The Bartholomew Fair Murders

by Leonard Tourney

  “Now, Urse, easy on, now,” Jack says, inserting himself between the pig-woman and Rose. “Contain your spleen, old smock. The girl scrubs with her hands, not her eyeballs. Remember yourself in such years. Did your eye not rove? Did you not slaver after a brawny hunk of male flesh, a well-turned thigh?”

  “My eye roved for a fact,” Ursula concedes, only partially calmed by the wine seller’s words. “But then I had meat on my limbs, a head on my shoulders, yea, and a brain inside it too, a great novelty in these years of shame. No scrawny poultry, I, but a full-fleshed woman. Oh, the skinny birds we must pluck nowadays!”

  She casts a scornful eye on Rose and shakes her head. Then she turns back to the wine seller as though to invite his sympathy. Was this not the sign of the times, this craven girl before her? The very image of the world’s decay? All skin and bones, and her brain no bigger than a pea pod? Why, at home Ursula has a lapdog she swears has a bigger brain, can come when she bids and stay when she bids it and never hikes a leg within

  doors. “Girls nowadays have no more sense hut to gape at every codpiece that passes. Let her mind her work if she wants to continue in my employ.”

  Ursula, winded from her diatribe and sweating as though bedrizzled by a sudden shower, now stops screaming. She gri-maces and scowls, punctuating all this face-making with a snort of contempt for Rose and her ilk. She aims a heavy brow to-ward the wine seller too. His intercession has been a dangerous one—coming as he has between her and her wrath. Yet they are friends. And perhaps, as impossible as it must seem, lovers. For Ursula would hardly have permitted herself to be restrained by any other man, being as they are villains by nature and vil-ifiers by habit, so that no honest woman of trade endowed with a generous portion of flesh and smart lash of the tongue is free from their insults and taunts.

  She orders Rose back to work, sees that her order is obeyed, and then returns to the back parts of the booth. Rose begins to scrub. Jack stays and watches.

  “How’s the arm, Rose?”

  “Oh, it does hurt, I’faith it does. Like a wasp’s sting.”

  She ceases work, glances cautiously at the booth to see if Ursula is watching. Ursula can be heard moving around inside, fussing and cursing again. But at someone or something else now, not at Rose. Rose looks at the wine seller’s good-natured face. He is grinning sympathetically; his eyes are warm and moist; his body, all winey, as though he bathed in malmsey. “There shall be a great bruise, I know it,” she complains.

  Without thinking, she slips her loose smock from one shoulder to examine the hurt place. Gasps at the sight of reddening skin on her upper arm. In doing so, she exposes a generous share of her right breast and nipple.

  “The bruise will go away,” Jack says, watching the girl, the wound, the breast.

  She readjusts the smock on her smooth shoulder and looks at the wine seller again, but he is already focusing his attention on the booth. “Ursula’s a difficult woman, to be sure,” he observes

  in his easygoing manner. “Her temper is that of three women, maybe four.” He laughs genially. “Take my advice, stay out of trouble. Keep your eyes to yourself and your hand to your work. That’s the way to avoid Ursula’s wrath. Who is this boy she speaks of? He’s made off, I see, a politic move on his part.”

  “Mr. Babcock the bearward’s new helper,” Rose says, forget' ting about the pain in her upper arm.

  “The bearward’s helper, is it? He who walks with a limp?”

  “That’s the one,” she says, proudly.

  “He’s a likely'looking lad, despite the limp, but I’d watch myself, Rosie,” Jack says.

  “Why, what do you mean?” she asks, puzzled by the sudden alteration in his expression and tone.

  “Well, now, you know you’re an eyeful for man or boy, girl, a juicy wench,” Jack says, cocking an eye, grinning still so that she feels no apprehension at his appraisal of her body. But she is confused. What is he saying about Gabriel?

  “This Gabriel of yours is a man, for all his handsomeness and kindly treatment.”

  Now she understands. Jack is saying that Gabriel is like the others. Leering and clutching and yes, more than once, pulling her to the ground and penetrating her with their things, to little pleasure for her and sometimes agonizing pain.

  “Oh, he’s good, not evil,” she blurts in the simplicity of her heart. She begins to cry, despite herself.

  “Is he good?” Jack says. “Well, maybe he is and maybe he isn’t. In any case, be careful. Some men are good and some only appear so. Now, you’re a very innocent creature, Rose. As sweet as your name. It’s your nature to think everyone as you are—until you find out differently. But every Rose has its thorn, you know.”

  Every Rose? Did he mean her? Or was he talking of some' thing else? Who was her thorn? She liked the wine seller, but sometimes his words confused her. Yet his grin was comforting, and it still lighted his face. She wiped her eyes, and the wine

  seller went away. She resumes scrubbing, scrubbing more ener-getically than before.

  How she wishes she understood more. She feels confused and hurt. Jack’s words have instilled doubt in her heart. But surely he is mistaken. The bearward’s helper is as good as his words. She is sure of it.

  She thinks of Ursula, now silent in the booth. Sleeping in the noonday shade, exhausted from her screaming—if Rose is lucky. If luckier, the woman is dead, her heart overcome by its own venom. For Rose can never please Ursula. Everything the girl does is wrong, no matter how hard she tries. Rose has no parents to look out for her. She thinks they are dead, but doesn’t know where they are buried. She does know that when you are dead they put you in a box called a coffin and your soul is snatched up by God in heaven while your body remains in the box until it is like the dust in the chamber corner, mere sweepings. On the Judgment Day all bodies are quickened. The soul returns to where the body lies and scoops it up, breathes life into ragged bones, the senseless dust.

  This little religion she has from sermons heard at Paul’s Cross on weekdays, when great preachers address the multitude, does not answer this question for her. Yet she is a girl of great faith, and although the deeper mysteries of doctrine are unfathomable to her, the simpler pieties are well within her grasp. She is loyal to a fault. And loyal to her faith, for, in all, religion is a very pleasant thing to her—a refuge from the cruelty of her employer and the savage men who abuse her.

  Gabriel, to whom her thought now turns, speaks of holy mys-teries. Like the preachers at Paul’s but in a milder, more engage ing tone. Her image of him brings her peace.

  She scrubs and scrubs and scrubs until the long tables are surely clean enough, until the strong soap makes her hands red and rough and burning. It is all futile, however. Ursula will not be pleased. She will probably make Rose do it all over again. Tomorrow, Rose thinks, half the world will be at Smithfield and these same boards she now cleans will be graced with new layers of grease and spit and other filth. Rose will take her turn sweating over the roasting pit, inhaling the pig’s flesh until it sickens her; take her turn waiting on tables, pouring the cheap ale Ursula sells, slapping away the hands probing or clutching, hearing the naughty suggestions of strange men.

  No, Gabriel is not one of them.

  But then, maybe Ursula will forget about poor Rose and think only of pig and money. Pig and money, money and pig. That was the way it was with Ursula. That was all she thought about when the booth became busy—that and the other things Ursula did that were wicked and that she tried to make Rose do. But she would not, no, not for all the beatings and tongue lashings in the world.

  Rose thinks of the coins Ursula keeps in the little cherry-wood box. The box is in a hole, like a little grave. A plank covers it, then rushes. All in the back parts of the booth. Ursula trusts no one. But Rose knows where the box is hidden, has seen the pig-woman secrete her earnings there. Where moth and dust corrupts, as the preacher says.

  It has never entered Rose’s heart to steal. God forbid she break
that sacred commandment either. But she often thinks of Ursula’s treasure, and it gives her some satisfaction to know what Ursula supposes her ignorant of.

  Yes, Ursula’s mind will be on her money and pig once the fair has begun and all the world is at Smithfield. They will come crowding out of Hosier Lane and Chick-lane and Cow-lane and Long-lane, come in droves until a wight can hardly move for all the shoulders and elbows. And in that hurly-burly Rose will be clever enough to find an opportunity to escape. Not to idleness, but to Gabriel, her heart’s longing. In the meantime she yearns for another glimpse of the bearward’s handsome helper.

  Later Ursula emerges from the back parts of the booth, sees what Rose has done and, to Rose’s surprise, grunts a few words of approval. Then she appoints another task to Rose. Some of the meat she has had from the butcher is wormy and foul, beyond use, Ursula complains. It must be hauled off, lugged in

  pails, brim full of globs of rotting swine’s flesh. “And do you think you can find your way to the muckhill?” Ursula asks with heavy sarcasm.

  “Yes,” Rose says, with a little thrill in her heart, since she is already thinking of something more pleasant than wormy meat or the muckhill.

  Ursula snorts with contempt. “Be about it, then. Don’t just stand there. Go inside. I’ve tossed the bad meat in the pails, where I would gladly have tossed the butcher who sold me the meat as well. See that you’re back in a quarter of an hour. No malingering, mind you, or you’ll be very sorry. Very sorry, for a fact.”

  • 4 •

  “That’s good. Yes, that’s well done, lad. Lay it on, lay it on. Don’t stint, now. Straw’s cheap as dirt and Samson loves a cheerful giver.”

  Francis Crisp, one of the two bearwards, was addressing his new helper, who was carrying armfuls of fresh straw from a pile in the comer to the bear’s cage to replace the foul. Samson himself, an old brown bear somewhat worse for the wear and tear of many a bearbaiting, looked on, occasionally taking a swipe at the noisome flies that buzzed about his shaggy head.

  A rectangular stockade used normally for the containment of cattle or horses had been transformed into a bear garden for the fair. Benches of splintery planks of new wood rose in tiers on two sides to allow spectators a view of the pit, the sandy area in between where a tall tethering stake had been fixed like a ship’s mast. At one end of the compound there was a gate to let the crowd in and a little booth where the admission was taken: tuppence for the good seats, a single penny for the common rout, some of whom could stand if they chose. At the other end was a large tent or pavilion with peaked top and closed sides. The tent was Samson’s quarters and contained his cage—a stur-dily built structure of iron bars and heavy oak frame—a great quantity of fresh straw, and a simple pallet in the comer for the bearward’s helper.

  Francis Crisp was an energetic little man in his midTorties, with thinning hair and a long, horsey face. He watched his new helper work, with growing satisfaction, for the young man worked with a will, whistled while he worked, and didn’t com-plain at all. Crisp thought the boy was a real godsend, given the current state of the labor market, and prided himself on

  finding him, although the truth was that the boy had found the bearwards. He had suddenly appeared two days before while the carpenters were still constructing the tiers of seats and every-thing was at sixes and sevens, with the former helper, Simon Plover, run off somewhere. The boy said he needed work, said he would do any honest thing, said his name was Gabriel Stubbs and that he hailed from the north country, as a certain lilt in his speech and innocence of expression confirmed.

  “Too much drink, that’s what it was,” Ned Babcock had said, speculating on the cause of Simon Plover’s disappearance. Ned Babcock was the other bearward, a man of strong moral convictions. “I’ll bet he got soused as a dormouse and went straightway to sign up for a sailor. Mark my words, Francis. We’ve seen the last of Simon—and good riddance too.”

  Crisp had murmured his agreement and made a disapproving face. He had never liked the lazy and shiftless Plover. Gabriel Stubbs more than made up for the loss. “Overmuch wenching too,” Crisp had added.

  “Ay, drinking and wenching,” Babcock said, sighing heavily.

  “So you want to work with the bear, do you?” Crisp had asked the young man, who wore dusty clothes and had a cheerful countenance, despite the limp in his right leg.

  “Yes, sir,” said Stubbs.

  “Bears are not to be trifled with,” said Babcock, a large, round-faced man with a red, blotchy complexion and an easygoing manner. Babcock was senior partner in the bearbaiting enterprise. A man of great enthusiasm.

  “One killed a child a few years past,” observed Crisp matter-of-factly. “Half swallowed him. The mother was beside herself with grief. They slaughtered the bear afterward, executed him like a common criminal.” Crisp glanced at Samson. The bear had given over his futile war with the flies and succumbed to the heat of the day, snoring softly.

  A handsome boy, thought Babcock, finding no mark of sluggard or thief in the smooth features and assessing the contour of shoulder and arm to determine that the young man was fit for

  his labors. “The bear requires a steady hand,” said Babcock. “Treat him well, and he will treat you likewise. But never for^ get. He is a beast, and he makes our living for us by breaking the backs of mastiffs and spaniels foolhardy enough to come against him.”

  The boy nodded and looked grateful. Wages were agreed upon. The boy was shown where he might sleep, and he was assured that in no time at all he would become accustomed to the animal’s strong odor.

  The boy said, “Who knows but that the world will end before Bartholomew Fair is done,” apropos of nothing it seemed.

  But both bearwards heard the comment and puzzled over it. Crisp said nothing but Babcock—who, although not a pious man, deeply revered philosophical sentiments in another— agreed that it was all too true. Life was short, Babcock said, and art only a little longer. Who knew what would befall any of them?

  Ned Babcock liked the boy’s attitude, his serious mien.

  Francis Crisp showed the boy where the pitchfork was and where the wheelbarrow was in which he should haul the bear’s dung and other leavings from the pit to the midden heap.

  About noon of the first day of Gabriel Stubbs’s employment at the Smithfield Bear Gardens, he paused in his labors to wipe the sweat from his face and ease a dull ache in his lower back. He was unused to hard physical labor and the muscles in his arms and shoulders protested the strain of lifting and pitching. His charge, Samson, ate hugely; the beast’s voidings were enor^ mous and foul. His stinking cage bottom was constantly in need of cleaning. But Gabriel did not object to his labors. He was a man with a mission, and each day its shape became better de^ fined in his mind. When he had chance—say, at night, when the bear was asleep—he would think and pray. He would read again Foxworth’s tract and feast upon its wisdom.

  Gabriel noticed that Samson had awakened from his lethargy and was watching him intently. The bear was balanced upon

  his rump again. His short, powerful hind legs were bowed and at right angles to his midsection. His forearms were cradled in his lap, with the claws turned upward.

  The beast looked all the world like a man who by some acch dent of nature had been cursed with a growth of fur but was, nonetheless, within the hairy excrescence a human soul who might at any moment utter a comment upon the young man’s labors.

  But the bear only stared. Stared at Gabriel with beady black eyes.

  Gabriel felt fear in his joints and bowels. In a kind of fascina^ tion he walked toward the animal.

  Gabriel stopped short when he could detect the acrid stench of animal breath, when he could see in detail the savage scars of old wounds on the beast’s belly and hind legs.

  For some time man and bear seemed engaged in a contest of wills to see whose eyes would drop or turn first. Samson was motionless, except for a slight flairing of his black nostrils. There was something menacing abo
ut the stare. It was the steady concentration of one who has just spied an enemy he thought dead, someone hated more than all the world and feared too. It was certainly not the menacing of an angry watchdog or bull who regards all strangers to its ground as sub' ject to its growls, stompings, or charges. Samson’s hostility (the boy saw now that hostility it was) was composed. It was inteb ligent, even logical. As though Gabriel had not only offended Samson in being unfamiliar but in being, on the contrary, familiar to him, as though the young man were someone with whom the bear had had a grudge of long standing.

  But for all of this and as unnerving as it was, Gabriel did not look away nor once think of retreating beyond the vicious swipe of Samson’s forearm should he think to attack. Gabriel was afraid and unafraid at the same time; his fear was contained in his gut, rioting there, but in his brain and legs he stood his ground. He was in control. Or something was in control of him.

  Then, at last, Samson moved. It was a jerk of the thick neck

  accompanied by a low snarl of animal discontent. Samson rocked forward onto all four feet. He lumbered away, at least as far as his tether would permit.

  The fear was gone; in its place Gabriel now experienced a strange sense of excitement, even triumph. And sudden illumination. This contest of wills between man and bear was not without its meaning, for under heaven’s eye all things had their spiritual significance, were clues to God’s intent or man’s destiny, gave inklings of the order of being or were holy signs of the special providence that governed the affairs of men. All this Gabriel Stubbs believed with unwavering faith. Again he studied the bear, noting the furry body, the massive strength, the brute malice of the eyes, turned from him now but still fixed in his memory. And the claws. He realized that Samson was more than beast dragged from forest to amuse the wicked.

  Was Samson not the very image of the Beast of which the Book of Revelation spoke—at least in part? Was Gabriel’s encounter—a kind of duel, if rightly understood—not the same order of encounter of which the able Foxworth had written at such length?