A Verse to Murder

by Peter Tonkin

  ‘When they screamed I nearly fainted!’

  ‘Was there still a cat upon the door into the garden?’ he asked.

  ‘And some sort of curse, though I could not stop to read it - and probably could never have understood it if I did!’

  ‘And the mysterious stranger in the privy?’ He came to the crucial point at last.

  ‘I could not make him out,’ she answered. ‘The peep-hole is the only part that lets in light and I blocked it by looking through it.’

  ‘So you didn’t see enough to recognise the man in there?’

  ‘No, I didn’t. Why? Is that important?’

  ‘It might have been, had you recognised him,’ said Tom. ‘But now, who knows?’ he added.

  Chapter 7: The Sin Eater

  i

  The great gates of Essex House stood wide revealing a cobbled yard and the steps up to the house-front. The hearse rested clear of the opening, hard up against the outer wall on the Strand. It was easy enough for Tom and Ugo to see past the black-painted vehicle into the area between the main door of Essex House itself and the street. It seemed that half of London was gathered around them in sombre silence, but the pair were tall and near the front. Their view was unobstructed, though it was more difficult for Rosalind and Will standing beside them to see precisely what was going on. Will didn’t want to be here. He was uneasy in crowds and emotionally torn by the fact that he hadn’t been invited to join the other poets while being well aware that he would have refused in any case. On top of that, he was, as always, impatient to get on with his writing. But Rosalind had insisted so he was sulkily making the best of it. Rosalind on the other hand was glowing with excitement. No-one had any clear idea of who would actually attend the funeral service but she was certain that she would spend much of the day surrounded by men and women from the pinnacles of society. Tom, Ugo and Will, all welcome at court, would be able to put faces to names she had heard spoken of with awe since childhood.

  The front door into Essex House stood wide. Half a dozen steps led down from it to the cobbled yard within the outer gate. On either side of the steps, a brazier glowed, packed with coal and clearly giving off some welcome heat in the bitter January morning. At the foot of the steps, Spenser, wrapped in his shroud, lay coffined on a bier. The coffin lid stood beside the bier like a guard at attention. The shroud was open so that the dead man’s head and shoulders were uncovered. His face was clean and shaven, his hair washed and brushed. His ears as clear as shells lately taken from the sea, Tom observed; both of them. Essex himself was standing in front of the coffin lid. Gelly Meyrick and, for a wonder, both the Bacon brothers, stood opposite them; Sir Anthony pallid and leaning on a stick. Chapman and his regiment of poetatsters filled much of the rest of the walled square, all dressed in funeral weeds only slightly darker than the sky.

  Beside the coffin, near Francis and Anthony Bacon, sat an old man. Considering where he was, and the occasion he was part of, he was shabbily dressed, ill-shaven and scrawny. And yet, thought Tom there was an air of unruffled calm about him; a sense that he knew his place in creation and was content with it; a man with a task at hand that he was happy and uniquely fitted to perform.

  ‘Who’s the old man?’ asked Ugo.

  ‘He’s the sin-eater,’ answered Tom, who had come across such men in the far north during his youth.

  A servant came out of the front door of Essex House and down the steps to stand beside the Earl. He carried a tray on which was a manchet loaf on a wooden platter and a wooden cup foaming with beer. The earl took the platter and passed it over Spenser’s corpse to the sin-eater who took it, put the platter on his lap, tore the bread apart and consumed it. Essex passed him the cup. He took that also and drained it with a single draught, then he handed both back. Essex passed them to the servant who carried them back towards the main door, pausing half way up the steps to place the platter in one of the braziers and the cup in the other. Everything stopped until the wooden vessels burst into flames, then Essex nodded. The sin-eater rose and followed the servant up into the house. Chapman led some of his companions forward. They covered Spenser’s face and placed the lid on his coffin.

  *

  ‘What was all that about?’ asked Ugo.

  ‘Spenser died in his sleep,’ Tom explained. ‘He had no chance to confess his sins; no opportunity even to pray at the end.’

  ‘Sent to his account with God,’ said Will, ‘with all his imperfections on his head. Horrible!’

  ‘He died with all his sins upon him,’ Tom emphasised to Ugo. ‘So he is likely bound for purgatory, if such a place exists, or even hell itself, as it is far too late to hope for absolution. He is doomed to wander the night as a ghost while suffering untold torments in the day. So the superstition goes.’

  ‘Until all his sins are burned and purged away,’ emphasised Will again.

  ‘Except,’ said Tom with some force, ‘that Essex has hired a sin-eater. The old man has taken the bread and the beer passed to him over Spenser’s corpse, and as he did so he took all Spenser’s sins upon his own soul leaving Spencer’s soul as white as snow.’

  ‘Do you believe in such things?’ demanded Rosalind.

  ‘Not really. Not now. Ask me again on my death-bed and I’ll be begging you to bring me a sin-eater as like as not.’

  ‘Hunh! Not even a regiment of sin-eaters would suffice!’ mocked Rosalind. ‘But I’m not going anywhere near your bed at any time, Tom. Death-bed or not!’

  ‘Glad to hear it!’ said Will.

  As they spoke, Chapman and his poets finished securing the lid on Spenser’s coffin. They all stood back except for Chapman who produced a piece of paper and held it up before his mournful face.

  ‘Here we go,’ said Tom quietly. ‘The first of the funeral odes. I hope to God he keeps it short.’

  ‘And that he has decided that he should only deliver one,’ said Will. ‘But I doubt it. One here and another at the graveside. Two audiences,’ he explained. ‘Two bites at the cherry.’

  ‘Rich tapered sanctuary of the blest,’ Chapman began,

  ‘Palace of Ruth made all of tears and rest,

  To thy black shades and desolation

  I consecrate this wight and giving moan

  Where furies shall forever fighting be

  And adders hiss the world for hating thee

  Foxes shall bark and night ravens belch in groans

  And owls shall hollow thy confusions

  Where we will furnish up thy funeral bed

  Strewn with the bones and relics of the dead.’

  The moment Chapman was finished, the five nearest poets stepped forward then the six of them shouldered the box and carried it slowly out through the main gate and laid it, with much weeping and wailing, on the hearse hard up against the wall.

  The main reason they were able to put the hearse so near to the wall, observed Tom, was the fact that the traces were empty. The carriage was designed to be pulled by two horses but there were no horses there. Instead, after they laid the coffin in the back of the hearse, the poets gathered round it. Some of them fitted themselves loosely into the harness while others simply took firm grip on the long wooden struts then, on Chapman’s order, they all heaved together and the hearse was in motion. As it proceeded slowly down the Strand, the Earl of Essex and his senior officers, followed by most of his household, fell in behind. And the rest of London, so it seemed, fell in behind them and filled the Strand like a river in silent flood. The only sound was that of Tom’s and Will’s voices as they whispered to Rosalind the names of all the most important people there.

  ii

  It took well over an hour for the funeral to process from Essex House past Somerset House and The Savoy, Durham House, York Place and Hungerford House down to Charing Cross. Here the cortege paused in the wide space beneath the towering cross itself as more crowds joined them out of Cockspur Street before the weary poets continued to pull the hearse into Whitehall. Ever more slowly, it seemed, the
y moved onwards, the poet-powered hearse at the head of a great crowd following it down through the Court Gate, which was normally forbidden to commoners, into the great complex of palaces comprising White Hall and West Minster. Down King Street they processed until at last they arrived at the Abbey itself. The hearse stopped. The poets relinquished their grip on it. Six of them stood forward, ready to shoulder the coffin. But there was a hold-up at once as the rest of them squabbled over precedence in the line. As they did so, Essex and his household walked past them and entered the Abbey itself. A fine, freezing drizzle began to fall. A wind whipped over the river and moaned in the ornamented buttresses as though the building itself was weeping and wailing.

  The area outside the Great West Door was already crowded. As Tom and his little party edged their way forward it was just possible to see that the inside of the ancient building was also busy. The entrance of Essex and his associates made it busier still but there was still room inside - for those allowed to pass as easily as the earl by the Dean’s men guarding the entrance. Tom did not hesitate. He walked up to the guards with the air of a man who has every right to be doing what he’s doing and fortune favoured him. One of the guards was the scholar from yesterday with whom he had discussed the fate of Henry V’s memorial. Their eyes met. The young man nodded and turned to his companions, so Tom and the others followed Essex through the Great West Door so closely that they could almost have been members of his household. As they did so, the Abbey bells began to toll.

  The interior of the Abbey was almost as confused as the gaggle of poets outside. In more than a dozen increasingly heated conversations, precedence and position were being sorted out as there was no plan for the congregation. As was all too often the case, thought Tom, there was no real plan for something that Essex was in charge of. In fact, only Essex, as theoretical host, was clear about where he should stand: as close to the grave as possible. Tom and Ugo knew precisely where they were heading as well, and made straight for the tomb of Henry V. Then, with the headless, handless king and the empty tomb of his French wife at their backs, they moved forward until they could get a clear view of the open grave, the bier beside it and the upstanding flagstones which leaned against the front of Chaucer’s monument behind it.

  There was a stirring in Essex’ household who were standing in front of Tom, keeping respectfully clear of the grave itself, where the sexton and his men stood ready to lift the coffin off the bier and lower it at the appropriate point during the service. A small man in chaplain’s robes moved toward the graveside, Bible in hand. Inflated with self-righteous haughtiness, he stood beside the empty bier and stared around impatiently.

  ‘Who is that?’ whispered Rosalind.

  ‘Abdias Assheton, Essex’ chaplain,’ Tom whispered. ‘One element of the conundrum that is Robert Devereux.’

  ‘How so?’ asked Rosalind. ‘He seems no more than an inflated, self-important little priest. The religious equivalent of the poet Weevil.’

  ‘As with so many of the men and women we are dealing with,’ said Tom, ‘though perhaps not with Weevil, there is more to him than meets the eye.’

  *

  ‘Assheton is an increasingly influential voice. He is famous for his absolute reliance on the Bible as the fount of all knowledge. He believes - and preaches - that every question that anyone can ever ask is answered in the Bible. It is the word of God revealed...’

  ‘An increasingly popular philosophy,’ added Ugo who had seen Puritanism on the Continent in the past and recognised the manner in which Assheton and the men who shared his views were taking precedence in the Church’s thinking. ‘Especially amongst Puritans,’ he continued, ‘many of look down on ancient wisdom - of which they are often ignorant in any case - and believe that knowledge of the Bible is all a learned religious philosopher requires.’

  ‘Essex inclines to that way of thinking to the tips of his square-cut Puritan beard,’ confirmed Tom. ‘But he also has contact - as we all know - with men such as Simon Forman, who seek for knowledge seemingly everywhere except in the Bible.’

  ‘As we know from our visit to Forman’s library,’ confirmed Ugo.

  ‘Forman, it seems to me, is a more comfortable bedfellow with Raleigh, who is endlessly exploring - intellectually as well as physically.’ Tom added. ‘As his School of Night demonstrates. What he believes he has learned from the natives of the New World has made him question some widely accepted biblical ‘truths’, like the calculation that God made the earth around 4004 years before Christ was born.’

  ‘Really,’ whispered Rosalind. ‘Who calculated that?’

  ‘Another Irishman, the Archbishop of Armagh, has been working on it I believe,’ answered Tom.

  ‘Are we expecting Raleigh?’ wondered Rosalind excitedly.

  ‘I should imagine Sir Walter will grace us with his presence,’ said a new voice from behind them.

  Tom swung round to find Sir Thomas Walsingham at his shoulder. The spymaster and patron of poets was accompanied by Audrey, his wife, and Kate Shelton his sister-in-law who was also Tom’s current lover. In his train were one or two other poets who, like Will, had not made it onto George Chapman’s list of mourners. John Donne, whose eyes just failed to meet Tom’s but rested lingeringly on Kate. Thomas Watson was there, the man who introduced Sir Thomas to Kit Marlowe who was, perhaps there in spirit.

  Ben Jonson bulked out the group, his normal massiveness somewhat reduced by his recent term in Newgate for killing Gabriel Spencer. He nodded at Tom companionably enough, for they had worked together in the past. Tom nodded back, the Master of Logic observing the way Ben stroked the ball of his left thumb where the letter ‘M’ of the murderer’s brand still burned - spiritually if not physically. Though the brand itself had probably hurt less than the forfeiture of all his property, goods and chattels, which was likely why the notoriously proud young man was relying on Sir Thomas’ bounty.

  The neck verse ran through Tom’s mind as he looked at Jonson - the verse from the psalms of David that the poet and playwright, who had admitted manslaughter, had to recite to receive benefit of clergy and a brand instead of a hanging: ‘Miserere mei Deus secundum misericordiam tuam iuxta multitudinem miserationum tuarum dele iniquitates meas... Have mercy upon me, O God, according to thy lovingkindness: according unto the multitude of thy tender mercies blot out my transgressions. But then all Tom’s thoughts were simply overcome by the arrival at his side of Kate Shelton, the origin of all his most pleasurable transgressions. Tall, deep-bosomed, witty and as forceful as either Rosalind or Audrey, Tom often wondered whether his green-eyed, flame-haired mistress had made her way into Will’s play of the Taming of the Shrew five years ago. Though he had to admit that if she was Shakespeare’s shrewish Kate, he was certainly no cunning Petruchio. She snuggled against him in a manner that would have had the carved saints and angels around them averting their eyes had they been able. His nostrils filled with the fragrance of her recently washed and perfumed hair. His ears filled with the throaty purr of her whispering. ‘Well met, my Tom. We came hither apart but what say we leave together?’

  ‘Gladly,’ he answered. But then he added, ‘I see Sir Thomas is moving close behind Essex.’

  ‘All the better to see the interment. Spenser, remember, was a client of his long before he went to Essex and Raleigh for sponsorship.’

  ‘Do you know why he did so?’

  ‘He was well served by what Sir Thomas gave when it was combined with his own income from his estates until the Irish victory at the Yellow Ford and the anarchy that sprang from it - which led to the burning of his castle, the death of one of his children, the flight of his family to the city of Cork and the ruination of his profits from his Irish land holdings which is also what he was seeking to discuss with the Council.’

  ‘And the reason he re-published a volume of his earlier poetry, including some works that had been banned.’

  ‘Ah. You refer to Mother Hubberd’s Tale. Sir Thomas was very much surprised tha
t he dared let Jaggard reprint that. And that Jaggard dared to do so. It has been banned and burned of course and Jaggard’s fortunate not to have Poley and Topcliffe after him.’

  ‘Not just Poley and Topcliffe but Raleigh and Cecil from what I understand!’

  ‘And who is it controls Poley and Topcliffe do you think?’

  ‘Essex controls Poley for the nonce. Did you not know he is Pursuivant Marshal?’

  She gave a gurgle of laughter. ‘Essex might think he controls Poley but...’

  ‘But what, Lady Katherine?’ said a yet another new voice. Kate and Tom turned to see that Robert Poley was standing immediately behind them in the place which Will and Rosalind had occupied a few moments earlier.

  iii

  This was the Poley Tom was used to - bathed, barbered, attired in black. Calculatedly at the edge of Essex’ party but not really a part of it; the Pursuivant Marshal maybe, but also - and perhaps more so - the Chief Intelligencer to Secretary Cecil and the Council. Tom was tempted to raise the circumstances of Sunday’s meeting in the Marshalsea, but he could see no good coming from irritating a man who, albeit temporarily, controlled almost all the law enforcement agencies in the country.

  ‘Ah, Master Poley,’ said Sir Thomas, glancing over his shoulder. ‘A word with you...’

  ‘But one word?’ Poley ironically quoted the doomed Mercutio from Will’s Romeo as he moved to Sir Thomas’ side. Apt enough, thought Tom, for it was generally recognised that Mercutio was a pen portrait of Kit Marlowe, recently deceased at Poley’s instruction and with Poley’s direct involvement when the play was first performed. Will and Rosalind, he noted were further back, looking at the tombs of headless Henry and his absent wife Catherine of Valois. He turned back, watching the two spies moving forward side by side.

  Tom watched as the two men moved further and further until they were standing at the heart of Essex’ household, immediately behind the Earl himself. ‘I wonder,’ whispered Tom to Kate, ‘whether the Earl has read Sir Thomas North’s translation of Plutarch?’