Death and the Arrow

by Chris Priestley

  “And by the way,” said Dr. Harker, rooting around in his coat pocket, “the second of the men had this on him.” He held up a card in front of Tom’s startled face: a Death and the Arrow card.

  NEWGATE

  The following day, Tom was on yet another errand for his father. But he had none of the spring that marked his stride when he was paying a visit to Dr. Harker; this was a chore he always dreaded. Today he was delivering to the Reverend Purney in Newgate prison.

  Tom walked past the waxworks, crossed the Fleet, and made his way up Old Bailey, only just managing to jump out of the path of an oncoming sedan chair. Chairmen stopped for no one—they shouted, and those not nimble enough to move were clattered like skittles. The sun leaked through a filthy blanket of clouds, sending beams of light across the city. A balladeer strummed tunelessly at a broken lute, but when he sang, his voice was as clear and sweet as spring water:

  “When first I came to London Town,

  My fortune for to find . . . ”

  The song was interrupted by the arrival of half a dozen sheep and a pursuing shepherd boy. The sheep had been heading for Smithfield but had bolted from their flock and were making a bid for freedom down Old Bailey. The balladeer was knocked off his feet, much to the amusement of passersby, and Tom did not quite succeed in hiding his own laughter. The balladeer shot him an angry glance and Tom continued guiltily on his way.

  A sunbeam struck Newgate as he reached the top of Old Bailey. It was actually one of the gates to the City of London; the prison was built into rooms above its arches and in buildings on either side. Will and his kind called it the Whit, because it had been built with Lord Mayor Dick Whittington’s money centuries before.

  Newgate was a fearful place and Tom could not help but think of Will whenever he came here. Pickpockets and highwaymen waited to have their fates decided at the Sessions House nearby; waited to be branded, flogged, or put in the stocks; to be transported as slave labor for stealing a silk handkerchief or a wig; to be hanged. In addition, the stench from Newgate made the rest of the city smell sweet in comparison.

  “Hello, sweetheart!” shrieked a voice above him. It came from one of the iron-grilled windows of the Women’s Hold above the archway. “Give us a smile, then!” He smiled weakly at the two women who pressed their filthy faces against the rusty bars. “Buy us a drink, pretty boy!” Tom blushed.

  “She-devils!” muttered a voice behind him. It was Purney. The women saw him and a great squawking erupted from the third floor; all of a sudden, a hand shot out and emptied a chamber pot. Tom and the reverend managed to get out of the way in time as they both dived into the cover of the arch just as the contents of the chamber pot splashed on the cobbles behind them. They could hear crazed laughter above.

  “Why we don’t just hang the lot of them I will not understand. Instead we ship them off to the Americas and after seven short years, they’re back again. It’s a disgrace! No, hang them all. It’s for God to be merciful, not us!”

  Tom said nothing, but only because he had promised his father that he would not argue with the Reverend Purney. “I know he’s an old goat, Tom, but we need all the business we can get,” Mr. Marlowe would say. But Tom wished the women had hit their mark all the same.

  He and the reverend usually conducted their business in The Quill, but Purney was busy that day, trying to wheedle a little more information out of the men in the Condemned Hold. It was a perk of his job that he could sell copies of their “confessions” on hanging days. It was these “accounts” that Tom’s father printed. “A pretty trade for a man of God,” Dr. Harker called it.

  A steady flow of visitors filed past them to pay to see their friends and relatives—and accomplices: a young woman sobbing pitifully into a lace handkerchief, a tall man with a dead eye, a stout gent in a powdered periwig, a pockmarked butcher’s boy in a bloodstained apron.

  “Here are your copies, Reverend Purney,” said Tom, eager to get the matter over with.

  “Yes, yes,” said Purney, peeling back a little of the wrapping paper with a grin. “That all seems to be in order; my thanks to your father. Let me get your money, Master Marlowe. . . .” He made a great show of bringing out the bag of money in payment for the printing. Given the nature of many of the visitors to Newgate, this was downright dangerous, and Tom could not rid himself of the idea that the old devil did it on purpose.

  Intentional or not, Tom lost no time in quitting Purney’s company and set off toward Ludgate Hill, throwing anxious glances over his shoulder as he did so. But no one followed him and gradually he breathed more freely and slowed his pace, smiling at his own nervousness. “Blast that old crow Purney,” he muttered to himself.

  Suddenly a hand shot out from an alleyway and dragged him sideways from the street. He tried to call out, but the hand clamped across his mouth and a voice near him hissed, “Hush, Tom!” It was Will.

  “I wish you’d stop doing that!” whispered Tom when his friend took his hand away. “Where have you been, anyway?”

  But Will was barely listening. He was shooting fevered glances this way and that, like a bird that fears the cat’s pounce. When he looked back at Tom, his eyes were wild. “I’m a dead man, Tom. As sure as if I was in my shroud,” he hissed.

  “Will?” said Tom. “What’s happened? Is it Hitchin?”

  “Ain’t got time to tell, Tom. But I’m dead, you have my word on it.”

  “But, Will—” started Tom. Will cut him off and handed him a leather purse, fat with coins.

  “See me buried proper, Tom. I ain’t got no one else,” he whispered, a tear tumbling down his cheek.

  “No!” said Tom. “There must be something we can do, whatever the trouble is—”

  “There ain’t nothing!” spat Will. “You got to swear to me, Tom, for friendship’s sake. A coffin. I don’t want those anatomizers carving me up like a goose.” He was sobbing now. “Swear it, Tom, I’m begging you!”

  “I swear, Will,” said Tom, crying himself now.

  “That’s settled, then,” said Will, suddenly calm. “And now I must bid you good day, Master Marlowe. . . .”

  “No, Will. Let’s go to my father . . . or to Dr. Harker—”

  Will suddenly lunged at Tom, grabbed him by his collar, and stared into his face. “No one can help me, Tom! No one!” He held up a card in front of Tom’s face. Grimy and dog-eared though it was, it still clearly showed a figure of Death holding an arrow.

  Tom gasped. “Will! Where did you get that? Those murders, Will . . .”

  “Don’t say you have me down as a murderer now, Tom?” said Will with a weak smile. “No, I ain’t killed no one and it ain’t Jack Ketch’s noose I’m feared of, neither.”

  “Then what?”

  “Don’t ask, Tom. No good could come of you knowing any more, I swear. . . .” Once again, Will became calm, and he grabbed Tom in a tight embrace. “Remember me,” he whispered, and turned to walk away. Tom tried to stop him, but Will shrugged him off. “Promise you’ll see me buried right, Tom, and then let me go. I wouldn’t want you hurt for all the world, and death is catching. . . .”

  With that, he bolted away as only he could, vanishing into the city he knew so well, leaving Tom standing forlornly in the alleyway, his face wet with Will’s tears and his own.

  ANOTHER STRANGE MURDER

  It was dark by the time Tom reached Dr. Harker’s house, and the lamps were lit. Tom could think of nowhere else to turn, so he hammered wildly on the doctor’s door with his fist. “Dr. Harker!” he yelled. “Dr. Harker!”

  An angry maid opened the door and told him crossly that her master was not at home.

  “Where is he? I have to find him!”

  “Be off with you,” she said. “And come back tomorrow when the doctor is at home.”

  “You know me!” shouted Tom. “I’ve been here many times. I need to see the doctor now!”

  Something in the desperate way he said it softened the maid’s heart a little. “He’s at
the coffee house,” she said after a moment’s pause. “Now on your way, or I shall fetch a constable!”

  But Tom was already running. A toothless old watchman shouted out to him to stop, but Tom ran on through the fine drizzle that polished the cobbled streets.

  He knew that something must be terribly wrong for Will to talk that way. He just wasn’t the sort to say a thing like that without good cause. Tom ran as if in a kind of trance, unable to think of anything but an overriding need to help his friend.

  He could not ask his father for help—he could not even tell his father—but he was sure that Dr. Harker would come to his aid, that Dr. Harker would know what to do. As he ran, he said this to himself in time with his feet on the pavement. “The doctor will know what to do, the doctor will know what to do. . . .”

  Tom almost fell into the coffee shop, gasping for breath. When he looked over to the fire, he saw Dr. Harker in his usual place. Sitting next to him was Mr. Marlowe.

  “Tom, lad,” said his father. “What are you doing here at this time?”

  “I . . . I . . .” stammered Tom, looking back and forth between the two men. He almost ran out again.

  “Come on, sit yourself down and spit it out,” laughed his father. “What’s troubling you?”

  Tom sat down and stared down into his lap, fighting back tears.

  “Tom?” said Dr. Harker, seeing there really was something very wrong.

  Tom hung his head and began to sob. “It’s Will . . . ,” he began, choking as he spoke.

  “Will?” shouted his father.

  “Mr. Marlowe, I thought we had agreed that—” interrupted Dr. Harker, but Tom’s father put his hand up to stop him. He lowered his voice and turned back to Tom.

  “Have I not strictly forbidden you to talk to that— that filthy little jackdaw?” he asked solemnly. “Must you go against me at every turn?”

  “But, Father—”

  “Have I not strictly forbidden it?” he asked again.

  “Yes, but—” Tom began again.

  “Give me the watch, Tom,” said his father quietly, holding out his hand.

  Tom looked at his father, then at Dr. Harker, then back to his father once more. “But—”

  “Give me that watch!” his father yelled, banging his fist on the table and attracting the attention of everyone in the room.

  “Mr. Marlowe, please!” said Dr. Harker.

  Tom’s father nodded, raised his hand briefly in apology, and continued in a lower voice once more. “I gave you that watch as a sign of how I’ve come to depend on you, son. To show how much I trust you and—”

  “Please don’t,” said Tom. “I’m sorry I went against you, Father, but Will’s my friend. And he’s in trouble.”

  “Friend? Trouble? Trouble? Of course the little rogue’s in trouble. He’ll be in trouble till the day he chokes at Tyburn!”

  “Don’t say that!” shouted Tom, getting to his feet. His eyes were wild and his fists were clenched.

  “You dare shout at me?” said Tom’s father in amazement. “You dare . . .”

  “Gentlemen, please . . . ,” said Dr. Harker, making calming gestures with his hands.

  “You dare shout at me?” repeated his father, standing up himself. “Are these the manners your so-called friend has taught you? You dare to go against me? To take that wretch’s side against your own kin!”

  “I’d rather count Will a friend than all the Purneys in this world.”

  “What the raging inferno has Purney got to do with anything?” shouted his father. “Purney can go to hell for all I care, and I daresay shall. . . .” He suddenly realized what he was saying and turned to see several customers nodding with approval. “Purney’s no friend of mine!” he said finally, turning back to Tom.

  “But Will is a friend of mine. And I’ll not desert him!” shouted Tom.

  Tom’s father, his face turning gradually purple, opened his mouth to speak but was cut short by the crash of the coffee-shop door as the newsboy rushed in.

  “Murder!” he shouted. “Another strange murder in the town!” All eyes in the coffee house turned from Tom and his father to the newsboy.

  “Was it arrows again?” shouted Dr. Harker, keen to make the most of the interruption and calm the tempers of his two friends.

  “No, sir; strangled.” A murmur went round the room.

  “Then why ‘strange’?”

  “Well, sir,” said the youth, “now, I’m glad you asked. I says ‘strange’ ’cos although he didn’t have the arrows, he did have the card.”

  “Explain yourself, lad,” said the doctor, but before the youth could speak, Tom yelled, “Who was it that was killed? Who was it that was killed?” The cry was so sudden and so passionate that it silenced the room. Dr. Harker and Tom’s father stared at him.

  “What is it, Tom?” said the doctor.

  “Who was it that was killed?” repeated Tom, quietly now, tears in his eyes.

  “There ain’t no need for shouting,” said the newsboy. “I ain’t no—”

  “Just tell the lad, for goodness’ sake!” said Dr. Harker.

  “All right, all right. As you’re so interested, like; his name was Pigeon, Padget . . . no, no, wait, Piggot. Yeah, that’s it—William Piggot.”

  Tom stared ahead like a madman. He shook his head and mouthed the word “No” soundlessly. A great black wave seemed to crash over him and he thought he might fall over. His father rose to his feet and started toward him, but Tom spun round and stopped him in his tracks with violence in his face. He took out the watch and tossed it across the room toward him. “There,” he said coldly. “Keep it. I never did deserve it.”

  “Tom,” began his father.

  “He . . . was . . . my . . . friend!”

  “Tom!” called his father, but Tom was already out the door and running for all he was worth through the dark and twisting lanes, screaming out in a bitter rage of sadness until his heart was fit to burst or break.

  A FUNERAL IN THE RAIN

  London hardly noticed the passing of a boy like Will. The great city lumbered on its busy way, untroubled by the loss of yet another of its poor children, closing up over the gap he had left. Soon it would be as though he had never existed.

  Or so things might have been, had it not been for Tom Marlowe. Whatever his father might think — and he and his father had barely spoken since their argument in the coffee house—Tom felt a bond with Will that even death could not break. He was true to his word, and with Dr. Harker’s help, he used the money Will had given him to buy a coffin; Will would not be surgeons’ meat.

  On a day of constant and fitting drizzle, Will’s young body was laid to rest in the churchyard of St. Bride’s on Fleet Street. As the church bells chimed, a flock of jackdaws burst from the steeple, calling out and flying off toward the river, and a seagull cried forlornly from a nearby chimney top. The church spire jabbed the sky.

  The only face in the graveyard that was not downcast belonged to the sexton, who leaned against the wall at a respectful distance, puffing on a clay pipe, leaning on a shovel, waiting to fill in the hole he had dug the day before. One grave was much like another to him.

  The rain blackened the headstones and soaked into the heap of clay beside the grave; it mingled with the tears of the mourners as they said their goodbyes to Will and turned away. Tom found it hard to leave the grave-side but let himself be led away by Dr. Harker. The sexton tapped out his pipe and picked up his shovel.

  Will Piggot had been a popular character and the churchyard was full of the most extraordinary-looking people—molls, rogues, and cutpurses—but Dr. Harker had greeted them all with the same civility as if they had been Justices of the Peace. He had taken control of the proceedings as Will’s father might have done, had he not drunk himself to death five years before, and it was greatly appreciated by all who came—particularly Tom, who could never have managed without him. But everyone knew Tom’s part in the proceedings.

  “He’s a
good lad, though, ain’t he, bless him, seeing our Will done right?” said a pale, skinny, pockmarked girl as she patted Tom on the shoulder. “And him from a decent home and everything.”

  “That he is, Bess. You done him proud, boy—and yourself.” There was a murmur of agreement and Tom saw Dr. Harker smiling through the crowd. He felt himself blushing and looked at his shoes.

  “But who could’ve done such a thing?” said a large woman, sobbing into a silk handkerchief.

  “I dunno, Poll,” said a rat-faced man, “but if I finds him, I’ll play the surgeon with him and that’s a Bible promise.”

  “Not if I finds him first,” said another, pulling back his coat to show a brace of pistols tucked in his belt. “These here pops will see the job done true.”

  And so it went on. Tom listened to it all and wondered if they would ever know who had murdered Will and why. After all, if these people did not know, then who would? Tom was once again running through recent events in his mind when he heard the grating creak of an upstairs window being opened in a house next to the churchyard.

  A housemaid unfurled a Persian rug, flicking with a practiced snap, tossing dust and specks of dirt into a little cloud as she did so. The brightly colored rug shone in the grayness, swirling and shimmering as it was shaken. Snap! And snap! again. Then, as the rug was pulled back in through the window, Tom saw a man standing in the shelter of the doorway below. He was keeping out of sight as well as out of the rain. And he was watching the churchyard.

  Tom wove his way through the mourners and the gravestones, trying to keep sight of the man as he did so. The drizzle and the gray gloom made it impossible to make out any of the man’s features, but he was tall and broad and dressed in black.

  Tom reached the path and walked briskly out through the gate and into the street. The man saw him and began to move off, bringing his hat down even farther over his face. A brewer’s cart passed by between Tom and the stranger; when the cart had passed, the man was gone. Tom searched the street, but there was no sign of him anywhere.