his breath replaced by various noxious odours emanating from other orifices about him. Tom followed, more closely than he wanted to - particularly than his nose wanted to - but the darkness left him little choice. ‘Master Poley...’

  By God’s good grace it seemed to Tom, the turnkey stopped at the first door on the right. Tom was so preoccupied that the Master of Logic hardly stirred or he would have reasoned a great deal of information from this. Independently of the fact that there was a sign on the door which a combination of the turnkey’s shoulder and the shadows made it impossible to read. The turnkey rapped on the wooden panel. ‘What is it?’ called a familiar voice impatiently.

  Taking this as an invitation to enter, the turnkey opened the door.

  Tom pushed past him, opening the door wider still. There were two people in the room. They sat behind a table amply supplied. At a glance, he saw a pie, some winter salad, the winter apples like those Elizabeth bought at the price of compromising her innocence in St Paul’s beside John Donne and a good-looking bottle of wine. He saw all this at a glance because he his attention was focussed on the pair behind the table. Poley was bedraggled, ill-shaven and filthy, and yet Joan Yeomans was seated happily on his lap, her bodice gaping just enough to establish that his hand had been snatched out of its depths an instant or so ago.

  ‘Master Poley...’ began the turnkey.

  But Poley cut him short. ‘That will be all, Dick Dull,’ he grated, leaving Tom uncertain whether Dick Dull was the turnkey’s name or an insult. ‘Show Master Musgrave in and then depart, disappear, decamp. Get OUT!’

  The turnkey stumbled backwards as though struck in the face by Poley’s angry words. Tom glanced over as he left and reached to close the door. So that at last he was able to read the sign.

  PURSUIVANT MARSHAL

  *

  ‘Dear God in Heaven, Poley,’ he said, his mind literally reeling as he closed the door behind himself. ‘Don’t tell me you are not only Chief Intelligencer to the Council and Secretary Cecil but Pursuivant Marshal working for his greatest rival Earl Marshal Essex. How in the Good Lord’s name do you know who to stab in the back?’

  Poley reacted to none of this. Joan Yeomans made to rise from his lap, fussing with her bodice as she did so but he held her firmly in place.

  ‘Master Musgrave,’ he said after a moment. ‘I had not looked to see you here.’ His face folded into a slow, thoughtful frown. In the centre of the wrinkled forehead there was just the faintest dark mark - the last sign of a wound that robbed him of his memory some time ago - and came close to robbing him of his life. It was only really visible if you knew where to look, thought Tom, who had been there when Poley was assaulted and for some time thereafter. It was mostly covered now with dirt and an oily fringe.

  ‘Nor I you, Master Poley,’ he said. ‘As I believe my astonishment has made clear. That is, I knew you were likely in the Marshalsea when Mistress Yeomans came hither. But to find you are Pursuivant Marshal! Can it be true?’

  ‘Making free of the Pursuivant Marshal’s office at any rate,’ said Poley, never one to answer a straight question with a clear answer. Politic to his fingertips, thought Tom.

  ‘Are you saying you are not the Pursuivant Marshal?’

  ‘I am saying nothing. Except, perhaps, what brought you hither? And have you any expectation of leaving in the near future? I have many cells and many positions in the largest of them convenient to this office, most of them full but I’m sure I can find room. At the moment I am contemplating chaining you in one of them, awaiting transfer to the Tower and Rackmaster Topcliffe.’

  Unlike Poley, Tom was willing to answer questions. ‘What brought me hither was my search for you. I tried Hog Lane without success but was lucky in that I could follow Mistress Yeomans. I have a lively expectation of leaving to return to Blackfriars rather than The Tower because I believe you will be interested in what I have to say. It is about Spenser, the poet and Sherriff of Cork City.’

  Poley frowned. ‘Spenser.’

  ‘As was found dead in his bed yesterday morning, who lies at the moment in Essex house, who is due to be washed, shrouded and coffined tomorrow, hearsed on Tuesday and buried next to Chaucer in Westminster Abbey.’

  ‘With all the foremost poets in the city reading elegies over him.; yes, I know it all.’

  ‘Except, perhaps, that Spenser met his end by having a potent distillation of hemlock poured into his ear as he slept,’ said Tom.

  Poley blinked. ‘Are you telling me he was murdered?’

  ‘As surely as Kit Marlowe was,’ Tom answered.

  Poley was so shaken that he didn’t even rise to Tom’s bait.

  ‘Murdered, you say. Who by?’

  ‘There was a witness said Will Shakespeare bought a great deal of hemlock early on Friday evening.’

  ‘Which explains your involvement, at least in part,’ observed Poley. ‘But if it was a distillation that killed him, the hemlock w
ould need to have been bought days in advance, perhaps more. Who is this witness?’

  ‘John Gerard’s apprentice, a young man name Hal.’

  ‘And where is this Hal now?’

  ‘Missing, believed dead.’

  ‘A murdered poet, a missing witness and one of your closest friends standing accused. Well, here’s a coil indeed! And why am I not surprised to find you caught right at the heart of it?’

  v

  ‘But I am surprised, I must admit,’ answered Tom, ‘to find that the Pursuivant Marshal - if you are truly the Pursuivant Marshal - remains in ignorance of the fact that Spenser was murdered. Sir Thomas Gerard, the Knight Marshal led the men who came for the body. He had apparently consulted with Essex, Gelly Meyrick and the Bacon brothers before he left Essex House. He had Simon Forman with him as I had John Gerard. Both men, whatever their faults and differences, could have seen that this was no natural death. John did and therefore I assume Simon Forman did. There must be some sort of investigation going on. But why keep it secret from one of the men who should be most actively involved in it?’

  The three of them were seated at the table now, Joan Yeomans and Robert Poley pausing between mouthfuls of pie to talk to Tom, who was nibbling some cheese and nursing a goblet of wine.

  ‘Perhaps because my work here is too important to be disturbed,’ suggested Poley. Joan Yeomans nodded, cheeks bulging, at this obvious truth.

  ‘What! You have another Babington plot afoot?’ asked Tom ironically. ‘Someone is planning to hide a dunderbus beneath a Jesuit cassock and shoot the Queen? There are barrels of gunpowder stacked beneath White Hall or West Minster waiting to blow Her Majesty, her parliament and her council out of this life and into the next?’

  ‘Even to suggest such things in jest comes dangerously close to sedition,’ warned Poley.

  ‘Really? How disappointing! I was trying for outright treason.’ Tom took a sip of wine, watching Poley over the rim of his glass.

  Poley gave a snort of exasperation. ‘You will end up in the Tower yet,’ he warned. ‘And at the headsman’s block on Tower Green if you don’t take care!’

  ‘That is a risk I will have to run. But the questions still remain, Master Poley. Are you the Pursuivant Marshal and, if so, why has neither the Earl Marshal nor the Knight Marshal told you that Spenser was murdered?’

  ‘You are the Master of Logic. You work it out.’

  ‘Because they do not trust you,’ said Tom. ‘Which brings us to the next question. If indeed you are the Pursuivant Marshal, how did you come by the post - you being, as we all know, Chief Intelligencer to The Council. Is the Earl of Essex trying to prove something to Secretary Cecil? Are you, so to speak, an olive branch? What is it that Essex wants so badly that he would accept you into his closest circle, knowing your true allegiance? Why, the Queen’s signature on his commission as Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, of course. It is all that consumes him at the moment. Is that it? He accepts you as Pursuivant Marshal and Cecil agrees to prompt the Queen into signing Essex’ commission. And Cecil is content to allow things to proceed because he has absolute faith in Essex - that he will fail in this mission as he has done in so many others, outrage Her Majesty and utterly destroy himself in Ulster. But in the mean-time, the cautious Master Secretary wants you - you of all men - just where you are because he has heard rumours that if he sees things going too terribly wrong, Essex might yet use his Irish Army to invade England and either replace the Queen himself or facilitate the succession by James of Scotland. Essex must be absolutely desperate or overweeningly confident even to consider countenancing such an arrangement. But then, as we know all too well, the compound of desperation and overweening confidence is the very essence of the man.’

  ‘That and arrogant high-handedness,’ agreed Poley.

  ‘So,’ concluded Tom. ‘You have the post and, no doubt, the power of the Pursuivant Marshal, especially in your search for Jesuit assassins. But you do not have the confidence of the Knight Marshal who has not shared the facts of Spencer’s murder with you; or, I would guess, of the Earl Marshal his master. So I would assume that it is you, Master Poley, who must beware a sudden and unexpected end like Spenser’s. For the instant Essex is commissioned as Lord Lieutenant, he is likely to have you murdered, just in case you have learned too much while posing as Pursuivant Marshal.’

  *

  ‘My life to protect the Queen,’ said Poley. ‘To safeguard the realm? Do you think I would hesitate?’

  ‘No,’ said Joan Yeomans. ‘Oh no!’ her voice rang with ill-controlled emotion and heartfelt pride.

  Tom looked at her. Her eyes were streaming with tears and glowing with admiration. He nodded. ‘Why man,’ he said, quoting something of Will’s that he had read recently. ‘You do bestride the intelligence world like a colossus.’

  ‘A colossus,’ said Poley, looking at Tom askance.

  ‘You have a foot in either camp at any rate,’ said Tom. ‘But remember to stand firm when the earth quakes.’

  Poley gave a grunt of cynical laughter, then he returned to the matter in hand. ‘Hemlock, you say.’

  ‘A potent distillation; thick and dark, almost like tar. A small scraping of it mixed with milk killed a cat in less than half an hour.’

  ‘Poured in his ear...’ Poley was clearly becoming interested. And only Rosalind had equal acuity in Tom’s experience.

  ‘He had been taking drugs to overcome pain and aid restful sleep. You remember that his ear was hurt by a blow from as club...’

  ‘An Irish bata, yes...’ Poley’s hand rose towards his own forehead before he could control the gesture.

  ‘Since then he has kept it bandaged and has taken doses of belladonna to help him sleep.’

  ‘A large dose to hold him asleep while hemlock was poured into his ear.’

  ‘Especially as it was the wounded ear and whoever poured the hemlock removed the bandage first. Was it Vesalius or Eustachius who first suggested that the ear is connected by a tube to the back of the throat? Pouring poison into Spencer’s ear was just the same as making him drink it - but far easier and quicker under the circumstances.’

  ‘Hmm,’ said Poley. ‘Even so, I’d guess that whoever prepared the sleeping draught must be party to the plot and made up a stronger dose than usual.’

  ‘Perhaps, but Spenser also drank a good deal of strong ale which John Gerard says would have compounded the sleeping draught’s effect.’

  ‘So the murderer was fortunate as well as well prepared. But to the sleeping potion,’ said Poley. ‘It was of course prepared by...’ Poley’s eyebrows rose interrogatively.

  ‘Gerard’s apprentice...’ said Tom.

  ‘Who is missing, presumed dead.’

  ‘Just so.’

  ‘Is there any suspicion that pressure could have been brought on this apprentice?’ asked Poley out of a world of experience in such matters. ‘Anything he wanted? Anything he feared? Any secrets he was afraid of having exposed?’

  ‘If he had secrets they are secret still, and likely to remain so,’ said Tom. ‘But he wanted Elizabeth, his master’s nubile daughter. And he feared that either John Donne or Simon Forman would have her first - she met the former by accident at St Pauls but he courted her after a fashion so she went to the latter to have her future foretold.’

  ‘If she was my daughter I would foretell her a future involving a well whipped arse!’

  Joan Yeomans nodded in righteous indignation at the wilful child’s behaviour and Poley’s suggested cure for it.

  ‘Which John Gerard has promised her if she persists.’ Tom said.

  ‘I’m glad to hear it!’ said Poley. ‘There’s some hope for modern parenting yet. But the apprentice has vanished, you say. If he’s alive that would seem like a sure sign of guilt.’

  ‘He died at Forman’s I am sure,’ said Tom, and went on to tell Poley what he had experienced in Billingsgate and what he had deduced from it.

  But then, just as he finished, another thoug
ht struck him. ‘Now I think of it, Master Poley, it seems unsettlingly convenient that the post of Pursuivant Marshal should fall vacant just at the time Secretary Cecil needed you to fill it and keep an eye on Essex and his acolytes. Can I ask, what happened to the previous incumbent? The man who last called this office his own?’

  ‘Dead,’ said Poley. ‘No mystery nor murder that I can discover, convenient though the matter proved. Fell off his horse and broke his neck, leading a squad of pursuivants in the examination of the notoriously recusant catholic Hoghton Hall up in Lancashire.’

  Chapter 6: The Ancient Abbey

  i

  Tom and Joan Yeomans parted company at the South Wark. The disgruntled woman, robbed of what she had hoped to receive from her lover in return for feeding him, went straight up under the southern gatehouse an all-but empty basket in the crook of each arm. The bridge was less busy than usual - they had crossed it in less than half an hour coming south and it looked as though she would get back even more quickly now. Tom turned left into Clink Street and strolled past St Mary Overie steps ignoring the calls of the wherrymen offering to skull him across the river to the City. Their cries had hardly faded before he was passing the Clink prison itself and crossing Dead Man’s Place beyond it.

  He was walking like a blind man, so deep in thought that Essex could have marched his Irish army past and Tom would not have noticed. Though to be fair, the bustle of people going into and out of the taverns and brothels all around was lessened, as was the audience at the Bull- and Bear-baiting pits. Like the crush on London Bridge there were fewer people here because it was a Sunday afternoon. Which also explained why the Rose theatre was closed.

  Tom’s first thought was that Joan’s carnal desires had been thwarted by more than his presence in the Pursuivant Marshal’s office. What he had described to Poley had sent the intelligencer into an equally deep brown study. He had hardly seemed to notice when Joan rose, cleared what was left of the food into her baskets and headed for the door with Tom immediately behind her. There were no farewells, fond or otherwise. Dick Dull had let them out into the calm, chilly afternoon. And they walked silently towards the bridge, each prey to their own thoughts.