The Nicholas Bracewell Collection

by Edward Marston

  ‘I have not been able to see him in person, Anne. He has been indisposed these last two days. But I have sent word to him. He knows his good fortune.’

  ‘That will rally him from his sick bed.’

  ‘I hope so.’

  ‘You do not sound too confident.’

  ‘Oh, I am,’ said Nicholas, shaking off his fleeting anxieties. ‘Gabriel is the sounder prospect for us and he will prove that on our travels. There is no man in the company I would sooner have beside me. I will visit him tomorrow and make sure that he understands that.’

  ‘Why do you have such a high opinion of him?’

  ‘That is the wonder of it. I do not know.’

  Smorrall Lane was less than a hundred yards from Anne Hendrik’s house but its dwellings were a world apart. The narrow, winding, fetid alley consisted of a series of dirty and decrepit buildings that leaned against each other for support with ramshackle companionship. Stews, taverns and ordinaries attracted a lower class of patron and those who tumbled along the lane at night were usually drunk or diseased from guzzling excess. Thieves lurked in dark corners and waited for easy pickings. Women offered their wares in doorways. Blood was often mixed with the urine and excrement that flowed over the cobbles. Smorrall Lane was easy to find. It could be located by its stench.

  The tall, elegant young man who stalked along it that night was no typical visitor. Nose wrinkled in disgust, he moved along quickly and pushed away two revellers who brushed against him. When he came to the house that he sought, he looked up and saw a faint glimmer in the window of the front bedchamber. His quarry was at home.

  He banged on the door but got no reply. Glancing down the lane to make sure that he was unobserved, he let himself into the house and coughed as its dust attacked his throat. He went swiftly to the staircase and crept silently up its crooked steps. Outside the bedchamber, he tapped on the door without response. All he could hear was stertorous breathing from within.

  It suited his purpose. Opening the door softly, he slid into the room and crossed over to the prone figure under the ragged bedsheets. The smell of decay assailed his nostrils and his stomach churned but he was not to be deflected from his purpose. Straddling the sleeper, he got a firm grip on the man’s neck and squeezed with all his power. There was little resistance. Weakened already, his victim had barely enough strength to flail his arms and they soon hung limp and lifeless.

  The visitor left with furtive speed and came out into the lane again. He used a piece of charcoal to write something on the battered door of the house.

  LORD HAVE MERCY UPON US.

  Then he looked up at the window once more.

  ‘Goodbye, Gabriel. Sleep with the other angels now.’

  Chapter Two

  Miles Melhuish believed totally in the power of prayer. As vicar of the parish church of St Stephen, he was in the ideal position to put his faith to the test and it had never been found wanting. Prayer had saved souls, cured diseases, softened tragedies, provided inspiration, secured guidance from above and generally eased the troubled mind of his congregation. If his ministry had taught him one thing, it was that ten minutes a day on his knees was far more effective than an hour on his feet in the pulpit. It was the first article in the Melhuish creed. By communing directly with God in true humility, he achieved infinitely more than he would have by haranguing the citizens of Nottingham with his sermons. He was a devout and pensive shepherd and his flock gained from it.

  Ten years in the parish had confronted him with all sorts of problems and all manner of strange sights but none could compare with what lay in wait for him now. As he knelt at the altar rail in an attitude of blissful submission, the setting sun flooded in through the stained glass window to give his rubicund face a saintly glow and to encircle his bald head with a golden halo. When his prayers were done, he used the rail to lift himself up, then genuflected with portly solemnity.

  The sound of running footsteps made him turn.

  ‘Why, Humphrey! What means this haste?’

  ‘I must speak with you, sir.’

  ‘And so you shall but not by bursting in like a runaway bull. This is the Lord’s house, Humphrey, and we must accord it all due respect. Hold there, man.’

  ‘I obey you straight.’

  ‘And catch your breath, dear fellow.’

  Humphrey Budden leaned on one of the pews as he gulped in air. A big broad man of florid hue, he had run much further than his legs or lungs had desired and he was now bathed in perspiration. Miles Melhuish walked down the aisle towards the glistening parishioner and tried to guess at the crisis which had brought on this uncharacteristic lapse. Budden was a respected figure in the town, a conscientious lacemaker who helped to keep the name of Nottingham at the forefront of his trade. Since his marriage the previous year, he had been the happiest of men, honest, affable, upright, regular in his devotions and often given to charitable impulse. Yet here was this same Humphrey Budden, charging into church, panting like a dog and sweating like a roast pig.

  The vicar put a consoling arm around him.

  ‘Fear not, my son. God is with you.’

  ‘I need him mightily, sir.’

  ‘To what end, Humphrey?’

  ‘I can hardly bring myself to tell you.’

  ‘Succour awaits.’

  ‘The sound still fills my ears.’

  ‘What sound?’

  ‘And the sight torments my mind.’

  ‘You are trembling with the shock of it.’

  ‘I came straight here, sir. God is my last resort.’

  ‘How may he help you?’

  Humphrey Budden bit his lip in embarrassment then cleared his throat. It had been far easier to carry his message to church than to deliver it. Words rebelled.

  Miles Melhuish tried to prompt him gently.

  ‘Are you in trouble, my son?’

  ‘Not me, sir.’

  ‘Your wife?’

  ‘Indeed.’

  ‘What ails the good woman?’

  ‘Oh, sir …’

  Humphrey Budden began to weep helplessly. The calamity which had brought him so recklessly into the church had deprived him of speech. Easing him down into a pew, the vicar sat beside him and offered up a silent prayer. Budden slowly regained some control.

  ‘Tell me about Eleanor,’ said the priest.

  ‘I love her so much!’

  ‘Some accident perchance?’

  ‘Worse, sir.’

  ‘She has fallen sick?’

  ‘Worse still.’

  ‘Dear Lord! Has she passed away?’

  ‘Worse even than that.’

  Melhuish coaxed the story out of him. Even in its garbled form it was enough to make the man of the cloth forget both his paunch and his place. Gathering up his belly in both hands, he led the way towards the door at a steady trot with Budden in close pursuit. They ran out into the churchyard then through the gate that opened on to Angel Row. The house was a couple of hundred yards away and the effort of reaching it took them both near exhaustion but they did not pause. Above the sound of their breathing, they heard a noise that froze their blood and put a last spurt into their legs.

  It was the scream of a woman. Not the sudden yell of someone in pain nor yet the anguished cry of someone in distress. It was a weird, continuous, high-pitched howl of a wild animal, a noise so intense and unnatural that it did not seem to come from a human throat at all. Budden opened the front door and ushered the priest into a room that already had some occupants. Four terrified children were clustered around the skirts of an old servant, gazing up in horror at the bedchamber above their heads.

  Humphrey Budden gave them a comforting squeeze then took his visitor up the stairs. During that short ascent, Miles Melhuish prayed more strenuously than even he had done in a long while. The sound was heart-rending. He had to force himself to follow the stricken husband into the bedchamber. What hideous sight lay within?

  When his eyes beheld it, he crossed himself at
once.

  ‘Dear God in heaven!’

  ‘Eleanor,’ called Budden. ‘Peace, good wife.’

  But she did not even hear him. The wail continued with unabated fury and her hands clutched at her hair. Melhuish was dumbstruck. There in front of him, kneeling stark naked on the floor, swaying to and fro, staring at a crucifix on the wall, was a buxom woman in her twenties with flaxen hair trailing down her back towards a pair of round, beautiful, shuddering buttocks. It was a scene at once so frightening and erotic that Melhuish had to avert his gaze for a few seconds and call his righteousness to his aid.

  Eleanor Budden was in the grip of some ineluctable passion. As her shriek soared to an even higher pitch, it spoke of pain and pleasure, of a torture suffered and a joy attained, of the misery of the damned and the joy of salvation. The mouth from which it came was twisted in a grimace but her face was luminescent with happiness.

  ‘Eleanor,’ said her husband. ‘Look who is here.’

  ‘She hears you not, Humphrey.’

  ‘Stand forth where she may see you, sir.’

  He motioned the priest forward until the latter was standing between the woman and the crucifix. The effect on her was immediate. Her howling stopped, her mouth fell shut, her hands went to her sides and her body no longer shook all over. The deafening cry was replaced by an eerie stillness that was almost as unsettling.

  Eleanor Budden looked up at the parish priest with a reverential smile. The fever had broken at last. Both men dared to relax slightly but their relief was premature. A fresh paroxysm seized her. Lunging forward, she grabbed the vicar around the waist and buried her head in the ample folds of his flesh, emitting a sound that began as a low wheeze of excitement then built up quickly until it was a cry of pure elation. Firm hands were clutching his buttocks, soft breasts were pressing against his thighs and urgent lips were burrowing into his groin. The noise surged on to a climax then spent itself in a sigh that filled the room with carnality and made her whole frame shudder with sheer ecstasy.

  She collapsed peacefully to the floor in a coma.

  Miles Melhuish was still praying furiously.

  Death moved through the streets of London every day and sent loved ones to an early grave but the citizens of London were still not satisfied. Private grief afflicted new families by the hour but there was still enough ghoulish interest left over to send a large crowd to Tyburn for the execution. Distraught people who had sat around doomed beds now found a sense of release as they jostled for position around the gallows. A public death carried an element of celebration. In the crude but legalised murder of some anonymous criminal, they could take a profound satisfaction and dispatch him into the afterlife with sadistic jeers. What was intended as a brutal warning to them became a source of entertainment.

  Everybody was keen to get a good view.

  ‘Stand aside, sir, I pray.’

  ‘By your leave, mistress.’

  ‘I’ll see nothing but your broad shoulders.’

  ‘Come in front of me.’

  ‘Let me through here.’

  ‘Push hard, mistress.’

  The tall young man heaved to the left to create a space for the old woman. Having fought her way through the press to its densest point, she found that her view was still blocked. The young man recoiled from the reek of her breath but her odour was soon swallowed up in the communal stink of the multitude. She was a countrywoman of sorts, with a basket on her arm and a slope to her shoulders that told of a lifetime of drudgery. Her lips were bared in a toothless grin of anticipation.

  ‘Have you come far, mistress?’ he said.

  ‘Ten mile or more, sir.’

  ‘All this way for an execution?’

  ‘I’d skip twenty sooner than miss it.’

  ‘Do you know who is to be hanged?’

  ‘A traitor, sir.’

  ‘But what is his name?’

  ‘That does not matter.’

  ‘It matters to him.’

  ‘He is nothing in himself.’

  ‘You walk ten miles for a total stranger?’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ she said with malicious glee. ‘Death to all traitors! I want to see them cut his pizzle off!’

  A loud cheer went up as the cart rumbled towards the gallows. The condemned man was sitting down with his arms pinioned behind his back and two gaolers standing over him. Even in his wretched condition, he had a tarnished dignity. Ragged, unkempt and maimed by torture, he yet had the bearing of a true nobleman. His apparent calm in the face of death only served to excite the onlookers to a louder display of rage. All their fear, hatred, anger and despair were channelled into a mounting roar of fury.

  The young man remained silent but watched it all with detached pleasure. Justice was enforced without hesitation. The prisoner was hauled on to the platform and his sentence was read out. He was then offered the momentary comfort of a chaplain to fit his mind for what lay ahead. When he refused, he was handed over to the executioner and his assistant, hooded monsters with brawny arms and a gift for prolonging agony. They knew their trade and set about it without delay. The prisoner began to recite something in Latin but it was drowned out by the baying of the mob. His lips were still barely moving as the noose was slipped around his neck.

  The rope was tightened, its position checked, the lever pulled then the trap door opened to give him his first glimpse of hell. His body stiffened as it took the impact then his legs jerked, his shoulders twisted, his mouth gaped, his face turned purple, and every vein and sinew about him strained to break through skin. It was a grotesque and repulsive sight but the spectators loved what they saw, laughing, cheering and waving in sadistic mockery, working themselves up into a state of malevolent hysteria, forgetting the troubles of their own lives in the mirthful contemplation of savagery.

  The body seemed to twitch and sway for a long time before the executioners moved in. Eyes closed, mouth wide open, neck half-broken, the victim seemed to have expired. Howls of outrage went up as onlookers felt that they were being robbed of their full due. But the executioners had not botched their work. As he was cut down, he stirred briefly and let out a groan. The young man was close enough to see what happened next. From under leaden lids, the prisoner shot his tormentors a glance that was spiked with accusation. Evidently, he had bribed them so that they would let him die on the gallows and be spared the further horrors that were enshrined in his sentence.

  The executioners had taken his money in all earnest then blithely forgotten their side of the bargain.

  The traitor was himself the victim of treachery.

  Stripped naked, the prisoner was castrated with a flash of steel, the loss of his manhood stirring up the crowd to even higher levels of blood-lust. The ritual disembowelling came next with the executioners slicing him open and pulling his entrails out in order to burn them before his eyes. When there was no more sport to be got from the bleeding carcass, the prisoner was beheaded and his body cut into quarters. The systematic butchery was at last over. Spectators had had their fill.

  Christopher Millfield afforded himself a quiet smile.

  London came out in a hot sweat. Foul contagion spread throughout its maze of streets and alleys. Bells rang out their jangling requiems all day long and ministers went scurrying from one house of death to another. Undertakers prospered and a worm-eaten generation of parish clerks grew rich from exploiting the miseries of the bereaved by increasing their fees. Vultures fattened themselves on the wasted corpses of their fellow-citizens.

  The exodus from the capital grew apace.

  ‘I am loath to depart the place, Nick.’

  ‘There’s no staying here.’

  ‘Where she is, there must I be.’

  ‘And so you are, Edmund,’ said his friend. ‘If she has your verses, then she holds your essence in her hand.’

  ‘I had not thought of that.’

  ‘Then do so now. Absence can only make her heart grow fonder and you may nurture that fondness with sweet poem
s and tender letters. Your pen will have to serve where your lips may not.’

  ‘This is consolation indeed.’

  ‘Woo her from all over England.’

  ‘What a welcome I will get on my return!’

  Edmund Hoode brightened. Discussing his private life with Nicholas Bracewell always paid dividends. The book holder was a man of the world with a keen understanding of the vagaries of love. His advice was invariably sound and his sympathy without limit. Hoode had found cause to be grateful to him on many occasions and that gratitude surged again now. Nicholas had shown him that a happy compromise was possible. Leaving the city did not have to be an act of desertion. He could continue his assaults on the heart of his beloved from a distance. It would make for some exquisite pangs of loneliness on his part and heighten the magic of consummation when that blessed moment finally came.

  ‘I’ll send her a sonnet forthwith,’ he decided.

  ‘You have only today in which to compose it.’

  ‘Today and tonight, Nick. I cast aside all thought of sleep in the joy of her service, and my Muse helps me best in the hours of darkness.’

  ‘Do not weary yourself entirely, Edmund. We have a long journey to make tomorrow.’

  ‘I embark upon it in good spirits.’

  ‘That pleases me well.’

  ‘Would that dear Gabriel could be with us!’

  ‘My mind was sharing that self-same hope.’

  The two men were walking together through Bankside on a sultry morning. They had come on a grim errand. Flies buzzed over piles of refuse and rats sniffed their way through rotting food. As the friends entered the most squalid part of the district, they saw signs of death and decay on every side. They were shocked to think that one of their fellows had been forced to live in such a warren of mouldering humanity. Gabriel Hawkes had excelled at playing princes yet his own kingdom was that of a pauper.

  They were only just in time. Turning into Smorrall Lane, they saw the cart trundling along about its doleful business, already piled high with its gruesome cargo. It stopped outside a door that was marked with a blue cross and another corpse was soon loaded up. The cart then went on to the house where Gabriel Hawkes had lodged. It was boarded up and the writing on the door confirmed that plague had also been a tenant. Wrapped in a dirty winding sheet, the body was carried out unceremoniously and hurled up on top of the pile.