Sword of Shame

by The Medieval Murderers

  A fire slumbered under another ornate chimney-piece. The chamber was full of furniture: chests, tables, an old coffer-seat, and other items piled into dark corners. There must have been a window in the facing wall but heavy curtains shut out the winter evening. Everything looked old and fusty. The largest and fustiest item was a great bed with bulbous foot-posts supporting the tester overhead. Under an ornate coverlet was a figure half sitting, half lying, propped against a mound of pillows. A large woman wearing a brown overdress was leaning in a familiar manner against the bed, wrestling with the pillows. I was surprised to see two people in the room, since I hadn’t hear any sound of conversation from outside. I halted some way from the bed, the momentary sense of conspiracy which Martha and I had enjoyed now gone.

  Elias Haskell waved a stringy arm at the woman, who was kneading his pillows with her powerful hands. ‘That’s enough, Abigail. I am quite comfortable.’

  ‘Thank you, Abigail,’ said Martha.

  The woman did not go immediately but delayed to fiddle with some items, a bowl and a few stoppered bottles, which were disposed on a table by the side of the bed. She scowled at me as she passed.

  When the servant had left the room, Martha Haskell said, ‘Uncle, here is someone come to see you,’

  Elias was wearing a white night-cap. His eyes were dark pools in a long-nosed face. All of this was fairly plain to see, for a pair of candles were burning in the recesses at either side of an intricately carved head-board. The whole scene made me think of a shrine or a tomb.

  ‘What have you brought me?’ he said.

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Nothing will come of nothing.’

  ‘I expect nothing, sir,’ I said, ‘since I find myself here under…false pretences.’

  ‘At least you admit it.’

  The voice might have been thin but the mind behind it was sharp. Elias Haskell looked unwell but he did not have the appearance of someone on the verge of death.

  ‘This is Nicholas Revill, uncle,’ said Martha. ‘He’s a player. He took the wrong turning.’

  Swiftly she explained the circumstances by which I’d arrived at the Haskell rather than the Maskell household. It made me appear foolish all over again, but I suppose I deserved it at least once more. I looked around the room in my discomfiture and moved nearer to the fireplace. I noticed that a large H, wreathed with fruits and foliage, was the central ornament in the chimney carvings. H for Haskell, presumably. Above the fireplace a great sword was displayed, while on either side of it there hung a tapestry. One tapestry depicted Judith holding up the decapitated head of Holofernes, while the other showed St Christopher carrying the Christ child on his back across the river. I looked towards the bed to see Elias smiling slightly.

  ‘A player, eh?’ he said. ‘I remember the old London playhouses. I remember the Red Lion.’

  ‘Before my time, sir,’ I said, but warming to him on account of his knowledge.

  ‘A player makes a change from the usual visitors.’

  His tone was more welcoming than that of the other men in the household. Now I smiled back, in gratitude and to show that I bore him no ill will because he knew of my blunder. I felt more at ease. Someone touched my right knee. For an instant I thought it was Martha and wondered why she was stooping. I looked down. And almost threw myself into the open fire, in fear and surprise. As it was I found myself jammed up against the chimney-piece and holding out my hands to ward off any attack.

  Crouched on the floor nearby and looking up at me was a wrinkled child. No, not a child, but a horrible, diminutive old man, with long arms and a bare head and great eyes.

  But it was neither a child nor an old man. Rather it was a creature, one of which I had often heard but seen on only a single occasion. The beast wasn’t in the menagerie of the Tower, as you might expect, but in the company of a sailor on one of London’s wharfs. They’d appeared to be good friends, the sailor and his creature. So, after the first shock had subsided, I instinctively recognized this specimen for what it was.

  ‘You’ve taken his place by the fire,’ said Elias Haskell.

  I couldn’t reply straightaway, I was still shaken, but I noticed that he was smiling more broadly now. Even Martha seemed amused.

  ‘Grant does not like the fire,’ she said, ‘because he singed his fur one day. But he thinks that the place in front of the fire is rightfully his. He resents anyone who stands where you’re standing.’

  Grant? Hadn’t the stout man in the hall told me to convey their greetings to just such an individual? Who would have thought that Master Grant would turn out to be a monkey. I’d wondered at the gatehouse whether I was entering some private bedlam. It had been an idle thought. Now I began to consider whether I really had wandered into a madhouse. Either that or I was dreaming.

  ‘Where does he come from?’ I said for the sake of saying something. I continued to eye the monkey while he continued to gaze on me with his large eyes. He was crouched on his hind legs and with his forelegs–or arms, I suppose–scraping the floor. I was afraid that he might take it into his large, furrowed brow to leap up at me and fling his hairy arms around my neck. That was how I’d seen the sailor carrying his monkey on the London wharf, the man striding along, his face all brown and creased, with the beast clinging round his neck like a wizened child. They’d looked alike, the sailor-man and the monkey. I realized now where the musty smell in the room came from. It wasn’t so much the sick man in his bed or the unaired state of the chamber. It was this brown creature that crouched underfoot.

  ‘Grant came from Africa,’ said Elias. ‘He belonged to one of the fellows at a college in Cambridge, though I do not know how he came by him. The fellow was called Grant too. When the man died he left me the monkey.’

  ‘In God’s name, why?’ I said.

  ‘Because I once said to him that the creature had more sense in his head than a whole tribe of humans. Not just more sense but he is better-natured too. Grant the man was glad that I approved of Grant the monkey, while I was glad to take the monkey when his owner died. See what he can do.’

  I turned aside to look, relieved that the monkey had shifted his ground. He was waving his arms above a pair of upturned pots set in a clear space on the rush-and herb-strewn floor. The pots were small, such as you might keep trinkets in. When he was sure I was watching him, he lifted up one of the pots. Nothing there. He lifted the other. Something glinted dully. I craned forward. It looked familiar. It was familiar. My hand flew to my doublet pocket. The copper buckle I’d removed from my shoe in case it was lost in the snow, the buckle in the shape of a love-knot, was gone. Whether it had fallen out or whether this monkey had somehow picked my pocket, I didn’t know, or care. I made to retrieve my property. At once, Grant started gibbering angrily and shifting on his haunches.

  ‘It’s his game,’ said Elias Haskell. ‘Let him be.’

  I stood back, in a state that wasn’t amusement or anger or amazement, but some mixture of all three.

  The monkey lumbered round so that he was hunched between me and the two pots. His long arms fiddled with the pots, sliding them around the floor. I knew what he was doing of course. I’ve seen similar tricks played by the coney-catchers on the London streets. So have you, I expect. Admittedly, the tricks are usually played out with three containers rather than two, but we must give the monkey some leeway. The coney-catcher waits for a country bumpkin to come along. He bets the bumpkin that he won’t be able to locate some small item hidden under one of three upturned goblets or coconut shells which are then shifted rapidly around. The bumpkin wins on the first couple of occasions and that encourages him to wager heavily on the third. Surprisingly, that’s the time he loses.

  I’ve seen this trick performed on the Southwark streets by all manner of humans but I’ve never seen it carried out by a monkey. As it happened, the monkey wasn’t quite as adept as his human counterparts and I was able to glimpse which pot my buckle was secreted under as he shuffled them about. When he
’d finished I pointed to that one. The mischievous beast deliberately lifted the other. Martha laughed. I felt annoyed, with her, with Grant the monkey, with myself. Fearing this might go on all night, I looked in despair at Elias Haskell.

  The old man said, ‘I know what you’re thinking, player. But Grant does not outstay his welcome, unlike human beings. See.’

  Elias snapped his thin fingers. The monkey swivelled his head towards the sound and then abandoned his upturned pots. He moved across the room with a queer, lolloping gait, like a man who can’t quite decide whether he’s going to walk or to crawl. In a dark corner on the far side of the chamber, I now saw, there stood a kind of large cage made out of wooden slats. The monkey called Grant entered the cage and pulled the door to after him. It was like a prisoner returning to his cell. Before he could think better of it, I picked up my copper buckle and put it back in my doublet.

  ‘Have you had any refreshment since you arrived?’ said the man in the bed, and then without waiting for a reply, ‘I thought not. Those carrion in the hall are too busy watching and waiting to be hospitable. Martha, bring our player-guest a beer.’

  The girl had all this while been watching the monkey and his tricks with indulgence. Now, uncomplaining, she left the room. Elias Haskell indicated a covered chest which was positioned near the bed. I sat down on it. No longer caring whether I appeared inquisitive, I cast my eyes over the sick man.

  ‘Well, player, do I look the part?’

  ‘I am not sure what part you mean, Mr Haskell.’

  ‘I heard you and my niece talking outside the door. She doesn’t approve of my little games, as she calls them. I expect she told you I was shamming illness to torment the carrion in the other room.’

  By carrion, he meant the three men whom I’d encountered in the hall. It seemed strange that he should refer to his cousins as carrion birds. But I suppose that a man who keeps a monkey as a pet may well regard his fellow men strangely, whether they are kin or not.

  ‘Your niece said nothing about shamming.’

  And, indeed, now that I was looking at him more closely there was something hectic about the old man’s face. The skin on his high forehead was as wrinkled as parchment or the monkey’s brow. His eyes were murky pools but with a glint of mischief–or malice–at the bottom of them.

  ‘Nor am I altogether shamming, Nicholas Revill. Even so my death is not to be as imminent as they hope. I’ll send them home with their tails between their legs, like whipped curs!’

  From carrion to curs. I suppose I must have looked baffled or taken aback at the force of his words, despite the thin tones in which they were delivered, for he went on: ‘You wonder why I bother to torment the carrion. But I don’t torment them, player. They torment themselves, the crow and the raven and the vulture. They come flocking here because they fear that they will miss out on all the juicy pickings. They’re almost more frightened of each other than they are greedy for themselves. That’s my name for them, crow, raven and vulture–it suits their function, you see. Oh, I almost forgot the woodcock. Mustn’t forget the woodcock. They are very stupid birds, woodcocks.’

  He watched to see how I was taking this information. The light from the candles in the recesses of the head-board glinted off Elias’s parchment-skin and now I wondered whether he was actually sicker than he supposed, sicker in mind rather than in body. But he followed this with a remark that showed he was in full possession of his faculties.

  ‘Don’t look at me so askance, Nicholas. You have your audience as a player just as I have mine. Both audiences must be tantalized.’

  ‘Our audiences are tantalized by arrangement,’ I said, stung by the comparison. ‘And they don’t go home with their tails between their legs. They go home cheerful, or thoughtful–or both.’

  ‘The Haskells are a very old family,’ said Elias, ignoring my words. ‘It is generally believed that old families must be rich, especially when they’ve been reduced to the nub. Martha and I are the nub. Crow and vulture and so on, the carrion cousins, certainly believe it is so. Rich, ha!’

  There was the sound of the door opening and Martha Haskell returned, bearing a mug of beer which she handed to me. Gratefully I took a draught from the mug. It was the first drink I’d had since setting out from Cambridge that morning.

  ‘Master Revill will have to stay the night, uncle,’ said Martha. ‘The snow is coming down good and hard now. The road to town would be difficult enough to find by day.’

  ‘Then he shall stay,’ said Elias. ‘He can be entertained by our guests. I’ll be interested to know what he makes of them. Come and talk to me again after supper, Nicholas. Let him have a room on the upper floor of the house, Martha. Go now. I am tired. No doubt I shall have a parade of cousins coming to bid me goodnight.’

  Elias fell back on the pillows and shut his eyes. Martha led the way from the chamber, taper in hand. The large servant woman who’d been struggling with the pillows was standing outside.

  ‘My uncle is very tired, Abigail,’ said Martha. ‘I do not think anyone else should be admitted to see him for the time being.’

  The woman was like a sentry. I said as much to Martha when we were out of earshot.

  ‘Abigail is fierce in guarding Elias. We have few servants in this house, in fact only Abigail as housekeeper and one of the Parsons in the kitchen.’

  ‘Parsons?’

  ‘Oh, that is the family in the gate-house.’

  We went down another passage and turned a corner.

  ‘You are thinking this is a large house for so few people?’ said Martha, reading my mind over her shoulder.

  ‘It’s like being in a maze,’ I said.

  ‘The Haskells were a great family once, with many limbs and branches. But now only my uncle and I are left. And all our cousins.’

  We came to a cramped flight of stairs. We climbed them and arrived at a low door. Martha lifted the latch and it opened with a creak. Inside was a small and stoop-ceilinged room. She held the taper up. There was a plain bed in a corner and a squinty little casement window.

  ‘I will tell the housekeeper to bring some more blankets,’ said Martha. She bent down and touched the taper to another candle which was set in a grease-pan on the floor.

  ‘I’m used enough to the cold,’ I said.

  ‘Cambridgeshire has its own special cold,’ she said. ‘The wind and snow come straight from Muscovy, they say.’

  ‘You should see my lodgings in London–feel them rather–for a taste of true cold and damp.’

  ‘You are not a householder, Master Revill?’ she said.

  ‘Why no, a lodger still.’

  She seemed to be about to ask something further, perhaps whether I was married and had children (the answer was no to both), but instead she said, ‘I’ve never been to London.’

  ‘You ought to visit us. It is a great city.’

  ‘My uncle needs me here. He gets fretful if I am away even for half a day. I have lived here since my father died.’

  ‘You’re a very devoted niece.’

  ‘He has his odd ways but he is a good man,’ she said. ‘You have no bags with you, Master Revill?’

  ‘Do not be so formal but call me Nicholas. I didn’t expect to be staying the night, whether with the Maskells or the Haskells. I set out before the snow came down, thinking to get here and back in a day. All I have with me is a letter of introduction from the shareholders. My gear is at an inn in Cambridge.’

  ‘I shall ask Abigail to find you a night-gown also. There is everything hidden in this place if you know where to look.’

  ‘Is that why the cousins are here? Do they believe there is hidden treasure?’

  ‘Probably,’ she said. ‘I must go attend to the supper arrangements, Nicholas. Come downstairs when it pleases you.’

  ‘Wait,’ I said. ‘What reason are we to give for my visit here? You’re not going to tell the story of my…blunder, are you? How I mistook the Haskells for the Maskells.’

  It
was strange but if she’d said that she was going to repeat my foolishness once more round the supper table, then I think I’d have taken my chances with the snow and the darkness and the fens and the rhines beyond the door. Death before humiliation.

  ‘Don’t worry, Nicholas,’ she said. ‘I shall think up some excuse for your presence. After all, everyone else is here on false pretences.’

  And with that she exited the room. I moved a couple of paces to the window (those two paces being about the width of the room) and wiped at one of the panes to peer outside. The glass was thick and distorted the view. As far as I could see we’d come in a circuit in our journey through the house, and I was now peering out of a room somewhere above the front door. The snow was coming down so thickly that it was impossible to discern much but I was looking at the courtyard and the little gate-house by which I’d entered. I hoped that Rounce was being well cared for in the stables, assuming that Meg and the stable-hand Andrew had been able to keep their hands off each other long enough to tend to him. Considering the foolish error I’d made, I had been quite kindly received, at least by Martha and Elias Haskell. It was a strange place, though, this Haskell household. I remembered the words of the podgy Meg in the courtyard: ‘They are all fools that come here.’

  As I’d said to Martha, I had nothing with me apart from the clothes I stood up in. There wasn’t much to detain me in this little room either. So, picking up the grease-pan which held the candle, I made my way back down the stairs and along the passageways which Martha and I had threaded moments earlier. I passed the kitchen. A woman was standing over the table, working a pestle and mortar. I stopped. She glanced up. It was Abigail, the housekeeper. Evidently she had abandoned her sentry-duty outside Elias’s door. The light was stronger in the kitchen, a combination of fire and candles, and I could see surprise, even suspicion, on her face before she recognized me.