The Harlot's Tale (The Midwife's Tale)

by Sam Thomas

  He gestured for the beadles to wait.

  “How many people have seen the body?” I asked.

  “Why do you ask?”

  “Please tell me,” I replied.

  “Mr. MacDonald, of course,” he said, counting on his fingers. “Joseph and Mark both entered the room with me, then the three of you. So seven in all. Why do you ask?”

  “And you trust our discretion? Each of us?”

  “Of course,” he said. “Will lacks political sense, but none of you is prone to gossip.” I wanted to defend Will, but circumstances required that I ignore the affront.

  “We first suspected Stubb because of the pamphlet he wrote about Jennet. He knew too much not to have some connection to the murderer.” Edward nodded. “This time we know everyone who has seen the body. We should wait to see if Stubb writes another pamphlet. If he writes about Betty, if he knows things that only the killer could know, we’ll have more evidence against him. If we are patient, he might well give us the proof that he is the killer.”

  “A pamphlet would not convince a jury,” Edward pointed out.

  “Perhaps not, but at the very least we’d have another piece of evidence. Edward, you can’t let him see the body.”

  He thought for a moment before coming to a decision. “The test will prove his guilt or innocence,” he replied, pulling his arm from my grasp. “If I can solve the murders tonight, I will. And then we can be done with the foolishness about Mr. Ward’s daughter being the murderer.” He turned away and motioned for Joseph to take Stubb upstairs.

  “Edward, please,” I begged, but he followed Joseph without a look back.

  Furious, I returned to Martha and Will. “How a man can have such good sense in business yet remain foolish is beyond me,” I said as I sat. I explained Edward’s decision to test Stubb’s guilt.

  The three of us sat in silence gazing up at the stairs, awaiting Edward’s verdict.

  We didn’t have to wait long. Not five minutes later, a stone-faced Stubb appeared at the top of the steps, his hands now free of the manacles. Without a word or even a glance in our direction, he descended the stairs and walked out into the night. Moments later, Edward and Joseph came down and joined us.

  “I take it she didn’t bleed?” I asked Edward.

  “No,” he said.

  I could see Martha fighting to keep a hold on her tongue, so I said what she could not.

  “I warned you. We had our chance to connect Stubb to the murders, and you lost it. Now he’s free to write his pamphlets, and there’ll be nothing we can do.”

  The corners of Edward’s mouth twitched as he considered my words. He knew he had made a mistake, but he could never admit it, certainly not in front of Will.

  “If the Lord had seen fit to expose the murderer on this night, He would have done so,” Joseph said. “It was God’s will.”

  Edward nodded in agreement. He was clearly pleased with Joseph’s logic. “We’ll find the murderer. God will see to it.” He turned to Joseph. “Come, you must oversee the whore’s burial. Have two beadles dig the grave and find a minister to say the service. There’s no sense in waiting until morning.” He turned and left the tavern without another word to me or Will.

  “Now what do we do?” Martha sighed.

  “Somehow Silence Ward must be a part of it,” Will said. “I don’t know how she did it, but we all heard what she said. She had the verse memorized. It is the only explanation.”

  “Come now, Will,” I said as gently as I could. “Your father has gotten much wrong tonight, but how could she have bound and killed Betty? How could she have overcome both Jennet and her man, and then Mary Dodsworth and her lover? She is just one woman.”

  “Perhaps she and Stubb did it together,” Martha said.

  The idea gave me pause and I motioned for Martha to continue.

  “They’re mad enough, that’s clear as can be. And you saw her face when she called him a soldier in the army of the Lord. If they’re as besotted with each other as they are with their God, why couldn’t it be both of them?”

  “Why not indeed?” I said, warming to the suggestion. “But how can we prove it?”

  “We talk to James Hooke,” Will said. “He’s as infatuated with Silence as she is with Stubb, but far too cowardly to do anything himself. If he knows we’re trying to see Stubb arrested, he’ll leap at the chance to help.”

  “But if we’re right, he’d be putting the noose around Silence’s neck as well,” Martha observed. “He’d not want do that.”

  “We leave that part out,” Will replied. “We tell him we think Stubb is guilty, and nothing more.”

  I wondered what Edward would make of such Machiavellian scheming from his own son.

  “But he’ll not talk to us, not after last year,” I said. “And if Rebecca were to find out that we approached him about another murder? I can only imagine her reaction.” The previous summer, I had come to suspect both Rebecca and James of murder, and came within an inch of seeing them hanged together.

  “Oh, come now, Aunt Bridget,” Will teased. “You can’t say that you’re afraid of that old maul, are you?”

  In the past I would not have shied away from angering Rebecca Hooke, but her friendship with the Wards made her much more formidable an enemy, and I was chary of angering her.

  “Love will make a wise man play the part of the fool,” Will continued. “And James is a fool to begin with. He will turn on Stubb if we give him the chance. If you have any other ideas, Martha and I would love to hear them.”

  “I’ll think about it,” I said at last. “If nothing better presents itself, tomorrow we’ll try to find him when he’s away from his mother. Perhaps he’s forgotten her wrath.”

  Even Will had to smile at the thought; the last time James had angered his mother, she’d broken his nose with a Bible.

  The three of us drained our glasses, then started for home. Will returned to his father’s house, not far from the tavern, while Martha and I began the much longer walk back to St. Helen’s. Will had loaned us his lantern, but the moon had set, so we had even less light than before.

  “God, I could sleep for days,” Martha moaned as we neared the Ouse Bridge. “We start the day with a birth, you’re interrupted by two murders, and then we are both called to yet another murder in the opposite corner of the city.”

  “I’m comfortable that the murderer isn’t also a midwife,” I said with a smile. “She’d not have time to do both.”

  We lapsed into a comfortable silence as we walked, which was the only reason we heard the footsteps behind us. I froze and glanced at Martha. Even in the lantern’s guttering light, I could see she’d heard them as well.

  “Are we being followed?” she breathed. “Could it be Stubb?”

  “I don’t know. I hope not.” While Martha could defend herself better than most women, I had little hope that she could hold her own against a giant such as Stubb. In one motion, I pulled her into a darkened doorway and slipped the lantern under my cloak. If we were being stalked, it seemed best to make ourselves as inconspicuous as possible.

  We huddled in the shadows, peering back the way we’d come. I could not decide whether to be relieved or worried when nobody appeared.

  “I didn’t hear a door,” Martha whispered. “They’re hiding, too.”

  I nodded. A hundred paces to the north I could see the glow of the lanterns at the guard post on the Ouse Bridge. I considered crying for help, but did not want to provoke our pursuer to violence; if he were close and bent on murder, we would be dead before the watchmen arrived. We would wait—as midwives, we were good at that.

  After a few minutes, we heard a shuffling of feet, and two figures stepped out of an alley. They paused and peered in our direction. I heard a whisper, and one of the figures produced a lantern from under his coat. They began to walk toward us. I inhaled sharply when I recognized them. The two men following us were Hezekiah and Praise-God Ward.

  As they approached, it b
ecame clear that they would pass so close to us that we could not hope to stay hidden. I did not think we had much to fear from the Wards—better to be found by them than by Stubb—but I did not relish being discovered skulking in a doorway in the middle of the night. Without warning, I exposed the lantern and stepped into the road.

  “Halt!” I demanded. “What business do you have being out at this time?”

  Praise-God and Hezekiah nearly leaped out of their boots in surprise, and both men cried out as if I were a knife-wielding highwayman. With a cry of pure terror, Praise-God slung his lantern at me, but it sailed harmlessly over my head and shattered on the street behind me. I fought to control a laugh at my own audacity and Praise-God’s panic.

  “Well?” I asked again. “Why are you here?”

  Praise-God tried to reply, but jabbered like a madman. Hezekiah regained himself more quickly than his son.

  “We are visiting one of my flock who is sick to her very soul,” he said, as if daring me to challenge him. “The devil’s work does not end when the sun goes down, and neither does the Lord’s.”

  “It is true that Satan never rests,” Praise-God said, nodding in agreement. Hezekiah gave his son the same withering look that Edward reserved for Will when he came drunk to supper. Praise-God looked more closely at me. “You are the midwife who assaulted my mother,” he said, his eyes narrowing. “And my sister.”

  “Never the mother,” I replied.

  “And your sister deserved it for her impudence,” Martha chimed in. Hezekiah seemed unmoved by the news that I’d attacked his wife and daughter. Indifference to such assaults might seem cruel in some men, but after all he’d suffered at Deborah’s hands, I counted the sin as venial.

  “You are a midwife?” Hezekiah asked, looking me up and down. “You are attending a woman in travail, I assume?”

  I nearly responded that I was—what lie could be more natural?—but something in his voice gave me pause. I realized that I had neither my tools, nor my birthing stool.

  “Not tonight,” I said with a laugh that sounded forced even to my own ears. My mind raced for some other explanation for our presence on a darkened city street after midnight. “I am not just a midwife, but an herbalist, too,” I said at last. “A woman called for me with terrible headaches. I brought some medicines.”

  Ward’s gaze sharpened. I could tell he was suspicious, and I realized that though he had chosen a tyrannical wife, he was no fool.

  “We are alike, then,” he said. “While you care for the body, I care for the soul.” He paused and smiled at me. I found myself strangely charmed; perhaps there was more to this man than a shrewish wife and thundering sermons. “The difference, of course, is that while the body is just so much trash, the soul is immortal.”

  “But I imagine your wife called on a midwife for her travail,” Martha challenged. She was less taken by his smile.

  “Of course,” he said to Martha. “The midwives of Egypt so feared the Lord they disobeyed Pharaoh and thereby saved Moses. There is no question they can do God’s work.” He turned back to me. “Now we seem to be without a lantern, my lady. Might I ask you to accompany us back to our inn? We are just across the bridge.” I could not deny his request, of course, and the four of us resumed our journeys home.

  When we reached the bridge, the watchmen waved us past without a moment’s hesitation, and we soon parted ways. By the time we arrived at my house, Martha and I were both exhausted. As I fell into bed, I said a prayer that the women I served would go for one night at least without a birth, and that the city’s whores would go for one night without a death.

  The next morning I accompanied Martha as she went to Thursday Market. I’d been searching for a few yards of fine lace, and I hoped one of the merchants might have received a package from France. City residents mingled with country folk as they bought and sold every imaginable good. To serve the needs of buyers and sellers alike, shopkeepers had set up stalls with food and drink, while booksellers advertised their wares by plastering title pages on the fronts of their stalls.

  One of these caught my eye: GOD’S TERRIBLE JUDGMENT ON AN UNREPENTANT WHORE it shouted. Below the title lay a rough woodcut showing a half-clothed woman lying on a bed. I looked more closely and confirmed my suspicions: it was a lurid description of poor Betty’s final hours.

  It seemed that Stubb had used Betty’s murder the same way he’d used Jennet’s. The only question was whether he’d given us the evidence we’d need to see him hanged.

  Chapter 14

  I immediately put aside my goal of finding the French lace, and as soon as Martha had purchased the food we needed, we hurried home.

  From the pamphlet’s opening words, it was clear that Stubb had little new to say. He railed against all manner of vicious acts, and claimed that God would not end the heat afflicting the city until sin had been driven from within its walls. When it came to the murder, it seemed Stubb had written about another woman entirely. In his fevered brain, Betty was not a tavern maid who sometimes resorted to whoredom, but a common streetwalker, selling herself every night to all comers. She seemed a symbol rather than a person.

  Stubb inveighed against Betty and other common women for nearly two pages before he turned to the murder itself. He offered a fanciful description of Betty’s unrepentant death, and a horrible account of the wounds on her body.

  “There’s nothing here he didn’t see when he was in the room,” Martha said in frustration. “We can thank your brother-in-law for that.”

  “Let’s just keep reading,” I said, turning the page. Then I caught my breath. “Look—he knows about the papers. As a sign of God’s wrath at her sinful life, the whore held in her hands a trumpet blast from the Lord, holy verses warning her of the fate that awaited all such filthy wretches and beastly sinners.”

  “He couldn’t have seen the paper, could he?” Martha asked.

  “We found it before he arrived and I put it in my apron,” I answered.

  “Either he put the verses in Betty’s hands himself, or the killer told him about them,” Martha said.

  “It seems that way,” I replied. I could feel my heart racing as I sought a hole in the net we were drawing around Stubb, but I could not find one.

  “So at the very least, Stubb knows the killer,” Martha said. “And we all heard Silence quote the passage we discovered in Betty’s hand. It seems they are working together. Will this convince your brother-in-law to question them?”

  I shook my head. “It is still too weak. He and Joseph are so close to the Wards that they will not act unless we give them no choice.”

  I turned to the last page of the pamphlet and let out a small cry, for at the top in large print I saw my name: BRIDGET HODGSON, a midwife of the city, has been charged with solving this bloody murder, but THE LORD OUR GOD says Touch not mine anointed, and do my prophets no harm! He will not allow His justice to be denied. God will surely stay her hand until His work is complete.

  We sat and stared at the words, unable to speak.

  “It’s the same language from the note someone slipped under the door,” Martha said at last. “Touch not mine anointed, and do my prophets no harm! Could Stubb be behind the note as well?”

  “And what does he mean that God will stay my hand?” I cried. “How does he think God will do that? Has that cretin threatened my life? Between the note he left and this pamphlet, I’ll have him arrested this very day!”

  “He’d deny it is a threat,” Martha said. “He’ll say God will be the one who will strike you down, perhaps with the gout or an ague. His works are a mystery, are they not?”

  I tried to calm myself. Martha was right, of course. Stubb had been careful in his choice of words.

  We read the pamphlet a second time, searching for any other hints of Stubb’s guilt. We found none, and concluded that it would not be enough to see him arrested. It certainly would not convince a jury to hang him. Had we made no progress at all?

  A knock at the door pul
led me from such melancholy thoughts. I heard Hannah greeting Will and went to meet him.

  “Look who’s come with me, Aunt Bridget,” Will announced. To my surprise, James Hooke—the son of my worst enemy in York—stepped into my home. “I told him we suspected John Stubb is a worse man than he pretends, and he agreed to speak to us.”

  “Mr. Hooke!” I cried. “It has been too long!”

  Even as the words passed my lips, I winced at their absurdity. While it had been nearly a year since we’d spoken, it was not mere happenstance. Rather, it was because James knew that if his mother found out he talked to me, she would beat him black and blue. James was not a bright lad, but he knew enough to be afraid of Rebecca. Nevertheless, on this day he had overcome his fear, and I knew I had to take advantage of the fact. I brought him into the parlor and sent Martha for ale.

  “Will says you know things about John Stubb,” James said even as he sat. “What things?”

  I weighed my words before speaking. If he had come in the hope of defeating his rival for Silence Ward’s affection, I had to be sure not to impugn her or her family.

  “We believe that he is a hypocrite,” I said at last. “While he speaks of godliness and of living a holy life among God’s chosen ones, in truth he is to be counted not among the sheep but among the goats.”

  James sat up straight and gazed at me, his eyes alight with anticipation. “What sin is it?” he asked. “Is he a swearer? A drunkard? Silence cannot tolerate a tippler.”

  “That is what we are trying to discover,” Will said. “We have heard rumors, but do not wish to spread them without cause. The Lord does not love a gossip.”

  “No, no, of course not,” James replied. “But if I had some idea, perhaps I could help. What have you heard? I would not tell anyone. Especially not Silence or her parents.” In his eagerness to undermine Stubb, James had lost what little artfulness he’d ever had.

  “Mr. Hooke,” Martha said, handing him a mug of ale. “We think Mr. Stubb might have indulged in his particular sin the night before we saw you at the inn.”