The Lost Boys of London

by Mary Lawrence

  “I saw the body before he was cut down.” His eyes never left the fire.

  “Was he a boy under your care?”

  Brother Sedar’s head jerked up. “I gave him a meal and a bed, once.”

  “The constable has not been able to identify the victim. Do you recall his name?”

  “His name was Peter.”

  “Know you his surname?”

  “I do not recall. I only knew his acquaintance for one night. He did not stay.”

  “If the boy had any relatives they must surely be wondering where he has gone to.”

  “If the boy had any relatives would they not have heard by now? They would have come forward. I can think of no reason why they would not. Unless, of course, he had no family.” Brother Sedar got to his feet. He had a broad chest and gave Bianca the impression that he must have been a muscular man in his youth.

  What chores as a monk would have favored strength such as his? She also wondered if it was true that Peter had no family. The child could very well have relatives who, perhaps in some way, felt responsible for the child’s death. Or were, in fact, responsible for it. Whether through negligence or complicity, guilt could silence even the most innocent. Bianca studied Brother Sedar’s face. Could he be feeling the burden of guilt?

  Bianca withdrew the paternoster from her purse and presented him with the beads.

  “This was found wrapped around the boy’s neck. There are some letters cut into the crucifix,” she said, pointing them out.

  The monk shook his head. “I cannot read them.”

  “The initials are ‘Y’, ‘H’, and ‘S’.”

  “Are you suggesting that the initials belong to the owner?”

  “Aye.”

  He handed back the prayer beads. “I do not agree.”

  “What else could they mean?”

  Brother Sedar returned his gaze to the fire. “It could simply be the Greek initials for Christ.”

  “Brother Sedar, do you think that the letters might mean the owner belonged to the cult of the Holy Name?”

  The monk pressed his lips together, making a vein in his temple bulge. “It is possible. But why would anyone advertise that he is a Papist?”

  Indeed, why would the murderer condemn himself by deliberately leaving proof of his association with a religious group so vilified by the king? Was it done intentionally or by accident? Bianca thought on this. She even thought the most likely group of clandestine Papists would be the pensioned religious. She could see several possibilities, each more confounding than the next.

  “It will be dark soon,” said Brother Sedar, motioning toward the door. “The area is not safe at night. I do not want to be responsible should you encounter trouble on your passage home.”

  Chapter 17

  The priest at St. Benet’s, Father Wells, began each day with a meal of poached quail eggs. While he waited to be served, he studied the silvery gray light outside his window, which overlooked a long stretch of enclosed garden—alas, still dormant and showing no signs of waking. The overcast sky promised another dreary day, and he felt his mood adversely effected. It made him think--why was it that one associated sunshine with a sanguine disposition? He tapped his spoon on the table as he considered this, then the spoon stopped midair. Likely, it was because sunshine was so uncommon. It was like a gift from God every time colors were lit to their full intensity. He nodded, content with his explanation.

  Finally, his meal arrived. The platter was lowered in front of him and his wine refreshed. His cook had arranged the twelve eggs--one for each disciple--around the periphery of the plate; an artful attempt to symbolize the seating at the Last Supper. In the center was a slice of bread, toasted lightly on one side--Jesus.

  He scooped up an egg and deposited it on one corner of the toast, then raised it level with his mouth. “Peter,” he said, naming the first apostle and he bit off the corner. With each successive egg he named a disciple and ate ‘him’ along with ‘Jesus’, saving ‘Judas Iscariot’ for last, taking the time to bite ‘Judas’ in half and watch his little yolk bleed.

  His meal done, he pressed his napkin to his lips and rose from the table. His back ached and he grimaced as he made his way to the door to don his hat and gown. It was such a brief walk to the church it was hardly worth the effort of dressing for the weather. If he was younger, he would have made a dash for it and not bothered.

  Wistfully remembering days of his lost youth, he lifted his gown off its hook and reached for his paternoster underneath, but it was not there. Had he dropped it the night before? He looked around on the floor, forgetting his aching lower back, but his search proved fruitless. Perhaps he had taken it to bed. He returned to his palliasse and threw back the blankets, but his prayer beads were not there. He stood a moment trying to remember. There were bits from last night that remained a mystery. In fact, he couldn’t even recall coming through the door and going to bed. Well, mayhap they would be found. He began walking the short distance to Thames Street, pausing briefly on Addle Hill to order his thoughts.

  The previous night had been difficult. He’d stayed out far too late and the wine he’d been served had made him feel queer. He was not certain and could not remember to what, exactly, he had agreed. His recollection of the gathering was fraught with missing moments, and if he had not been accompanied home by the younger cleric in service to Bishop Bonner and Father Foxcroft, he might not have gotten there without mishap. As it was, he had had trouble keeping up with the two men, and he’d been approached by a young thief thinking him an easy target. If his escorts had not answered his calls for help, he might have been knifed in the liver and left to wallow in his own blood. The whole incident was a blur of confusion, but he remembered the shouting and the terrible fear he felt in those precarious few minutes.

  His annoyance with Father Foxcroft persisted past the meeting, even though the man had insisted on seeing him home safely. Foxcroft’s ambition to earn a position under the bishop was on full display, his obvious fawning after Bonner a disgusting show of obsequiousness. Being a fellow priest in Castle Baynard, Wells felt in some measure responsible for Foxcroft’s behavior. He knew Foxcroft didn’t care for him and cared even less about what he had to say, but he had pulled the lackey aside and told him there was nothing worse than a groveling priest.

  “As humans we may grovel before God,” he had lectured. “But do not flatter Bonner to gain office. Earn it through scholarship and exemplary character.” Even though the wine had loosened his tongue and dulled his judgement, he remembered he did not reveal his own shady past with Bonner, which had been handsomely rewarded. (At least to the point where he was able to eat quail eggs every day.)

  Foxcroft had become strident and advised Wells to mind his own affairs and keep out of others’. Wells snuffed cynically, remembering this. He stopped walking to blow his nose, the cool morning air causing a tiresome nasal drip. Foxcroft’s terse response was as he had expected. Men like Foxcroft never see themselves in the light that others view them.

  Thames Street was practically empty this early in the morning. Dogs outnumbered the people and rats outnumbered the dogs. Father Wells could see his breath--the puffs billowing like smoke from a miniature serpent, the kind drawn in the margins of a book of hours.

  The timber construction of a lender’s residence turned into the stone façade of St. Benet’s church, and Father Wells walked along the familiar building to the arched entry. It occurred to Wells that when the church bell rang, its tolling probably shook the lender’s furnishings and his building’s foundation since the two buildings practically touched each other. He imagined the usurer sitting over his important papers, a quill poised, and then the rattling chime shaking the ink from the nib, ruining his numbers. He wondered if the man had grown used to the interruption or whether he anticipated with dread the jarring reminder calling God’s flock to prayer? Either way, the man never complained.

  Indeed, in these times i
t was a prudent man who kept his opinions to himself. Lamenting his own poor decision, he thought that perhaps he had been wrong to reprimand Foxcroft. Father Wells pushed open the door and stepped inside the narthex where the cavernous silence and cool air enveloped him. Perhaps he should have let Foxcroft be; let him make a fool of himself. Aye, he decided in regret--in this environment, a man was better served staying his tongue, and keeping his secrets.

  Father Wells was the kind of man who kept his head down.

  ***

  After informing Patch of the victim’s first name and returning the paternoster, Bianca spent the next few days working on her remedy for spring sniffles and visiting Cammy at the Dim Dragon Inn. No word arrived from the northern border regarding the king’s army or the supposed end to the king’s efforts to suppress Scotland.

  She had visited Fisk’s residence every day and never found his mother or his family at home. It was too far and inconvenient to visit more than once a day. She had tried early in the morning, thinking she might catch them home, and had received no response. The family’s absence troubled her and she had no way of learning whether Fisk had returned. For all she knew, the family could have hurriedly left for some unknown reason--perhaps failure to pay their rent. She continued looking for him on the streets and asked at market, but no one had seen him. Even Meddybemps had nothing to report.

  Her efforts to learn more about the boy named Peter at St. Mary Magdalen’s had also reached a standstill. Even Patch, with all of his pestering and prying, was unable to garner any more information from Constable Berwick or the church officials. Nor was he able to learn anything about Fisk’s disappearance. Bianca’s suggestion that Brother Sedar’s quarters be watched received an unenthusiastic response from Patch and plenty of grousing that he didn’t have the men to devote to such an undertaking. He argued the address was in Castle Baynard and it was Berwick’s responsibility. For the next few days, the series of obstacles forced Bianca’s inquiry into stalemate.

  She occupied her time with her chemistries, studied her notes for past concoctions and devised possible new ones. During swaths of quiet when she tended the fire in her calcinatory furnace and watched the alembics rattle from the heat, her thoughts ran through what she knew about the victim at St. Mary Magdalen and her visit with Brother Sedar.

  Sedar did appear to have been a monk. Certainly, a friar would be able to tolerate the bare necessities of life and teach that sensibility to others. A pensioned monk would have some resources, but she didn’t know how much or even if it was possible to stretch those resources to provide for others. Mayhap he held connections with those of wealth who could help his cause.

  Perhaps he was correct in identifying the initials to be the Greek letters for Christ. But would he say that because his own name “Sedar” matched the last initial?

  Brother Sedar’s reaction to her question about the “cult of the Holy Name” had made her think. “Why would anyone advertise that they are a Papist?” Why, indeed, would anyone in this king’s London flaunt their affinity for the Pope?

  Was the murderer a Papist--a follower of the Pope and the traditional beliefs? Was it his way of flouting his allegiance to the old religion? But why would such a person murder an innocent boy?

  Or, perhaps the murderer had left the paternoster as a talisman, a conscious effort to wish no more harm on the child’s soul than had already been done. In which case, its significance might only be religious.

  However, what if a murderer wanted people to think a Papist perpetrated the crime? Leaving the paternoster with the initials representing the cult of the Holy Name might successfully implicate the group in the murder. Then, again, Brother Sedar and the shopkeeper might be wrong—the letters might actually be someone’s initials, and by coincidence were the same as the Greek letters for Jesus.

  Bianca turned each possibility around in her mind, holding the choices up to the light to try to see through them to some sort of truth.

  It was on one such morning that she had begun to distill peppermint when she went into her back alley to refill a jug with rainwater. She had left the door ajar and upon filling her crockery she heard movement inside her room of Medicinals and Physickes. Thinking she had an intruder, she peeped through the crack in the door. Not seeing or hearing anyone, she waited and listened. Nothing.

  She stood back, wondering if perhaps Hobs had brought her a mouse, but when he appeared next to her with the hair on his tail standing on end, she knew it was something more.

  She quietly poured the water back into the cistern and, wielding the empty jug, crept around the corner of her rent and poked her head out to see the front entrance. The door to her hovel was left ajar. Someone was inside.

  Bianca tiptoed toward the door and quietly pushed it open to better see, glad that the hinges didn’t creak. Someone was looking over her latest experiment.

  He wore a grubby jerkin and Bianca caught a whiff of perspiration. There was also a miry smell of river about him and she guessed he might be a muckraker from the trail of silty clay tracked across her floor.

  She hesitated, trying to decide what to do, but when he found her strongbox with all of her savings and banged it with a pair of iron tongs, she’d seen enough. She raised the water jug and rushed forward to strike him.

  But he was a man practiced in defense. He dodged her blow and caught her arm as it came down. In one smooth move he twisted it behind her back, and the jug fell to the floor.

  “Zounds, ye could hurt someone with that!” he said. He nudged the pottery out of reach as Bianca struggled.

  “I’ll not have my earnings pilfered!” And Bianca kicked his shin.

  The fellow let go of her and clutched his throbbing leg. “Hear, hear,” he said, hopping backwards and raising his other hand in a show of surrender. “I’m not here to steal your money.”

  “I trust what I see. Unless my eyes deceive me, you hit that box with a pair of tongs!”

  “There was a mouse on it. I was doing ye a good turn!” The fellow was as ugly as he smelled. His upturned nose with hairy nostrils was the first thing she noticed.

  Bianca snatched the tongs off the floor and pointed them like a knife. “Methinks that is a quick excuse. Who are you?”

  “They call me Brian Bindle, my lady.” He took off his soiled flatcap and swept it low across his body as he bowed. He watched Bianca from under his ridge of brow until she bid him rise.

  “Why are you here?” Bianca liked him not. And she trusted him even less.

  “Constable Patch sent me. I am to bring ye acrosst the river. There is something he wishes ye to see.”

  ***

  Constable Patch’s emissary insisted that Bianca not delay. A second victim had been found, this time at St. Benet’s, another church located in Castle Baynard ward. St. Benet’s was not far from St. Mary Magdalen and had in common a similar size building, typical of a parish church. It had been a week to the day of the first boy’s death.

  Bindle and Bianca hailed a wherry, and when she asked if Patch knew the victim, Bindle shrugged. “We couldn’t see who it was. They were working to get ‘im down when I left.”

  “Was he hanged from a height?”

  “He was.”

  “Did the victim have dark hair?”

  “Good wife, in truth I could not tell.”

  Bianca thought about Fisk and worried what she might find once she got there. She sat in silence for the ride across, twining a loose lock of hair around her finger and fidgeting in her seat.

  They landed near Paul’s Wharf next to the old ship cranes and the ward’s namesake, Castle Baynard, inhabited by one of the king’s courtiers. From there the church was only a short walk.

  Unfortunately, St. Benet was located on Thames Street, one of the most heavily traveled lanes in London. There was no shortage of interested spectators and Bianca arrived to a scene much like the one before at St. Mary Magdalen. This time, however, the body had already bee
n recovered. The crowd had not yet dispersed and there was an anxious collection of locals milling about. Speculation ran rampant, theories abounded as witnesses tried to make sense of yet another distressing death.

  Bianca arrived just as a well-dressed fellow was taking Constable Berwick to task. The man looked to be of money, likely a nobleman, wearing a smartly tailored doublet and fox-lined gown. Constable Patch stood by, snickering in delight as his peer received a condescending haranguing, the likes of which only a man of education and higher standing could successfully deliver.

  “He likes this not,” said Patch to Bianca’s questioning look. “He heard of the other boy’s hanging and is threatening to take the matter to the Lord Mayor.”

  Bianca had no interest in Patch’s gloating. Foremost on her mind was learning the identity of the victim. She steadied herself, trying to prepare for news about Fisk.

  “Patch, did you see the victim?”

  “I dids, it is another nameless boy.”

  Bianca felt uneasy. “You would recognize Fisk if you saw him?”

  “I believes I would.” He read the concerned look on Bianca’s face and put her at ease. “Nay, ‘twas not yer young friend.”

  Bianca closed her eyes in relief. She resolved to do more to find his whereabouts. Fisk was not her family--but in a sense, he was. When she opened her eyes she took up the nobleman’s cause. “Mayhap telling the Lord Mayor would be a good thing. He may dispatch more help to find the murderer.”

  “Naws,” groused Patch. “Berwick woulds make a pidgy mess of it. He can barely manage his own sorry group of men.”

  “Well then, this may be your chance to show them of what you are capable.” Bianca said this lightly. She wasn’t in the least bit serious. She was curious, though, to see if Patch would think it a good idea. His arrogance never failed to astonish her.

  Patch grew quiet, as if gauging the right moment to make himself known.

  Politicking aside, Bianca got on with her work. “First, though, tell me what happened.” She gripped Patch’s forearm, snapping him out of his reverie.