A Missed Murder

by Michael Jecks

Agnis was nodding agitatedly. ‘Yes, that’s what Blount was saying.’

  ‘How did you hear about it?’ I asked. I knew Blount of old, and it was highly unusual for him to speak uninhibitedly in front of others. Usually, he would supply just enough information for his servants to carry out their tasks, considering that the less they knew of his plans or aims, the better for all concerned.

  ‘He was having a meeting at a tavern when I was in there, and he had me wait in the next room. I could hear every word.’

  ‘You were listening at his door?’

  ‘Yes.’

  I looked at her with some respect. To listen in to Blount’s conversation was an act of courage. If he had realized, he could well have put her on the top of his list of ‘People I don’t want to hear of again’.

  ‘That was very brave.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Are you both finished?’ Humfrie said.

  ‘Well, at least we know why now,’ I said.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But it doesn’t help us find him.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘No,’ I said more firmly.

  ‘I suppose not,’ Humfrie agreed. He set his drink down. ‘So you continue hunting for him, if you like.’

  I looked up. The sun was out, and it was sweltering already. My armpits felt sticky and my back ran with sweat. ‘I suppose we could always stay here a little longer.’

  Agnis exchanged a look with Jen. ‘Are you serious? You have been talking about how badly we need to find Michol, and now you want to drink away your afternoon here?’

  Jen agreed. ‘Father, come along! We need to discover where he is!’

  ‘I’m staying here a little longer,’ he declared, and thrust his chin and legs out, crossing his arms. He was the very picture of obstinacy.

  ‘I’ll buy us a drink,’ I said.

  Both the women made sounds expressive of contempt and annoyance, and span on their heels, walking away down the lane. A hand reached out, I saw, towards Agnis’s bottom, but before it could connect, she had whirled around, whipped out a knife, and the man withdrew his hand with a yelp.

  I smiled and walked into the dingy interior.

  It was a short walk to the bar, a plank set across a trio of barrels, and I called for two quarts of their best ale. While they were drawn, I turned and glanced about the room.

  There was a loud party at a long table, and as I glanced about, one of the men was bellowing with delight. ‘Come on, Michol! Even at St Olave-towards-the-Tower, they must have …’

  And I saw him.

  There was no mistaking him. As Blount’s original note described him, Michol was a happy-looking fellow, perhaps in his early thirties, and the description of a man with a paunch who looked as though he enjoyed his life was fully justified. Apart from that, his clothing was not of a bad type. It looked to be of a stolid, workaday form, with good, bright colours, although little of the expensive silks that a man like me would require to demonstrate his status.

  But there he was, sitting at a bench, smiling and laughing with other men. It was the kind of sight to make a person feel as if the grey clouds of misery and despair were suddenly burned away under the beaming glory of a full summer sun.

  I did think to go to him and join in with his little party. The men were clearly discussing a game of cards, while there were some women with them to lighten the mood with alternative diversions.

  One of the prettier wenches gave a raucous laugh and slapped the face of the man on whose lap she was sitting, but her hand left no mark. It was not the angry smack of an offended maiden, but a jestful tease, tempting the man to greater efforts.

  I allowed my eyes to flit over the other women in the group, and all were a sight to please a man’s gaze. As I moved on through the crush to the bar and ordered the drinks, I circumambulated the people at the table, and it was as I was talking to the pretty maid serving that I caught sight of the skinnier woman on the farther side. It was enough almost to make me spit out my beer.

  She had been sitting with her back to me when I had entered, so I had no idea who this was at first, but now I could see her plainly: it was Jeffry’s daughter, whom I had seen at his house on the day I had gone hoping to find news of his money.

  Except now she was no ancient wench who was weary from cleaning up after an inveterate gambler, but a woman in her early twenties, if I had to guess, with sparkling eyes, and if her upper carriage was a little lighter than Agnis’s, there was still enough to fill both hands.

  What was she doing here, though? I had left her deep in misery, convinced that she was about to lose her house, knowing full well that no matter what her father managed to do to recover any income, he was sure to squander it on cockfighting, bull-baiting or the time it took for a snail to crawl up a glass. Now she was the glittering beauty in this gathering. Her dress must have cost someone a pretty penny, and she wore about her dainty throat a necklace that gained more from quantity than delicacy. The weight of gold involved was enough to sink a small wherry.

  It was astonishing to see her there, but my eye was drawn back to the man who must soon die.

  For a man whose death warrant was signed, he had every appearance of health and happiness. I had no reason to dislike the man, except for the fact that he was the source of considerable embarrassment to me, since he should be dead and Jeffry alive, but I wasn’t going to hold that against him. Not in the time he had left, anyway.

  And then my thoughts were dislocated as someone else entered the room.

  It had not occurred to me that there might be a second entrance to this tavern, but there was clearly a door at the rear which gave out to a yard where drinkers would go to piss. While I stood there, I saw a couple of men walk in from that direction. It was the second of the two that made me almost drop my ale. I must find Humfrie. I had news for him.

  Gathering up my beers, I tried to duck my head to be as unobtrusive as possible as I squeezed and pushed my way out from the place, spilling only a very little of the beer on my way.

  ‘You took your time,’ Humfrie said.

  ‘Did you know he was in there?’

  ‘Oh, so ye saw him too? I wondered if you would,’ he grinned. ‘That was why I thought we might as well remain here. More fool those two women for not trusting me! They can enjoy their walk while we wait here for him to come out, and then one of us can follow him and do what is needful.’

  I put a hand over my eyes. The sight of the woman and the man in there had quite unmanned me.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘At his table, there was a woman. It was the daughter of the man we killed at the wharf.’

  ‘Oh? Jeffry’s daughter, eh?’

  ‘Yes. How did she come to know Michol? She is sitting in there right at his side.’

  ‘So? Maybe their fathers knew each other?’

  ‘Yes? How, I wonder? Was it a shared interest in gambling? Perhaps both liked to watch cockroaches racing? Or seeing which window pane would attract the most raindrops in a storm?’

  Humfrie was watching me with that steady, grim stillness that I was coming to recognize. ‘What’s the matter with you?’ he said with great preciseness.

  ‘What’s the matter is that Mal the Loaf is still alive.’

  ‘No,’ Humfrie grinned. ‘I think I can be fairly certain that he wasn’t going to get up again after the tap I gave him.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said. ‘That’s a great surprise, then, especially to Jeffry’s daughter. Because his ghost just walked into the tavern there and gave her a welcoming kiss.’

  You know those moments, when you are gaily going about your daily business, and suddenly something strikes you in the face like a recently caught pike? I don’t mean a polearm, of course, but the fish. I mean, if you were hit by a polearm, there would be little humour in it.

  There was a time when I was in a hurry to get somewhere, back when I was still living with my father, and there was a series of fields that had ditches dug all about them, to
prevent flooding, and where the ditches were wider, a helpful fellow or two had installed bridges to facilitate crossing. However, most of these bridges were little more than broad planks with a handrail on one side.

  One day I ran across with urgent abandon. A man in front of me, walking the same way, was striding along in a powerful style, and as I was on the bridge, he thought it would be a fine thing to call his dog, a great shaggy black thing built like a pony. Unknown to me, his brute was at the far side of the bridge behind me. So I was unaware, when the man whistled, what this could mean.

  The first I knew was a thunderous sensation on the plank as the hound sprang on to it. Then I became aware of the wood bouncing before I received a sudden buffet at my knee as the mongrel slammed past and pelted onwards.

  He was fine, of course, but he completely up-ended me; my feet slid on the slimy surface, while my knees collapsed, and in an instant I was upside down in the ditch, my shoulders wedged against the ditch’s walls, my legs waving in the air.

  For a few moments, the hound returned, head set on one side as though contemplating the foolishness of humans who decided to go diving into ditches. Then, with a valedictory shake of his head, which had the unhappy effect of depositing several strings of drool on to my upturned face, he responded to another call from his master and trotted off.

  I have often had cause to think that, were the ditch full of water, I would have drowned, and anyone who knew me would speak of the foolhardiness of anyone who could slip and fall into a stream in such a ridiculous manner. Who, after all, could have guessed at the canine agency of my death?

  But that was plainly one of those moments in which I felt I had been hit about the face by a cold, wet fish. And I was now granted the sight of someone else who was struck with the same sensation.

  Humfrie goggled at me. For a while, he looked like a bull that had run at a man, only to find that the man was painted on a rock wall. He was dumbfounded. As though in a mild daydream, he reached into the bag at his side and withdrew his little leather sack. He weighed this in his hand as though suspecting someone else had been fiddling with it, and had perhaps replaced the sand and stones inside with pure fleece.

  ‘No, he can’t be alive after that,’ he said doubtfully.

  ‘Go in and see for yourself. You know him. You can’t miss him just now. He has a turban of muslin wrapped about his head,’ I said, thoroughly enjoying Humfrie’s discomfort. After all, no expert in any field enjoys being shown to be wrong. I suppose it would be like an alchemist having absolute, incontrovertible proof that all his efforts for the last thirty years had been barking up the wrong tree.

  Humfrie stood, tugged at the front of his jack, took a great gulp of ale, and sauntered into the tavern.

  A few minutes later he returned, this time sinking half his beer. ‘Yes, it’s him,’ he said pensively. ‘I cannot have hit him hard enough.’

  ‘Obviously.’

  ‘But it is interesting that he is with the man Michol,’ he continued, eyes narrowed. ‘If what you said is correct, and Michol is acting for France, I am surprised that he would meet and socialize with a man like Mal. Men who have such an interest in politics that they seek to overthrow a queen rarely meet socially, in my experience. How did they meet?’

  ‘Both are Catholic,’ I suggested. Since King Henry’s creation of the new English Church, Catholics had become an underground body, and even now, with Queen Mary’s sweeping away of so much of her father’s religious reforms and the return of the Catholic Church, many adherents were rumoured to meet in secret. It would be no surprise if these two did.

  ‘So? You think Mal would let religion get in his way?’

  ‘Perhaps politics to them is less important than gambling?’ I hazarded.

  He gave me a look of admiration. I confess, I threw out the comment more as a sarcastic reflection, but he was plainly taking it seriously. ‘Of course!’ he declared. ‘They must be seeking to make money together in some manner.’

  I nodded and smiled knowingly, wondering what on earth he was thinking. Then I returned to the matter at hand. ‘Michol doesn’t know you, does he?’

  ‘No. He is completely unaware of me.’

  ‘So getting close to him should be easy enough. What do you think? Get him into an alley where you can strangle him? A knife in the dark?’

  Humfrie nodded. ‘Something of that nature.’

  ‘Well, I had best leave you so you can follow him.’

  ‘Yes.’

  He was still studying me with a quizzical look in his eye. It was the sort of look that made the hackles rise on the back of my neck. ‘What?’

  ‘I just had an idea,’ he said. ‘After all, I can do little while Mal remains in there. If he sees me, he will likely want to come and chat about my attack.’

  ‘So you will need to remove him before you can kill Michol. I see.’

  ‘I cannot go to him without him chasing me away. If he does, then I will not be able to follow Michol later, will I?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘So, we must have someone else go in there and let Mal see him, so he can be tempted to pursue the hare.’

  ‘But there is only you and …’

  My mouth was in need of Agnis’s finger again. I gaped like a carp, mouth flapping uselessly. ‘But that would … I can’t do that … What if he catches me?’

  ‘I would think that you would be entitled to the defence of preventing a murder. His of you!’

  ‘Which is fine, except he would take more killing than an elephant! Look at the size of him! You thought you had killed him yourself, but there he is still! If you can’t manage it, how in God’s name do you think I can? God’s wounds, it’s mad! You’re mad!’

  ‘All you have to do is let him see you. If you run, he’ll give chase, and with his head the way it is, he will not be able to run too fast. Just go quickly, and he won’t be able to keep up with you.’

  ‘No. I can’t do it. I won’t do it!’

  I entered the tavern as quietly as I could. After all, if the man refused to notice me, it wouldn’t be my fault. I could hardly be blamed for being unnoticed.

  They were all sitting, and I walked around them, so that I could avoid meeting either Jeffry’s daughter’s eye or Mal’s. I had thought that I could wander through, buy a drink, and saunter out in front of Mal. Now a slight difficulty became clear. If I were to do this, then I would be in plain sight of Mal from the moment I turned and faced the table. Since his attention was fixed in that direction, I would have to run the gauntlet to escape the tavern. It was moderately full, so that meant I would have to force my way past twenty feet of slow-moving, aggressively resentful manhood to make it to the door, while all Mal would have to do would be to stand and move four feet or so to cut off my escape. I may be no gambler, but those looked like odds that were not in my favour.

  Standing at the bar, I tried to escape the conviction that his eyes were boring into my back. I stared disconsolately at the ground before me, but found no inspiration there.

  I came to the conclusion that I had two choices. First, I could return the way I had come in, and hurry out and tell Humfrie that Mal had not seen me. That would risk Humfrie’s contempt – well, I was used to that from many people. I could bear his disdain, I was sure, in exchange for my life.

  The second option was to go out and then return so that Mal could see me while I was still nearer the door. That way, he would have the handicap of all the people in his way, and I would be able to escape more swiftly. At least by that means I would be more likely to get outside with a firm grip on my life. It appealed much more.

  There was, of course, the third option of running out through the door to the yard as though I wanted a piss. This only occurred to me now, because as I stood there contemplating my options, I was growing ever more aware that my bladder was full. Now, I don’t know about you, but for me, if I am to run away from someone in a hurry, the very last thing I want is a heavy load of ballast on board. But to go
to that door would involve walking back in full view again.

  Then another thing came to my mind. The door to the outside could have a second exit. If I went out there, I might be able to gain access to an alley or side lane that could take me away from here. I could run back to my house and …

  And meet with the Spaniards and be reintroduced to Ramon and his Toledo steel. That was no option. Where else could I run? Without money, I had no choices. I had to accept the danger of Mal the Loaf’s breadknife.

  I turned to face my enemy.

  He didn’t see me. His own face was turned to Jeffry’s daughter, and the two were laughing and joking like lovers.

  And then I saw Agnis. She was staring at me from the doorway, half hidden behind the door itself. Her eyes were fixed on Mal, and as she looked across at me, I held up my hand.

  It was a moment’s thoughtlessness, that was all. She was there and looking as attractive as only she could, and I was anxious and trying to think of what to do for the best, and seeing her was like seeing an inn after a long and dangerous journey, a refuge and sanctuary against all the dangers that surrounded me.

  So, yes, I lifted my hand. And she saw me. Pretty much at the same time as Mal.

  You have to admire men like Mal. There he was, sitting with a pretty maiden at his side, in a room full of people, and yet even at such a time, even with a head that must have hurt as much as if a dozen bulls had tried dancing on it, even with the men about him who would surely have protected him against any obvious attack, he was still alert and watching for danger.

  It just goes to show that a vicious, evil, murderous halfwit really should not be underestimated.

  I stood goggling in horror as our eyes met across the crowded room, and for a moment I considered trying to make it to the door – but it was very obvious, very quickly, that to try that would be suicide. Even as I considered it, I saw that Mal was standing – Christ’s Blood, he was huge! – and starting to move towards me, like a great ship of the navy getting underway.

  It was really impressive, in a hideously horrific manner. He sort of swam through the crowds; he swept with his left arm, and four men found themselves inexplicably moved a yard or so to the side; his right arm duplicated the motion, and another three men were relocated. With each move of his arms, he took a step towards me. At first his progress was slow, but he began to pick up speed, while I could do nothing but remain where I was, transfixed with terror. I felt as though my feet had sent out roots. A slight murmur, or perhaps gibbering, may have left my lips, but that was all.