1588 A Calendar of Crime

by Shirley McKay

  ‘Aye? An what is that?’

  ‘Ye wad like to ken. Something all the lassies here will want. The ladies at the court will be greening for it.’

  ‘Something bonny, then? Is it a jewel?’

  He fixed her with a stare. ‘Now why do you say that?’

  ‘Because a jewel is small. And can be hidden in a pocket.’

  ‘Been keeking, have ye, lassie?’ he replied.

  The lassie flushed dark. ‘Ah never did. But yer bags are wee. You couldna fit in them onything of worth.’

  ‘Now, is that a fact?’

  The lassie did not like it that she was caught out. ‘Ah dinna think it is onything at all. It is jist a fraud,’ she said.

  ‘Think what ye like. When the ladies clamour for it, you’ll be last in line. Be sure to mak my dennar guid an hot.’

  She was closer to the mark than she could know. Her interest in his empty baggage pleased him. It was his intention to instil an appetite. He had not brought the samples she was after to the town. Truth was, in themselves, they did not look like much. But it was the story that he had to tell that would prove their worth. It was all a question of creating a demand.

  By dinnertime, he had drawn a crowd around him. He told them the story of the Gran Grifon, the flagship of the Grand Armada, which had been shipwrecked off the Orkney isles. Martin had been there on his travels at the time. He saw the ship go down. He had stood and watched, while the devils drowned, in the boiling sea that swirled them down to Hell.

  ‘For they were monsters,’ he said. Recovered from the ship, and washed up on the shore, were artefacts and tools, so cruel in their device they might have been thrown up from very Hell itself. ‘Oh, it would hurt your heart to see those devils’ instruments, strewn on those white sands, still wet with martyrs’ blood.’ To spare the feelings of the Orkney islanders, Martin Crabbe had gathered up the dreadful things, and put them in his barque, and he had brought them home. They might be seen, for the price of a copy of a pamphlet, in his shop at Dundee, or, to a most discerning and particular collector, they might be for sale.

  The torments were not all. There were treasures too; cups and plates and bowls, and a hundred daggers, of the Spanish kind. Now, he drew one out, to tease them with its blade. Its owner, Martin said, had crawled out from the sea, writhing like a serpent, dying at his feet. Martin Crabbe had found the dagger buried in his breast. He had drawn it out.

  ‘Wha stabbed him, then?’ someone asked.

  Martin brushed him off. He did not care for questions to interrupt his flow. ‘One of his kind. They are devils,’ he said. ‘The blood that had flowed from the life wound was black, black as the dead Spaniard’s heart. You could see right inside it,’ he said. ‘I looked into his face, and saw before my eyes his bright complexion fade. I could have caught it up, and put it in a glass. It was,’ he said, ‘a maist extraordinary thing. I have a picture of it vivid in my mind. The colour fled from him. Here, I have the ring I took from his finger. I have many others, coming in my ship.’

  ‘Many other rings? How many fingers did the devil have?’ the heckler asked again.

  ‘Many other things.’ Despite this irritation, he had made his mark. By dinnertime, his pocket book was filling up with orders. The inn was filling up with fleshers in their killing clothes, come to slake their thirst. Martin found a quiet table in a corner, and called for another stoup of wine. He was waiting for a man called Will, a customer for whom he had a special deal in mind. His shop was an essential link to Martin’s chain. To please him, though, he must please his wife, which would be the key to open up the town.

  Will did not seem keen. He came to the meeting late, and refused a drink. He seemed ill at ease. To make the matter worse, as soon as Will sat down, Martin was obliged to depart himself, on an urgent mission to the jakes. Outside in the yard, he found his shirt and hose again were drenched with sweat, although the damp November air was very far from warm. He could hardly breathe, but found the ruff around him choking like a chain, until he pulled it off. Struggling back inside, he found his prey was just about to leave. ‘Stay, hae some dinner wi me. For you have not heard what I have to sell,’ he urged.

  Will sat down again. He watched, as the lass ran back and forth with bread and cheese and wine, a bowl of mutton broth, and the hot blood pudding. ‘Won’t you try some?’ Martin said, ‘It is very good.’ He felt it bring a flood of colour to his cheek.

  ‘Ah dinna think,’ said Will, ‘you ought to eat so quickly. Or, in truth, so much. You do not look so well.’

  ‘I had a bad egg,’ Martin said. ‘The remedy for bad is to follow it with good, or so I have always found.’ He dabbed his lips, unwilling to concede that at that moment he did not feel so well. He called for more wine, to wash down his queasiness.

  ‘Show me,’ Will said, ‘what you have to sell.’

  This had never been Martin Crabbe’s intent. It was not simply that what he had to sell, without the tale to sell it, looked quite plain and dull; it was also something Will could make quite easily himself, if he put his mind to it.

  ‘Let me first explain to you, how it comes about.’ Martin told his story, which began again with the late destruction of the Spanish fleet. The lass who brought the wine appeared to be bewitched by it, but it failed to have the same effect on Will. Before it was concluded, he stood up.

  ‘I have to go. If you have aught to show, bring it to the shop. That is the provost and the bailies over there.’ This explained his nerves. The man he called the provost caught Martin’s eye. Martin tipped his hat to him, annoyed. So it was the provost chased away his deals. The attention of the bailies now was drawn to him, but he would not be cowed. He would simply have to bide his time.

  The lass came with the brandy. ‘Oh. Your friend has gone. I will never hear the ending to the tale. What is the stuff that all the ladies like?’

  Martin felt confused. A black mist had descended, and a fiery heat. He could not see, or breathe. He fumbled at his neck, to pull off the ruff, but found it was not there. His bowels turned to water, and he felt ashamed. Dimly, he saw that the provost was rising, was coming towards him. He heard the lass say ‘What is the stuff’ and the rest of the world became swallowed in darkness, pulling him down. Drowning, he thought, oh, I am drowning. How can it be. There is the provost. What is the stuff. His eyes were open wide, so wide he felt the weight of them. Yet he could not see. ‘Dead Spaniard,’ he said. That was the last thing, the sound of his words.

  It was hopeless for Giles Locke, summoned to the scene, to insist that Martin’s death had been a natural one. His word was overruled, by men of weight and dignity, the provost and the bailies of the town. ‘With respect,’ the provost said, ‘ye were not here yourself, when the man went down. Ask awbody you like.’ The inn was full of witnesses, many of them fresh from the killing fields. ‘They are acquainted with death. And all of them ken what they saw. He was dragged down to Hell, by a ghost.’

  ‘With respect,’ said Giles, ‘is any one among them trained as a medicinar? Have they ever seen an apoplectic stroke?’

  ‘Well, sir, there is one, whose word ye maun attend to, since he is your own. And he has telt us a marvellous thing, which you have tried to keep from us. He says that the Dead Spaniard has been seen before, in your college kirk.’ When the dreadful words were said a murmuring arose, with one or two among them whispering a prayer.

  It was the fermer, Kennocht Cutler, who was now revealed to be a viper in their midst. He was there by chance, he said, on a sudden urgent quest to purchase aquavite, wanted at the fermary, and on no account to satisfy his thirst.

  Giles fixed upon the fermer a stare full of sorrow. ‘Oh, Kennocht, what have you done?’

  ‘Ye did not it see it, sir. He wis looking at the spirit, right into his eyes, the moment that he fell. He wis trying to tell us when he died. He spake the devil’s name. It was that same ghost that came into our kirk and struck that puir bairn senseless to the ground.’

 
; ‘Did you see it too? Did any one of you?’ Giles persisted wearily.

  His protests were ignored. For it was plain to all, the Spaniard would appear only a man who was about to die.

  ‘That cannot be the case. For no one has died at the college,’ he said.

  The fermer said darkly, ‘No one has yet.’

  Coming to the college shortly after dinnertime, Hew found himself in the middle of a storm. The provost and his bailies were gathered at the gate, demanding the right to speak with Thomas Crowe. Giles held them off; though Thomas was still safe in the care of Meg, he was now attending to the tearful Malcolm Crabbe, who had been told in a way that was brutal and abrupt that the father he had loved had been carried off by a Spanish ghost. ‘It is Thomas Crowe,’ he sobbed, ‘who has put a curse on him,’ adding fuel and fury to the swilling crowd.

  Giles lit on Hew, and threw him to the wolves. ‘Here is a man who can rid you of your ghosts. Ask him; he will tell you they do not exist, but are conjured up by sad and frantic minds.’

  The provost, knowing Hew, fell upon him gratefully. ‘Can you,’ he implored, ‘drive away the spirits that infect the town? For I feel the grip upon us like the plague.’

  Consoling him, Hew said three ghosts were hardly an epidemy. Giles let out a groan, grim enough to muster for a fourth. The provost said, aghast, ‘There has been a third?’

  Hew, to make amends, promised he would rid the town of the Spanish ghost. ‘I know what you believe happened at the inn. But I will prove to you it has a natural cause.’

  It was, he thought, a mere trick of the mind, like the other ghosts. ‘In the case of Thomas Crowe,’ he explained to Giles, ‘I thought, at first, it was a counterfeit, a trick that was played on him, by his colleagues here. It turned out that the trick was in his own imagination. In the case of Colin Snell, what we thought was in his mind, was a counterfeit. But both of them have an explanation, rooted in the physical or the natural world. This third ghost, surely, must be the same. Yet it is Thomas Crowe who is common to them all. His ghost lies at the heart. What made Martin Crabbe speak of the Dead Spaniard, the moment that he died? I cannot see the meaning in it. What was it killed him, Giles?’

  Giles said, ‘Meat and drink. Now I must go and tend to his poor boy, and leave you to confront the devil on your own.’

  Hew spoke to Kennocht Cutler, to the lassie from the inn, and to several witnesses, who had seen Crabbe die. ‘Did you hear him speak his final words,’ he asked them all, ‘or is it that you ken them from report? Were they loud and clear?’ Each one said the same. The words were not in doubt.

  He spoke to Will Dyer, a man that he knew well, and liked. ‘Oh, he had a tale to tell,’ said Will. ‘A dreadful kind of tale. I wonder if he scared himself to death with it. If he robbed the graves of the Spanish as he said, no wonder that the devils came to take him at the end. He said he took the dagger from the dead man’s breast. Well, the dead man came and took it back from him. I give thanks to God I did not buy from him.’

  ‘Daggers,’ said Hew, ‘are hardly in your line.’

  ‘No, they are not. He promised something finer, that was just for me, that everyone would want. He niver had the chance to tell me any mair. But I hae a notion what it was.’

  ‘What was that?’ asked Hew.

  ‘I think it was the flag, frae the Gran Grifon. That was the flagship of the Spanish fleet. The flag wid be a prize, for sure. A Spanish man would gie, and tak, a life for that. I wid not want it, now, at any price.’

  Returning to the college, Hew saw Malcolm Crabbe setting out for home. He called to him. ‘I am so very sorry for your loss,’ he said. ‘And I am sorry, too, I never met your dad, to give him back the books I took from you. Next term, when you join us again, you shall have them back, to remember him.’

  Malcolm Crabbe nodded. ‘He would have liked you.’

  ‘And I him.’

  ‘You would. He was not bad. The things that he sold – the daggers and cups – were not real, you know,’ Malcolm said. ‘He did not really take them from a Spanish ship. There is a blacksmith makes them for him in Dundee. He never saw the wreck of the Gran Grifon, or took the knife from a dying soldier. It was all made up, to help him sell the things. So I do not see–’ The boy broke off in tears.

  ‘What do you not see?’ asked Hew.

  ‘I do not see why the ghost would come for him. He only told a lie. He never did it harm.’

  ‘Nor do I see why.’ Hew put his arm round him. ‘I do not think it did.’

  ‘Truly?’ Malcolm looked at him. ‘Then why did he cry out “Dead Spaniard”? Was it Thomas Crowe, put a curse on him?’

  Hew shook his head. ‘It was not Thomas Crowe. I do not know why your father said those words. But you have my promise that I will find out.’

  He was late home. And though he wanted very much to discuss the case with Frances, he found her strangely cold. She would not look at him. And when he asked for Flora, she said, ‘Oh, she is in bed now. Do not disturb her,’ which hurt him, for she knew he liked to give a last kiss to the child, at whatever hour, before he went to sleep.

  ‘I am sorry to be late,’ he said. ‘Something happened in the town.’

  Frances said, ‘It always does.’

  He tried to make amends, with no clear understanding what his fault had been. ‘I left you on your own, at killing time,’ he said.

  ‘That is of no consequence.’

  ‘Did it not go well?’

  ‘The slaughter is done, if that is what you mean. We have enough meat to see us through the winter. The candlemaker will come to visit us on Thursday. It is a busy week for him.’

  He asked, ‘What is it, then?’

  ‘What is what?’

  ‘The matter.’

  ‘There is no matter, Hew.’

  He took her hands in his. ‘Shall we begin again? Plainly, there is.’

  Frances pulled away from him. ‘I went into the library,’ she said.

  ‘And?’

  ‘I wanted to begin a new account book, because today is Martinmas.’

  ‘Did you not find one?’ he said.

  The look she gave him made him thankful when she turned away. ‘I do not like to tell you what it was I found,’ she said. ‘Oh, Hew, I had not thought of you, that you had a taste for such things.’

  ‘As account books?’ he replied, baffled at the words.

  ‘How can you!’ she cried. ‘How can you make light of it, in such an unkind way. I mean, you know I mean, that cruel and vile obscenity you will say is verse.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Hew at last, ‘you mean the Spanish scourge.’

  ‘How can you stand and smile at it, and show no scrap of shame? I thought I knew you, Hew.’

  ‘You do. I scarcely can believe you thought I liked that stuff. It is not mine,’ he said.

  Relief, and confusion, diluted her anger. ‘Oh! Then it must belong to Gavan Baird. I did not think that it could be his.’

  He answered, with a heavy humour, ‘You did not think it could belong to the librarian. And yet you were convinced that it must be mine?’

  ‘Do not twist my meaning, Hew. I am not a student you dispute with in your class. I did not think that Gavan Baird, being the librarian, would dare to bring such filth into his master’s house. But, if he has, he must be dismissed from here at once.’

  ‘Frances, it was not Gavan Baird. I took it from a student at the college. It has caused, to this time, more trouble than you can possibly imagine. I am truly sorry that I brought it home. I did not think, nor meant for you to see it.’

  ‘Then it is not yours, though you brought it here?’ Frances said, perplexed.

  ‘It was never mine. And I do deplore it as a hateful thing.’

  ‘Then I am ashamed, for thinking ill of you.’

  ‘You should be.’

  ‘But you should be ashamed for bringing it back home. It was not responsible. We have Flora and the servants here.’

  ‘Flora is a babe
, and the servants cannot read,’ he reminded her.

  ‘Even so, I cannot help but think it is an evil influence. It is a hateful thing. Can we burn it, please?’

  ‘We shall. We will not have its evil come between us here,’ he agreed. Could the paper be at the heart of this? Like a kind of charm that bore its own malevolence, over and above the meaning of its words? That was superstition, and Hew pushed it from his mind. He fetched the paper down and put it to the flame. And burning it, indeed, appeared to break its spell, for soon they were together, sitting in the firelight, peaceful once again. ‘Are the stories of the Spanish torments true?’ Frances asked.

  He answered honestly. ‘The Inquisition has inflicted countless cruelties. But I think also that the accounts may be exaggerated. This writing has sprung up to celebrate the triumph of the English fleet. It is more heroic when the enemy is monstrous. And people like to read that kind of stuff.’

  ‘I do not like it,’ Frances said, ‘when we look for glory in a man’s defeat. It should be enough, to know that we have won, and God is on our side. I think it is shameful, and small, to make foul of the tune of the good Valiant Soldier, and dress in Dead Spaniard, and such.’

  Hew stared at her. ‘Say what, my love? Dress in what?’

  ‘Dead Spaniard. It is the latest colour worn in London now.’

  ‘Dead Spaniard is the name for a kind of cloth?’

  ‘For the colour,’ Frances told him. ‘It is all the vogue. My uncle sells the stuff. My cousin Mary has a gown of it. She writes it is a drab and dirty shade, but people like to wear it all the same. Thank God, we do not find it in Will Dyer’s shop.’

  ‘I love you, Frances Phillips,’ Hew declared, and kissed her. Frances was a little pleased, and still a little vexed. ‘I know you do,’ she said. ‘The question that remains is do I still love you? Shall we go to bed now, and find out?’