by Paul Finch
Urmston turned to Morgeth. “What did this fellow look like?”
“Catlike, he was, my lord. Very lean. Had a black beard, long black hair … dark eyes, like pools of oil. I hear, at first glance, the ladies thought him very handsome.”
“A regular angel of death,” Ratcliffe said, with a cynical smile.
*
“A Spanish inquisitor!” Lord Walsingham sat back behind his desk. “How marvellous!”
Urmston stood facing him, one hand on his sword-hilt. “Of course, we can’t be certain.”
“No, I understand that … but well done all the same. I can hardly wait to tell the queen.”
Urmston felt a flutter of panic. “Even with this knowledge, we’re no closer to catching him.”
The Secretary of State dipped his quill in his ink-pot and began to scratch out various authorisations. “We will be when we increase the reward to five hundred pounds. I doubt anyone who might be sheltering him could resist such temptation.”
It struck Urmston at once that increasing the reward at this stage might lead to all sorts of false accusations. Anyone with tanned skin could find himself dragged into the street.
“I shall also alert George Eliot and his priest-hunters,” Walsingham added.
Urmston couldn’t resist a snort of disgust. “Much good he’ll do us.”
Walsingham smiled to himself as he wrote. “Are you an expert in economics as well as criminal investigation, Robert? We may offer a reward, but paying it is another matter. I’d sooner one of my agents made the arrest than some drunken ne’er-do-well in the Stews. That way, it won’t cost us a penny.”
“It would cost us even less if you cut the entirety of George Eliot’s salary.”
Walsingham stamped a document with his seal. “No jealousy, Robert, please. It doesn’t matter to me which one of you apprehends the villain, so long as one of you does. Of course, we must try to ensure that he is taken alive. A grand show-trial would be the coup de grace.”
Urmston made no reply. Here at Richmond Palace, Walsingham’s study was only one corridor away from the great hall, where at this very moment the queen was entertaining the London city bankers to a lavish Christmas feast. Bellows of laughter could be heard; there was a frantic tooting of pipes, a strumming of mandolins.
“This should be a lesson to Catholics everywhere,” Walsingham said. “Let’s hope Vesquez is a Jesuit … the knowledge that one of their elite warriors has stooped to such dastardly crimes would be a sickening blow.”
“It would certainly make a change from their rising to the challenge of martyrdom,” Urmston replied.
Walsingham sealed another letter. “You’ve done well, Robert. Yet again I’m reminded why I tolerate your impudence.” He glanced up, his grey eyes cool. “But don’t push your good fortune too far. In the event of accusations, there’s only so much that even I could do to protect someone whose mother was a Catholic.”
“Will that be all, my lord?”
“Even someone whose mother finally converted … at the wise instigation of her husband, of course.”
“Will that be all?”
Walsingham went back to his papers. “That’ll be all.”
*
For several days, the forces of rumour ran riot in London.
With town-criers passing on the news, and posters appearing on every gable wall from Westminster to Lime Hurst, advertising an increased reward for “capture of the detestable prieste of Spayne”, the sensation grew until eventually even Christmastide was relegated to secondary chatter. Idle tongues wagged, opinions were aired about neighbours and lodgers, and all sorts of calumny was cast, while the printing presses ran off hundreds of pamphlets to accompany each new item of gossip. Not satisfied with this, the well-to-do were taken by litter and armed escort, to see for themselves the sordid tangle of streets where the evil deeds had been done. In knee-jerk response, the beggars flocked there too.
But only during daylight hours.
As darkness fell on Southwark, London Bridge creaked beneath hooves and feet as a frantic mob made haste for safer parishes.
Only Robert Urmston, it seemed, had withdrawn from the scramble. Even a note from the queen, congratulating him for identifying the felon, failed to inspire him. He remained in his solar, theorising, making copious notes, writing and receiving letters. Then, one day, a particular missive almost knocked him from his chair. At length, he summoned Kingsley and bade him sit and listen.
“A cousin of mine,” Urmston said, “who serves with the royal embassy in Paris, has recently returned to England. He heard about our Flibbertigibbet, and in an attempt to be helpful, has sent me this rather disturbing information.” He produced the letter and unrolled it. “Before I read it, tell me honestly, John … is it possible that in naming Raphael Vesquez as our chief suspect, I have been colossally presumptuous?”
“I don’t follow, my lord.”
“All the evidence pointing to this man is circumstantial. Much of it isn’t even that.”
Kingsley shrugged. “You can only do your best with the information you have.”
Urmston nodded. “I agree absolutely. Now … let me tell you what my cousin writes. Eight years ago, it seems, in the Chastenoy region of France, the populace were living in terror. Some ferocious individual was committing senseless attacks. The victims were women and children … at least five of them died, their necks broken, their throats torn. Those who survived only did so through luck … to a one, they’d been beaten and mauled and, in the case of the females, horribly assaulted.”
Kingsley said nothing, but listened intently.
Urmston continued: “At first, in the level-headed fashion of all Frenchmen, the authorities thought they were searching for a werewolf. But when a suspect was finally apprehended, the most remarkable thing about him was that he was unremarkable. His name was Gilles Garnier. He admitted his crimes, but denied, even under torture, that he killed as a wolf. In reality, he was a simple vagrant who lived on the outskirts of St. Bonnot. He was indistinguishable from the other vagrants there in that he was ragged, dirty and ill. He had no great powers of strength, and in fact his appearance was not remotely frightening.”
“And was he the murderer?” Kingsley asked.
“Oh yes. He was tried, convicted and subsequently burned to death.”
“A grim tale, my lord, but if he was burned, how could he be responsible for our …”
Urmston shook his head. “I’m not saying he is, John! I’m saying that somebody is who may be like him.” He tapped the letter. “There are similarities here. Murders committed apparently for their own sake, a city in terror, everyone convinced that some kind of monster or demon is abroad … and yet, at the end of it all, the killer is nobody; an ordinary man who gentle-folk wouldn’t cock a snook at if they passed him in the street.”
“But could such an extraordinary thing happen twice?”
Urmston almost laughed. “Of course. If it can happen once, it can happen again and again.” He paused to think. “I wonder if this is some new madness of the downtrodden. The worm who finally, viciously, turns. The despised nonentity who suddenly realises there is fame and power in the fear he can inspire.”
“It would discount our Spanish inquisitor.”
Urmston snorted. “I fear our Spanish inquisitor is a figment of our bigoted imagination. Think about it … is he not exactly the sort of criminal the English would love to believe is abusing them? A Catholic, a Spaniard! The reality is that our killer is of no such consequence … he’s a carter, a street-sweeper, a vagabond.” Urmston started to look worried. “Is there any chance so anonymous a person can ever be caught?”
At that point, there was a loud knocking at the front door. Kingsley went to answer it, leaving his master alone. A moment later, there were excited shouts in the vestibule, and a stammer of urgent voices. Kingsley re-appeared, looking flustered.
“They’ve captured him, my lord! Raphael Vesquez! He’s been captured!”
“I’m glad,” Urmston grunted. “This is only the fourth one captured in the last two days.”
“But, my lord … this may be different. Apparently, he surrendered himself at the Tower.” Kingsley was ruddy-faced with excitement. “Under no pressure from anyone, he has confessed to being Vesquez.”
Urmston looked slowly up. A thrill of uncertainty passed through him.
“Don’t you realise what this means, my lord?” Kingsley said. “Your first theory was right, after all. You’ve done it … you’ve smoked him out!”
*
Urmston went straight to the Tower, but on arrival there his delight at the capture of Vesquez was tempered by news that the Spaniard had already been put on the rack.
“How dare you!” he said, as Constable Ratcliffe led him down the dank stairwells. “I gave no such orders!”
“We received a letter from Sir Francis Walsingham,” Ratcliffe replied. “It stated that we were to commence examination promptly, and to use all methods at our convenience.”
“Francis Walsingham may no more permit the use of torture than your man Morgeth!” Urmston retorted. “It requires a signed warrant from the Privy Council or the queen, as a man in your position should be well aware.”
“But isn’t this villain the Flibbertigibbet? The murderer of fourteen women!”
“It wouldn’t matter if he was Satan himself. The same rules apply. We don’t use torture in criminal enquiries. English Common Law has no place for it.”
“But, I thought in these circumstances …”
“You didn’t think at all, my lord! That much is plainly obvious.”
They passed through the open cell where Urmston and his servant had been made to wait previously, descended another subterranean stairway, and entered an ice cold chamber cut from wet, black stone and reeking of sweat and offal. Rusted fetters hung on the greasy walls; trampled, filthy straw formed a decaying carpet. In one corner lay the hideous apparatus: a steel frame, eight feet long and three feet across. Stretched full-length on it, his wrists and ankles securely manacled to the pulleys at either end, was a naked man who looked more dead than alive. His limbs were like pipe-stems, his ribs showing clearly through grey, emaciated flesh. If this was the infamous Spaniard, he was no longer the sleek, cat-like creature of legend. His head had been shorn to bristles, and his face, also shaved, was grizzled, brutalised, and currently screwed up with agony.
“This is him?” Urmston asked.
Morgeth, who had been administering the torture, glanced up. He hammered a wedge beside the pulley, to maintain the tension, then stood back. The prisoner could only gasp and cringe. The chains holding him were already at straining-point. The joints in his arms and legs were fully extended, threatening to dislocate. As the newcomers came forward, fresh sweat broke on the prisoner’s brow. A thin trickle of blood seeped from the corner of his mouth.
“You are the Spanish priest, Raphael Vesquez?” Urmston asked.
The prisoner didn’t even look up, let alone answer.
“He says that he is being treated unfairly, and that he will speak only to the queen,” Ratcliffe explained.
“The queen will not see you,” Urmston said. “She never comes here. You must talk to me instead. I am her representative.” Still the prisoner held his tongue. “You must speak to me, otherwise this ordeal will continue!”
“You see for yourself how stubborn he is,” Ratcliffe said. “I tell you, my lord, this may look like harsh treatment, but I have seen some Catholic fanatics hold out against it for days.”
“My dear Ratcliffe,” Urmston replied, “he is not here because he is a Catholic, but because he is suspected of murder.”
For the first time, the prisoner glanced up. Fleetingly, there was hope in his glazed, red-rimmed eyes.
“Murder is the worst crime of all, my lord,” Ratcliffe replied in a sneering tone, “and I take my duty as a punisher of crime very seriously. However, if you wish us to cease applying this device, we will. But you know perfectly well that in a case as serious as this, we would be neglecting our …”
“Don’t tell me my duty, Ratcliffe. I’m well aware that specific occasions warrant specific methods, but I’d have preferred to leave this until the last resort.”
“Shall I order him released?”
Urmston considered. Whether he liked it or not, torture did have its judicial role, and it seemed doubtful than in so vile a case as this, any lawyer would quibble about its use.
“Not yet,” he finally said. “Tell me … what were the circumstances of the arrest?”
“He came in voluntarily. He was wearing a monk’s habit at the time. A ragged old thing of sackcloth. He also wore ashes on his head. Repenting, no doubt, for his filthy crimes …”
“Yes!” the Spaniard hissed, his grimace of pain suddenly a growl of rage. “For my crimes! When I lived and worked here … when I did the things you now do!”
He might have been Spanish, but he clearly had a good command of English.
“You dog!” Ratcliffe snarled. “You dare liken yourself to us!”
He signalled to Morgeth, and the jailer knocked out the wedge, re-inserted his crank-handle, and turned it. There were agonising creaks of bone and sinew; Vesquez howled.
“That’s enough,” Urmston said.
Morgeth glanced around, surprised, his grip slackening.
“Talk to me, man,” Urmston urged the prisoner. “Don’t be a fool!”
“This is against God’s law,” the Spaniard stammered. “I came here of my own will …”
“What do you know of God’s law?” Ratcliffe scoffed.
“I broke it too, many times. It’s why I repent …”
Ratcliffe glanced at Urmston. “As his penance, he claims to have been living as a mendicant, with no fixed abode.”
Morgeth gave a brutish chuckle. “Doesn’t sound like the Spanish priests I know.”
“Why did you surrender to us?” Urmston asked the prisoner.
“I … I hear you are looking for me … Raphael Vesquez, the killer of women. I come here to declare my innocence. I have lived in this city twenty-three years, since Queen Mary died … never once have I sinned with women. I seek only forgiveness …”
“Forgiveness for what? For your crimes under Mary?”
Weakly, the prisoner nodded.
Ratcliffe chuckled. “Would you believe he was wearing a horsehair shirt under his habit?”
Urmston looked round at the Constable. “And that didn’t tell you anything?”
Ratcliffe’s mirth drained away. “You don’t mean to say you believe him?”
Urmston thought again – about the terrible suffering of the Protestant martyrs, about how Raphael Vesquez had reputedly revelled in their weeping and wailing, in their shrieks for mercy. He glanced back at the prisoner. Granted, this pathetic specimen was no longer the smooth, murderous tiger of Tower memory, but did that mean he was any the less a ruthless criminal?
“I don’t know what to believe,” the spy-catcher admitted.
“I do!” Ratcliffe said. He turned to Morgeth and barked: “Rack him! Make him talk!”
The jailer threw all his weight against the crank-handle. The prisoner screamed …
*
Several times that night, the interrogators retired to consider, but at no stage were they able to agree with each other. Urmston wasn’t as convinced of the prisoner’s innocence as much as he was discomforted by the methods they were using. Ratcliffe continued to call on his own extensive experience, assuring his colleague that even the most heinous felons broke in the end. Each time they went back into the torture chamber, Urmston asked Vesquez, implored him, to confess – for his own sake if nothing else. He even reminded the Spaniard that the penalty for murder in England was a relatively quick death on the gallows. But the prisoner would shake his head defiantly and proclaim that he’d had nothing to do with the Southwark murders.
It was some time in the early morning, when t
he prisoner, exhausted by pain, began to faint – not just once, but repeatedly. Each time Morgeth applied a little pressure, he would pass out for progressively longer periods. One glance at his physical state was enough to prove that he wasn’t shamming. His limbs were black and blue, and twisted grotesquely out of shape; at least one of his shoulders had disjointed. In the few moments he spent conscious, he raved deliriously rather than cried out. His nose pumped blood and mucus.
The interrogators, weary themselves, finally opted to rest. Ratcliffe ordered that Vesquez be removed from the apparatus and taken back to his cell. Morgeth obeyed, dragging the wretched man by his feet. The prisoner, mercifully unconscious again, slithered out of sight like a sack of shattered crockery.
Urmston glanced up at Ratcliffe, now stripped to his shirt-sleeves, his face red as beef and beaded with the sweat of his exertions, and wondered how he could ever have imagined that the Constable of the Tower was “jovial-looking”. Of course, he ought to have known. No-one of a jovial disposition ever became custodian of this cruel place.
Ratcliffe retrieved his jerkin. “I’m surprised, my lord,” he said. “For a spy-catcher, you seem markedly squeamish about use of the rack.”
Urmston shrugged. “Partly, I am. But mainly I’m doubtful. Any information extracted through torture is likely to be unreliable.”
The Constable sighed as if this was sadly true. “The moral way is often the hardest one to understand.”
“The moral way?”
Ratcliffe replaced his cap, and straightened it. “The rules are very simple. If a good man is put to the pains, then God will give him the strength to see it through. If he’s a bad man, he’ll crack, and the torture will have served its purpose.”
“And what, I wonder, is the time-limit on this distinction? How long, for example, does he have to withstand it to prove himself good? A week, a month … six months? Or isn’t it simply the case that, if we’ve a mind to it, we will continue with the torture for however long, until he proves himself bad?”
Ratcliffe smiled to himself. “I didn’t invent this system, my lord, I simply impose it. As is my duty.” And with that, he turned and left.
